THE detective had asked Harry to keep careful watch upon Dick, but the
boy betrayed no inclination to roam, and when he did venture out it was
to call upon Harry himself. Dick's spirits had recovered marvellously,
and if it were not for an occasional fit of sadness (induced by thoughts
of Christina Shine) he would have been quite restored to his former
healthy craving for devilment, and eager to call together the
shareholders of the Mount of Gold with a view to arranging further
adventures. Harry, too, no longer felt the ill effects of his injuries,
and intended returning to work in the course of a few days. The recent
discoveries had served to lighten his heart, and yet thoughts of
Christina welled bitterness; but his mother was happy in the confidence
that at last justice would be done and her son restored to her.
Dick found Harry moodily smoking in the garden, and addressed him through
the fence.
'What d'ye think?' he said, with the air of one propounding a conundrum.
Harry was not in a guessing mood; he gave it up at once and Dick took
another course.
'I got somethin' p'tickler to tell you,' he said.
'Have you, Ginger?' Harry was quite alert now. 'About this
gold-stealin'?'
'No--o, not quite about that. I'm goin' to tell all that to Downy, but
it's somethin' jist as p'tickler--about a reef we found.'
'A reef? Nonsense, Dick. How could you find a reef?'
'By diggin' fer it, I s'pose. What'd you think if I said we fellers' ye
got a mine--a really mine--me an' Jacker Mack, an' Ted McKnight, an'
Billy Peterson, an' Phil Doon? What'd you say, eh?'
'I'd say you didn't know what you were talking about, Ginger, my boy.'
'But if I took you down the shaft an' showed you the reef, an' showed you
stone with gold stickin' in it--suppose I done that, how then?'
'Where is this reef?' asked Harry, becoming impressed by the boy's
earnestness.
'Tellin's!'
'But didn't you come to tell me?'
'Come to tell you we'd found it, an' to ask what to do, so's no one can
jump it. We want it took up on a proper lease, all right fer me an' the
rest o' the fellers, an' we'll let you stand in.'
'I can't take up a lease unless I know where the reef is, can I?'
'Well, it ain't far from the Bed Rand.'
'Nonsense, Dick! The bottom must be over three hundred feet deep there.
You couldn't cut a reef any shallower than that.'
'On'y we have.'
Harry sat for a moment lost in thought. He had suddenly recalled old talk
about mysterious indications of a shallow reef in that locality, a reef
the existence of which would have been in open opposition to mining
traditions, and contrary to all locally known theories of scientific
mining. He remembered hearing of a shaft that had been put down by a few
believers, in defiance of local derision; he recalled, too, the eccentric
and unheard-of drive thrown out by the Red Hand in some such absurd
quest, and his respect for the boy's opinion grew into something like
conviction.
'It's very queer, Dick,' he said; 'but if you'll show it to me I'll do
all I can for you.'
'That's good! You see we're all in it. We're the Mount of Gold
Quartz-minin' Company--me an' Jacker an' them--but it's on'y a
make-believe company, an' I'd like Mr. McKnight, an' Mr. Peterson, an'
Mr. Doon to come, an' the detective cove too, cause there's somethin'
else there--somethin' else p'tickler too.'
'Very well, we can go an' see McKnight an' Peterson, but they'll laugh at
us.'
'When they laugh we'll show 'em this,' said Dick, producing a lump of
quartz.
Harry took the stone in his hand; it was not larger than a hen's egg and
of a dark colour, but studded thickly with clean gold, and as he gazed at
it his pipe fell from his mouth and his eyes rounded. He pursed his lips
to whistle his astonishment, and forgot to do it; he lifted his hand to
scratch his head and it stuck half-way; he turned and turned the stone,
stupid with surprise.
'By the holy, your fortune's made if there's much o' this!' he blurted at
length.
'Think there's heaps of it,' said Dick coolly.
'When can we go to it?'
'When the detective cove comes, an' I've told him 'bout somethin'.'
'Somethin' good for us, Dick?' asked Harry anxiously.
Dick nodded his head slowly several times.
'Well, if this don't lick cock-fighting. Have you told your mother?'
'No,' said Dick.
'Nothing about this either? How's that?'
'Oh,' said Dick with a man's superiority, 'she wouldn't understand. She
don't know nothin' 'bout minin', you know.'
Harry looked down upon his young friend curiously for a moment.
'D'you know,' he said, 'you're a most amazing kind of a kid?'
'How?' asked Dick shortly.
'Why in the way you get mixed up in things.'
'Tain't my fault if things happen, is it?' asked the boy in an injured
tone.
'S'pose it ain't,' replied Harry with a grin; 'but they all seem to come
your way somehow. Look here--it can't matter now--tell me how you came to
be in the Stream drive that night?'
Dick kicked up a tuft of grass, bored one heel into the soft turf, and
answered nothing.
'Come on, old man, I won't turn dog.'
'I'm goin' to tell it to Detective Downy first. 'Twasn't nothin' much
anyhow. I jes' went down.'
