Читать книгу A Tail of Gold - David Hennessey - Страница 11

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IN the meantime, Boswell Smart had been having a gay time on the road to Seldom Seen.

He had treated Charley Bousak, the coach driver, at almost every public-house they passed, and made love to Julia Careless without let or hindrance. He helped her on and off the coach, and made her take his arm when they walked up the big hill, and kissed her as they stood waiting for the coach to catch them up.

He promised her a dozen things which he never intended to give her, and in sundry ways made himself extremely agreeable.

Julia was a fair match for him, however, for she had met mining men of his ilk before, and she gave Charley Bousak, who was one of her admirers, a reassuring wink, and told him not to hint at the Major's doings to the dad.

'He's promised to give me a pair of thirty-five shilling boots; and I guess he'll want to measure my foot; but I'll make him write a cheque out beforehand, and get it, and send down to town for the boots myself.'

'Well, be careful of him,' said Charley, as he prepared to start his team on the return trip to Reefton. 'He's no good, I'll warrant. I'd like to punch his head!'

There was rare feasting and drinking that night at the Seldom Seen Hotel. The Wooler and others had been on a spree there for a week, and the Major paid his footing by shouting for drinks all round. Later on, however, he kept himself to the more private end of the house, and had a special dinner set out in the large dining-room. He got Julia, her sister Kate, who was two years younger, and Mrs. Careless, to honour him with their company at dinner. He invited the landlord too; but Jim Careless was too busy serving drinks. However, the Major did not really want him, which perhaps he knew, and could very well have done without Mrs. Careless; but she was a shrewd dame, and, in her best black silk, sat opposite the Major at table, with a daughter on either hand.

She had no objection to his paying her daughters broad compliments, or to his ordering the best wines, or other luxuries, so long as he paid for them. Julia and Kate might play and sing to him as much as they liked; but she drew the line at dancing, and at eleven o'clock sent the girls off to bed.

To solace himself for his disappointment, the Major smoked a cigar on the veranda in the warm moonlight, and there arranged with Jim Careless, who came to have a yarn with him about a mine, to send him out in the morning, in the buggy, to Never Mind Creek, where Julia had told him Joe Chandler was to be found.

He did not much expect to do any business; unless to make a few inquiries about gold mining further along on the Dark River; but he had had a sumptuous lunch put up, and thought there was a chance that Julia would drive him. He had suggested to her to do so, and to get a quiet horse, and promised, if she did, to send her up a new side-saddle and cloth for a habit, when he got back to town.

In the morning, however, Mrs. Careless caught him with his arm round her waist, in the breakfast room, so she sent a man with him instead.

Charley Bousak heard of this, and other, episodes, on his next trip from Reefton, and registered a vow that he'd upset Boswell Smart in Reefton Creek when he returned. But a new adventure awaited the Major in the lone country of Never Mind Creek, which, for the time at any rate, put Julia Careless entirely out of his frothy mind.

The man referred to as Joe Chandler had been living for about two years on Never Mind Creek, fossicking for gold. It was all snow-grass country up there, and he was six miles away from any road or cross country track.

The loneliness of the life may be imagined; his nearest neighbour was three miles distant; but he was a man of queer disposition and said the place suited him. He had a theory that every man has a chance in this life, and that it comes to him sooner or later, no matter what his circumstances, or where he may be. He was working and waiting on Never Mind Creek until he got his chance.

Often for a week at a time he saw no one; but he lived his own life, waiting for his chance, and careless as to how the great world managed to do without him. Like many of his class, he was possessed by the visionary hope of striking prodigious wealth in some abandoned shaft or drive; for the banks of Never Mind Creek were honeycombed with old workings, and strewn with the debris of more prosperous times.

The landlord of the Seldom Seen Hotel thought Chandler a bit dotty; but gave him cash for his gold, wondering whether, like other eccentrics, he was saving up the hard earnings of years of lone hand mining, to squander at his pub in a fortnight's spree.

But Joe was not a hard drinker, and, to tell the truth, had made very little more than enough to keep him in tobacco and the bare necessities of life.

