To help pass the time the two worked a little in the drive, breaking down about a hundredweight of the quartz ridge that had cut in across the narrow face. The stone showed gold freely. At another time this would have occasioned the wildest jubilation, but now everything was secondary to the wonder inspired by what they had seen in Waddy, combined with their dread of the results of last night’s work. It was well on in the afternoon when they were joyfully startled by the sound of a whistle in the shaft.
“Hello, below there!” cried a voice, and a few seconds later Parrot Cann, too excited to go through the usual formalities, rattled down and landed in a heap at Dick’s feet.
“What’s up?” asked Dick eagerly, as Parrot crept into the drive.
“Oh, I say,” gasped Parrot, “youse fellers are in fer it!”
“How? Who split? What’re the troopers doin’?”
“They’re after youse.”
“After us!” Peterson’s face paled at this corroboration of his worst suspicions.
“My oath! Gable’s in gaol at Yarraman; Phil an’ Jacker an’ Ted’s been took, an’ now they’re after you.”
“Fer what?”
“Rob’ry under arms, the feller said, an’ shooting with intent’ r somethin’.”
Dick whistled incredulously. Here was fame, here was glory. His favourite authors were justified, and yet there was the dark side; thought of his mother came with a sharp twinge.
“Who went an’ split—Ted?”
“None o’ the Company,” said Parrot. “The troopers came to arrest Gable’s mates, thinkin’ they was men, an’ Toll-bar Sam told who you was. He saw you all last night.”
“Did they take Ted, an’ Jacker, an’ Phil right away?”
“Um. Off to Yarraman. You don’t know what a row’s on. It’s awful. Them fellers what captured Gable told a yarn about a gang o’ bushrangers’n a terrible fight, an’ swore Gable was the blood thirstiest of ’em all. The Yarraman Mercury printed a special paper this mornin’, with all about the outbreak of a new gang o’ bushrangers in great big type, an’ every one’s near mad about it, ’sept those what’s laughin’.”
The boys gazed at each other for a few moments in silence. It took some time to grasp the astounding facts. They were real bushrangers, their escapades had been printed in the papers, they were actually being pursued by bona fide troopers on flesh-and-blood horses—what more could ambitious youth demand?
Dick’s unconquerable romanticism upheld him; he had achieved distinction, and the prospect of deluding and outwitting the police after the manner of his most brilliant heroes filled him with delight; but Billy Peterson was awed and out of spirits.
“It’s all right, Billy,” said Dick, “they’ll never find us here. We can defy ’em all fer weeks.”
“Yes,” said Billy bitterly, “but I’m hungry!”
“You didn’t bring no crib, Parrot.” Dick had made it a rule that the necessities of a shareholder temporarily in difficulties and hiding in the mine were to be attended to by the free members of the Company or others who, like Parrot Cann, were admitted to the Company’s councils.
“Wasn’t game,” answered Parrot; “they’d ’a’ watched me. Had to sneak away as it was.”
Dick puckered his face wisely. It was a very dirty face just now; his red hair, long neglected, hung in wisps over his forehead and about his ears, giving him an elfish look in the candlelight.
“Never mind,” he said, “bring us some to-night, first chance you get; but be cunnin’. We’ll shake some fruit soon ez it’s dark, to keep us goin’.”
“What’s the good o’ fruit?” groaned Peterson, “Fruit ain’t grub.”
Dick looked anxiously at his mate. There was an immediate danger that the outlaws might be starved out.
“Parrot’s goin’ to fetch some,” he said brightly.
Parrot promised to do his best for them, but, although they waited till nearly nine o’clock in hungry anticipation, he did not return that night. The last carrot was eaten, and a cautious excursion to Summers’ orchard produced nothing, Maori’s warning bark driving the boys back to the Gaol Quarry, empty and disconsolate. Billy could hold out no longer, but he did not meditate an open desertion.
“I’ll jes’ sneak round our house till I get a chance to slip in an’ shake a junk o’ bread or somethin’; then I’ll come right back an’ we’ll go halves,” he said.
“Sure you’ll come back, are you?”
“’S that wet? ’S that dry?”
Dick accepted the oath. He would have gone home himself with burglarious intentions, but feared that the official anxiety to catch the notorious head of the new gang must have concentrated police vigilance about his mother’s house, and the risk was too great.
“Hurry back ez quick’s you can,” he commanded. “’N you’ll have to be slyer ’n a black snake ’r they’ll nab you.”
Dick spent the first hour alone under the saplings in the quarry, and then, as Billy had not returned and the time hung heavily on his hands, he crept out and up the hill towards the Red Hand. He prowled about amongst the old tips for a time, then seated himself at the foot of a dead butt and gave himself up to thought. He began to fear that Peterson would prove unfaithful, or, worse still, that he had fallen into the hands of the enemy; and the idea made him very uneasy. He hesitated about returning to the drive.
Although he was singularly free from the superstitious fears that would make such a place a haunt of horrors to the average youngster, the notion of sleeping alone below there did not please him, and he had still some hope of hearing Billy’s signal.
