Forewarned, Forearmed.
Tresco and the Prospector were eating their "tucker" beneath the boughs
of a spreading black-birch. In front of them burned brightly a fire of
dead branches, suspended above which was the "billy," black and battered
externally, but full of fragrant tea.
"I shall go home to England," said Benjamin; his mouth half-filled with
cold bacon. "I shall visit my widowed mother, and be the comfort and
support of her declining years. There must be over 200 ounces in the
tent, and hundreds more in the claim."
"I ain't got a widowed mother," said the Prospector. "_I_ shall go into
Timber Town and make The Lucky Digger open house--come when you like,
have what you like, at the expense of Mr. William Wurcott. That's my
style. I like to see a man free with his dollars."
They had pegged out their claim at a spot where the corrugations in the
rocky bed of the creek stretched from bank to bank and a beach of soft
sand spread itself along the water's edge.
The first "prospect" that they had "panned off" resulted in a return of
a couple of ounces. Next they had "fossicked" with sheath-knives in the
crevices of the rocks, and had quickly got something more than half a
cupful of gold, in shape and size like pumpkin seeds. The day following,
they continued to "pan off" the sands in front of their tent; each dish
yielding a handsome return. But as Benjamin found this process difficult
in his unskilful hands, he directed his attention to looking for new
patches. Wading about in the shallows with a dish in one hand and a
shovel in the other, he overturned loose bits of rock which he found
lying on the sand. Sometimes he would find an ounce or two, sometimes
nothing at all; but upon turning over a flat slab of rock, to raise
which needed all his strength, he gave a whoop of delight, for a yellow
mass lay glittering in the rippling waters. With a single scoop of his
shovel he had won 80 ozs. of gold.
This rich spot was where the water was but two feet deep, and above it
and below it gold could be seen shining amongst the sand and gravel.
When the cream of the claim, so to speak, had been skimmed off with the
tin dish, the men began to set up sluice boxes, by means of which they
might work the whole of their ground systematically.
In constructing these boxes they received every help from Moonlight, who
lent them tools, and aided them in cutting out the slabs. Left mateless
during Scarlett's visit to Timber Town, the veteran miner frequently
exchanged his lonely camp for the more congenial quarters of Tresco and
the Prospector.
It was during one of the foregatherings round the camp-fire, when Night
had spread her sable mantle over the sleeping earth, and only the
wakeful wood-hen and the hoarsely-hooting owl stirred the silence
of the leafy solitude, that Moonlight was "swapping" yarns with the
Prospector. As the flames shot up lurid tongues which almost licked the
overhanging boughs, and the men sat, smoking their black tobacco, and
drinking from tin pannikins tea too strong for the urban stomach, Bill
the Prospector expectorated into the flames, and said:
"The biggest streak o' luck I ever had--barring this present field, you
understand--was at the Diamond Gully rush. There weren't no diamonds,
but I got over 100 ounces in three days. Gold was more plentiful than
flour, and in the police camp there was two safes full of gold belonging
to the Bank, which was a twelve by eight tent, in charge of a young
feller named Henery. A more trusting young man I never met. When I went
to sell my little pile, he had over 12,000 ounces in a old leather
boot-trunk in his tent, besides more in a sugar-bag. He'd even filled
one of his top-boots with gold, and its feller stood waitin' to receive
my contribution. 'Good morning,' I says. 'Are you the boss o' this
show?' 'I'm in charge of the Bank,' he says, just as grand as if he was
behind a mahog'ny counter with brass fixings. 'Then weigh my pile,' I
says, handing over my gold. Then what d'you think he done? 'Just wait
till I get my scales,' he says. 'I've lent 'em to the Police Sergeant.
Please have the goodness to look after the business while I'm gone.'
With that he leaves me in the company of close on L100,000, and never a
soul'd have bin the wiser if I'd helped myself to a thousand or two. But
the reel digger don't act so--it's the loafers on the diggings gets us a
bad name. I've dreamed of it, I've had reg'lar nightmares about it when
I've bin stone-broke and without a sixpence to buy a drink."
"What?" said Tresco. "Gold littered about like lumber, and you
practically given the office to help yourself? It's wonderful, Bill,
what restraint there is in an honest mind! You can't ever have been to
Sunday School."
"How d'you know?" asked the Prospector.
"Because, if you'd ha' bin regular to Sunday School when you were a boy,
and bin told what a perfect horrible little devil you were, till you
believed it, why, you'd ha' stole thousands of pounds from that calico
Bank, just to prove such theories true. Now _I_ was brought up godly. I
was learnt texts, strings of 'em a chain long; I had a red-headed,
pimply teacher who just revelled in inbred sin and hell-fire till he
made me want to fry him on the school grate. I couldn't ha' withstood
your temptation. I'd most certainly have felt justified in taking a few
ounces of gold, as payment for keeping the rest intact."
