HARRY HARDY'S first few shifts below only served to convince him of the
difficulties of the task he had set himself. The Silver Stream was a big
alluvial mine working two levels, and there were close upon a hundred
hands below on each shift. All these he could not watch; but he was
working in the same drive and with the set of men Frank had worked with,
and was always alert for hint or sign that would give him a clue, whilst
at the same time being careful not to set the thieves on their guard. He
must watch closely without letting it be seen that he was watching at
all. Keen as he was in the pursuit of his object, he found, with some
self-resentment, that his mind frequently reverted to another subject
altogether; and that subject was Miss Christina Shine. When he caught
himself absorbed in a reverie in which Miss Chris was the centre of
interest, he metaphorically took himself by the neck and shook himself
up, and during the next few minutes reviewed with quite extravagant
ferocity the excellent reasons he had for hating Chris for her father's
sake. It was a melancholy pleasure to him to see the searcher pawing his
clothes about, digging into his pockets and his billy, and examining his
boots. His old instinct would have prompted him to attack Ephraim on the
floor of the shed, but now, with lamentable unreason and injustice, he
nursed the insult as good and sufficient cause for contemning the
daughter. He had seen Chris once since Sunday, and then only from the
recesses of a clump of scrub into which he had retreated on seeing her
approach; but he felt, without admitting the knowledge even to himself,
that he would need all the excuses he could find, just or unjust,
reasonable or otherwise, to battle with something that was rising up
within him to drive him on his knees to the feet of this grey-eyed girl,
a humble and abject penitent.
For an hour or two each day Harry was fossicking in the creek on the spot
where Frank had been working, with the idea of satisfying himself whether
or not such gold as Frank had sold was obtainable there; and here the
searcher's daughter came upon him one morning shortly after the incident
of the Sunday School. Harry had his cradle pitched near the crossing, and
to ignore the young woman would be an avowal of enmity. Here was his
opportunity. Harry set his face over the hopper and cradled
industriously. He thought he was displaying proper firmness, but his hand
trembled, his heart beat like a plunger, and he was the victim of an
ignoble bashfulness. Chris approached with some timidity; but Maori
bounded up to the young man, making elephantine overtures of
friendliness, which were resented by Harry's cattle-dog Cop, who walked
round and round the mastiff in narrowing circles, bristling like a cat
and snarling hoarsely. Maori treated the challenge with a lordly
indulgence. Cop went further, he snapped and brought blood. There were
some things Maori could not stand: this was one. Out of a small storm of
pebbles, chips, leaves, and dust, the two dogs presently came into view
again, Cop on his back, pawing wildly at the unresisting air, and Maori
at his throat, pinning him with a vice-like grip.
Harry rushed to the rescue, tore his dog free, and held back the furious
animal up-reared and exposing vicious fangs. Chris laid a trembling hand
on the collar of the penitent Maori, and in this way the young people
faced each other. Their eyes met for a moment, Harry's frowning blackly,
hers anxious and beseeching.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'Is he hurt?'
'No,' replied Harry sulkily. 'No thanks to that brute of yours, though.'
'Oh!' This very reproachfully.
Harry looked up and encountered her eyes again, and they shattered him,
as they had done in chapel, giving him a sense of having exerted his
strength to hurt something sweet and tender as a flower; and yet the girl
seemed to tower above him. Nature, in putting the fresh sympathetic soul
of a child into the grand body of a Minerva, had set a problem that was
too deep for Harry Hardy.
'Beg pardon,' he said, humbly; ''twas my dog started it. Down, Cop! To
heel--!'
He checked himself suddenly on a 'stock term.' There were tones of his
master's that Cop never dared to disobey; he went down at full length and
lay panting, regarding Maori fixedly with a sidelong and malevolent eye.
Harry returned to his cradle, and Chris approached the stepping-stones
and paused there.
'Did Dickie Haddon give you my message?' she asked in a low voice.
Harry nodded.
'It's all right,' he said.
There was another pause, broken at length by Chris.
'You ought not to be angry with me. It isn't fair.'
