The Gold-Stealers Part 26

d.i.c.k's heart jumped like a startled hare. He recognised his enemy now in spite of his cap and his disguised voice. It was Joe Rogers.

'D'ye deny takin' it?' asked the man sharply.

'Yes,' said d.i.c.k, cold at heart and quaking in every limb.

'd.a.m.n you for a young liar! Fer two pins I'd send you straight to smash.

I know you've got that gold stowed somewhere. Where?'

The boy gave him no answer, and Rogers sprang to his feet, and tickled him again with the knife.

'You whelp!' he said hoa.r.s.ely. 'I'd think ez much of slaughterin' you ez I would of brainin' a cat. Speak, if you want to live! Where's that gold?'

d.i.c.k was convinced that the man would be as good as his word, but he still lingered, casting about helplessly for an excuse, a hope of escape.

'Blast you, won't you speak?'

d.i.c.k felt the knife cut into the rope above his head, and shrieked aloud in a paroxysm of terror.

'Stop, stop! I'll tell!'

'Tell then, an' be quick. That's one strand o' the rope gone; there's two more. Speak!' He raised the knife threateningly.

'It's under that big flat stone near the spring in the Gaol Quarry.' The lie came almost involuntarily from the boy's lips in instantaneous response to a new impulse. But he was doomed to disappointment.

'Good!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the man. 'Now, you go with me. I don't trust you; you're too smart a kid to be trusted.' As he spoke he twisted the gag into d.i.c.k's mouth again. 'No,' he cried with a sudden change of intention, 'you'll stay where you are. You're safe enough here. While I'm away think o' what's below you there, an' pray yer hardest in case you've lied to me, because if you have you're done fer. I'll kill you, s'elp me G.o.d, I will!'

Rogers took a bee line through the scrub in the direction of the quarry, leaving d.i.c.k hanging over the open shaft. The Gaol Quarry was not more than half a mile off, and Rogers ran the whole of the distance. He made his way clumsily down the rocky side from the hill, falling heavily from half the height and bruising himself badly, but paying no attention to his injuries in the anxiety of the moment. He found the big flat stone after a minute's search, and succeeded in turning it only after exerting his great strength to the utmost. There was nothing underneath. Yes, there was something; a snake hissed at him in the darkness and slid away amongst the broken rock. Rogers fell upon his knees and groped about blindly, but the ground was hard. There was no sign of the gold anywhere, and not another stone in the quarry that answered to the boy's description. Possessed with a stupid blundering fury against d.i.c.k, Rogers turned back towards the Piper. He breathed horrible blasphemies as he ran, and struck at the scrub in his insensate rage. He was a man of fierce pa.s.sions, and meant murder during those first few minutes-swift and ruthless. He reached the Piper breathless from his exertions and wild with pa.s.sion. He did not even pause to resume his disguise, but ran to the shaft, cursing as he went. There he stopped like a man shot, his figure stiffened, his arms thrown out straight before him; his eyes, wide and full of terror, stared between the skids rising from the shaft to the brace above.

d.i.c.k Haddon was not there. The s.p.a.ce was empty, the rope's end moved lazily in the wind.

The revulsion of feeling was terrible: it left the strong man as weak as a child, it turned the desperate criminal into a mumbling coward. Rogers staggered to the shaft and examined the rope. It had broken where one strand was cut; the other strands were frayed out. The gold-stealer fell upon his knees and tried to call, but a mere gasp was the only sound that escaped his lips. He remained for a minute or two gazing helplessly into the pitch blackness of the shaft; then, recovering somewhat with a great effort, he rose to his feet, untied the remainder of the rope from the skid and dropped it into the shaft, and turning his back on the mine fled away through the paddocks towards Waddy. As he issued from the bush a quarter of an hour later, and crossed the open flat, a slim figure slipped from the furze covering the rail fence and followed him noiselessly at a distance.

CHAPTER XVIII.

WHEN Rogers reached his hut he sat for some time in the dark, thinking over his position. It had been his intention all along to make his escape from the district the moment he succeeded in recovering the gold, and now, in his horror at the consequences of his last act, he was incapable of cold reason. His one desire was to get away as far as possible from the scene of his crimes. He lit a candle, and the drunken drover, peeping through a crack, saw him spread a blanket on the floor and set to work hastily to make a swag. The drover watched him for a minute and then sped off in the darkness. Shortly after this Rogers was startled at the sound of a shrill and peculiar whistle. Jumping up on the impulse of the moment, with the quick suspicion of a criminal, he s.n.a.t.c.hed his gun from a corner and stepped out. Standing in the light thrown from his hut door, he heard the tramp of horses' hoofs and a voice calling:

'Stand and deliver! You are my prisoner!'

Joe slipped into the shadow, sheltering himself behind the chimney, and saw two troopers riding at him. Instinctively his gun was lifted to his shoulder.

