‘Married man, sir?’
‘No,’ I replied.
‘No more ’m I,’ he continued, ‘or I don’t s’pose I’d be here yarning a
night like this.’
‘It’s a wonder,’ I said, ‘that none of these jolly-looking _Fräuleins_
about here have been able to take your fancy.’
‘Well, to tell the truth,’ he replied, with, however, a rather
conscious expression on his face, ‘I think what those poor Fairleighs
went through rather scared me of marryin’.
‘But, as I was sayin’, farmin’ didn’t seem to agree with my mate,
Bill—that’s him you seen at the claim to-day—spite o’ his past
experience, any more’n it did with me. _He_ done the business,
by-the-bye, quite lately with a bouncin’ gal—Lieschen Hertzog—an’ now
stays at home o’ nights.
‘We had a note or two left. We had also a crop o’ potaters an’ some
punkins. But no one wanted ’em—wouldn’t buy ’em at any price. In fact,
you couldn’t give ’em away in those times.
‘The Fairleighs an’, I think, all of us, were pretty much in the same
box. As I said before, it was time somethin’ turned up.
‘It was a wild night. Bill an’ me was lyin’ in our stretchers readin’.
About ten o’clock, open flies the door, an’ in bolts Fairleigh
drippin’ wet, no hat on, an’ pale as a ghost, an’ stands there like a
statue, starin’ at us, without a word.
‘“In God’s name what’s the matter?” I says at last. With that he flaps
his hands about, so-fashion, an’ sings out, “Dot’s lost in the
ranges!”
‘You may bet that shook us up a bit! You’ve seen the Broken Ranges for
yourself, an’ can judge what chance a delicate little kiddy like Dot’d
have among them rocks an’ scrub on a worse night than this is.
‘That fool of a sailor-man, if you’ll believe me, an’ his wife had
been out sence dark searchin’ for the child, ’stead o’ rousin’ the
settlement. Presently, to make matters worse, it appears that he’d
lost the woman too—got separated in the scrub, an’ couldn’t find her
again. Just by a fluke, while on the Black Hill yonder, he’d caught
the glimper o’ sparks from our chimney. He was covered with cuts and
bruises an’ goin’ cranky fast when he got to the hut.
‘Bill had gone to tell the news; an’ in a very few minutes a whole
crowd o’ Fritzes, an’ Hanses, an’ Hermans, an Gottliebs was turned out
an’ ready for a start.
‘They didn’t want no coaxing. All they says was ‘_Ach Gott!_’ an’ they
was fit for anythin’. By no manner o’ means a bad lot,’ here commented
Ward, ‘when you comes to get in with ’em an’ know ’em like. Honest as
the light, an’ as hard-workin’ as a bullock. Slow, maybe, but very
sure. Full o’ pluck as a soger-ant. Clannish as the Scotties, an’ as
savin’. I’ve got some real good friends among ’em now. An’ their
women-folks, too, is amazin’ handy—make you up a square feed out o’ a
head o’ cabbage an’ a bit o’ greenhide, I do believe, if they was put
to it.
‘Cert’nly their lingo ’s the dead finish at first, till you gets used
to it. I can _Deutsch gesprechen_, myself, now, more’n a little.
‘However, that’s neither here nor there.
‘Bill, my mate, as I told you, as much as me, havin’ got full o’
farmin’, we used to take a prospectin’ trip now and then among the
ranges. But we never rose the colour. Never found a thing, ’cept scrub
turkeys’ eggs. Anyhow, we knew the country better’n the Germans, an’
took the lead.
‘Pitch dark it were, with heavy squalls, an’ the river roarin’ along
half a banker.
‘Fairleigh, after a stiff nip o’ rum, began to find his senses again
sufficient to give us the right course.
‘Such scramblin’, an’ _coo-eein’_, an’ slippin’, an’ tearin’ about the
Bush in the dark never, I should think, happened before. But we
managed to keep in some sort o’ line an’ cover a goodish track o’
country.
‘We must ha’ gone fully five miles into the ranges, an’ Bill an’ me
was gettin’ to the end of our tether in that direction, when we found
Mrs Fairleigh. Karl Itzig nearly falls over her, lyin’ stretched out
on a big flat rock.
‘We thought she was dead; but, after a while, she comes to,
light-headed, though, and not able to tell us anythin’. So we sends
her home with a couple o’ the chaps carryin’ her.
‘Well, we searched till daylight—rainin’ cats an’ dogs all the time.
And we searched all the next day without any luck. That evenin’ it
cleared-up bright at sundown. Then Fairleigh gives in complete, an’
has to be carried home to his wife.
‘After a camp an’ a snack the moon rose, an’ we at it afresh. But we
’bouted ship now; for I was sure we’d overrun ourselves. There was
full fifty of us, an’ we circled, takin’ in all the country we could.
You see, we was hopin’ for fresh tracks, an’ we went with our noses on
the groun’ like a lot of dogs on the scent of an old man kangaroo,
only a sight slower.
‘’Bout midnight I sees somethin’ shinin’. It was the steel buckle on
the front o’ poor Dot’s shoe. Only one of ’em, an’ all soaked through
with rain. No tracks; so we reckoned he’d been here last night in the
heaviest of it.
