VI
Michael and Potch were at work next morning as soon as the first cuckoos were calling. Michael had been at the windlass for an hour or thereabouts, when Watty Frost, who was going along to his claim with Pony-Fence Inglewood and Bully Bryant, saw Michael on the top of his dump, tossing mullock.
“Who’s Michael working with?” he asked.
Pony-Fence and Bully Bryant considered, and shook their heads, smoking thoughtfully.
Snowshoes, where he lay sprawled across the slope of Crosses’ dump, glanced up at them, and the nickering wisp of a smile went through his bright eyes. The three were standing at the foot of the dump before separating.
“Who’s Michael got with him?” Pony-Fence inquired, looking at Snowshoes.
But the old man had turned his eyes back to the dump and was raking the earth with his stick again, as if he had not heard what was said. No one was deafer than Snowshoes when he did not want to hear.
Watty watched Michael as he bent over the windlass, his lean, slight figure cut against the clear azure of the morning sky.
“It’s to be hoped he’s got a decent mate this time—that’s all,” he said.
Pony-Fence and Bully were going off to their own claim when Potch came up on the rope and stood by the windlass while Michael went down into the mine.
“Well!” Watty gasped, “if that don’t beat cockfighting!”
Bully swore sympathetically, and watched Potch set to work. The three watched him winding and throwing mullock from the hide buckets over the dump with the jerky energy of a new chum, although Potch had done odd jobs on the mines for a good many years. He had often taken his father’s turn of winding dirt, and had managed to keep himself by doing all manner of scavenging in the township since he was quite a little chap, but no one had taken him on as a mate till now. He was a big fellow, too, Potch, seventeen or eighteen; and as they looked at him Watty and Pony-Fence realised it was time someone gave Potch a chance on the mines, although after the way his father had behaved Michael was about the last person who might have been expected to give him that chance—much less take him on as mate. Like father, like son, was one of those superstitions Ridge folk had not quite got away from, and the men who saw Potch working on Michael’s mine wondered that, having been let down by the father as badly as Charley had let Michael down, Michael could still work with Potch, and give him the confidence a mate was entitled to. But there was no piece of quixotism they did not think Michael capable of. The very forlornness of Potch’s position on the Ridge, and because he would have to face out and live down the fact of being Charley Heathfield’s son, were recognised as most likely Michael’s reasons for taking Potch on to work with him.
Watty and Pony-Fence appreciated Michael’s move and the point of view it indicated. They knew men of the Ridge would endorse it and take Potch on his merits. But being Charley’s son, Potch would have to prove those merits. They knew, too, that what Michael had done would help him to tide over the first days of shame and difficulty as nothing else could have, and it would start Potch on a better track in life than his father had ever given him.
Bully had already gone off to his claim when Watty and Pony-Fence separated. Watty broke the news to his mates when he joined them underground.
“Who do y’ think’s Michael’s new mate?” he asked.
George Woods rested on his pick.
Cash looked up from the corner where he was crouched working a streak of green-fired stone from the red floor and lower wall of the mine.
“Potch!” Watty threw out as George and Cash waited for the information.
George swept the sweat from his forehead with a broad, steady gesture. “He was bound to do something nobody else’d ’ve thought of, Michael!” he said.
“That’s right,” Watty replied. “Pony-Fence and Bully Bryant were saying,” he went on, “he’s had a pretty hard time, Potch, and it was about up to somebody to give him a leg-up … some sort of a start in life. He may be all right … on the other hand, there may not be much to him. …”
“That’s right!” Cash muttered, beginning to work again.
“But I reck’n he’s all right, Potch.” George swung his pick again. His blows echoed in the mine as they shattered the hard stone he was working on.
Watty crawled off through a drive he was gouging in.
At midday Michael and Charley had always eaten their lunches in the shelter where George Woods, Watty, and Cash Wilson ate theirs and noodled their opal. They wondered whether Michael would join them this day. He strolled over to the shelter with Potch beside him as Watty and Cash, with a billy of steaming tea on a stick between them, came from the open fire built round with stones, a few yards from the mine.
“Potch and me’s mates,” Michael explained to George as he sat down and spread out his lunch, his smile whimsical and serene over the information. “But we’re lookin’ for a third to the company. I reck’n a lot of you chaps’ luck is working on three. It’s a lucky number, three, they say.”
Potch sat down beside him on the outer edge of the shelter’s scrap of shade.
“See you get one not afraid to do a bit of work, next time—that’s all I say,” Watty growled.