In winter the days were short, and the nights very cold. He did not work if it was wet, and never over hard, except on those rare occasions when he struck a patch; but he cultivated a bit of garden, which he irrigated from an old water race. He built himself a rubble shanty; kept fowls, and otherwise made himself comfortable, in view of the long cold winter nights.

He had been fairly well educated in England, in his youth, and had a few books, which he read assiduously. He kept a number of dogs, a few goats for milk, and last, but not least, a diary, in which he wrote down much of his daylight doings and imaginings—and his midnight dreams.

One of the recreations of his lonely life was the keeping of this diary, which he often read aloud to himself, or to any one who had the patience to listen to it. Yet it was not without its quaint fancies and shrewd remarks; for he lived so near to nature that he could not help seeing and hearing much that it is desirable to know.

He had some original ideas as to the occurrence and formation of gold. One of his beliefs was that wherever mica was found in a leader there was also gold, if you followed the leader far enough. He was something of a philosopher too. He held that even assumed goodness in a man proved that, somewhere in his nature, there was the real yellow metal.

'Mica,' said he, 'is only new-chum gold, yet I have found it, again and again, associated with the genuine article. The world is a better place than people generally allow.'

How Joe Chandler's doctrine panned out in his own after experience remains to be seen.

Fortune is a wilful jade, and rarely comes to men in the way, or upon the paths, prepared for her, and on the day of Smart's visit to Never Mind Creek, Joe was neither well-conditioned in person, nor prosperous in estate.

He had had no luck lately, and Christmas alone in the Bush had made him feel a bit off colour. Possibly he was getting tired of waiting for his chance. However, his green peas were just in, and a good dinner is a sovereign balm for many of the ills of life, so when Major Smart strolled up to his shanty, he was outside, plucking a fowl for dinner.

Smart prided himself on his management of men, and his free and easy way with them.

'Good-day, mate, are you Mr. Chandler?' he said.

Joe nodded his head, looked him up and down, and said: 'I am, sir.'

'Well, I'm Major Boswell Smart, of Melbourne, to whom you sent those sulphide specimens of copper ore, and I've come up on purpose to see you about them.'

Joe nodded his head again more than once, but this time more at the ground than at the Major. He took no notice of the Major's proffered hand, and barely lifted his eyes to look at the speaker. He had a grudge against Smart, for the Major had not troubled to acknowledge the samples, or to answer Joe's letter. He knew very well that Smart was lying, for he had had other information that the ore was too low grade to be payable; so he stood, for a moment, wondering whatever had brought him up there. To Joe, the mere glitter of Smart's personality, the look of his eyes, and the smoothness of his speech classed him at once as 'a grab-all Melbourne mining shark.'

Joe had in his hand a large tin saucer, with water in it, a small quantity of stream tin, and half a dozen colours of gold. He had found it in the fowl's gizzard, and, out of curiosity, was vanning it out into a small steel prospecting dish.

'What have you there?' asked Smart.

'Some colours of gold, and a bit of tin,' replied Joe.

'Ah! struck it rich?' asked the Major.

'Not much,' said Joe. 'It was in the fowl's crop.'

'Queer thing that,' said Smart, who was now all attention, 'there must be surface gold and tin about,' and he scrutinized the ground, as though expecting to see it strewn around in all directions.

'These fowls are not fed much,' said Joe reflectively, as though talking to himself. 'They go poking about the banks of the creek and old workings, and pick up bits of things.'

With this, he deftly vanned the remaining quartz and lighter residue into the dish, and held out the saucer to Smart with about a half an ounce of tin in it, and six colours of gold. The mining man examined it carefully, and handed it back. Joe was about to throw it away.

'Don't do that old man, keep it!' exclaimed Smart. And then, as though struck with a new idea, he continued: 'How much are your fowls worth?'

'From one-and-six to two shillings each,' said Joe indifferently; he thought the question was an idle one, asked through curiosity, and he was afraid that Smart might expect to be asked to dinner.

