V
Watty was winding dirt, standing by the windlass on the top of the dump over his and his mates’ mine, when he saw Paul coming along the track from the New Town. Paul was breaking into a run at every few yards, and calling out. Watty threw the mullock from his hide bucket as it came up, and lowered it again. He wound up another bucket. The creak of the windlass, and the fall of the stone and earth as he threw them over the dump, drowned the sound of Rouminof’s voice. As he came nearer, Watty saw that he was gibbering with rage, and crying like a child.
While he was still some distance away, Watty heard him sobbing and calling out.
He stopped work to listen as Paul came to the foot of Michael’s dump. Ted Cross, who was winding dirt on the top of Crosses’ mine, stopped to listen too. Old Olsen got up from where he lay noodling on Jun’s and Paul’s claim, and went across to Paul. Snowshoes, stretched across the slope near where Watty was standing, lifted his head, his turning of earth with a little blunt stick arrested for the moment.
“They’ve took me stones! … Took me stones!” Watty heard Paul cry to Bill Olsen. And as he climbed the slope of Michael’s dump he went on crying: “Took me stones! Took me stones! Charley and Jun! Gone by the coach! Michael! … They’ve gone by the coach and took me stones!”
Over and over again he said the same thing in an incoherent wail and howl. He went down the shaft of Michael’s mine, and Ted Cross came across from his dump to Watty.
“Hear what he says, Watty?” he asked.
“Yes,” Watty replied.
“It gets y’r wind—”
“If it’s true,” Watty ventured slowly.
“Seems to me it’s true all right,” Ted said. “Charley took him home last night. I went along with them as far as the turnoff. Paul was a bit on … and Archie asked me to keep an eye on him. … I was a bit on meself, too … but Charley came along with us—so I thought he’d be all right. … Charley went off by the coach this morning. … Bill Olsen told me. … And Michael was reck’ning on him goin’ to Warria today, I know.”
“That’s right!”
“It’ll be hard on Michael!”
Watty’s gesture, upward jerk of his chin, and gusty breath, denoted his agreement on that score.
Ted went back to his own claim, and Watty slid down the rope with his next bucket to give his mates the news. It was nearly time to knock off for the midday meal, and before long men from all the claims were standing in groups hearing the story from Rouminof himself, or talking it over together.
Michael had come up from his mine soon after Paul had gone down to him. The men had seen him go off down the track to the New Town, his head bent. They thought they knew why. Michael would feel his mate’s dishonour as though it were his own. He would not be able to believe that what Paul said was true. He would want to know from Peter Newton himself if it was a fact that Charley had gone out on the coach with Jun and two girls who had been at the hotel.
Women were scarce on the opal fields, and the two girls who had come a week before to help Mrs. Newton with the work of the hotel had been having the time of their lives. Charley, Jun Johnson, and two or three other men, had been shouting drinks for them from the time of their arrival, and Mrs. Newton had made up her mind to send the girls back to town by the next coach. Jun had appropriated the younger of the two, a bright-eyed girl, and the elder, a full-bosomed, florid woman with straw-coloured hair, had, as the boys said, “taken a fancy to Charley.”
Paul had already told his story once or twice when Cash Wilson, George, and Watty, went across to where he was standing, with half a dozen of the men about him. They were listening gravely and smoking over Paul’s recital. There had been ratting epidemics on the Ridge; but robbery of a mate by a mate had never occurred before. It struck at the fundamental principle of their life in common. There was no mistaking the grave, rather than indignant view men of the Ridge took of what Charley had done. The Ridge code affirmed simply that “a mate stands by a mate.” The men say: “You can’t go back on a mate.” By those two recognitions they had run their settlement. Far from all the ordinary institutions of law and order, they had lived and worked together without need of them, by appreciation of their relationship to each other as mates and as a fraternity of mates. No one, who had lived under and seemed to accept the principle of mateship, had ever before done as Charley had done.
“But Charley Heathfield was never one of us really,” Ted Cross said. “He was always an outsider.”
“That’s right, Ted,” George Woods replied. “We only stuck him on Michael’s account.”