She was thinking of the day years ago when she was carried, all tattered
and torn, from the midst of that mob of sportive cattle. She was a very
little girl then, but the incident had remained fresh and vivid in her
mind, and ever since Harry Hardy had been a hero in her eyes. He only
remembered the affair casually and without interest.
'I am really very grateful to you for--for going away, because I know you
had good cause for your anger.'
Oh, that's all right,' said Harry again, inaptly.
'But you ought not to be angry with me. It pained me very much--the trial
and your mother's sorrow, and all the rest. It hurt me because it seemed
to set me on the side that was against Mrs. Hardy, and I--I always
admired her. I knew she was a good woman, and it was easy to see the
trouble cut into her heart although she bore it so proudly.'
'Oh, that's all right.' Harry was fumbling with the gravel in the hopper.
He was conscious that his replies were foolish and trivial, but for the
life of him he could do no better.
She waited a few moments, then bade him good morning and went across the
creek and away amongst the trees beyond; and Harry, resting upon the
handle of his cradle, watched her, absorbed, a prey to a set of new
emotions that bewildered him hopelessly. He was still in this position
when Chris looked back from the hill, and half an hour later Dick Haddon
found him day-dreaming amongst the tailings.
Day-dreams were not possible in the vicinity of Richard Haddon. The boy
was an ardent fossicker, and loved to be burrowing amongst old tailings,
or groping in the sludge of an auriferous creek after little patches. He
was soon peering into the ripples of Harry's cradle.
'Poor,' he commented, with the confidence of an expert.
'Not up to much, Dick,' said Harry. 'I've just been prospectin' a bit
round here.'
'Frank was tryin' that bank. 'Tain't no good. Say, I can lay you onter
somethin' better not far from here.'
'Yes--where is it?'
'Tellin's. What'll you give us?
'Depends. What's it worth?'
'Got half a pennyweight prospect there onst. Look here, you lend me yer
dog t'-night, an' I'll show where.'
'What do you want with Cop?'
'You won't split? Well, some coves down to Cow Flat come up an' stole my
goat, Butts, an' a lot of others, an' me an' some other fellers is goin'
after 'em t'-night, late. A good sheep-dog what's a quiet worker 'd be
spiffin. Cop's all right. He'd work fer me.'
Harry had not forgotten the time when a lordly billy was the pride and
joy of his own heart, and his sympathies were with Dick; so Cop
accompanied the band of youthful raiders that assembled with much mystery
in the vicinity of the schoolhouse late that night. The desperadoes had
stolen from their beds while their parents slept, and were ripe for
adventure. Dick, who had Cop in charge, put himself at the head of the
rising with his customary assurance, and gave his orders in a low, stern
voice. According to his authorities, a low, stern voice was proper to the
command of all such midnight enterprises.
But before starting for Cow Flat it was necessary to forage for
ammunition. Two or three of the boys were provided with bags. It was
proposed to fill these with such vegetables as would serve to allure the
coy but gluttonous goat, and a silent, systematic descent was made upon
several kitchen gardens of Waddy.
Go fer carrots an' cabbages, specially carrots,' whispered the
commandant, whose experience of goats was large and varied, and taught
him that the average nanny or billy would desert home and kindred and go
through fire and water in pursuit of a succulent young carrot not larger
than a clothes-peg.
When the boys turned their backs on Waddy the expedition carried with it
vegetables enough to bribe all the goats in the province. The garden of
Michael Devoy was a waste place, desolation brooded over the carrot beds
of the Canns and the Sloans, and Mrs. Ben Steven's cabbage-patch lay in
ruins.
For this night only Dick had assumed the role of Moonlighter Ryan, a
notorious Queensland cattle duffer, recently hanged for his part in a
disputation with a member of the mounted police. The dispute ended with
the death of the policeman, who succumbed to injuries received. As
Moonlighter Dick was characteristically remorseless, his courage and
cunning were understood to verge upon the inhuman, and his band was
composed of the most utterly abandoned ruffians the history of the
country afforded; only two of them had not been hanged, and these two
justified their inclusion by having richly deserved hanging several times
over.
