It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 122

"How did you get your black eye?"

"Oh! didn't I tell you? Fighting with the blackguards for your claim."

It was now Robinson's turn to be touched.

"You are a good fellow. You and I must be friends. Ah! if I could but get together about forty decent men like you, and that had got gold to lose."

"Well," said Ede, "why not? Here are eight that have got gold to lose, thanks to you, and your own lot--that makes ten. We could easy make up forty for any good lay; there is my hand for one. What is it?"

Robinson took Ede's hand with a haste and an energy that almost startled him, and his features darkened with an expression unusual now to his good-natured face. "To put down thieving in the camp," said he, sternly.

"Ah!" said the other, half sadly (the desirableness of this had occurred to him before now); "but how are we to do that?" asked he, incredulously. "The camp is choke-full of them."

Robinson looked blacker, uglier and more in earnest. So was his answer when it came.

"Make stealing death by the law."

"The law! What law?"

"Lynch!"

CHAPTER LX.

ABOUT a fortnight after Robinson's return to the diggings two men were seated in a small room at Bevan's store. There was little risk of their being interrupted by any honest digger, for it was the middle of the day.

"I know that well enough," growled the black-maned one, "everybody knows the lucky rip has got a heavier swag than ever, but we shan't get it so cheap, if we do at all."

"Why not?"

"He is on his guard now, night and day, and what is more he has got friends in the mine that would hang me or you either up to dry, if they but caught us looking too near his tent."

"The ruffians. Well, but if he has friends he has enemies."

"Not so many; none that I know of but you and me. I wonder what he has done to you?"

The other waived this question and replied: "I have found two parties that hate him; two that came in last week."

"Have you? then, if you are in earnest, make me acquainted with them, for I am weak-handed; I lost one of my pals yesterday."

"Indeed! how?"

"They caught him at work and gave him a rap over the head with a spade.

The more ---- fool he for being caught. Here is to his memory."

"Ugh! what, is he, is he--"

"Dead as a herring."

"Where shall we all go to? What lawless fellows these diggers are. I will bring you the men."

For the last two months the serpentine man had wound in and out the camp, poking about for a villain of the darker sort as minutely as Diogenes did for an honest man, and dispensing liquor and watching looks and words. He found rogues galore, and envious spirits that wished the friends ill, but none of them seemed game to risk their lives against two men, one of whom said openly he would kill any stranger he caught in his tent, and whom some fifty stout fellows called Captain Robinson, and were ready to take up his quarrel like fire. But at last he fell in with two old lags, who had a deadly grudge against the captain, and a sovereign contempt for him into the bargain. By the aid of liquor he wormed out their story. This was the marrow of it: The captain had been their pal, and, while they were all three cracking a crib, had with unexampled treachery betrayed them, and got them laid by the heels for nearly a year; in fact, if they had not broken prison they would not have been here now. In short, in less than half an hour he returned with our old acquaintances, brutus and mephistopheles.

These two came half reluctant, suspicious and reserved. But at sight of Black Will they were rea.s.sured, villain was so stamped on him. With instantaneous sympathy and an instinct of confidence the three compared notes, and showed how each had been aggrieved by the common enemy. Next they held a council of war, the grand object of which was to hit upon some plan of robbing the friends of their new swag.

It was a difficult and very dangerous job. Plans were proposed and rejected, and nothing agreed upon but this, that the men should be carefully watched for days to find out where they kept their gold at night and where by day, and an attempt timed and regulated accordingly.

Moreover, the same afternoon a special gang of six was formed, including Walker, which pitiful fox was greatly patronized by the black-maned lion. At sight of him, brutus, who knew him not indeed by name but by a literary transaction, was "for laying on," but his patron interposed, and, having inquired and heard the offense, bellowed with laughter, and condemned the ex-peddler to a fine of half a crown in grog. This softened brutus, and a harmonious debauch succeeded. Like the old Egyptians they debated first sober and then drunk, and to stagger my general notion that the ancients were unwise, candor compels me to own, it was while stammering, maudling, stinking and in every sense drunk that mephistopheles driveled out a scheme so cunning and so new as threw everybody and everything into the shade. It was carried by hiccoughation.

