THE RACE FOR GOLD.
A land may be bare and barren, uninhabitable and desolate; the cold
winds of the snow-borne North may blow across it, and freeze it into
ice-bound sterility; or the blazing fury of the tropic sun may pour down
upon it, and scorch it into a dreary waste of glaring, burning sand; but
if there is gold in it, and if man comes to know that the gold is in it,
desolation, frozen sterility, or scorching waste, are alike doomed for
conquest. The gold may lie in the sand; the gold may be held under the
ice, or be hidden away in massive tiers of rock hard enough and big
enough to defy the wear and tear of time through countless ages; but
when man comes--man who knows and understands the needs and uses of
humanity--the gold will be wrested from whatever holds it, and carried
away in pride and glory to the greatest centres of population to grace
still further the triumphs of mankind over the grim tyrannies of Nature.
A good many men may suffer in the process. The cold, or the heat, or the
lurking fever germ, will own many a victim before they own defeat, and
even amongst the men themselves--the men who should be united as in the
face of a common enemy--there will be the wherewithal and the impulse to
swell the price paid for the hard-won fruits of victory. And so it was
at Birralong.
The find of gold on Ripple Creek (as the stream was named where Gleeson
unconsciously led the Boulder Creekers to wealth) brought many a change
among the men who found it.
For the first few weeks after the discovery each man was too busy
winning as much as he could in the least possible time to notice very
much what was going on around him. The banks of the creek were pretty
well lined with men, and all the men were working wherever the layer of
sandy gravel was found under the scanty topping of turf. Higher up the
stream the turf lay upon rock, and lower down the stream there was no
gravel at all to be found. Only was there the one area, fortunately
large enough to give all the men from Boulder Creek working room, over
which the sandy gravel occurred, as though at some time in the remote,
bygone days a small lake had been formed in the course of the stream,
into which the water from higher up had carried down and spread out the
gold-bearing drift, until the basin was filled up, and the lake
disappeared, as the stream flowed on its way uninterrupted and
undetained. As it was, the drift was very evenly enriched by the gold,
and each man, as he worked, was happy in his own surroundings, and so
did not bother about those of his neighbours. Only when each one began
to reach the limits of his claim, and away down the creek the water was
re-depositing the rejected sand and gravel from which the gold had been
washed, did any one have time to look around him. Then it was seen that
the population along the creek was the population of the dirt-holes of
Boulder Creek--the teeming thousands whom each one expected had arrived
long since, as foretold by Gleeson, were not to be seen. It was curious,
for every one had gold enough to keep them for a year with care, and
they had no doubt that the drift they had been working in, and had
worked out, was to be found anywhere for the looking. But they did not
look. Each man had his own fancy to follow, and with money, or its
equivalent, the following was easy.
A few, whose faith in the possibilities of the alleged reefs on Boulder
Creek was not to be shaken by mere alluvial success, went back with
their winnings, and used them to keep the mill going, while they drove
and tunnelled and sank in search of the phantom reefs. A few--a very
few--thought again of bygone dreams they had had about selections of
their own, and set out, bursting with good intentions of taking up land
somewhere. But the majority had no such thoughts and no such cares. They
had struck a patch; they had money in hand, the result of their toil on
the patch; and now they were free to spend it, without a thought or
care--spend it as freely as they had made it, spend it in the search of
a similarly engrossing delight to that which they had experienced in the
finding of it; and when it was gone--if any gave a moment's
consideration to the question, it was answered by mentally jerking the
head towards the creek--when it was gone, they would come back and get
some more. What comes easy, goes easy; and who cares for the morrow when
to-day overflows with content?
In search of the delights they needed, their energies were quickened by
the fact that Christmas and the New Year were approaching. A twelvemonth
before there had been a dearth of entertainment, more than usually
pronounced, in the neighbourhood of Boulder Creek, and not even the
combined persuasiveness of the inhabitants could induce the landlord of
Cudlip's Rest to "set 'em up" for luck in an all-round shout. Just to
stimulate the spirit of good fellowship, one man had dexterously annexed
a couple of bottles of Pain-killer from a hawker's waggon he stumbled
across, and those who were in his vicinity toasted one another and the
general run of the diggings in nobblers of it; but it was not a success,
and the festive season was even less exhilarating to the revellers than
it was to those who had not participated in the "find."