Dick would say nothing more. He found himself on the side of the law for
the first time, and felt he owed a duty to Downy, whom he regarded as
almost as great a man as Sam Sagacious. Downy had come to his rescue in
an hour of dire peril, Downy had trusted him and taken him into his
confidence to some extent, and he was determined to do the fair and
square thing by the detective, at least so far as he could do so without
interfering with his sacred obligation to handsome, unhappy Christina
Shine.
The detective returned to the township in the afternoon to prosecute the
search for Ephraim, of whom nothing had yet been heard. In the presence
of his mother and Mrs. Hardy and Harry, Dick faced the officer to tell
his story; but he found it hard to begin.
'Well, my lad,' said Downy, 'you're going to tell all you know?'
Dick nodded, abashed by his new importance.
'Out with it then. You were in that drive?'
'Yes.'
'You went down with Rogers and Shine?'
'I didn't.'
'Very well, my boy, how did you go?'
'Went by myself. Out of a drive what I know into the Red Hand workin's,
an' down the Red Hand ladders.'
'But why? Go ahead--why?'
'To--to drag Harry out o' the water.'
There were three distinct gasps at this, and even the detective's eyelids
went up a trifle.
'Go on, Dick.'
Now having started, Dick told his story in full. The incidents were not
told consecutively, and he needed considerable cross-examining before the
tale was properly fitted together and his audience of four had grasped
the full details. Then Mrs. Hardy arose from her seat and moved towards
him somewhat unsteadily; knelt by his side, took him in her arms softly
and quietly, kissed him, and said in a very low voice:
'God bless you, Richard; God bless you, my brave boy.'
This, for some reason quite incomprehensible to the boy, caused a lump to
swell in his breast and gave him an altogether uncalled-for inclination
to blubber; but he swallowed it down with an effort, and then his mother
hugged him in that billowy energetic way of hers. After which Harry took
his hand and shook it for quite a long time without speaking a word. The
detective alone was undemonstrative.
'Now,' said he, 'what about this gold? You hid it?'
'Yes. In our shaft.'
'Look here, Master Dick, why have you kept all this so quiet? Why did you
go down that mine in stead of running for help? Come, there is something
at the back of all this; out with it!
Dick's lips closed in a familiar way, and their colourlessness indicated
a stubborn defiance of all argument and persuasion.
'Did you want to steal the gold yourself?'
'No,' cried the boy angrily.
'Then you were afraid of something. By heaven! I have it. You rip! 'twas
you gave warning to Ephraim Shine. You deserve six months.'
'Shame!' murmured Mrs. Hardy.
''Tisn't fair!' expostulated Dick's mother. Dick's lips were closed
again, and he stared defiantly at the detective.
'Well, well,' groaned Downy, 'this is the most extraordinary thing in
boys that I have ever encountered, but he's a mass of grit--for good or
bad, all grit. Shake hands, Dick.'
Dick brightened up, and shook hands cheerfully.
'You're quite sure about that gold? You hid it securely?' queried the
detective.
'Yes, I buried it under the reef quite safe.'
'And nobody knows of this hole but yourself?'
'Yes, Jacker knows, an' Ted, an' Billy Peterson, an'--'
'Bless my soul, the whole township knows! We won't get an ounce of that
gold--not a colour. We'd better make the search at once, Mr. Hardy.
You'll need a rope and tools, I suppose. Hunt up the men you spoke of as
quickly as possible, will you?'
Harry and Dick started off together in quest of McKnight. He was on the
night shift, and they found him in bed. Harry explained. McKnight was
scornful and profane.
'What--that boy Haddon again?' he cried. 'Now what's his little game?
What devilment's he up to?
'But this looks all right,' Harry expostulated.
'All right, my grandmother's cat! You'll be findin' quartz reefs in a
gum-tree next.'
'You ask Jacker an' Ted,' put in Dick resentfully, hurt to find his
well-intentioned efforts so ungraciously received.
'Ask Jacker, is it? If Jacker comes playin' any of your monkey tricks
with me, my lad, I'll make him smell mischief, I tell you.'
'But hang it all, Mack! you might as well come an' see. I own the chances
o' finding a shallow reef in that locality look blue, but you know there
was talk o' something of the kind years ago.'
'Yes, talk by fellers that didn't know a quartz lode from a load o'
bricks or a stone wall. Get out, I'm sleepy.'
'Show him the specimen,' said Dick.
Harry handed it over.
'The boy says this is from his show. How's that?' he said.
McKnight took the stone indifferently, cast his eye over it, and then sat
up with a jerk. He moistened the stone here and there, glared again in a
strained silence, and one leg shot out of bed. He weighed the specimen in
his hand, and the second leg followed. Then McKnight fell to dressing
himself; he literally jumped into his clothes, and as he buttoned his
vest all askew, he gasped:
'Hold on there--I'll be with you in two twos!'
'Wouldn't break my neck about it, old man,' said Harry sarcastically,
'p'raps the boy made that specimen out of a door knob an' a bit of
brick.'
'Did he, but--That's just the same class o' stone as the specimen
Henderson found in the back paddock twelve years ago, that sent everyone
daft after a reef there. Come on.'