"You're talking nonsense, the two of you," said Moonlight. "To rob on a
gold-field means to be shot or, at the very least, gaoled. And when a
man's on good gold himself, he doesn't steal other people's. My best
luck was on the Rifle River, at a bend called Felix Point. It had a
sandy beach where the water was shallow, just like this one here. My
mate and I fossicked with a knife and a pannikin, and before the day was
over we had between 30 and 40 ounces. The gold lay on a bottom of black
sand and gravel which looked like so many eggs. After we'd put up our
sluice we got as much as 200 ounces a day, and thought the claim poor
when we got no more than fifty."
"I 'xpect you had a rare ole spree when you got to town," said the
Prospector. "How much did you divide?"
"Between twenty and thirty thousand," replied Moonlight. "I handed my
gold over to the Police escort, and went to town as comfortable as
if I was on a turnpike road. I didn't go on the wine--I'm almost a
teetotaler. A little red-headed girl got most of my pile--a red-headed
girl can generally twist me round her thumb. That must have been ten
years ago."
"You've grown older and, perhaps, wiser," interjected Benjamin.
"Wonderful thing, age."
"This time I'm going to take a draft on Timbuctoo, or Hong-kong, or some
place where red-headed girls are scarce, and see if I can't get away
with a little cash."
"Most probably you've got a widowed mother, like me," said Benjamin.
"Go, and comfort her declining years. Do like me: wipe out the
recollection of the good times you've had by acts of filial piety. A
widowed mother is good, but if you can rake up a maiden aunt and keep
her too, that'll be a work of supererogation."
"Of how much?" asked Bill.
"It's a word I picked up in my College days--I'm afraid I've forgotten
the precise meaning." Benjamin's face lit up with a smile that stretched
from ear to ear. He lifted his pannikin to his lips, nodded to his
companions, said, "Here's luck," and drank the black tea as though it
had been nectar. "That's the beauty of turning digger," he continued;
"the sobriety one acquires in the bush is phenomenal. If you asked me to
name the most virtuous man on this planet, I should say a prospector in
the bush--a bishop is nothing to him. But I own that when he goes
to town the digger becomes a very devil let loose. Think of the
surroundings here--innocent twittering birds, silent arboreous trees,
clear pellucid streams, nothing to tempt, nothing to degrade."
Tresco might have amplified his discourse as fully as a bishop, but that
at this point there was a shouting and the noise of dry boughs cracking
under advancing feet. In a moment the three men were standing, alert,
astonished, in various attitudes of defence.
Moonlight had armed himself with a pick, the Prospector had grasped a
shovel, Tresco drew a revolver from inside his "jumper."
The shouting continued, though nothing could be seen. Then came out of
the darkness, "What-ho there, Moonlight! Can't you give us a hand to
cross the river?"
"It's my mate," said Moonlight. "I know the voice. Is that you,
Scarlett?"
"It's Scarlett, all right," called back the voice, "but how am I to
cross this infernal river?"
The three men walked to the edge of the water, and peered into the
darkness.
"Perfectly safe," said the Prospector. "She's barely up to your middle."
There was a splashing as of some one walking in the water, and presently
a dark object was seen wading toward them.
"Now, what the deuce is all this about, Scarlett?" It was Moonlight who
thus expressed his wonderment. "The man who travels here at night
deserves to get bushed. That you reached camp is just luck."
"Camp?" replied the dripping Scarlett. "I've been waiting for you at
_our_ camp since nightfall with twenty other devils worse than myself.
Don't you ever sleep in your tent?"
"Of course 'e does," the Prospector answered for Moonlight, "but mayn't
a digger be neighbourly, and go to see 'is friends?
"Come, and dry yerself by the fire, and have a bit of tucker."
"But Great Ghost!" exclaimed Moonlight, "all the gold's in my tent, in
the spare billy."
"Quite safe. Don't worry," said Scarlett. "All those twenty men of
mine are mounting guard over it, and if one of them stole so much as an
ounce, the rest would kill him for breach of contract. That's the result
of binding men to go share and share alike--they watch each other like
ferrets."
Jack took off his clothes, and wrapped in a blanket he sat before the
fire, with a pipe in his mouth and a steaming pannikin in his hand.
"Well, happy days!" he said as he drank. "And that reminds me,
Tresco--you're wanted in Timber Town, very badly indeed--a little matter
in connection with the mails. 'Seems there's been peculation of some
sort, and for reasons which are as mad as the usual police tactics, the
entire force is searching for you, most worthy Benjamin. The yarn goes
that you're a forger in disguise, a counterfeiter of our sovereign's
sacred image and all that, the pilferer of Her Majesty's mails, a
dangerous criminal masquerading as a goldsmith."
"Holee Smoke!" cried the Prospector. "Look to your gold,
gen'lemen--there's thieves abroad, and one of us may be harbourin' a
serpent unaware. Ben, my lovely pal, consider yourself arrested."
"Do I understand there's a writ out?" asked Moonlight, serious,
judicial, intensely solemn. "This must be put a stop to instantly.