Across the flat and past the toll-bar, where the light sleep of Dan, the
tollman, was not disturbed by the creeping band, Moonlighter led his
outlaws warily, then struck the long bush road between two lines of
straggling fence running with all sorts of lists and bends, going on and
on endlessly, according to the belief of the boys of Waddy. The road was
overhung by tall gums and nourished many clumps of fresh green saplings,
about which the tortuous cart-track wound in deep yellow ruts, baked hard
in summer, washed into treacherous bog in winter. Here caution was not
necessary, and there were divers fierce hand-to-hand attacks on clumps of
scrub representing a vindictive and merciless police, out of which
Moonlighter and his men issued crowned with victory and covered with
glory. A scarecrow in a wayside orchard was charged with desperate
valour, and only saved from instant destruction as a particularly hateful
police spy by the sudden intervention of the leader.
'Back, men!' he cried imperiously. 'Moon lighter never makes war on women!'
He pointed to the protecting skirt in which the scarecrow was clad, and
his bold bad men drew off and retired abashed.
For the next half-mile Moonlighter led his men in stealthy retreat from
an overwhelming force of troopers armed to the teeth. Tracks had to be
covered and diversions created, and there was much hiding behind logs and
in clumps of scrub; indeed, the police were only foiled at length by the
exertion of that subtle strategy for which Moonlighter was notorious.
It was after one o'clock in the morning when Cow Flat was reached. The
little township slept, steeped in darkness, beside its sluggish strip of
creeping 'slurry' miscalled a creek. Beyond, on the rise, a big mine
clattered and groaned, and puffed its glowing clouds of steam against the
sky; but Cow Flat had settled down into silence after the midnight change
of shifts, and a mining township sleeps well. For all that it was a
stealthy and cautious band Moonlighter led down to the old battered
engine-house by the edge of the common, where the goats of Cow Flat were
known to herd in large numbers. Sure enough here were goats of both
sexes, and all sorts and sizes--sleeping huddled in the ruined
engine-house, on the sides of the grass-grown tip, in the old bob-pit,
and upon the remains of the fallen stack. Carefully and quietly the
animals were awakened; slyly they were drawn forth, with gentle whispered
calls of 'Nan, nan, nan!' and insidious and soothing words, but more
especially with the aid of scraps of carrot, sparingly but judiciously
distributed. An occasional low, querulous bleat from a youthful nanny
awakened from dreams of clover-fields, or a hoarse, imperious inquiry in
a deep baritone 'baa' from a patriarchal he-goat, was the only noise that
followed the invasion. Then, when the animals within the ruin were fully
alive to the situation and awake to the knowledge that it all meant
carrots, and that outside carrots innumerable awaited the gathering, they
streamed forth: they fought in the doorways, they battered a passage
through the broken wall; faint plaintive queries went up from scores of
throats, answered by gluttonous mumblings from goats that had been
fortunate enough to snatch a morsel of the delectable vegetable. Down
from the tips and up from the bob-pit they came, singly and in sets,
undemonstrative matrons with weak-kneed twins at their heels, skittish
kids and bearded veterans, and joined the anxious, eager, hungry mob.
'Away with them, my boys,' ordered Moonlighter. 'Head 'em fer the common.
We'll have every blessed goat in the place.'
He sent away three bands in three different directions, fully
provisioned, and commissioned to collect goats from all quarters.
'Bring 'em up to the main mob on the common, an' the man what makes a row
I'll hang in his shirt to the nearest tree. Don't leave the beggars any
kind of a goat at all.'
Dick had undertaken a big contract. Cow Flat was simply infested with
goats; every family owned its small flock, and the milk-supply of the
township depended entirely upon the droves of nannies that grubbed for
sustenance on the stony ridges or the bare, burnt stretch of common land.
Probably Cow Flat was so called because nobody had ever seen anything
remotely resembling a cow anywhere in the vicinity; consequently goats
were hold in high esteem, for ten goats can live and prosper where one
cow would die of hunger and melancholy in a month.