To work this scheme mephistopheles required a beautiful large new tent; the serpentine man bought it. Money to feed the gang; serpent advanced it.

Robinson's tent was about thirty yards from his claim, which its one opening faced. So he and George worked with an eye ever upon their tent.

At night two men of Robinson's party patrolled armed to the teeth; they relieved guard every two hours. Captain Robinson's orders to these men, if they saw anybody doing anything suspicious after dark, were these:

First fire, Then inquire.

This general order was matter of publicity for a quarter of a mile round Robinson's tent, and added to his popularity and our rascals'

perplexities.

These orders had surely the double merit of conciseness and melody; well, for all that, they were disgustingly offensive to one true friend of the captain, viz., to George Fielding.

"What is all the gold in the world compared with a man's life?" said he, indignantly.

"An ounce of it is worth half a dozen such lives as some here," was the cool reply.

"I have heard you talk very different. I mind when you could make excuses even for thieves that were never taught any better, poor unfortunate souls."

"Did I?" said the captain, a little taken aback. "Well, perhaps I did; it was natural, hem, under the circ.u.mstances. No! not for such thieves as these, that haven't got any honor at all."

"Honor, eh?"

"Yes! honor. Look here, suppose in my unconverted days I had broke into a jeweler's shop (that comes nearest to a mine) with four or five pals, do you think I should have held it lawful to rob my pals of any part of the swag just because we happened to be robbing a silversmith? Certainly not; I a.s.sure you, George, the punishment of such a nasty, sneaking, dishonorable act would be death in every gang, and cheap, too. Well, we have broken into Nature's shop here, and we are to rifle her, and not turn to like unnatural monsters, and rob our ten thousand pals."

"Thieving is thieving, in my view," was the prejudiced reply.

"And hanging is hanging--as all thieves shall find if caught convenient."

"You make my flesh creep, Tom. I liked you better when you were not so great a man, more humble like; have you forgotten when you had to make excuses for yourself; then you had Susan on your side and brought me round, for I was bitter against theft; but never so bad as you are now."

"Oh, never mind what I said in those days; why, you must be well aware I did not know what I was talking about. I had been a rogue and a fool, and I talked like both. But now I am a man of property, and my eyes are open and my conscience revolts against theft, and the gallows is the finest inst.i.tution going, and next to that comes a jolly good prison. I wish there was one in this mine as big as Pentonville, then property--"

Here the dialogue was closed by the demand the pick made upon the man of property's breath. But it rankled, and on laying down the pick he burst out: "Well, to think of an honest man like you having a word to say for thieving. Why, it is a despicable trait in a gold mine. I'll go farther, I'll prove it is the sin of sins all round the world. Stolen money never thrives--goes for drink and nonsense. Now you pick and I'll wash. Theft corrupts the man that is robbed as well as the thief; drives him to despair and drink and ruin temporal and eternal. No country could stand half an hour without law!! The very honest would turn thieves if not protected, and there would be a go. Besides, this great crime is like a trunk railway, other little crimes run into it and out of it; lies buzz about it like these Australian flies--drat you! Drunkenness precedes and follows it, and perjury rushes to its defense."

"Well, Tom, you are a beautiful speaker."

"I haven't done yet. What wonder it degrades a man when a dog loses his dignity under it. Behold the dog who has stolen; look at Carlo yesterday when he demeaned himself to prig Jem's dinner (the sly brute won't look at ours). How mean he cut with his tail under his belly, instead of turning out to meet folk all jolly and waggle-um-tail-um as on other occasions--Hallo, you, sir! what are you doing so near our tent?" and up jumped the man of property and ran c.o.c.king a revolver to a party who was kneeling close to the friends' tent.

The man looked up coolly; he was on his knees.