The Gold-Stealers Part 5

d.i.c.k read the letter slowly; it was a very artful letter, most pathetic, and sprinkled with drops which might have been tears. The writer spoke despondingly of her loneliness and her desolation, and the fears she endured when by herself in the house at night, knowing there was a camp of blacks in the corner paddock, and so many rough cattlemen about. She was entirely helpless since her only protector had deserted her, and she supposed that it only remained for her to be resigned to her fate. She signed her self, 'Your forsaken and sorrow-stricken mother.'

When d.i.c.k had finished reading he started to put on his clothes.

'What's up, Morgan?' asked Phil.

'Knock off!' was the brief reply.

'But what yer goin' to do?'

'I'm goin' home.'

'Home!' cried Peterson. 'Why?'

'Because!'

d.i.c.k had the instincts of a leader; he demanded reasons for everything, but gave none.

Before the lads parted that night young Haddon proffered Ted McKnight excellent advice.

'Your dad's night shift, ain't he?' he said. 'Well, don't you go in till near twelve. He'll be gone to work then, an' when he comes off in the mornin' he'll be too tired to lick you much.' This, from an orphan with practically no experience of paternal rule, argued a fine intuition.

CHAPTER V.

d.i.c.k HADDON did not enter his home immediately after parting with his mates. Mrs. Haddon's little cottage, four roomed, with a queer skillion front, was surrounded by a tumbled ma.s.s of tangled vegetation miscalled a garden, and d.i.c.k loitered in the shadow of the back fence to consider what manner of entrance would be most politic. He was shrewdly aware that his mother might be tempted to make an attack on the impulse of the moment, her most pathetic letter notwithstanding, and it was a point of honour with him to offer no resistance and make no evasion when Mrs.

Haddon felt called upon to administer corporal punishment. To be sure the maternal beatings occasioned very little physical inconvenience; but they gave rise to much unpleasantness, and were to be avoided when possible.

As it happened, d.i.c.k was not put to the necessity of making a choice to-night. In the midst of his cogitations he felt himself seized from behind in a pair of long, strong arms. With the quick instinct of a wrongdoer he suspected evil, and kicked sharply back ward at the shins of the enemy.

'Le' go! You le' me go, see!' gasped the boy, struggling and fighting fiercely.

Resistance was quite useless. d.i.c.k was dragged through the gate, and up to the house. The door was opened, and he was bundled unceremoniously into the kitchen. Then Ephraim Shine--for it was the superintendent who had fallen upon d.i.c.k in the darkness--thrust his spa.r.s.ely-whiskered, leathery face into the well-lighted room, and said shortly:

'Your boy, ma'am!'

Shine withdrew instantly, closing the door noiselessly after him, and left d.i.c.k flushed and furious.

'He didn't take me,' he cried. 'I was comin' home, an' he grabbed me just outside there--the beast!

d.i.c.k stopped short, suddenly conscious of the presence of visitors. Mrs.

Hardy was sitting opposite his mother by the wide fireplace--the tall, white-haired gentlewoman in whose society he always felt himself transformed suddenly into a sort of saintly fellowship with the remarkably gentlemanly little boys whose acquaintance he made in the books provided by the chapel library. At the table sat Gable, the grey, chubby-faced third-cla.s.s scholar whom Joel Ham had forgiven because of his extreme youth. The old man had a circular slab of bread and jam in his left hand, and was grinning fraternally at d.i.c.k. There was a third visitor, a stranger, a brown-haired, brown-skinned, bony young man, dressed after the manner of a drover. He had a small moustache, and a grave, taking face. He looked like a bushranger, d.i.c.k thought admiringly.

'This is Richard, Henry,' said Mrs. Hardy.

'You don't know me, eh, Coppertop?' said the young man, taking the boy's hand.

'Harry Hardy,' said d.i.c.k at random.

'Well, that's a good enough guess, young fellow

d.i.c.k fell back quietly. It was, he felt, a moment when an air of sadness and a retiring disposition would be likely to be most becoming in him--and most effective. He declined his mother's invitation to supper with such meekness that the little woman found it difficult to hide her concern. Could she have peeped into the drive of the Mount of Gold, where was sc.r.a.p-food enough to victual a small regiment, not to mention pillage from Wilson's orchard, she might have been more at her ease--or have found fresh occasion for uneasiness. d.i.c.k had none of his mother's apple-like roundness--the widow, who was not yet thirty-five, always suggested apples and roses--he had inherited his father's flame-coloured hair, and a pale complexion that was very effective in turning away maternal wrath when allied with an appearance of pensive melancholy and a fict.i.tious pain in the chest.

