That night three boys—three of the faithful—Jacker McKnight, Phil Doon, and Billy Peterson, stole through Wilson’s paddock carrying mysterious bundles, and taking as many precautions to avoid observation and pursuit as if they were really, as they pretended to be with the fine imagination of early boyhood, desperate characters bent upon an undertaking of unparalleled lawlessness and great daring. They crossed the creek and crept along in the shadow of the hill, for the moon, although low down in the sky, was still bright and dangerous to hunted outlaws. Off to the left could be heard the long-drawn respirations of the engines at the Silver Stream, and the grind of her puddlers, the splashing of the slurry, and the occasional solemn, significant clang of a knocker. They passed the old Red Hand shaft, long since deserted and denuded of poppet legs and engine-houses, its comparatively ancient tips almost overgrown and characterless, with lusty young gums flourishing amongst its scattered boulders. Waddy venerated the old Red Hand as something so ancient that its history left openings for untrammelled conjecture, and the boys associated it with not a few of the mysteries of those grand far-off ages when dragons abducted beautiful maidens and giants were quite common outside circuses. The mouth of the shaft was covered with substantial timbers, save for a small iron-barred door securely padlocked. The pit now served a useful purpose as air-shaft for the Silver Stream, and the iron-runged ladders still ran down into its black depths.
The boys kept to the timber, and presently found themselves climbing down the rugged rocks where the hillside suddenly became an abrupt wall. From here had been blasted the thousands of tons of rock that went to the building of that grim prison in Yarraman, the town where Frank Hardy lay, a good half-day’s tramp across the wide flat country faced by the township The quarry, too, was overgrown again; being almost inaccessible to Wilson’s cattle its undergrowth was rank and high, and as it was sheltered from the sun’s rays and watered in part by a tiny spring, it was often the one green oasis in a weary land of crackling yellow and drab.
After gaining the bottom of the quarry, Jacker led the way to the deepest end. Here the bottom, covered with scrub growth, sloped rather suddenly for a few feet up to the abrupt wall. Going on his hands and knees under the thick odorous peppermint saplings, Jacker ran his head into a niche in the rock amongst climbing sarsaparilla, and remained so, like some strange geological specimen half embedded in the rock. Within, where his head was hidden, the darkness was impenetrable. Jacker blew a strange note on a whistle manufactured from the nut of an apricot, and after a few moments a light appeared below him, a feeble flame, far down in the rock. This was waved twice and then withdrawn.
“Righto!” said Jacker in a hoarse piratical tone. “Gimme the tucker, Black Douglas; I’ll go down. You coves keep watch, an’ no talkin’, mind.”
Phil grumbled inarticulately, and Jacker’s tone became hoarser and more piratical still.
“Who’s commandin’ here?” he growled. “D’ye mean mutiny?”
“Oh, shut up!” said Doon, bitterly. “No one’s goin’ t’ mutiny, but there ain’t no fun campin’ here.”
McKnight relented.
“All right,” he said, “come down if you wanter. S’pose you’ll on’y be makin’ some kind of a row ’f I leave you.”
Jacker put the growth aside carefully, and going feet first gradually disappeared. Within there in the formless darkness he stood upon a ladder made of the long stem of a sapling to which cleats were nailed. The sapling was suspended in a black abyss. The boy, with his bundle hanging from his shoulder, started down fearlessly. Presently he came to where a second prop was fastened to the first with spikes and strong rope. Here he paused a moment, and called:
“Hello, be-e-low there!”
Jacker’s character had undergone a rapid change; he was now quite an innocent and law-abiding person, a working shareholder in the Mount of Gold Quartz-mining Company.
“On top!” answered a cautious voice from the depths.
“Look up—man on!
And now, having observed the formalities, Jacker continued his descent, and in a few moments dropped from the primitive ladder and found a footing on a few planks thrown from one drive to another, across what was really an old shaft. At his back was a drive running into darkness; before him was a small irregular excavation lit with a single candle, and sitting in this, dressed, or, more correctly, undressed, like miners at their work, were Dick Haddon and Ted McKnight.
Jacker threw his bundle on the floor of the drive.
“Crib,” he said carelessly; and then, after examining the face of the excavation: “S’pose we ain’t likely to cut the lode this shift, Dick?
Dick shook his head thoughtfully.
“No,” he said. “Allowin’ for the underlay, we should strike her about fifteen feet in.”
The other boys had now joined their mates. Each on his way down had gravely followed the example of Jacker, who was supposed to be the boss of the incoming shift. As the fathers labour their sons play, and for months these boys had been digging in this old mine, off and on, with enthralling mystery. The excavation in which Dick and Ted were seated represented the joint labour of the members of the Mount of Gold Quartz-mining Company, though the very existence of the mine was unknown to a single soul outside the juvenile syndicate.