Now the situation was different. There was money in the land, and with
the memory still acute how, the year before, the landlord of Cudlip's
Rest had been deaf to their blandishments, and proof against their
numbers (for he had abstained even from replenishing his stock lest a
wave of communistic instinct might sweep up Boulder Creek), they turned
with one accord towards the town of Birralong. As they toiled and slaved
along Boulder Creek, when they thought of Birralong at all it was to
heap upon it and its inhabitants the scorn they considered was justly
earned by a settlement which looked at a miner askance, and from whence
stores, for years past, had been unobtainable save on a cash basis. The
name of Marmot did not rank high with the fossickers when funds were
low, and the joys of the Carrier's Rest were only known to the man who
had "struck it" from time to time in the creek; but the aloofness of
Cudlip's Rest the previous Christmas still rankled, and, not for any
special admiration or respect for it, Birralong was chosen as the scene
of the coming festivities.
Marmot, having completed on the day before the last order he was
expecting for the season, was taking it easy on the verandah, sitting,
as was his wont, in his shirt-sleeves and with a pipe in his mouth, on
the tobacco-box in front of the open doorway, just where he received the
full benefit of any draught which might be set up by the heated iron
roof over his head and the cool of the shade in the store. There was not
much danger of taking cold; rather would a chill have been enjoyable as
a change from the sweltering heat of the summer's day. The steady swing
of the grasshopper's song--like the wavering hum of a telegraph pole
pitched in a high, shrill key--came through the hot air on all sides,
until it seemed to spring from the ground in answer to the heat-rays
that beat upon it--a response from the great dusty parched crust to the
ceaseless throb of the heat-waves pulsing and splashing upon it, like
the ripple and rattle of shingle stones at the rush of retreating tides.
There was no wind, not even a breeze; and yet the heat came in wafts
and currents, as it comes from an open furnace-door as the up-draught
ebbs and flows. The tough, tanned skin of old Marmot glistened with a
faint moisture one moment as an extra hot wave rolled by, drying hard
and rough a second later as the parched air sucked up the moisture like
a greedy flame licks oil.
The life of the bush was silent, save for the grasshoppers and an
occasional stridulation from an energetic cicada (locust, as the
bush-term has it, and which, like many another bush-name, seems to have
been given because it was inappropriate, for the cicada is anything but
a locust, while the "grasshopper" is nothing else). The leaves of the
gums hung motionless, with their sharp edge turned to the sun-glare, so
as to let the fierce heat strike on the stems and curl the shed-bark
into long festoons--and puzzle the minds of the new chums why broad
leaves cast no shade. Under the folds of the shed-bark the lizards
cuddled asleep, and occasionally a tree-snake shared their shelter;
while far down, squeezing into the farthest corner, away from the heat
and glare, and away from their unwelcome neighbours, the green
tree-frogs spread their ball-pointed toes and turned their golden eyes
up to the light to watch the coiled mystery as they slept.
The iron of the store-roof popped and crackled now and then as a sheet
of "galvanized," expanding, strained on a nail and buckled. And yet from
further down the township road there came the whirr and shriek of
Smart's buzz-saw rending its way through hard-wood logs; the clang and
jangle of Cullen's hammers as they fell on iron and anvil; and more
sleepily, more drowsily, more in keeping with the hot languor of the
day, the hum of the children's voices as they chanted their task in
unison on the open verandah of the school-house. Marmot, listening and
heeding, thought, and the thoughts grew in importance in his mind and in
impressiveness, until, forgetful that the court was not sitting and that
he was alone, he took the pipe from his lips, and, pointing the stem
down the dusty, sun-scorched track, exclaimed--
"The cause--the fust cause--the great cause--the cause of our being a
nation--_the_ nation; yes, bust me, _the_ nation--is--what?"
He waited for an answer from the silence of the verandah, and, receiving
none, save the crackle of the sheets of iron in the roof, pointed with
his pipe-stem in the direction of the sounds from the township.
"That!" he exclaimed. "There it is--energy--go--good Anglo-Saxon go.
That's what makes us what we are. Here's the bush asleep. If there's any
niggers in it, they're asleep. Even the lizards are asleep. The trees
stop growing, and won't even make a shade; but us--do we stop? No! There
ain't nothin' that'll stop us. We didn't make the world altogether
maybe, but, by smoke, we're making it fit for our needs. Who'd work this
hot spell except us? Who'd run this country except us? Here's Australia;
there's Africa; there's America; there's India; and there's "home;" and
who runs the lot if it ain't us? And what's the world outside of that
lot? A few paddocks full of dargoes and black-fellows ready to cut each
other's throats if it wasn't for us."
He put his pipe once more between his lips, and sat thinking in silence.
