The Gold-Stealers Part 21

'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.'

d.i.c.k 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 antic.i.p.ation, 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?'

d.i.c.k 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.'

d.i.c.k 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 b.u.t.t 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 superst.i.tious 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 n.o.ble 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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, d.i.c.k, 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, d.i.c.k followed until, resting a moment, he heard distinctly the words:

'Why did you hit him again? Good G.o.d! 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 a.s.s!' d.i.c.k 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 hoa.r.s.ely.

'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!'

d.i.c.k 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, d.a.m.n 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!

d.i.c.k 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 ma.s.s 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 h.e.l.l's name's happenin' now? Quick, cut for the scrub; someone's comin'. I'll hide the bag here. Come back when they've pa.s.sed.'

d.i.c.k heard Rogers throw the calfskin bag into the hollow of the tree and sc.r.a.pe 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. d.i.c.k'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. d.i.c.k 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 s.p.a.ce 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 d.i.c.k 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.'

d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k'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.'

d.i.c.k's heart thrilled at this.