The blood oozed slowly over Potch’s heavy, quiet face. Nothing more was said of Charley, but the men who saw his face realised that Potch was not the insensible youth they had imagined.
Michael had watched him when they were below ground, and was surprised at the way Potch set about his work. He had taken up his father’s gouging pick and spider as if he had been used to take them every day, and he had set to work where Charley had left off. All the morning he hewed at a face of honeycombed sandstone, his face tense with concentration of energy, the sweat glistening on it as though it were oiled under the light of a candle in his spider, stuck in the red earth above him. Michael himself swung his pick in leisurely fashion, crumbled dirt, and knocked off for a smoke now and then.
“Easy does it, Potch,” he remarked, watching the boy’s steady slogging. “We’ve got no reason to bust ourselves in this mine.”
At four o’clock they put their tools back against the wall and went above ground. Michael fell in with the Crosses, who were noodling two or three good-looking pieces of opal Archie had taken out during the afternoon, and Potch streaked away through the scrub in the direction of the Old Town.
Michael wondered where he was going. There was a purposeful hunch about his shoulders as if he had a definite goal in view. Michael had intended asking his new mate to go down to the New Town and get the meat for their tea, but he went himself after he had yarned with Archie and Ted Cross for a while.
When he returned to the hut, Potch was not there. Michael made a fire, unwrapped his steak, hung it on a hook over the fire, and spread out the pannikins, tin plates and knives and forks for his meal, putting a plate and pannikin for Potch. He was kneeling before the fire giving the steak a turn when Potch came in. Potch stood in the doorway, looking at Michael as doubtfully as a stray kitten which did not know whether it might enter.
“That you, Potch?” Michael called.
“Yes,” Potch said.
Michael got up from the fire and carried the grilled steak on a plate to the table.
“Well, you were nearly late for dinner,” he remarked, as he cut the steak in half and put a piece on the other plate for Potch. “You better come along and tuck in now … there’s a great old crowd down at Nancarrow’s this evening. First time for nearly a month he’s killed a beast, and everybody wants a bit of steak. Sam gave me this as a sort of treat; and it smells good.”
Potch came into the kitchen and sat on the box Michael had drawn up to the table for him.
“Been bringing in the goats for Sophie,” he jerked out, looking at Michael as if there were some need of explanation.
“Oh, that was it, was it?” Michael replied, getting on with his meal. “Thought you’d flitted!”
Potch met his smile with a shadowy one. A big, clumsy-looking fellow, with a dull, colourless face and dingy hair, he sat facing Michael, his eyes anxious, as though he would like to explain further, but was afraid to, or could not find words. His eyes were beautiful; but they were his father’s eyes, and Michael recoiled to qualms of misgiving, a faint distrust, as he looked in them.
It was Ed Ventry, however, who gave Potch his first claim to the respect of men of the Ridge.
“How’s that boy of Charley Heathfield’s?” was his first question when the coach came in from Budda, the following week.
“All right,” Newton said. “Why?”
“He was near killed,” Mr. Ventry replied. “Stopped us up at the Three Mile that morning I was taking Charley and Jun down. He was all for Charley stopping … getting off the coach or something. I didn’t get what it was all about—money Charley’d got from Michael, I think. That’s the worst of bein’ a bit hard of hearin’ … and bein’ battered about by that yaller-bay horse I bought at Warria couple of months ago.”
“Potch tried to stop Charley getting away, did he?” Newton asked with interest.
“He did,” Ed Ventry declared. “I pulled up, seein’ something was wrong … but what does that goddamned blighter Charley do but give a lurch and grab me reins. Scared four months’ growth out of the horses—and away they went. I’d a colt I was breakin’ in on the offside—and he landed Potch one—kicked him right out, I thought. As soon as I could, I pulled up, but I see Potch making off across the plain, and he didn’t look like he was much hurt. … But it was a plucky thing he did, all right … and it’s the last time I’ll drive Charley Heathfield. I told him straight. I’d as soon kill a man as not for putting a hand on me reins, like he done—on me own coach, too!”
Snowshoes had drifted up to them as the coach stopped and Newton went out to it. He stood beside Peter Newton while Mr. Ventry talked, rolling tobacco. Snowshoes’ eyes glimmered from one to the other of them when Ed Ventry had given the reason for his inquiry.
“Potch!” he murmured. “A little bit of potch!” And marched off down the road, a straight, stately white figure, on the bare track under the azure of the sky.