Part 12 (1/2)

IN the four days and a half of their first week on the field Burton and Done cleared close upon seven hundred pounds. By the end of the second week they had worked out their first mine, and Jim possessed eight hundred pounds. They tried another claim, and bottomed on the pipeclay.

The hole was a duffer. They tried a third, and cut the wash once more.

This claim was not nearly so rich as their first, but rich enough to pay handsomely, and Mike, young as he was, was too old a miner to abandon a good claim on the chance of finding a better. By this time Jim was feeling himself quite an experienced digger; he could sink a straight shaft, knock down wash-dirt with the best, and pan off a prospect as neatly and with as workmanlike a flourish as any man on the field. He was rapidly coming into close touch with the life about him, adopting the manners of his a.s.sociates, and slowly wearing down that diffidence which still clung to him in the society of strangers. He was reticent, but there remained no suspicion, no animosity towards his kind. Looking back a year, he could hardly recognise himself; the Jim Done of Chisley seemed an old man by comparison. Already Jim of Forest Creek could laugh at Jim o' Mill End, but the consciousness of an escape from a horror remained.

How serious he had been in those days! How he had permitted himself to suffer! Thank G.o.d, it was all gone!

Going into the tent on the afternoon of the second Sunday, Jim found his mate asleep on one of the bunks. In the hollow of his out-thrown hand lay a cheap lacquered frame containing a daguerreotype of a girl's face. A sudden contrition smote Jim; he turned anxiously to his bunk, throwing the clothes left and right. The vest he had worn when he left the Francis Cadman lay under the pillow. He dived his finger into the watch-pocket, and heaved a sigh of relief. Yes, it was there, safe and sound. He held Lucy Woodrow's miniature, gazing on it, suffused with chastened emotions.

Heavens! how beautiful she was, and so gentle and generous! What an a.s.s he had been! He kissed the picture very tenderly, and with a bit of twine secured it in the pocket of his jumper in dangerous proximity to his heart.

Jim Done had now seen much of the fanciful night life of the camps. A populous lead presented a picturesque appearance by night. The illuminated tents and the flaring camp-fires dotted the field thickly, and where the tents of the business people were drawn in line and something like a main street formed, slush lights and kerosene torches flamed and swinging oil-lamps lit up the scene. Here the wilder spirits a.s.sembled and drank square gin, and gambled in the canvas shanty bars, or danced with fine frenzy to music provided by some enterprising German Fraulein stolidly grinding a hurdy-gurdy. There were numerous sly grog-shops amongst the tents, and most of the storekeepers sold illicit drink with open impudence. These places were often centres of roaring, ribald life after nightfall; but the majority of the diggers lay in groups about their camp-fires, chatting quietly or reading the most recent papers available, and were peaceably inclined, easy-going citizens.

It was the fiercer side of existence on the fields that appealed most directly to Jim; he loved the strong colour, the exultant animation, the devil-may-care character, that marked the gatherings in the bars and the gambling-saloons. He took little active part in the playing and the drinking, but the feverish energy of the men and the stirring scenes provided such vivid contrast to what he had hitherto known and seen of life that his soul was greedy for it all. To Mike these scenes were all familiar; his att.i.tude towards them was one of quiet indifference, and he regarded Jim's rapture with the amused tolerance a sedate, elderly gentleman feels for the enthusiasm of a little boy.

