It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 137

COWARD.

Attacked and abused an old man.

>N. B.--Not hanged this time because they got a licking then and there.

"Let us go and see after Mr. Levi, George."

"Well, Tom, I had rather not."

"Why not? he ought to be very much obliged to you."

"That is it, Tom. The old man is of rather a grateful turn of mind--and it is ten to one if he doesn't go and begin praising me to my face--and then that makes me--I don't know which way to look. Wait till he has cooled upon it a bit."

"You are a rum one. Well, George, I have got one proposal you won't say no to. First, I must tell you there is really a river of quartz in the country."

"Didn't I tell you?"

"Yes, and I didn't believe it. But I have spoken to Jacky about it, and he has seen it; it is on the other side of the bush. I am ready to start for it to-morrow, for there is little good to be done here now the weather has broken."

George a.s.sented with joy; but, when Robinson suggested that Jacky would be very useful to pilot them through the bush, his countenance fell.

"Don't think of it," said he. "I know he is here, Tom, and I shan't go after him. But don't let him come near me, the nasty little, creeping, murdering varmint. Poor Abner will never get over his tomahawk--not if he lives fifty years."

In short, it was agreed they should go alone at peep of day.

"I have talked it over with Jem already, and he will take charge of our tent till we come back."

"So be it."

"We must take some provisions with us, George."

"I'll go and get some cold meat and bread, Tom."

"Do. I'm going to the tent."

Robinson, it is to be observed, had not been in his tent since George and he left it and took their gold out of it just before sunrise. As he now carried their joint wealth about his person, his anxiety was transferred.

Now at the door of the tent he was intercepted by Jem, very red in the face, partly with brandy, partly with rage. Walker, whose life he had saved, whom he had taken to his own tent, and whom Robinson had seen lying asleep in the best blanket, this Walker had absconded with his boots and half a pound of tobacco.

"Well, but you knew he was a rogue. Why did you leave him alone in your tent?"

"I only left him for a minute to go a few steps with you if you remember, and you said yourself he was asleep. Well, the moment our backs were turned he must have got up and done the trick."

"I don't, like it," said Robinson.

"No more don't I," said Jem.

"If he was not asleep, he must have heard me say I was going to cross the bush with my mate to-morrow at daybreak."

"Well! and what if he did?"

"He is like enough to have gone and told the whole gang."

"And what if he has?"

Robinson was about to explain to Jem. that he now carried all the joint gold in his pocket, but he forbore. "It is too great a stake for me to trust anybody unless I am forced," thought he. So he only said: "Well, it is best to be prudent. I shall change the hour for starting."

"You are a cunning one, captain, but I really think you are overcareful sometimes."

"Jem," said the other gravely, "there is a mystery in this mine. There is a black gang in it, and that Walker is one of them. I think they have sworn to have my gold or my life, and they shan't have either if I can help it. I shall start two hours before the sun."

He was quite right; Walker had been shamming sleep, and full four hours ago he had told his confederates as a matter of course all that he had heard in the enemy's camp.

Walker, a timid villain, was unprepared for the burst of savage exultation from brutus and Black Will that followed this intelligence.

These two, by an instinct quick as lightning, saw the means of gratifying at one blow their cupidity and hate. Crawley had already told them he had seen Robinson come out of Levi's tent after a long stay, and their other spies had told them his own tent had been left unguarded for hours. They put these things together and conjectured at once that the men had now their swag about them in one form or other.

"When do they go?"

"To-morrow at break of day," he said.

"The bush is very thick!"

"And dark, too!"

"It is just the place for a job."

"Will two of you be enough?"

"Plenty, the way we shall work."

"The men are strong and armed."

"Their strength will be no use to them, and they shan't get time to use their arms."

"For Heaven's sake, shed no blood unnecessarily," said Crawley, beginning to tremble at the pool of crime to whose brink he had led these men.

"Do you think they will give up their swag while they are alive?" asked brutus, scornfully.

"Then I wash my hands of it all," cried the little self-deceiving caitiff; and he affected to have nothing to do with it.

Walker was then thanked for his information, and he thought this was a good opportunity for complaining of his wrongs and demanding redress.

This fellow was a thorough egotist, saw everything from his own point of view only.

Jem had dragged him before Judge Robinson; Robinson had played the beak and found him guilty; Levi had furnished the test on which he had been convicted. All these had therefore cruelly injured and nearly killed him.

Himself was not the cause. He had not set all these stones rolling by forging upon nature and robbing Jem of thirty pounds. No! he could not see that, nor did he thank Jem one bit for jumping in and saving his life at risk of his own. "Why did he ever get him thrown in, the brute?

If he was not quite drowned he was nearly, and Jem the cause."

His confederates soothed him with promises of vengeance on all their three his enemies, and soon after catching sight of one of them, Levi, they kept their word; they roused up some of the other diggers against Isaac on the plea that he had refused to give evidence against Walker, and so they launched a mob and trusted to mob nature for the rest. The recoil of this superfluous villainy was, as often happens, a blow to the head scheme.