In the Roaring Fifties Part 8

'But you are quite wrong; I'm not this Solo.'

'Not Solo! That won't wash. Wasn't I there with Long Aleck when you got away with the gold Hoban hid in our nosebag other side o' Geelong?'

'You're on the wrong scent. My name is Done. I'm a new chum, landed only this morning off the Francis Cadman.'

'Here, let's look you over again.' The stranger struck a match, and, s.h.i.+elding it with his hands, examined Jim's face. 'Dunno,' he said, 'but p'r'aps you are a bit young. Still, rig a beard around that chiv of yours, and it's Solo to the life.'

'If it's worth while, walk down to the s.h.i.+p with me, and I'll satisfy you in two minutes.'

Your word's good enough for me. Solo or no, taint my deal.'

'Well, you've gone to some trouble to help me out of a hole, and I'm obliged.' Done offered his hand, and the other shook it heartily. 'You might tell me who and what this Solo is,' continued Jim.

'Smartest, coolest, most darin' gold-thief in Australia. Outlawed for robbery under arms, wanted by all the police 'tween here and the Murray, and his head's worth five hundred to you 'r me, 'r any yob that can rob him of it. He works alone. What his right name is no one knows.'

'That's all a bright look-out for me!' laughed Jim. 'But if he's such an infernal scoundrel, and he's robbed you among the rest, why come to his rescue?'

''Pon my soul, I dunno I' replied the Australian, scratching his head dubiously, ''less it's 'cause of his pluck 'n' the dashed pleasant, gentlemanly way he has o' doin' things. By the way, what 're you out for?

Goin' diggin'? Got a mate? Where 're you makin'?'

'I'm going digging. I have no mate. I can't say what field I'm making for till I know more about them.'

'Look here, take in my points.' The native struck another match, and held it that Done might make an inventory of his perfections. 'Five foot ten high, strong as a horse, sound in wind and limb, know the country, know the game, been on three fields, want a mate. Name's Micah Wentworth Burton--Mike for short. Got all traps, pans, shovels, picks, cradle, tub, windla.s.s, barrow. Long Aleck--chap that attacked you--was my mate; he's turning teamster. Take me on, an' here's my hand. We're made for a pair.'

Burton stopped for lack of wind. He jerked his words with a slight nasal intonation, and his manner and his action indicated a characteristic impetuosity. Done was astounded at his own seeming good fortune and the other's rash confidence.

'Come,' he said doubtingly, 'do you mean to say you'll go into partners.h.i.+p in this desperate way with a man you don't know, but whom you suspect of being a notorious rogue, and give him all the advantages of your property and your knowledge?'

'Will I? My oath! Is it a deal? All that about Solo is off. I might 'a'

known he had too much horse-sense to mooch about Melbourne disguised only in a daily shave. As for the rest, blast it! we're men. I take you on chance, you take me on spec. We can look after ourselves, I s'pose. Well, what say?'

'I couldn't ask for anything better. The only objection to the arrangement is that I take all and give nothing.'

'Done, then! But don't you run away with a wrong idea. There 're heaps o'

decent men an' good miners in Melbourne who'd jump at a mate of your stamp. Come along to my tent up Canvas Town to-night. There's a spare bunk. Aleck started on a jamboree that won't mature for a week. We can talk things into order.'

Jim Done awoke next morning with a fear in his heart that he had made a fool of himself. His mate was sitting just without the tent, grilling chops on a piece of hoop-iron twisted into a grid. Jim's head felt new to him, and ached badly; old doubts, old prejudices, possessed him. Why should all the regard this stranger expressed have developed in an acquaintances.h.i.+p of minutes? Why should Burton be so eager to bestow benefits upon him? That was not the customary way of men. He got up, dressed and washed, and took breakfast with his mate, and the sullen suspicion lingered; but Mike talked volubly, questioning nothing, and as the morning wore on his obvious sincerity won on Done, and ere they turned their backs upon Melbourne the Australian's spontaneous, careless confidence in him and his open-hearted cordiality planted in Done the seeds of one of those strong, lasting friends.h.i.+ps which are never half expressed in words, although they may sometimes be attested in eloquent and heroic actions.

On the afternoon of his second day in Melbourne Jim saw Lucy Woodrow once more. She pa.s.sed in Macdougal's trap as Done and his mate were walking along Swanston Street. She looked very pretty, and was laughing gaily at something her companion had said. The sight of that companion affected Jim in a peculiar way. He looked a man of about forty, strongly but sparely built; his face, clean-shaven but for the triangle of hair coming just below the ears, had a cameo-like correctness of outline; the lips were firm and full, the eyes deep. He wore one of the flat-brimmed bell-toppers fas.h.i.+onable at the time, a skirted coat, and a high collar.