Paul told George, Watty, and Cash the story he had been going over all the morning—how he had gone home with Charley, how he remembered going along the road with him, and then how he had wakened on the floor of his own hut in the morning. Sophie was there. She was singing. He had thought it was her mother. He had called her … but Sophie had come to him. And she had abused him. She had called him “a dirty, fat pig,” and told him to get out of the way because she wanted to sweep the floor.
He sobbed uncontrollably. The men sympathised with him. They knew the loss of opal came harder on Rouminof than it would have on the rest of them, because he was so mad about the stuff. They condoned the abandonment of his grief as natural enough in a foreigner, too; but after a while it irked them.
“Take a pull at y’rself, Rummy, can’t you?” George Woods said irritably. “What did Michael say?”
“Michael?” Paul looked at him, his eyes streaming.
George nodded.
“He did not say,” Paul replied. “He threw down his pick. He would not work any more … and then he went down to Newton’s to ask about Charley.”
Two or three of the men exchanged glances. That was the way they had expected Michael to take the news. He would not have believed Paul’s story at first. They did not see Michael again that day. In the evening Peter Newton told them how Michael had come to him, asking if it was true Charley had gone on the coach with Jun Johnson and the girls. Peter told Michael, he said, that Charley had gone on the coach, and that he thought Rouminof’s story looked black against Charley.
“Michael didn’t say much,” Peter explained, “but I don’t think he could help seeing what I said was true—however much he didn’t want to.”
Everybody knew Michael believed in Charley Heathfield. He had thought the worst that could be said of Charley was that he was a good-natured, rather shiftless fellow. All the men had responded to an odd attractive faculty Charley exercised occasionally. He had played it like a woman for Michael, and Michael had taken him on as a mate and worked with him when no one else would. And now, the men guessed, that Michael, who had done more than any of them to make the life of the Ridge what it was, would feel more deeply and bitterly than any of them that Charley had gone back on him and on what the Ridge stood for.
All they imagined Michael was suffering in the grief and bitterness of spirit which come of misplaced faith, he was suffering. But they could not imagine the other considerations which had overshadowed grief and bitterness, the realisation that Sophie’s life had been saved from what looked like early wreckage, and the consciousness that the consequences of what Charley had done, had fallen, not on Charley, but on himself. Michael had lived like a child, with an open heart at the disposal of his mates always; and the sense of Charley’s guilt descending on him, had created a subtle ostracism, a remote alienation from them.
He could not go to Newton’s in the evening and talk things over with the men as he ordinarily would have. He wandered over the dumps of deserted rushes at the Old Town, his eyes on the ground or on the distant horizons. He could still only believe he had done the best thing possible under the circumstances. If he had let Charlie go away with the stones, Sophie would have been saved, but Paul would have lost his stones. As it was, Sophie was saved, and Paul had not lost his stones. And Michael could not have given Charley away. Charley had been his mate; they had worked together. The men might suspect, but they could not convict him of being what he was unless they knew what Michael knew. Charley had played on the affection, the simplicity of Michael’s belief in him. He had used them, but Michael had still a lingering tenderness and sympathy for him. It was that which had made him put the one decent piece of opal he possessed into the parcel he had made up for Charley to take instead of Paul’s stones. It was the first piece of good stuff he had found on the Ridge, and he had kept it as a mascot—something of a nest egg.
Michael wondered at the fate which had sent him along the track just when Charley had taken Paul’s stones. He was perplexed and impatient of it. There would have been no complication, no conflict and turmoil if only he had gone along the track a little later, or a little earlier. But there was no altering what had happened. He had to bear the responsibility of it. He had to meet the men, encounter the eyes of his mates as he had never done before, with a reservation from them. If he could give the stones to Paul at once, Michael knew he would disembarass himself of any sense of guilt. But he could not do that. He was afraid if Paul got possession of the opals again he would want to go away and take Sophie with him.
