“But I don’t want them. … I don’t want the cursed stones,” he argued with himself. “I’ll give them to him—to Paul, as soon as I know what ought to be done about Sophie. She’s not old enough to go yet—to know her own mind—what she wants to do. When she’s older she can decide for herself. That’s what her mother meant. She didn’t mean for always … only while she’s a little girl. By and by, when she’s a woman, Sophie can decide for herself. Now, she’s got to stay here … that’s what I promised.”
“And Charley,” he brooded. “He deserves all that’s coming to him … but I couldn’t give him away. The boys would half kill him if they got their hands on to him. When will he find out? In the train, perhaps—or not till he gets to Sydney. … He’ll have my fiver, and the stones to go on with—though they won’t bring much. Still, they’ll do to go on with. … Paul’ll be a raving lunatic when he knows … but he can’t go—he can’t take Sophie away.”
His brain surged over and over every phrase: his state of mind since he had seen Charley and Paul on the road together; every argument he had used with himself. He could not get away from the double sense of disquiet and satisfaction.
An hour or two later he heard Charley moving about, then rush off down the track, sending the loose stones flying under his feet as he ran to catch the coach.
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
