Singing Bob and Lily Steve had been friends since first they came
into the camp, both having made their entrance upon the same day, and
having grown intimate over a glass of something hot. Perhaps the total
difference in the appearance and in the nature of the two men drew them
together; anyway, they were seldom apart. They worked upon the same
claim, shared in everything, and spent their leisure in taking long
stretches over the surrounding country.
Singing Bob was a big, burly, handsome man. The sun had tanned his skin
to the colour of the red earth, from out the setting of which a pair
of eyes, blue as the summer sky, and heavily fringed with long, misty
black lashes, laughed continually. He was careless in his dress, as
diggers as a rule are; but for all that nothing ever seemed to hang
ungracefully upon his magnificent limbs. His blue shirt, as a rule,
was stained with earth, and torn with pushing through the undergrowth
in the pine woods. His long, brown wavy hair was pushed back from his
broad brow, and fell almost upon his shoulders.
He had earned his name through his voice: he sang like an angel, clear
as a bell, flexibly as a lark; he could trill and shake in a way which
would have made many an educated singer envious. He could have made his
fortune as a concert singer, but perhaps he had sufficient reasons for
avoiding civilized parts: most probably he had. However that might be,
he came to the diggings, and gave his fellow gold-seekers the benefit
of his musical talent.
Taken all through he was a rough sort of fellow, with off-hand manners,
and a loud voice. When he laughed one feared for the upper half of his
head: he opened his mouth so wide it seemed as though it must come
off, and showed a double row of teeth which would have made a dentist
despair. He was a popular man in the camp, because he was perfectly
fearless and perfectly good tempered.
Lily Steve was a very different man. He was small in stature, below
the medium height, and with all that conceit and self-esteem which is
so usual with very little men. His face was pretty. The sun seemingly
had no power to tan his pink and white skin. His hair was golden, as
were his short beard, whiskers, and moustache. His clothes were always
spotless, even after a hard day's work in the gulch. Apparently the
earth had no power to soil him.
It was to this general spotlessness that he owed his name, "Lily
Steve." Diggers are quick to notice, and name a man from any little
peculiarity he may possess; and in a diggers' camp cleanliness is a
decided peculiarity. They tried to laugh him out of it at first, but as
Singing Bob said, "It was a matter of taste. Lily Steve was doubtless
fond of washing; p'r'aps--who could tell?--it reminded him of something
in the past. Some men like as not got drunk to bring their fathers and
mothers back to their memory and the days of their youth generally;
for his part, he thought it was a good plan to let folks run their own
affairs. There were more objectionable things than cleanliness. He
liked the smell of the earth about his things; upon his own shoulders
a perfectly spotless shirt had a lazy, uncomfortable, all-over-alike
sort of appearance, which wearied his eyes; but upon Lily Steve it was
different. To have one perfectly clean man in the camp conferred a
distinction upon it, which, no doubt, would make other camps envious.
Like as not, they'd be for copying it, but it would not be the real
thing--only a base imitation; they'd have the comfort of knowing that."
So Lily Steve was simply nick-named and left in peace. He had a bold
champion, who towered head and shoulders above the rest of the men in
the camp, and whose aim was sure--that may have had something to do
with it.
"Hunter's Pocket," as the settlement was called, was in a fairly
flourishing condition; not so flourishing as to bring hundreds flocking
to it, but with a reputation which daily increased its population.
There was one long street, with two branches which struck off
crosswise, a rough chapel, a store, and lastly an hotel.
Paradise Hotel scarcely deserved its name. True, there was plenty of
light in it, and plenty of spirits, but neither was celestial; one
thing alone justified its ambitious misnomer--the presence of a goddess.
Mariposas was a beauty, there was not the slightest doubt about that:
tall and slim as a young pine tree, lissom as a willow, graceful and
agile as a wild deer, her eyes large and dark, her skin softly ruddy
as a peach which the sun has kissed passionately, her lips full and
red, the upper one short and slightly lifted, showing even when she was
not laughing a faint gleam of her white teeth; the under one cleft in
the centre like a cherry, her nose short and straight, her chin gently
rounded, her little head set firmly and proudly upon her white throat,
her burnished brown hair falling in wavy masses to her knees, and
caught in at the nape of her neck with a ribbon--such was Mariposas,
the Goddess of the Paradise Hotel, the darling and pride of Hunter's
Pocket.
[Illustration: "MARIPOSAS."]
Who was her father and who was her mother no one appeared to know. Some
said that, so far as paternity was concerned, she was indebted to one,
Jim, who had been found dead in the bush, shot through the heart, some
seventeen years previously, with the infant clasped in his arms; but as
for the mother--about her everyone was perfectly ignorant.
However, the child was adopted by the camp, fed and clothed from
a general fund, and in time installed as presiding Goddess of the
Paradise Hotel. Here she dispensed drinks to the thirsty, refused them
to the inebriated, sang snatches of songs to the company, and even,
when in a specially gracious mood, danced to them.
Singing Bob and Lily Steve were at work on their claim; there was
silence between them only broken by the sharp sound of the picks as
they came in contact with the quartz, and the chattering of a jay-bird
which had settled upon a mound of the red earth, and was watching
operations with his head cocked knowingly upon one side.
It was a curious sort of silence, one that they both apparently
noticed, for now and again they would glance at each other, then
without speaking go on with their work again. It was not that they had
not time for talk, for the picks were lifted but laggingly, and often
rested upon the ground while they took a survey of the surrounding
country.
Seemingly both found more beauty to the right, where the settlement
lay, than to the left, where the pine-crowned hills lifted themselves
up high towards the blue sky. Perhaps the scorching sun which blazed
down upon them that hot January afternoon made their thoughts turn
longingly towards the Paradise Hotel, and the cool drinks which were
being dispensed there. Singing Bob put down his pick, lifted his arms
high above his head, leaned slightly backward, and stretched himself;
then stooping picked up a bit of quartz and looked at it thoughtfully,
passing his shirt sleeve across it once or twice. The sun shone down
upon it, making the iron pyrites glitter and the gold crystals sparkle.
He tossed it from one hand to the other, then let it fall.
"Plenty of gold here, Steve," he said, slowly.
The other man started and turned--their eyes met; there was a curious,
questioning, anxious look in both.
"Plenty," he answered.
"Enough to make a man rich in a couple of months if he worked honest,"
he continued.
"Yes," the other said, curtly.
"There's some as would give a good price for this claim," Bob
continued, meditatively. "It's my 'pinion it's a pocket, and a deep
one; if we was wanting to quit we'd be able to raise a tidy sum on it."
"Yes."
"But we ain't."
"No."
"And if one of us," Bob said, speaking still in an abstract sort
of way, "had found the life distasteful, and wished to leave his
partner--if he hated the dirt, and the hard labour, and had friends
as he'd like to go home to--the other would be willing, like as not,
to pay him a good round sum for his share of the claim; but," looking
anxiously at his companion, "there ain't either of us feels like that?"
"No."
Bob heaved a sigh, took up his pick again, let it fall, then, seating
himself upon a heap of earth, took up the fragments of quartz which
sparkled with sprays of native gold, and crushed them into atoms with a
hammer.
"Some men," he said, softly, glancing at Steve, and catching his eyes
fixed upon him, "have a hankering after England when they've made
something of a pile, and the sweetheart they left there--we didn't
leave any sweetheart?"
"No."