Michael thought of taking Watty and George into his confidence, but to do so would necessitate explanations—explanations which involved talking of the promise he had made Sophie’s mother and all that lay behind their relationship. He shrank from allowing even the sympathetic eyes of George and Watty to rest on what for him was wrapped in mystery and inexplicable reverence. Besides, they both had wives, and Watty was not permitted to know anything Mrs. Watty did not worm out of him sooner or later. Michael decided that if he could not keep his own confidence he could not expect anyone else to keep it. He must take the responsibility of what he had done, and of maintaining his position in respect to the opals until Sophie was older—old enough to do as she wished with her life.
As he walked, gazing ahead, a hut formed itself out of the distance before him, and then the dark shapes of bark huts huddled against the white cliff of dumps at the Three Mile, under a starry sky. A glow came from the interior of one or two of the houses. A chime of laughter, and shredded fragments of talking drifted along in the clear air. Michael felt strangely alone and outcast, hearing them and knowing that he could not respond to their invitation.
In any one of those huts a place would be eagerly made for him if he went into it; eyes would lighten with a smile; warm, kindly greetings would go to his heart. But the talk would all be of the stealing of Rouminof’s opal, and of Charley and Jun, Michael knew. The people at the Three Mile would have seen the coach pass. They would be talking about it, about himself, and the girls who had driven away with Charley and Jun.
Turning back, Michael walked again across the flat country towards the Ridge. He sat for a while on a log near the tank paddock. A drugging weariness permeated his body and brain, though his brain ticked ceaselessly. Now and again one or other of Rouminof’s opals flashed and scintillated before him in the darkness, or moved off in starry flight before his tired gaze. He was vaguely disturbed by the vision of them.
When he rose and went back towards the town, his feet dragged wearily. There was a strange lightness at the back of his head, and he wondered whether he were walking in the fields of heaven, and smiled to think of that. At least one good thing would come of it all, he told himself over and over again—Paul could not take Sophie away.
The houses and stores of the New Town were all in darkness when he passed along the main street. Newton’s was closed. There were no lights in Rouminof’s or Charley’s huts as he went to his own door. Then a low cry caught his ear. He listened, and went to the back door of Charley’s hut. The cry rose again with shuddering gasps for breath. Michael stood in the doorway, listening. The sound came from the window. He went towards it, and found Potch lying there on the bunk with his face to the wall.
He had not heard Michael enter, and lay moaning brokenly. Michael had not thought of Potch since the people at Newton’s told him that a few minutes, after the coach had gone Potch had come down to the hotel to cut wood and do odd jobs in the stable, as he usually did. Mrs. Newton said he stared at her, aghast, when she told him that his father had left on the coach. Then he had started off at a run, taking the shortcut across country to the Three Mile.
Michael put out his hand. He could not endure that crying.
“Potch!” he said.
At the sound of his voice, Potch was silent. After a second he struggled to his feet, and stood facing Michael.
“He’s gone, Michael!” he cried.
“He might have taken you,” Michael said.
“Taken me!” Potch’s exclamation did away with any idea Michael had that his son was grieving for Charley. “It wasn’t that I minded—”
Michael did not know what to say. Potch continued:
“As soon as I knew, I went after him—thought I’d catch up the coach at the Three Mile, and I did. I told him he’d have to come back—or hand out that money. I saw you give it to him the other night and arrange about going to Warria. … Mr. Ventry pulled up. But he … set the horses going again. I tried to stop them, but the sandy bay let out a kick and they went on again. … The swine!”
Michael had never imagined this stolid son of Charley’s could show such fire. He was trembling with rage and indignation. Michael rarely lost his temper, but the blood rushed to his head in response to Potch’s story. Restraint was second nature with him, though, and he waited until his own and Potch’s fury had ebbed.
Then he moved to leave the hut.
“Come along,” he said.
“Michael!”
There was such breaking unbelief and joy in the cry. Michael turned and caught the boy’s expression.
“You’re coming along with me, Potch,” he said.
Potch still stood regarding him with a dazed expression of worshipful homage and gratitude. Michael put out his hand, and Potch clasped it.
“You and me,” he said, “we both seem to be in the same boat, Potch. … Neither of us has got a mate. I’ll be wanting someone to work with now. We’d better be mates.”
They went out of the hut together.