‘That little bit o’ leather put us in better heart. But it wasn’t to
be. The sun was just risin’, when, pretty near done up, me an’ Bill
an’ Wilhelm Reinhardt comes out o’ the scrub on to a small bald knob,
an’ there, on a bare patch, lies Dot, stone dead, with his blue eyes
wide open, starin’ at the sky, an’ the long curly hair, as his mother
used to be so proud of, all matted with sand and rain.
‘Four crows was sittin’ overright him on the limb of a tree. I don’t
believe the poor little fellow ’d been dead very long—in the chill o’
the early hours o’ that mornin’ likely. In one hand he had a bit o’
stick. With the other he held his pinny, gathered up tight, same as
you’ve seen kiddies do when they’re carryin’ somethin’.
‘A real pitiful sight it were. It was as much as Bill an’ me could
stand. As for Wilhelm, he just sits down aside the body an’ fair
blubbers out.
‘Well, with our _coo-ees_, the rest comes up in twos an’ threes. Most
of the Germans started to keep Wilhelm company. Foreigners, I think,
must be either softer-hearted than us, or ain’t ashamed o’ showin’
what they feel. Anyhow, there wasn’t a dry eye among them Germans when
they gathered round little Dot.
‘Presently we starts to rig a sort o’ stretcher with coats and a
couple o’ saplin’s.
‘Then Bill lifts the body up, an’ as he does out from the pinny drops
four o’ the beautifullest specimens you’d ever wish to see—them on the
table ain’t a patch on ’em.
‘I twigs them at once. So did three or four more old digger chaps.
‘Then we takes a squint around, an’ there, right against our noses, as
one might say, ran the reef, with bits o’ gold stickin’ out o’ the
surface-stone an’ glimperin’ in the sun.
‘I don’t believe the Germans tumbled for a while. You see they was all
new chums. Most likely none of ’em hadn’t ever seen a natural bit o’
gold afore.
‘But the others did, quick. An’, presently, a rather hot sort o’
argument begins to rise.
‘For a short time me an’ Bill stands and listens to the wranglin’.
Then I looks at Bill, and he nods his head, and I shoves my spoke in.
‘“Look here, chaps!” I says, “this may be only a surface leader, as
some of you appears to think, or it may be a pile. I don’t care a damn
which it is! It’s Fairleigh’s first say. His kid, as lies there dead,
found it! An’, by the Lord, his father’s goin’ to be first served! I’m
goin’ now to peg out what I considers a fair prospectin’ claim for
him. That’ll be seen to after. When that’s done you can strike in as
you likes. If you objects to that you ain’t men. Bill, here, ’ll back
me up, an’, if you don’t like it, we’ll do it in spite o’ you. We’re
all poor enough, God knows! But none of us ain’t just lost an only
child, an’ self an’ wife gone half mad with the sorrow of it.”
‘Well, sir, the Germans, who was beginning to drop to how the thing
lay, set up a big shout o’ “_Hoch! Hoch!_” meanin’ in their lingo,
“Hooray.” An’ the rest, what was right enough at bottom, an’ only
wanted showin’ like what was the fair an’ square thing to do, quick
agreed. All ’cept, that is, one flash sort of a joker from the
Barossa. But, while I steps the groun’, Bill put such a head on him in
half-a-dozen rounds that his own mother wouldn’t know him again.
‘It were only a couple o’ miles in a straight line from the
settlement, through the ranges, to that bit of a bald hill.
‘Exactly, almost, where you stood to-day, lookin’ at the windin’ plant
o’ the El Dorado, was where we found Dot.
‘When the field was proclaimed the Warden didn’t have much alteration
to make in the p.c. I’d marked off for Fairleigh.
‘You see it was only one man’s groun’ then. An’ it turned out rich
from the jump. An’ it’s gettin’ better every foot. None o’ the others,
as the Company’s bought an’ ’malgamated with it, although joinin’, can
touch “Dot’s.”
‘But Fairleigh’s never to say held up his head sence that night.
‘A week after we buried the child we carried the mother to rest beside
him.
‘Fairleigh must be a rich man now. Everythin’ he touches, as the
sayin’ is, seems to turn to gold. He can’t go wrong. But he seldom
comes a-nigh the place. One of the first things he done when “Dot’s”
turned up such trumps, was to put five thousand pounds to mine and
Bill’s credit in the A—— bank. But we never touched it. Ever sence
that night our luck’s been right in. First we sells out No. 1 North to
the Company at a pretty stiff figure. Then we buys out No. 2 South
an’ seemingly we’ve struck it again, an’ rich.’
‘And, now,’ I remark as my friend, his yarn finished, sits gazing
meditatively at the glowing logs,—‘and, now, all you want is a wife.
Follow your mate’s example, and make a home where you’re making your
money.’
Ward shook his head, smiling doubtfully, and, knocking the ashes out
of his pipe, rose to go.
Just then Gretchen, buxom, and smiling also, appeared bearing a huge
back-log in her arms. And when I saw the way my companion sprang up
and rushed to meet and relieve her of the burden, and heard the
guttural whispering that took place before the lump of timber reached
its destination, I thought that, ere very long, all doubts would be
dissipated, and that, even then, I sat within measurable distance of
the future Mrs Ward.