The buzz-saw whirred and jarred; the hammers clanged and jangled; the
school-children droned and hummed; and beyond Marmot saw in his fancy
the selections whence they came to school. Always the same picture,
inasmuch that in each there was work. Here a man was working with his
hoe in his pumpkin patch; there another cared for his maize; a third was
splitting shingles for the roof of a shed he was building; a fourth was
splitting logs with a heavy maul and wedge for fencing rails; a fifth
was fixing water-tanks to be ready when the rain came; while a sixth was
digging a waterhole in the hard, baked earth also to be ready for the
rain. On every selection, as it came into Marmot's mind, there was work
going on--work that made the tanned skins of the workers glisten with
the beads of sweat; work that made moving pictures against a background
of nature at rest. Inside the selection houses the women did their
share, and sometimes outside as well. Beyond the houses and the
selections, in the gullies of the ranges, men worked as they sought for
mineral wealth when the sun was high, as well as when it was low; on the
big paddocks of the station the bush slept, and the flocks and herds
huddled wherever shelter could be found, but the men were never still,
not even in the station homesteads. Everywhere that the mind of Marmot
wandered, every scene that came to him as he sat and mused, showed
white men, the men of the Anglo-Saxon blood, tireless, restless,
working. Only when men of other races, dark-skinned, dark-haired, and
dark-eyed, passed his mental vision, was there the stillness of lazy
rest; and Marmot was pleased, for he loved to prate of the Anglo-Saxon
and the work they had done, and would do, for the world that gave them
birth.
His meditations were interrupted by the sound of many voices, and he
rose from his seat and went to the edge of the verandah, so as to
command a better view up the road. A wide column of dust, or a cloud
made up of columns, moved down the centre, the sunlight gleaming on the
dust-cloud, making it nearly opaque, and rendering the figures of the
men within it almost invisible. It approached rapidly, and part of it
rolled along as an advance guard, filling the air that Marmot breathed
till he coughed and swore. When the main body arrived, he felt it in his
eyes and nostrils, and the men who tramped on to the verandah and into
the store were covered with it, so that, as they moved, it came in small
puffs from their clothes and boots.
The men trooped past him and into the store, talking and chaffing, their
clothes toil-stained and ragged, their faces tanned nearly black by the
sun.
"Now, then, old brusher, where's your reach-me-downers?" one asked.
"Sling out a pound of twist as a start," another demanded.
"Two revolvers and a bag of shot," a third wanted; while others
clamoured for tent-calico, blankets, sheath-knives, and such like
necessaries, and, growing impatient at not being attended to at once,
tramped out on to the verandah, where they sat on their swags as they
filled their pipes.
"There's no rum in the show, boys," a man exclaimed, as he appeared in
the doorway. "It's all up at the pub."
"Come on, then," the last man to arrive, and who had just slung his swag
to the ground by the horse-posts, cried, as he swung his swag on to his
shoulder again.
Like a body of ants swarming on to a victim they had come from the road
to the store. Now they streamed out again and gathered in the roadway,
calling to one another, chaffing one another, and worrying those who
still lingered inside to hasten along and bring the storekeeper with
them.
Then, with Marmot in the lead, they passed slowly down the township
road, and as they passed the various centres of industry which had so
roused Marmot's admiration earlier in the day, a hush fell upon the
machinery and the workers ceased their labours, while the procession in
the direction of the Rest grew larger. It was just such an occasion as
justified the expansion of bush hospitality, and Birralong, recognizing
the fact, went out as a man to meet it. The school-children, as they
trooped away home, carried the message with them to their fathers and
their brothers that the prospectors had come in from the ranges with a
team-load of nuggets, and that there was a pile of them on the bar table
at the Rest being melted. The news travelled, as such news will, and
many a man on a neighbouring selection was moved to thought. Half the
farming implements in the district were damaged or out of order, and
flooring-boards were at a premium, to judge by the numbers of clients
who, during the early evening--school only broke up at four--rode or
drove up to the smithy and the saw-mill, and had perforce to seek the
proprietors farther afield.
Since the arrival of the trio who led Tony away the Rest had not known
such an entertainment. There was drought in the land, and water was so
scarce on many a selection that washing was a luxury which stood
adjourned till the rain came, and so the Rest had been allowed to
slumber. But a good store of necessaries, as so regarded at a bush
hotel, was in the house, for a drought is usually followed, sooner or
later, by a flood; and in a country where rain is rare and sunshine
frequent, that which in more humid countries is regarded with
displeasure, is hailed in droughty lands as an occasion for festivity
and mirth; hence the Rest was well stocked, so as to be ready for the
rain.
The accommodation for housing an unlimited number of visitors, however,
was not quite so apparent, but when those visitors were men who had for
years past known no other roof than a tent, and often none other than
the sky, sleeping quarters were not difficult to obtain, especially as
each man had his blankets--or what passed for such--with him. There were
paddocks round the Rest and calico enough for a hundred tents in
Marmot's store, and with gold in their pockets, the fossickers of
Boulder Creek asked for nothing more--in the way of shelter.