'Bail up!' he cried. 'A step nearer an' I fire!'

The troopers spurred their horses. Rogers clinched his teeth, his eye ran along the barrel, he covered the leading man and fired. The trooper was flung forward on his horse's neck, his arms dangling limply on each side.

His horse sprang to a gallop, and a minute later the man slid over its shoulder and fell, rolling almost to Joe's feet as the animal rushed past.

The second trooper fired a revolver, and the bullet chipped a slab at the gold-stealer's ear. Rogers had him covered, and his finger was on the trigger when the gun was whirled from his hands and a man who had stolen up from the back closed with him. The newcorner was slim, and Rogers felt that he might break him between his hands if he could only get a proper grip; but the drunken drover--for it was he--was as sinuous as an eel, and a moment later Joe was on the broad of his back with the 'darbies' on his wrists and a trooper kneeling on his chest, while the drover, transformed into Detective Downy, stood over them, mopping his face with his big false beard.

The wounded trooper had recovered somewhat, and was on his hands and knees, with down-hanging head, in the light of the open door.

'How are you, Casey?' asked the detective anxiously.

'Aisy, sor. I'm jist wonderin' if I'm dead or alive,' said the trooper in a still small voice, watching the blood-drops falling from his forehead.

'Then the devil a bit's the matter with you, Casey.'

'Thank you, sor,' said the trooper, with a trained man's confidence in his superior. 'Thin I'd best git up, p'raps.' And he arose and stood dubiously fingering the furrow plowed along the top of his head by the gold stealer's bullet.

'Get him into the hut,' said Downy, indicating Rogers with a nod; 'and hobble the brute--he's dangerous.'

Rogers, sitting on the edge of his bunk, handcuffed and leg-ironed, gazed sullenly at the detective.

'Well,' he said, 'an' now you've got me, what's the charge?'

'A trifle of gold-stealing,' replied Downy, 'and this,' indicating Casey's bleeding head. 'To say nothing of the murder of your accomplice.'

Rogers blanched and glared at the detective, his face contorted and his eyes big with terror.

'Shine,' he murmured, 'd'ye mean Shine? It's a lie; he's not dead!'

Harry Hardy, who had just come upon the scene and was standing in the doorway, cried out at this.

'Great G.o.d!' he said. 'Then it was Ephraim Shine after all!'

'Pooh!'' cried Rogers, 'it was a trick to trap me into givin' his name.

You needn't 'a' troubled yerself. I don't want to shield him--d.a.m.n him!'

'Do you know where this Shine's to be got at?' asked Downy, appealing to Harry, who had been working in concert with the detective ever since his appearance in Waddy.

'Yes,' was the reply. 'I know his house. He'll be easily taken.'

'Then go with the sergeant. Take Casey's horse. It'll be with the other.

Here,' he threw Harry a revolver. 'Case of need, you know, but no shooting if it can be avoided.'

Harry thrust the weapon in his belt, and a minute later he and Sergeant Monk rode off in company to take Ephraim Shine in the name of the Queen.

Meanwhile d.i.c.k was not at the bottom of the Piper shaft, as Rogers concluded in his haste. Joe had not left the boy half a minute when a second man made his appearance on the other side of the shaft. This was Downy, in his drover disguise. The detective, whose sole object in a.s.suming the disguise was to watch d.i.c.k, believing that the boy would be sure to communicate with the real thieves, had witnessed his capture by Rogers and had followed in the latter's tracks; and now, after being entertained and instructed by the words that had pa.s.sed between Rogers and his captive, he cut d.i.c.k down, quickly frayed the end of the rope between two stones, and cut away d.i.c.k's bonds, throwing the rope and gag into the shaft.

'Now, my lad,' he said sternly, 'after that man. Take me the nearest track to the quarry you spoke of as quick as you can cut, and don't make noise enough to wake a cat or I'll hand you over to him when we get there.'

d.i.c.k did as he was bid; and they were in time to overlook Rogers as he searched amongst the stones, and to overhear some of the language that announced his failure. At this stage the detective, who had retained his grip of d.i.c.k's wrist, whispered:

'You can go now, but you must take a message from me to Harry Hardy. Go straight to his house and say, 'Downy says 'Ready.'' Can I trust you?'

d.i.c.k nodded.

You're a plucky lad,' said Downy, 'and I'll take your word. Off you go, but make no noise.'

d.i.c.k crept quietly along the gra.s.s till he was well beyond hearing, and then ran down by Wilson's ploughed land and out into the open country. He understood that the career of Joe Rogers as a gold-stealer was drawing to a close, and the knowledge brought him a certain sense of relief in spite of the fact that he quite realised Shine's danger, and was more than ever devoted to the searcher's daughter, more than ever pleased with the idea of her hearing some day how faithful and bold he had been, how true a knight to his liege lady.