In a flash the whole man was photographed on Jim's mind--why he could not understand. The sensations given him by the sight of that face were quite apart from the pang he experienced on noting Lucy's apparent interest in the man. Jim felt for the miniature in his pocket. It was hard to believe that only about twenty-four hours had sped since their parting. Looking back now over so much that was strange, he thought as many weeks might have gone in the interval.

'Monkey Mack,' said Mike, following the direction of Jim's eyes.

'Do you know him?'

'Everybody knows of him. Owns the best-stocked station out of New South.

Made a pile through the rushes, selling stock at famine prices. Richest squatter in Vic, an' that dirty mean he won't wash 'cause o' the ruinous wear and tear on soap. Used to go round collecting the wool the sheep sc.r.a.ped off on his fences an' trees, an' for years cadged his toby, (tobacco, you know) off pa.s.sing teamsters; then, when the teamsters s.h.i.+ed at him, gave up smokin'. Owns thousands of acres an' hundreds o'

thousands o' pounds, an' wears toe-rags, an' yet lets his wife have what she likes, an' spend what she pleases. That was his wife 'long side him.'

'Yes, she came over in our s.h.i.+p.'

's.h.i.+pmates, eh? That's as good as first-cousins.'

'Who was the other man?'

'Donno. Looked like something just blown ash.o.r.e. Very superior, likely.

Mrs Mack's got a weakness for gentility. She was a neighbourin'

squatter's milkmaid, they say.'

'Well, Macdougal's not mean in the matter of horseflesh.'

'Right. That's his other great extravagance. See, he gets about badly on those spider-legs of his, and makes up for his misfortune when he splits across a horse. He breeds the best, drives like a fiend, an' can ride anythin' lapped in hide.'

A week later Done and Burton were on their way to Forest Creek diggings.

Everything worth working on Ballarat was pegged out, Mike said. Forest Creek was the new Eldorado. Their tools and stores were four days ahead, in the care of an experienced teamster whom Mike knew well, and whom he could trust to pull through, despite the abominable roads and the misfortunes that had knocked up many a well-found team and marked the track with crippled horses and stranded wagons. For two days Jim had carried his swag through the Australian Bush, and one night he had slept on the brown gra.s.s, using his folded blanket for a pillow, the camp-fire flickering palely at a distance, the wide-branching, dreamy gum-trees spreading their limbs above him, the warmth of summer in the scented air Already the instincts of the Bushman were developing in him. He began to feel a friends.h.i.+p for the towering gums in their flaunting independence; their proud individuality pleased him. To his mind they reflected the spirit of the people--it must be the spirit of the land. Nowhere in their feathery elegance did he find a law of conformity; each tree was a law unto itself, tall and strong and slender, youthful and buoyant, opening fond arms to the blue sky. The absence of the sap-greens of England conveyed at first an impression of barrenness, but that wore off, and the artistic side of his nature fed upon the soft harmonies of faded gra.s.s and subdued green foliage nursing misty purples in its shade. The ground was his bed and chair and table; never had he been so intimate with Mother Earth. Here she was uncontaminated, the soil was sweet, and it gave no hint of untold generations of dead fattening the gra.s.s upon which he couched as in sweet hay. From the earth he drew an ardent patriotism.

He was already a more enthusiastic Australian than the loose-limbed native with whom he fraternized.

They camped five miles beyond Miner's Rest on the second night, preferring the comparative solitude of the Bush to the scant accommodation and some what boisterous company at the shanty lately established to cater for the fortune-hunters streaming to the new rushes.

Mike selected the spot and dropped his swag.

'We've tramped far enough to-day,' he said. 'You'll find water just over that rise there. I'll light the fire.'

'So you've been over this part before,' said Jim, unstrapping the billy from his mate's swag.

'No; this is new country to me.'

'Then, how do you know I shall find water beyond that hillock?'

''Pon my soul, I don't know why I know,' Mike answered; 'but I'll wager my share of our first tub it's there.'

