It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 109

"You don't say so, Tom."

"This is gold washing as beginners practice it in California and Mexico and Peru, and wherever gold-dust is found. They have been working with a pan, they haven't got such a thing as a cradle in this country. Come lower down; this was yesterday's work, let us find to-day's."

The two men now ran down the stream busy as dogs hunting an otter. A little lower down they found both banks of the stream pitted with holes about two feet deep and the sides drenched with water from it.

"Well, if it is so, you need not look so pale; why, dear me, how pale you are, Tom!"

"You would be pale," gasped Tom, "if you could see what a day this is for you and me, ay! and for all the world, old England especially.

George, in a month there will be five thousand men working round this little spot. Ay! come," cried he, shouting wildly at the top of his voice, "there is plenty for all. GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! I have found it. I, Tom Robinson, I've found it, and I grudge it to no man. I, a thief that was, make a present of it to its rightful owner, and that is all the world. Here GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!"

Though George hardly understood his companion's words, he was carried away by the torrent of his enthusiasm, and even as Robinson spoke his cheeks in turn flushed and his eyes flashed, and he grasped his friend's hands warmly, and cried, "GOLD! GOLD! blessings on it if it takes me to Susan; GOLD! GOLD!"

The poor fellows' triumph and friendly exultation lasted but a moment; the words were scarce out of Robinson's mouth when to his surprise George started from him, turned very pale, but at the same time lifted his iron-shod stick high in the air and clinched his teeth with desperate resolution. Four men with s.h.a.ggy beards and wild faces and murderous eyes were literally upon them, each with a long glittering knife raised in the air.

At that fearful moment George learned the value of a friend that had seen adventure and crime; rapid and fierce and unexpected as the attack was, Robinson was not caught off his guard. His hand went like lightning into his bosom, and the a.s.sailants, in the very act of striking, were met in the face by the long glistening barrels of a rifle revolver, while the cool, wicked eye behind it showed them nothing was to be hoped in that quarter from flurry, or haste, or indecision.

The two men nearest the revolver started back, the other two neither recoiled nor advanced, but merely hung fire. George made a movement to throw himself upon them; but Robinson seized him fiercely by the arm--he said steadily but sternly, "Keep cool, young man--no running among their knives while they are four. Strike across me and I shall guard you till we have thinned."

"Will you?" said Black Will, "here, pals!" The four a.s.sailants came together like a fan for a moment and took a whisper from their leader.

They then spread out like a fan and began to encircle their antagonists, so as to attack on both sides at once.

"Back to the water, George," cried Robinson quickly, "to the broad part here." Robinson calculated that the stream would protect his rear, and that safe he was content to wait and profit by the slightest error of his numerous a.s.sailants; this, however, was to a certain degree a miscalculation, for the huge ruffian we have called Jem sprang boldly across the stream higher up and prepared to attack the men behind, the moment they should be engaged with his comrades. The others no sooner saw him in position than they rushed desperately upon George and Robinson in the form of a crescent, and as they came on Jem came flying knife in hand to plunge it into Robinson's back. As the front a.s.sailants neared them, true to his promise, Robinson fired across George, and the outside man received a bullet in his shoulder-blade, and turning round like a top fell upon his knees. Unluckily George wasted a blow at this man which sung idly over him, he dropping his head and losing his knife and his powers at the very moment. By this means Robinson, the moment he had fired his pistol, had no less than three a.s.sailants; one of these George struck behind the neck so furiously with a back-handed stroke of his iron-shod stick that he fell senseless at Robinson's feet. The other, met in front by the revolver, recoiled, but kept Robinson at bay while Jem sprang on him from the rear. This attack was the most dangerous of all; in fact, neither Robinson nor George had time to defend themselves against him even if they had seen him, which they did not. Now as Jem was in the very act of making his spring from the other side of the brook, a spear glanced like a streak of light past the princ.i.p.al combatants and pierced Jem through and through the fleshy part of the thigh, and there stood Jacky at forty yards' distance, with the hand still raised from which the spear had flown, and his emu-like eye glittering with the light of battle.

Jem, instead of bounding clear over the stream, fell heavily into the middle of it and lay writhing and floundering at George's mercy, who turning in alarm at the sound stood over him with his long deadly staff whirling and swinging round his head in the air, while Robinson placed one foot firmly on the stunned man's right arm and threatened the leader Black Will with his pistol, and at the same moment with a wild and piercing yell Jacky came down in leaps like a kangaroo, his tomahawk flourished over his head, his features entirely changed, and the thirst of blood written upon every inch of him. Black Will was preparing to run away and leave his wounded companions, but at sight of the fleet savage he stood still and roared out for mercy. "Quarter! quarter!" cried Black Will.

"Down on your knees!" cried Robinson in a terrible voice.

The man fell on his knees, and in that posture Jacky would certainly have knocked out his brains but that Robinson pointed the pistol at his head and forbade him; and Carlo, who had arrived hastily at the sound of battle, in great excitement but not with clear ideas, seeing Jacky, whom he always looked on as a wild animal, opposed in some way to Robinson, seized him directly by the leg from behind and held him howling in a vise. "Hold your cursed noise, all of you," roared Robinson. "D'ye ask quarter?"