On the surface all signs of the shaft had long since been obliterated. The quarrymen blasting into the side of the hill years back had made a small opening into the disused pit at some distance from the top, and this opening was accidentally discovered by Dick and Jacker one day during a hunt for a wounded rabbit. Investigation proved the mine to be of no great depth, and, thanks to the pumps of the Silver Stream, as dry as a bone. A company of reliable small boys was formed with exceeding caution and a fine observance of rule and precedent; for Dick Haddon did nothing by halves, and forgot nothing that might give an air of reality to the creations of his exuberant fancy.
The original intention of the Mount of Gold Quartz-mining Company was to strike a reef five yards wide, composed entirely of gold, and to overwhelm its various parents with contrition on account of past lambastings by making them suddenly rich beyond the dreams of Oriental avarice. Time had served to dim the ardour of its hopes in this direction; but the mine was still an enticing enterprise when exciting novelties in the way of adventure were wanting, and would always be a hiding-place in which a youthful fugitive from injustice might defy all authority so long as the members of the Company remained true to their oath. Now that oath was quite the most solemn and impressive thing of the kind that Dick Haddon and Phil Doon had been able to discover after consulting the highest literary authorities.
The quarrel between Dick and Jacker McKnight that originated under the school was quite forgotten in the resulting excitement. It was a mere incident in any case, and would have made no material difference in their friendship. It had not kept Jacker from visiting the Mount of Gold on the same night with information and supplies, and now the boy was cheerfully unconscious of the black eye that still ornamented his broad visage. There were two well-worn shovels and a miner’s pick in the drive. Jacker seized the pick.
“Might as well put in a bit of work,” he said.
“Hold hard,” replied Dick, “Smoke-ho, old man. What’s goin’ on on top?”
“Whips! They had a meetin’ about youse last night—Jo, an’ Rogers, an’ my dad, an’ ole Tinribs, an’ the rest. They’re all after you. You’re fairly in fer it.”
Dick’s face became radiant with magnificent ideas.
“What! You don’t mean they’re goin’ t’ form a band t’ capture us?”
“Well, they sorter agreed about somethin’ like that.”
“My word, that’s into our hands, ain’t it? Lemme see, we must be a band of bushrangers what’s robbed the gold escort an’ the mounted p’lice’re huntin’ us in the ranges. I’ll be—yes, I’ll be Morgan. An’ Ted—! What’ll we make Ted? I know—I know. He’ll be my faithful black boy, what’ll rather die than leave me. You fellers bring a cork to-morrow, an’ we’ll pretty quick make a faithful black boy of Twitter.”
All eyes were turned upon Ted, who did not seem in the least impressed by the magnificent prospect. Indeed, the faithful native was palpably out of sorts; he took no part in the enthusiasm of his mates, his face was pale, and funk was legible in the diffident eye he turned upon the company. Dick noted this and put in an artful touch or two.
“Jacky-Jacky, the faithful black boy,” he said; “brave as a lion, an’ the best shot in the world—better’n me!
The ruse was not successful. Ted failed to respond.
“Twitter don’t seem to want to be no black boy,” said Phil.
“I’ll be Jacky-Jacky,” volunteered Peterson eagerly.
Peterson was a stolid youth with a face like a wooden doll; absolutely reliable since he was as stubborn under adult rule as a whole team of unbroken bullocks, and quite reckless of consequences for the reason that he never anticipated them. Peterson would have made a most successful Jacky-Jacky, but his suggestion was overlooked in the general concern inspired by Ted’s conduct.
Feeling the eyes of the party upon him, Ted grew more uneasy, the corners of his mouth drew down, one finger went up slowly, and Twitter began to snivel.
“I—I—w—wa—want to go home,” he said.
The mates looked at each other in amazement. Ted was little, but his pluck had been tried on many occasions, and this was a great surprise.
“Well, he’s on’y a kiddy,” said Phil pityingly, and with the superiority two years may confer.
Dick found the three were looking to him for an explanation.
“Ted’s real scared,” he said. “We made a discovery this afternoon—in there.”
“In the big drive?” asked Jacker. The others looked startled.
Dick nodded, and took up the candle. “Come an’ see,” he said.
Dick led the way along the opposite drive, and his mates followed, not too eagerly, Ted bringing up the rear. The drive was about eighty feet in extent. Having reached the end, Dick held the candle low, and made visible to his wondering mates a black cavity about eighteen inches in diameter in one corner near the floor.