Imagine our virtuous friend in gaol."
"Anyway, joking apart, the men I have brought know all about it," said
Scarlett. "You've got till to-morrow morning to make tracks, Benjamin."
The goldsmith coughed, and stood up in the full blaze of the fire-light.
"I confess to nothing," he said. "My strong point hasn't been my piety,
I own to that. I'm not much of a hot gospeller. I can't call to mind any
works of unusual virtue perpetrated by me in unthinking moments. I'll go
even so far as this: I'll acknowledge there are times when, if I let
myself off the chain, I'd astonish all Timber Town; for there lurks
somewhere inside my anatomy a demon which, let loose, would turn the
town into a little hell, but, gentlemen, believe me, he is bound hand
and foot, he's in durance vile. I'm no saint, but I'm no forger or
counterfeiter, or animal of that sort--not yet. I have notions sometimes
that I'd make a first-class burglar, if I gave my mind thoroughly to the
business: I'd go to work in a scientific way; I'd do the business in a
workmanlike fashion. I've got a strong leaning towards the trade, and
yet I never burgled once, I who take a pleasure in investigating locks
and latches and all the hundred-and-one contraptions used against
thieves. But what is Timber Town?--a trap. The man who goes
housebreaking in a little tin-pot place like that deserves to be
caught. No, it is too isolated, too solitary, too difficult of egress
to foreign parts, is Timber Town. The idea is preposterous, foolish,
untenable--excellent word, untenable--and as for forging, the thing is
so ridiculous that it isn't worth confuting. But what's this about
robbing mails? What mails?"
"The incoming English mail," said Scarlett. "Someone went through the
bags before they were delivered."
"Ah!" said Benjamin, "we must look for the motive in the perpetration of
such a crime as that. We'll grant that the robbery took place--we'll
make that concession. But what was the motive? The thief would expect
one of two things--either to enhance his wealth, or to obtain valuable
information. Who does the cap fit? Personally, I am as poor as a crow
but for this gold: as regards information, all the secrets of the
citizens of Timber Town do not interest me--I have no use for
scandal--and as I have no rivals in my calling, mere trade secrets have
no charm for me. The police are chuckle-heads." Tresco buried his face
in his pannikin, and then re-lit his pipe.
"Very good argyment," commented the hirsute Prospector, "very clear and
convincin', but the police aren't open to argyment--they act on
instinct."
"Armed with a writ, a policeman is like a small boy with a shotgun,"
remarked Moonlight--"he must let it off. I don't say you're guilty,
Tresco, but I say the minions of the Law will have you in their clutches
if you don't make yourself scarce."
"An' just as I was accumulating the one little pile of my life,"
murmured Benjamin. "Sometimes I think the gods show incompetence in the
execution of their duty; sometimes I think there ain't no gods at all,
but only a big, blind Influence that blunders on through Creation,
trampling promiscuous on small fry like me." He pulled at his pipe
contemplatively. "Decamp, is it? Obscure my fairy-like proportions from
the common gaze? But who's to look after my interests here? What's to
become of my half of the gold yet ungot?"
"Can't you trust a mate?" said Bill. "Ain't I acted square so far? What
are you gettin' at? I'll work the claim to its last ounce, and then I'll
go whacks, same as if you'd bin here all the time. Then you can leave
the country. Till then I'll put you away in a hiding-place where all the
traps in the blanky country"--Bill had worked on Australian fields, and
showed it in his speech--"won't find you, not if they search for years."
Scarlett rose. He had put on his garments, now dry and warm. "So-long,
Benjamin," he said. "You may be the biggest criminal unhung, for all I
know, but you have one thing in your favour: if you robbed those mails
it must have been for the benefit of another man."
Moonlight bade good-bye, but as though to make up for his mate's
aspersion, said, "I know nothing of this business, but I know the
police. If they're not turned into a holy show when they set foot in
this camp to look for you, may I never find another ounce of gold. Keep
your end up, Benjamin. So-long." And he followed his mate into the
darkness.
The Prospector was wrapped in thought. He sat, gazing into the fire, for
fully ten minutes. Then he said, "There's three ways--the Forks, the
Saddle, and the Long Valley. I give 'em my own names. The Saddle's the
safest. It's a bit of a tough climb, but it's sure. There's no hurry,
but we must leave here at dawn, before these newsters reach the
claim, which Moonlight'll see isn't jumped. So we'll sleep happy and
comfortable, pack our swags just before daylight, take all our gold
along with us, and cook our tucker when we make our first halt. All
serene, my lovely Bishop; all thought out and planned, just like in a
book. Never hurry in the bush, my beautiful ecclesiastic, as nothing's
ever gained by that. More haste, less speed--in the bush, my learned
preacher. What a pity they didn't catch you young and turn you into a
sky-pilot, Ben. The way you jawed them two was fit for the pulpit. But
now I know where you got the money to repay me that L117. I don't want
any explanation. I know where you got it."