The diggers shared their good fortune royally with their comrades and
friends, and song and jest circulated, as well as the encourager of
both, and the atmosphere in the big, lumbering room which served the
purpose of a bar, was filled with laughter and tobacco-smoke on the
first night of the arrival.
Subsequently other elements supervened--elements which had their origin
in the influence of potent libations acting on natures by no means
warped by conventional thought, but which, under that influence, were
stripped of the scanty robes they wore, and stood before the world naked
in all the simplicity and crudity of first principles.
There was a guest already staying at the Rest when the crowd of diggers
arrived--a guest whose suave manner and smooth tongue had been used to
ingratiate himself with the proprietor of the Rest, but which had only
tended to induce a lurking suspicion against him. Men used to the blunt
methods of unadulterated human nature are prone to be sceptical of the
motives which underlie what they tersely define as "chin-oil."
He, a slim, long-limbed man, with a sharp-featured face and shifty eyes,
who said his name was Tap, lingered round the bar as the diggers trooped
in, and smiled and cringed as he heard the order given to "Fill 'em up,
fill 'em all up." When his glass was charged, he sidled up to a group,
and asked, in his smooth voice, whether any one had found a nugget.
The man nearest, a burly, sunburned specimen, with a voice like a bull's
and a vocabulary limited in everything save profanity, turned and looked
at him.
"Nuggets?" he said, with a large embellishment of adjective, as he
produced a canvas bag from inside his shirt and opened the mouth of it,
revealing a store of gold. "We've all got 'em--enough to buy"--and he
indicated Birralong.
"Oh, I am glad," the smooth-tongued Tap rejoined. "You must have worked
hard; and in the hot weather too."
The man swallowed the contents of his glass, and set it down with a bang
on the table as he fixed his eyes on Tap's face, and from the succeeding
observations Tap realized that his sympathy and would-be friendly
overture had been as gall in the mouth of his companion, who, unused to
anything save the rugged bluntness of a wild, free life, took the
mealy-mouthed sentence as a slight on his intelligence. The storm was
averted by Tap inviting him to "have another," and, with delicate
humility, taking the burly man's glass up to the bar in order to have it
replenished--and also charged against the score of the burly man. Then
he discreetly moved away, and mingled with other groups, always reaching
one as the order was being given, and moving on to another before the
time came for the "shout" to get round to his turn, until he had learned
conclusively that every one of the men had a fair-sized bag of gold
somewhere in his possession, and felt satisfied that he had imbibed as
much as he could conveniently carry at their expense.
Slipping out of the room quietly and unostentatiously, he went round to
the paddock where his horse was, saddled it, and rode away. The sounds
of uproarious mirth came to him from the direction of the Rest, and he
smiled furtively.
"It's right into our hands," he said to himself, as he rode along in the
direction of the Three-mile.
He followed the track, dimly defined in the evening gloom, with the
certainty of one who traverses a well-known route. The red flicker of
firelight showed through the simple window as he approached the hut, and
he went up to the door, after turning his horse loose in the paddock,
and pushed it open. Inside, the firelight showed two men sitting on
rough-made stools in front of the fireplace, while a third lay on a
stretcher at the far end of the room.
One of the two men turned round quickly.
"Hullo, Barber, I didn't know you were back," Tap said in a subdued
voice. "But I'm so glad, because----"
"Shut the door," the man interrupted abruptly.
"All right," Tap answered, as he turned and did the man's bidding.
"Walker hasn't turned up, but there's a lot of them come in, and they've
all got gold," he went on, as he came over to the fire.
The man lying on the stretcher half raised himself, and the firelight
fell on his face.
"Oh, you're there," Tap said, as he saw and recognized Gleeson. "I was
going to say----"
Barber turned round again and fixed his eyes on Tap's face.
"What about Gleeson's men?" he asked.
"I didn't hear if they were there or not, but Gleeson can go in himself
to-morrow. They won't know him now, after the night they're having."
"If Walker's not there he's waiting for them somewhere," Gleeson said.
"Then it's good enough for you to get in and start the game before they
come," Barber said; adding, "And maybe you'll have sense enough to hold
your tongue after the last experience you had. And you too, Tap, d'ye
hear? I'm boss of this show, and don't you forget it."
The two men addressed did not answer; and Slaughter, sitting in front of
the fire and looking into the red mass with eyes that were dazed and
lustreless, wondered what all the comings and goings and muttered
conversation, which had so inexplicably supplanted the still solitude of
the Three-mile, had to do with him and his selection.