Jacker Mack, Peterson, and Parrot Cann had recognised their billies in
the heard, but Butts was still missing. On an open space near the road by
which Moonlighter's gang had come, and at a safe distance from the
township, a few of the raiders held the main body of the goats. Parrot
Cann, with a bag of cabbages on his shoulder, was the centre of
attraction, and the dropping of an occasional leaf kept the goats pushing
about him, some uprearing and straining toward the tantalising bag,
others baa-ing in his face a piteous appeal. Suddenly, however, an astute
billy with a flowing beard came to the rescue. He drove at Cann from the
rear with masterly strategy and uncommon force, and brought him down;
then in a flash boy and bag were hidden under a climbing, butting,
burrowing army of goats, from the centre of which came the muffled yells
of poor Parrot clipped in a hundred places by the sharp hoofs of the
hungry animals.
Moonlighter promptly led a desperate charge to the rescue, and after a
hard struggle Cann was dragged out, tattered and bleeding; but the bag
was abandoned to the enemy.
In about twenty minutes Jacker Mack and a couple of subordinates brought
up a herd gathered from the hill on the left bank of the creek; Peterson
came soon after with a good mob from the right, and Dolf Belman and
another followed with a score or so from about the houses. But still
Butts had not been captured.
'You fellers take 'em on slowly,' said Moonlighter. Me an' Gardiner'll go
back an' have a try after Butts.' Ted McKnight represented Gardiner in
this enterprise.
The hunt for Butts had to be conducted with great circumspection. The
boys crept from place to place; Dick called the goat's name softly at all
outhouses and enclosures, and won a response after a search of over a
quarter of an hour, Butts's familiar 'baa' answering from the interior of
a stable in a back yard. Ted was stationed to keep 'nit,' and Dick stole
into the yard, broke his way into the stable, and was leading the huge
billy out of captivity when the savage barking of a dog broke the
silence; and then an adjacent window was thrown up and a woman's voice
called 'Thieves!' and 'Fire!
Dick had given Butts the taste of a carrot and now fled, dangling the
inviting vegetable, Butts following at his heels.
'Go for it, Ted!' he yelled, and the two rushed over the flat ground, up
the hill, and across the thinly-timbered bush to the road. A good run
brought them up to the main flock, Butts still ambling gaily in the rear,
making hungry bites at the carrot hitched under Dick's belt at the back.
'Rush 'em along!' cried the panting Moonlighter. 'We've waked the blessed
town. Heel 'em, Cop, heel 'em!
Peterson and Jacker went ahead dangling cabbages; the dog entered into
the spirit of the thing with enthusiasm and worked the flock in his very
best style; and so the boys of Waddy, hot, excited, very frightened of
probable pursuers, but wondrously elated, swept the great drove of goats
up the road in the light of the waning moon. The pace was warm for a
mile, but then, the dread of pursuit having evaporated, the marauders
slowed down, and for the rest of the journey they were experienced
drovers bringing down the largest lot of stock that had ever been handled
by man, full of technical phrases and big talk of runs, and plains, and
flooded rivers, and long, waterless spells. It was Jacker Mack who
sounded the first note of dismay.
'Jee-rusalem! How 'bout the toll?'
Nobody had thought of the toll-bar, and there were the big, white gates
already in sight, stretching across the road, threatening to bring dismal
failure upon the expedition when complete success seemed imminent.
'Down with the fence!' ordered the implacable Moonlighter.
In two minutes the boys had found a weak set of rails in the fence, and
shortly after the goats were being driven across Wilson's paddock,
cutting off a great corner, and heading for the farmer's gates that
opened out on to the open country on which Waddy was built. Through these
gates the flock was driven with a racket and hullaballoo that set
Wilson's half-dozen dogs yapping insanely, and started every rooster on
the farm crowing in shrill protestation. Then helter-skelter over the
flat the goats were swept in on the township and left to their own
devices, whilst a dozen weary, dusty, triumphant small boys stole back to
bed through unlatched windows and doors carefully left open for a
stealthy return.