He was beginning to feel the pangs of hunger, too, and now that it was too late recollected that he might have found a ministering angel in Miss Chris. It would have been an easy matter to have met her when coming through the paddock from chapel at nine o’clock, and an easier matter to have appealed to her tender sympathies with a story of hunger and misfortune. The boy’s thoughts lingered with Miss Chris; he found a melancholy satisfaction in the belief that she would pity him, and probably shed a few tears over the sorrows of a noble and generous youth driven to crime by persecution, and outlawed through the machinations of an unscrupulous constabulary. So real could he make these sentimental fancies that her keen sorrow for him filled him with acute emotions of self-pity, and a large tear actually rolled down his freckled nose.
Suddenly romance was swept out of his mind, and wonder and fear possessed him. Throwing himself forward, he crept noiselessly to a rotten trunk over grown with suckers that lay between him and the Red Hand shaft, and, raising himself on his hands, peered through the bushes. A belt of pale golden light, thrown by the rising moon between the converging tips, lay right across the mouth of the shaft; and up through the rusty bark of the door were thrust a thin long hand and a bony arm. As Dick gazed, trembling and amazed, a second hand appeared. He heard the rattle of a chain, the click of a lock; then the door was thrust upwards and let noiselessly back upon the timber. Now a man’s head came into view, and up out of the shaft crawled a figure that Dick recognised in spite of the precautions taken. Reaching into the darkness of the shaft, the man, who remained on his knees in a crouching position, drew up a skin bag containing something of considerable weight apparently; then came another head, and a second man slid, snake-like, from the shaft. At the sight of the second, Dick, whose heart seemed to have swollen within him to an enormous size, gasped aloud; he heard a warning “Hush!” from the shaft, and lay perfectly still. The door was closed, the lock clicked again, and when he ventured to look the two men were stealing away towards the quarry. The boy crept after them to the extent of the trunk behind which he was hidden, and when he looked again they had disappeared. Creeping silently in the shadows and amongst the scrub ferns, Dick followed until, resting a moment, he heard distinctly the words:
“Why did you hit him again? Good God! did you want to kill him?” The voice was Ephraim Shine’s.
“No. That won’t kill him. Don’t be so blasted chicken-hearted I didn’t want to be seen, you ass!” Dick knew the voice for that of Joe Rogers, whose face he had seen in the moonlight.
“The lick I gave him was enough; it must ’a’ stunned him.” Shine spoke in a low voice.
“D’yer think he recognised you?” asked Rogers hoarsely.
“No, I was in the shadder. I d’know, though—I d’know.”
“Listen here, an’ take a grip on that screamin’ woman’s tongue o’ yours. It don’t matter whether he saw you ’r didn’t see you, ’cause he won’t live t’ tell it.”
“Oh, Heaven! Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! I didn’t mean that—I swear to Heaven, I on’y meant to stun him!”
“I know yer didn’t. Pull yerself together, you quiverin’ idiot. D’ye think I meant to do murder?”
“No, no, no; o’ course not. P’raps he ain’t hurt ez bad ez you think.”
“Tain’t the hurt, it’s this. I on’y thought of it comin’ up the ladders. Did yer notice where he fell? He went back down the incline, fallin’ with his head a few feet up from the pumps. Know what that means? Harry Hardy’ll be found drowned!”
Dick heard Shine gasping for breath, and Rogers went on coolly:
“He was in the Sunday afternoon shift at the pumps. The water in the incline’ll rise up over him before the first workin’ shift goes down.”
“Let’s go back, an’ drag him out. Let’s go back!”
“Sit still, damn you! Go back an’ be trapped, or be recognised if his senses return? His candle was burnin’.”
“But it’s murder—it’s murder!
“Is it? Listen here. I noticed a lump o’ rock had fallen out o’ the roof. It’ll be thought he was stunned by it, an’ drowned in the water as it rose.”
“Man, it’s terrible. Two brothers! My sin is findin’ me out, Joe Rogers!
“Shut up cant, d’you hear! It served him thunderin’ well right. What’d he want to come pokin’ into the mine at all fer? What the devil did the other one interfere in what didn’t concern him fer? But we’ve got it in spite of ’em.” Rogers had plunged his hands into the skin bag.
“All, Rogers, all!” For the moment Shine’s cupidity triumphed over his fears. “Every blessed ounce. All the stuff I’ve been puddlin’ away in the floor o’ that drive fer weeks. an’ the nugget, ain’t it a beauty—ain’t it a beauty? an’ to think I’ve been shepherdin’ that daisy fer ten shifts!”
Dick crept closer and, peering through a slit in the great hollow trunk of the tree, saw that Rogers was handling the contents of the bag. On his knee lay a gleaming mass that the boy knew to be a beautiful nugget.
“What devil’s luck brought that young fool to the ‘T’ drive?”
“He must ’a’ heard you splashin’. You wasn’t careful.”
“Ez careful ez I could be. I had to scoop the stuff outer holes in the wet floor o’ the drive where I’d puddled it away in the mud.”
“Ain’t there a chance fer him—not a single hope?”