Jim found the water. There was a water-hole in a small creek at the spot indicated. His mate's knowledge of things about him in the Bush, things unseen and unheard, had seemed uncanny at first; he was getting used to it now. Mike was born in the Bush, and the greater part of his life had been spent in it. He knew it as thoroughly as its familiar animals did, and much in the same way, without being aware of his knowledge, which was mainly instinctive. The billy was on the blazing fire, and Done sat watching Mike smartly mixing a damper in the lid. To Jim this, too, was a wonderful accomplishment. Water and flour were deftly manipulated until a ball of dough that quite filled the small lid resulted. It was done with the cleanness and quickness of a conjuring trick. The dough was divided into two pats, to be cooked under the hot ashes. Then Mike improvised his wire grid again, and in a few minutes the steak he had carried in a dilly-bag from Miner's Rest was sizzling and spitting over the embers.

Done's admiration for his mate was growing rapidly. Mike looked like a model in new copper, kneeling by the fire, his face thrown back, reflecting the glow of the flame in the surrounding dusk. Jim realized what had gone to the making of that hard, lean frame, and, proud as he was of his own strength, envied the other his endurance. He knew that Burton had been making concessions to him throughout their journey, that he could have walked miles further in the time without fatigue, carrying his swag as jauntily as if it were a b.u.t.terfly poised on his back. His boyish exuberance of manner when stirred was in direct contrast to the quiet a.s.surance with which he went about ordinary affairs. He was never in difficulties, never at a loss; the Bush was his living-room, bedroom, and larder. He had already shown himself independent of what the stores could provide when a meal was wanted. Mike might have been a pink Adonis in another climate and under other conditions; his gray eyes and fair moustache were in almost ludicrous contrast with his tanned hide--he appeared to be bound in morocco.

After their meal Jim spread himself upon the ground, his head pillowed on the swag, stretching his tired limbs. Mike sat smoking, and there was silence over and about them. One of those brief hushes, when all the night voices are stilled and the trees merge into black, motionless ma.s.ses, was upon the Bush, and it infected the men. All day they had marched with the throng; their tramp had never been lonely, thousands of men were moving upon Forest Creek, and every now and again they pa.s.sed a toiling party burdened with tools and utensils, or were pa.s.sed in turn by more enthusiastic spirits pus.h.i.+ng on, eager for a share in the treasure of Red Gully, Diamond Gully, and Castlemaine. The shouts of the joyous travellers were still echoing in Done's ears.

He had seen diggers on the track under varying fortunes, cursing dreadfully by broken-down teams, urging on their dull bullocks--slow, but very sure--singing exuberantly as they paced by, carrying heavy swags with light hearts, shouting as they went, under the impulse of a common hope that begot friendliness in all; and yet each man was armed now--there was a revolver or a pistol in every belt. They came out of the Bush, and the Bush swallowed them again--strange groups. Two Jim pa.s.sed he recognised as sailors off the Francis Cadman: one was in the shafts of a loaded wheel barrow, the other, with a rope over his shoulder, trudged ahead, towing manfully, both as merry as boys at play, despite the ten days' journey ahead of them.

'Good luck, mate!' 'Good luck!' The trees showered kindly wishes, and hearty compliments danced from lip to lip. A spirit of irrepressible jollity laughed in the land. Drays, waggons, buggies, cabs, vehicles of all kinds, were pressed into the service of the adventurers. Four diggers went roaring by in a dilapidated landau that had seen vice-regal service in Hobart Town, driven by a fifth blackguard dressed in an old livery, and they brandished champagne bottles, and scattered the liquid gold like emperors--lucky pioneers from Buninyong. A ragged, bare-footed, hatless urchin, a stowaway fresh from the streets of London, whipped behind, as he might have done a few weeks earlier on a Bishop's carriage in Rotten Row. The mates next encountered a band of Chinamen carrying their burdens on bamboos, covering the ground smartly with their springing trot and cackling gaily as they went; then a 'hatter,' drunk as a lord rolling heavily, his hands in his pockets, his hat jauntily set on the back of his head, bellowing the latest comic song, a lonely soul; then a dray, piled high with cradles, pans, picks, shovels, swags, and a miscellaneous cargo, on the top of which perched a bulky Irishwoman, going to the diggings to make her fortune as the proprietress of the Forest Creek Laundry. This and much more in the depths of a pathless forest, the grave solitude of which was disturbed only for the moment as each jocund company hastened on into the mysterious vastness ahead, or fell back into the dense Bush that lay behind. That anybody could have a definite idea whither he was going in this ocean of trees, that engulfed them all like stones dropped into the sea, Done found it hard to believe.

'You're a curious kind of devil, Jim,' said Mike, who had been watching Done closely during the last few minutes.

'How's that?'

'You don't talk. Worse still, you don't smoke.'

'No; in England I had neither mates nor friends, and smoking's a convivial disease--a kid catches it from his companions.'

'I might have guessed you were bred a "hatter"; you're as dumb as a mute.'