“We were workin’ in here a bit for a change this afternoon after Peetree hunted us, an’ I broke through.”
“What’s in there?” asked Jacker in an awed voice.
“Look,” said Dick.
Jacker backed away; the other three kept a respectful distance and stared silently.
“It’s on’y another drive,” Dick explained. “It must come from the Red Hand, I think.”
Dick was quite undisturbed, but the others were afraid, and even when they had returned to their own drive cast many doubting glances back into the darkness. In the mine as they had known it before everything was definite, and there was nothing of which a boy of spirit need be afraid. The shaft was choked with dirt a few feet below their landing-planks, and there was no spot in which a mystery might lurk; but it was very different now with that black hole leading Heaven knew into what awesome depths, harbouring goodness knew what horrors. Ted’s defection had suddenly become the sentiment of the majority. At that moment Dick could have counted on Peterson alone had need arisen.
“We’ll go down there an’ explore them workin’s,” said Dick, having lit a piece of dry root and composed himself for a smoke.
“In the daytime, Morgan,” said Jacker hastily and with diffidence.
“All right; but it don’t make no difference down here, you know.”
Jacker thought it did, for although it was always night in the drives, the consciousness that the earth above was flooded with sunlight was a great heartener.
“Don’t you think you’d best give this up for once—this bushranger game?” ventured Jacker.
“Why?” Dick’s eyes were round with surprise.
“Oh, well, Twitter’s jack of it, an’ I don’t think it’s much fun.” Jacker had assumed a careless air. “See here, Dick,” he continued smartly, “the Cow Flat chaps made a raid last night, an’ took Butts an’ three others—mine among ’em.”
This was an important matter. Butts was Dick’s big grey billygoat, the best goat in harness the boys had ever known or ever heard of; and the “Cow Flat chaps” were the boys of a small centre about two miles and a half further down the creek, between whom and the boys of Waddy there existed an interminable feud that led them to fight on sight, and steal such of each other’s possessions as could be easily and expeditiously removed. Dick’s excitement soon evaporated; evidently root smoking was conducive to a philosophical frame of mind.
“We’ll get them back all right—after,” he said.
“They’ll work Butts to a shadder,” Jacker remarked insinuatingly.
“Then we’ll go down some night, an’ strip Amson’s garden.” Amson was a prominent resident of Cow Flat, and had nothing whatever to do with the goat raid, but the boyish sense of justice does not stoop to find distinctions.
Jacker Mack had another string to his bow. “They say Harry Hardy’s comin’ home this week,” he said.
“No!” cried Dick, much moved. “Who says?”
“Gable says.”
“Pooh! Gable’s a kid.”
“No matter, it’s true. Mrs. Hardy had a letter, ’n Harry’s coming down with cattle.”
“Gosh! he’ll make it hot for Tinribs, I bet.”
Waddy had been waiting for Harry Hardy to come home, confident that he would do something of an exciting character to the disadvantage of those persons who had been instrumental in sending his brother Frank to gaol. Harry was much the younger of the two brothers; for some years he had been away droving, and the news of his brother’s misfortune was bringing him home from a Queensland station. The township thought, too, there would be a score to wipe out on his mother’s account, and the return was looked for as an important public event.
Dick pondered over the situation for a moment. It would never do to miss any entertainment that might result from Harry’s return, and yet there was Joel Ham still to be reckoned with.
“I think we’d better wait,” he said. “You fellows can let on as soon’s he arrives.”
Ted’s face fell again, and Jacker moved uneasily. He was anxious to be out of the mine and away from the uncanny possibilities of that dark chasm, and yet it was absolutely necessary that he should show no sign of funk, leave no opening for the tongue of derision. Some day, perhaps, when the full strength of the company was available and candles were numerous, he would follow Dick’s lead in the work of exploration, but for the present his whole desire was to get to the surface. Now recollection came, and with it hope. Diving into his breast pocket, he drew and crumpled envelope, and handed it to Dick.
“A letter,” he said, “from your mother.”
Dick was surprised; as he took the note Jacker discovered an accusation in his eye.
“The oath don’t say nothin’ agin’ letters,” said McKnight sullenly.
“No,” answered his mate, “but really miners ain’t supposed to have mothers runnin’ after ’em, like if they were kids.”
“Well,” said the other, on the defensive, “your mother comes to me at dinner time, an’ she says: ‘I s’pose ’taint likely you’ll see my Dick, Jacker.’ I said, ‘No, Missus Haddon, ’taint, s’elp me.’ Then she says, ‘Well, if he should come to see you, will you give him this?’ So I took it, an’ there you are.”
Dick 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 Dick 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!”
Dick 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.