“Oh, yes, but it’s a bad un fer us if he recognised you. There’s the chance o’ him recoverin’, an’ draggin’ himself out o’ the water. Hullo! what in hell’s name’s happenin’ now? Quick, cut for the scrub; someone’s comin’. I’ll hide the bag here. Come back when they’ve passed.”
Dick heard Rogers throw the calfskin bag into the hollow of the tree and scrape the loose rubbish over it, and then both glided away in the shadow of the Red Hand tips. From beyond the tips came the beat of a horse’s hoofs, and the sound of human voices. Dick’s first thought was of his pursuers, the troopers; his second of his escape; his third sent the blood surging through his veins and his heart beating like a piston. A grand thought, a magnificent thought! He could have cried out with exultation as it swept into his mind. Creeping around the tree he silently unearthed the gold-stealers” bag and dragged it after him, retreating to the quarry. At the edge of the incline he let the bag slide, and it went to the bottom with the noise a cow might have made moving through the scrub. Dick followed, scrambling down the rocks. Having recovered the bag, he dragged it under the scrub to the opening in the wall, hastily concealing his tracks. There was some difficulty in getting the bag through the space in the rock but he managed well; then he swung it free of the ladder, so that it dropped into the shaft and on to the broken reef below. He clambered through on to the ladder, drew the loose scrub ferns into their places, and fitted into the crevice the wedge-shaped stone, kept as a last concealment of the retreat.
Standing on the ladder Dick waited, and presently heard sounds of men making their way into the Gaol Quarry. His suspicions were correct: the party was seeking him. Presently he heard a voice he recognised as that of Jim Peetree, saying:
“This is the spot, boss; I’ve seen him here scores o’ times. If he ain’t here I give it up.”
Dick heard the jingle of spurs, and an authoritative voice.
“Search all about amongst the scrub and the rocks. Keep my horse ready in case the boy makes a bolt for it.”
There were three or four men, Peterson and McKnight amongst them. They searched industriously, coming pretty close to Dick’s hiding place more than once.
“We should have let the other lad go and have followed him,” said the authoritative voice. “Fancy three troopers being kept a whole day and half the night dancing after a bit of a kid.”
Dick’s heart thrilled at this.
“Well, he’s not here, that’s certain sure,” said Peterson. “My boy said he left him in the paddock, an’ I s’pose he can’t be fur, but I tell you you won’t get him, he’s that cunnin’. He’s fuller o’ wickedness an’ wisdom, an’ good an’ bad, than any boy you ever see, sergeant.”
“Ah, well, we’ll move on and try the other spot; but I would like to have the dear boy for five minutes now, while I feel in the humour to knock some of the bad out of him.”
They started off again, and when the beat of hoofs was lost in the distance Dick crept from his hiding-place and climbed up out of the quarry. He now stole to a position from which he could command a view of the hollow tree, whilst remaining under thick shelter and leaving himself an excellent opening for retreat. His blood was full of the excitement of this new adventure, a true adventure dealing with theft and murder. He was afraid, terribly afraid, but it seemed to him that all his emotions were held in abeyance: he was conscious of their existence, but they no longer ruled him. One thing was paramount, his determination to know everything of the crime that had been perpetrated in the main drive of the Silver Stream. Fragments of thoughts seemed to flicker up like flames within him and die out again instantly, and he repeated constantly under his breath without knowing why:
“Her father! Her father! Her father!”
There was something to be done—much to be done, and one important thing, one thing that meant life or death; but these must come after. Now he was wild to know all that the thieves might tell.
Rogers was the first to come crawling back to the tree. He scattered the loose rubbish in the hollow trunk, and uttered a fierce oath.
“It’s gone, gone, gone!” he almost shouted as Shine joined him.
“You lie, you lie! You want to rob me!” the long searcher had flown at his throat, and for a few seconds they struggled together, but Rogers threw the older man off fiercely and dragged him by the throat to the tree.
“Feel, search, look for yourself, you hound!” he cried. “Could I eat it?”
Shine, going on his hands and knees, clawed amongst the rubbish; then, whining and muttering, went scratching about like a dog, seeking high and low, and Rogers followed him blaspheming with insensate fury.
“It’s no good, I tell you, you snuffling, whimpering, white-livered cur!” he said. “Those men have got away with it, curse them!”
But Ephraim continued his search, creeping under the scrub, scratching in the grass; and as he searched his whimper grew louder and louder, and he cried like an old woman at a wake.
“An’ we killed a man, we killed a man!” he wailed again and again.
Rogers rushed at him viciously, and kicked him heavily in the ribs.
“Get up, you dog!” he cried hoarsely, with a string of oaths. He dragged Shine to his feet, and continned: “Listen to me. Go home an’ go to bed fer a while. Turn up at the mine all right at one, and in the mornin’. Keep your mouth shut, an’ wait till you hear from me again, or—or—” He did not finish his threat. After a moment he continued, in a more composed tone: “We’re in no danger if we’ve not been seen. That was the trooper after the cub Haddon. He’s got the gold all right. Bury the key. Get back to your house, an’ lie down fer a while. Be careful—p’raps we’re watched now.”
The two men moved off together. After they had passed the tips Dick quickly made his way into the quarry, and from thence to the drive of the Mount of Gold.