McKnight was now much the most eager of the three, and led the way at a
great pace to Peterson's house. Peterson was more easily convinced, and
in a few minutes the four joined Downy at Mrs. Hardy's. The detective had
borrowed a coil of rope, the necessary tools were provided, and the party
set off. The five no sooner appeared on the flat with their burdens than
they were sighted by many of the people of Waddy, now eagerly on the
lookout for adventure, and before they reached the bush they had quite a
mob at their heels, fed by a thin stream of men, women, and children
hurrying to witness the newest development of Waddy's latest and greatest
affair.
Dick led the men into the Gaol Quarry, and at the spring turned and
pointed the way through the scrub growth under which he and his mates
always crawled to get at the opening leading into the Mount of Gold.
'In there,' he said, 'agin the wall.'
Harry and McKnight broke a passage through the saplings and ti-tree.
''Tween them two rocks,' said Dick; 'low down under the fern.'
'Yes,' cried Harry, 'here we are! Let's have the hammer, Peterson.'
Harry broke away projecting pieces of stone, widening the aperture, and
Dick and the detective joined them at the opening.
'I'll go first,' said the boy. 'I can go down the ladder we made, but it
mightn't bear a man.'
Dick went below and lit a couple of candles. Nothing had been touched in
the drive, and he peeped into the shaft and saw that the loose dirt there
was as he left it. Harry joined him in a few minutes and McKnight
followed. The men came down on the boys' curious ladder, but with a rope
about their waists, paid out from above. Downy was the last to go below,
Peterson remaining on the surface to keep the crowd back from the
entrance.
McKnight seized a candle, crawled to the extremity of Dick's diminishing
drive, and examined the place curiously.
'It's right,' he cried, 'right as the bank. She's a dyke formation, I
should say, an' rich. By the holy, we're made men--made men, Hardy!
Detective Downy was too deeply interested in his own quest to pay much
attention to the miners.
'Now, my lad,' he said, 'where are we?'
'The bag's there under them lumps.' Dick held his candle low, throwing
its light into the shaft. Downy dropped from the slabs placed across from
drive to drive into the bottom, and going on his knees threw aside the
lumps of mullock indicated by the boy. Dick followed him holding the
candle, and watching his movements, anxiously at first, and then with
terror. He flung himself down beside the detective, and plunged his hand
amongst the rubble, then ceased and faced the detective, mute,
despairing.
'Well, well,' cried Downy in alarm, 'what is it?
'Gone!' whispered Dick.
'Gone? Are you sure? We have not searched yet.'
'It's gone!'
'You may have made a mistake. Hardy, Mc Knight, lend a hand here.'
'No good,' said Dick, 'it's gone.--it's stolen. I put it right here,
coverin' it with this flat junk an' a lot o' small stuff. I know--I know
quite well.'
Harry and McKnight went into the shaft with shovels, and turned over the
dirt stowed there to the depth of two feet, but the bag was gone.
'Show a light here,' Downy said suddenly, looking up at Dick from the
slab on which he was seated above the two workers. He took the candle and
examined the edge of the slab closely.
'You said the bag containing the stolen gold was made of hide.'
'Yes,' said the boy, 'green hide--just a calfskin bag, with the hair on.'
'Humph! Then here is proof that part of your story is true anyhow.' He
held up a little tuft of reddish hair.
'Rogers had a skin bag, a red-an'-white one. Used to use it fer haulin'
in the shallow alluvial at Eel Creek. I've seen it at his hut often,'
said McKnight. 'But, I say, mister, if you' take the advice of an old
miner you'll get out o' this just as quick as you can lick. See, the
timber's been taken out o' this shaft, an' it's a wonder to me it ain't
come down in a lump an' buried them kids long since. It's damn dangerous,
I tell you.'
'Very good,' said Downy. 'First have a look into these drives and then
we'll clear. Show me how you got through into the Red Hand workings,
Dick.'
Dick led him along the drive and pointed out the little heap covering the
opening where he had broken through.
'Do you think that dirt's been touched by anyone since you piled it
there?' asked Downy.
'No,' said Dick, 'it seems jist the same.'
'Then the thief did not come that way.' The detective scattered the heap
and examined the rough edges of the opening carefully. 'No cow hair
there,' he said. 'We must hunt for that skin bag somewhere up aloft,
Dick.'
When Dick reached the surface he found Hardy, McKnight, and Peterson
standing apart from the crowd, with elate faces, talking earnestly.
'She's a rich dyke,' McKnight was saying, 'an' she'll go plumb down to
any depth. We must get the pegs in at once, an' apply fer a lease. She
just misses Silver Stream ground, an' the ole Red Hand is forfeit long
ago. Boys, it's a fortune fer us.'
'Remember Phil Doon's a shareholder, too; his father's got to be in it,'
said Dick.
'To be sure, lad, to be sure; all honest an' fair to the boy pioneers.'
Dick felt little enthusiasm about the Mount of Gold just then, for the
loss of the bag of stolen gold troubled him sorely. He feared that
Detective Downy regarded him as a liar and a cheat.