The conversation, which had been interrupted by d.i.c.k's entrance, was presently resumed. The women were recounting the story of Frank Hardy's arrest and trial for Harry's information. The subject was one of profound interest to d.i.c.k, and from his retreat at the far end of the table, where he sat disregarded, his crimes tacitly ignored for the time being, he listened eagerly. When Gable kicked him to attract his attention, and gleefully exhibited a handful of loaf sugar that he had slyly abstracted from the basin, the small boy frowned the old man down with a diabolical scowl.

Gable was Mrs. Hardy's brother, and although over sixty years of age, his mind had remained the mind of a child; mentally, he never grew beyond his eighth year. He was a child in all his ways and wishes, was happiest in the society of children, and was regarded by them, without question and without surprise, as one of themselves. He was sent to school because it pleased him to go, and it kept him out of mischief, and every day he learned over again the lessons he had learned the day before and forgotten within an hour. His admiration for d.i.c.k Haddon was profound, the respect and appreciation the boy of eight has for the big brother who is twelve and smokes.

Abashed by d.i.c.k's frown, the old man devoted himself humbly to his 'piece,' and the boy gave his whole attention to the conversation. He was eager to get an inkling of Harry's line of action. For his own part he had thought of a desperate band, with Harry at its head and himself in a conspicuous position, raiding the gaol at Yarraman under a hail of bullets, and bearing off the prisoner in triumph; but experience had taught him that the expedients of grown-up people were apt to be disgustingly common place and ludicrously ineffective.

'If he'd an enemy,' said Harry, 'there'd be something to go on. Was there n.o.body, no one at all, that he'd had any row with--n.o.body who hated him?'

Mrs. Haddon shook her head.

'n.o.body,' she said. 'But he declared the real thieves had done it, either to shift suspicion or to be rid of him. He thought it a disgrace that all the men at the Stream should be marked as probable thieves because of one or two rogues; an' he was always eager to spot the real robbers. It was known gold-stealin' had been goin' on for some time. That's why they put on the searcher.'

'Shine. Mightn't he have had a finger in it?'

'No, no. It doesn't seem likely. Why should he?'

'I can't say. G.o.d knows! But there is somebody. If I only knew the man--if I only had him under my hand!

Harry's face became grey through the tan; he sat forward in his chair, with a sinewy arm thrust down between his knees, and his hand closed as if upon a throat. His mother touched his shoulder.

'Violence can only work mischief, my boy. Use what intelligence you have--only that can help. If we can save poor Frank and clear his name, we may leave vengeance to the law.'

'Yes, mother, you are right, but I am no saint. I hate my enemies, an' it is maddening not to know who you hate--who to hit at.'

'That may be so, Henry, but pa.s.sion will only blind you. If you are not cool you will fail. Remember, the true culprits may be near you while you are seeking; do nothing to set them on their guard. You may learn much from the men. They are all Frank's friends, even those who believe him guilty.'

'Believe him guilty!

'O, my boy, my boy! You would want to fight them all. It is folly. The evidence did not leave room for a doubt as to his guilt, and these men have their own ideas as to the morality of such crimes. Many of them think none the worse of a man who helps himself to a nugget that he may find on his shovel.'

'An' you are the mother of a thief, I am a thief's brother; Frank is a convict, an' we must grin an' gammon we like it.'

'We must be discreet, we must be cunning, if we wish to prove we are no thieves and no kin to thieves.'

'Right you are, mother--always right.' The young man spread his rough, brown hand caressingly upon the small hand upon his knee. 'My fist always moves before my head, but I know your way is best, an' I don't mean to forget it.'

'Ephraim Shine seemed to be tryin' to do his best for Frank at the trial,' said Mrs. Haddon. 'I think he's a well-meanin' man, if he is a bit near an' peculiar in his ways. He always says it was his duty he did, an' that's true. We know Frank's not guilty, because--because we're fond of him'--here the little widow wiped her eyes, and her voice trembled--'

an' know him better than others, but the case was black against him.

Frank came straight up from below and into the searcher's shed, an' Shine found the gold in his crib bag, which was rolled up, an' forced under the handle of his billy.'

'Where it'd been for half the shift, the billy hanging in a dark drive where any man below might 'a 'got at it.'

'They found gold in a little box-place made in the heel of one of his workin' boots.'

'A boot that was always left in the boiler-house when he was off work.

'He had sold coa.r.s.e water-worn gold to a Jew at Yarraman.'