"Quarter!" cried Black Will.

"Quarter!" gurgled Jem.

"Quarter!" echoed more faintly the wounded man. The other was insensible.

"Then throw me your knives."

The men hesitated.

"Throw me them this instant, or--"

They threw down their knives.

"George, take them and tie them up in your wipe." George took the knives and tied them up.

"Now pull that big brute out of the water or he'll drown himself."

George and Jacky pulled Jem out of the water with the spear sticking in him; the water was discolored with his blood.

"Pull the spear out of him!" George pulled and Jem roared with pain, but the spear-head would not come back through the wound; then Jacky came up and broke the light shaft off close to the skin, and grasping the head drew the remainder through the wound forward, and grinned with a sense of superior wisdom.

By this time the man whom George had felled sat up on his beam ends winking and blinking and confused, like a great owl at sunrise.

Then Robinson, who had never lost his presence of mind, and had now recovered his sang-froid, made all four captives sit around together on the ground in one little lot, "While I show you the error of your ways,"

said he. "I could forgive a rascal but I hate a fool. You thought to keep such a secret as this all to yourselves--you dunces--the very birds in the air would carry it; it never was kept secret in any land and never will. And you would spill blood sooner than your betters should know it--ye ninny-c.u.mp.o.o.ps! What the worse are you for our knowing it?

If a thousand knew it to-day would that lower the price of gold a penny an ounce? No! All the harm they could do you would be this, that some of them would show you where it lies thickest, and then you'd profit by it.

You had better tie that leg of yours up; you have lost blood enough I should say by the look of you; haven't you got a wipe? here, take mine--you deserve it, don't you? No man's luck hurts his neighbor at this work; how clever you were, you have just pitched on the unlikeliest place in the whole gulley, and you wanted to kill the man that would have taught you which are the likelier ones. I shall find ten times as much gold before the sun sets as you will find in a week by the side of that stream; why, it hasn't been running above a thousand years or two, I should say, by the look of it; you have got plenty to learn, you b.l.o.o.d.y-minded greenhorns! Now I'll tell you what it is," continued Robinson, getting angry about it, "since you are for keeping dark what little you know, I'll keep you dark; and in ten minutes my pal here and the very n.i.g.g.e.r shall know more about gold-finding than you know, so be off, for I'm going to work. Come, march!"

"Where are we to go, mate?" said the leader sullenly.

"Do you see that ridge about three miles west? well, if we catch you on this side of it we will hang you like wild cats. On the other side of it do what you like, and try all you know; but this gully belongs to us now; you wanted to take something from us that did not belong to you--our blood--so now we take something from you that didn't belong to us a minute or two ago. Come, mizzle, and no more words, or--" and he pointed the tail of his discourse with his revolver.

The men rose, and with sullen, rueful, downcast looks moved off in the direction of the boundary; but one remained behind, the man was Jem.

"Well!"

"Captain, I wish you would let me join in with you!"

"What for?"

"Well, captain, you've lent me your wipe, and I think a deal of it, for it's what I did not deserve; but that is not all. You are the best man, and I like to be under the best man if I must be under anybody."

Robinson hesitated a moment. "Come here," said he. The man came and fronted him. "Look me in the face! now give me your hand--quick, no thinking about how." The man gave him his hand readily. Robinson looked into his eyes. "What is your name?"

"Jem."

"Jem, we take you on trial."

Jem's late companions, who perfectly comprehended what was pa.s.sing, turned and hooted the deserter; Jem, whose ideas of repartee were primitive, turned and hooted them in reply.

While the men were retreating Robinson walked thoughtfully with his hands behind him, backward and forward, like a great admiral on his quarter deck--enemy to leeward. Every eye was upon him and watched him in respectful, inquiring silence. "Knowledge is power;" this was the man now, the rest children.

"What tools have you?"

"There is a spade and trowel in that bush, captain."

"Fetch them, George. Hadn't you a pan?"

"No, captain; we used a calabash. He will find it lower down."

George, after a little search, found all these objects, and brought them back. "Now," cried Robinson, "these greenhorns have been washing in a stream that runs now, but perhaps in the days of Noah was not a river at all; but you look at the old bed of a stream down out there. That was a much stronger stream than this in its day, and it ran for more than a hundred thousand years before it dried up."

"How can you tell that?" said George, resuming some of his incredulity.

"Look at those monstrous stones in it here, there and everywhere. It has been a powerful stream to carry such ma.s.ses with it as that, and it has been running many thousand years, for see how deep it has eaten into its rocky sides here and there. That was a river, my lads, and washed gold down for hundreds of thousands of years before ever Adam stood on the earth."

The men gave a hurrah, and George and Jacky prepared to run and find the treasure. "Stop," cried Robinson, "you are not at the gold yet. Can you tell in what parts of the channel it lies thick and where there isn't enough to pay the labor of washing it? Well, I can--look at that bend where the round pebbles are collected so; there was a strong eddy there.

Well, under the ridge of that eddy is ten times as much gold lying as in the level parts. Stop a bit again. Do you know how deep or how shallow it lies--do you think you can find it by the eye? Do you know what clays it sinks through, as if they were a sieve, and what stops it like an iron door? Your quickest way is to take Captain Robinson's time--and that is now."