The mates had s.h.i.+fted their tent to a convenient position near the claim they were now working, and were camped within two hundred yards of the establishment of Mrs. Ben Kyley, laundress and baker. Mrs. Kyley was a big-limbed, fresh-coloured, dimpled woman, whose native canniness did not, militate in the least against an amazonian joviality that made her hail-fellow-well-met with half the diggers on the field. Her voice was the loudest amid the clamouring tongues in her large tent at night, and her guffaw overbore everything; it was one of the wonders of Forest Creek. Many a time its echoes, rebounding from Boulder Hill, had set all Diamond Gully grinning in sympathy. It was not known whether Mrs. Kyley and Ben were married or merely mates, but popular opinion tended to the latter belief, legal unions being incompatible with a nice adjustment of forces at the rushes. The exigencies of life on the diggings made sudden changes of scene necessary to the men, and a woman like Mrs. Kyley couldn't be expected to abandon her business for the sake of a husband, seeing that it was so much easier to set up another husband than another establishment. But the most important branch of the business, that of sly grog-selling, made a man who could handle the riotous and evil-disposed quite essential. Ben Kyley's appearance, broad, thickly-set, solid as a gum-b.u.t.t, broken-nosed and heavy-handed, and his reputation as the man who was beaten by Bendigo only after an hour's hard fighting, marked him as the fittest man on the field for the position he held. For the rest, Ben was a quiet, mild man, whose voice was seldom heard, and whose subjugation to Mrs. Ben was almost comical. Ben worked on his claim by day, and at night he officiated as 'chucker-out' in Mrs. Kyley's bar--for a bar it was, to all intents and purposes. Ben's duty was not to suppress disorder, but merely to see that the common disorder did not develop into licentiousness, to the danger of Mrs. Kyley's property or the detriment of her trade.

Mrs. Ben Kyley made bread because bread-baking at three s.h.i.+llings a loaf was an exceedingly profitable business. For the same reason she washed s.h.i.+rts at twelve s.h.i.+llings the half-dozen. But selling rum at a s.h.i.+lling a n.o.bbler to 'flash' diggers who despised change was much more profitable still. The industrious woman, who washed and baked all day, was kept busy for the greater part of the night retailing rum to insatiable diggers, and the mystery was that, although n.o.body could see rum in the bottle or in bulk anywhere about the place, it was rare that the supply ran short.

Jim had visited the tent on one or two occasions, walking from the other side of the gully; he went again on the Sat.u.r.day afternoon following their removal to buy bread. Mrs. Kyley's big camp-ovens were nestled in the fires outside the tent, three of them in a row; Mrs. Kyley herself, half smothered in suds, was was.h.i.+ng with the rapidity and the indefatigability of a machine.

'Aurora will attend to you, my boy,' blared Mrs. Kyley, blowing a storm of suds out of her mop of hair.

Aurora! Jim entered the tent wondering, and found three or four men at the counter, conversing with a young woman, twenty-three perhaps, tall, black-haired, dark-eyed, flushed with colour, happy in temperament, free in manner, a striking representative of a not uncommon type of the time, meeting men on a mutual footing, asking no concessions and making none--Jim's 'Spaniard' of the Melbourne dance saloon. She recognised him immediately.

'h.e.l.lo!' she cried. 'Look now! if it ain't the boy wid the blushes, an'

there's the blush to prove it agin' him.'

Jim was blus.h.i.+ng; his rebellious blood gave the lie to his a.s.sumption of easy indifference.

'How are you?' he said. 'I knew you at once.'

'To be sure. 'Twould be indacent to forgit, seem' it's my debtor ye are, for the price of a dance.'

'Which you gave me for natural love and affection.'

''Deed, then 'twas because you were poor an' motherless in a strange land, but now the gold's a worry to you, I doubt.'

Jim laughed and shook his head. 'I want a loaf,' he said. 'My mate is hungry and waiting.'

'Heigho!' sighed Aurora; 'devil a sc.r.a.p of gallantry have these slips of boys, Quigley! You wouldn't leave me for all the mates on earth, would you, now?'

The big bearded digger banged his fist on the counter, and swore a firm, fluent oath that he would not.

'Worse luck,' added Aurora, with a twinkling eye. 'Here's yer bread, Teddy-was-me-darlin', an' ye'd have it fer love if 'twas me own to give.'

Aurora a.s.sumed and dropped the musical brogue according to her whim.

Ordinarily her English was as pure as Mrs. Kyley's, and Mrs. Kyley had the reputation of being a lady of vast attainments.

'There's the money,' said Jim, 'and will you take this for the dance?' He offered her a nugget he had picked from the week's yield, a flat, heart-shaped slug, curiously embossed.

''Deed, an' it's mighty fine,' said the girl, 'but I'd rather have ye me debtor for life.'