'Well, look here, mate, I'll give you a half-crown for that black hen over there, if you'll cook her for me, and give us a drink of tea.'

'Right you are!' said Joe.

The fowl was caught, killed and plucked; when Smart said, 'Now clean out the crop, as you did the other one.'

He stood by and watched the operation. The bird's crop contained about half an ounce of black tin ore, and a tiny nugget of water-worn gold.

'My word!' exclaimed Smart. 'Do the whole of your fowls pick up gold and tin like that?'

'Really, I couldn't say,' replied Joe, who was rather staggered by the nugget, and was puzzling his brains as to where the fowls could have found the mineral.

'I'd like to inquire further into this,' said Smart excitedly. 'You see, that's two with gold and tin in their crops; kill another one, mate!'

Joe looked at him, 'Another two-and-six then.'

'Here's the money,' said Smart, and he put five shillings into Joe's willing palm.

Joe killed a tough old rooster this time which he wanted to get rid of, and the bird's crop panned out no less than three quarters of an ounce of tin and two grains of gold.

'Good man! What's yer full and proper name?' called out Smart, quite carried away with the excitement of a new idea that had just come to him.

'Just Joseph Chandler, sir,' replied Joe, gravely, astonished at this singular discovery; but not seized with its commercial and speculative mining value, as was the Major.

'Well, Mr. Chandler,' said Smart, 'I'm inclined to think that you're a made man; give us your hand, old chap. I'm blest if we don't start a company, to combine mining for gold and tin with poultry farming. I've a bottle of whisky in the buggy, let's get the fowls cooked and have a feed.'

It was late in the afternoon when the Major, a trifle elevated, climbed into the buggy, with the horse's head turned toward Seldom Seen; and that night, fowls and ducks, and gold and tin, figured largely in Chandler's bewildering dreams.

They had killed two ducks, and, except half a dozen pullets, the whole of the fowls, and in the crops of every one of them had been discovered stream tin, and in most of them gold. The two ducks had panned out exceptionally well.

Mad as the proposal seemed, there were reasons why Smart thought a company might be successfully floated, privately, with a few thousands capital—the bulk of which would go, of course, into the pockets of the fortunate promoters.

A Melbourne lady had recently floated a mine very successfully; in fact it had been largely over-subscribed. Smart and others knew it to be a regular wild-cat swindle; but the confiding women shareholders, knew nothing about that, yet. The idea of excluding men from the list of shareholders had caught on wonderfully with the ladies; they had a board of lady directors, and were very nearly appointing a woman as mine manager. Gammage, who guessed what they were in for, said it would have been much better if they had.

However, the success of the 'Women's Company,' as it was generally spoken of, seemed assured at this time, so Smart thought that if his scheme was not taken up by the ordinary male mining investor, it might catch on with the women, and their money was as good as any one else's. Mrs. Maguire intended to take shares in the 'Women's Company,' but was too late; he would broach the matter to her, and some other of his feminine acquaintances, and see what they thought of it. He felt sure that they would take it on, as most women had a fancy for poultry, and it would be a kind of domestic mining proposition they would be likely to understand.

The scheme evolved in Boswell Smart's ingenious mind was as follows: He would form a 'No Liability' partnership, to be called 'The Golden Duck Company.' Joe suggested, 'The Golden Goose Company'; but Smart thought the name unsuitable. The Company would combine mining with poultry farming on a large scale. The crop of a goose, reared and fed in that district, might contain—that is for the prospectus—say, tin, 3 oz., gold, 4 grs.; ducks, tin, 1¼ oz., gold, 2 grs.; fowls, tin, 1 oz., gold, 1½ grs. Poultry farming was, in itself, a paying industry, so there would be little or no risk, and the whole proceeds from the minerals won would be absolutely net.

The following facts, said the Major, would be likely specially to appeal to the feminine mind: 'There would be no wages to pay to miners, no risks or losses on account of strikes; no amounts to pay as compensation on account of accidents; and no heavy bills to pay for cartage. All that would be necessary would be to clean up every few months by killing off a quantity of matured birds, sending the carcases to market, and the ores to the gold and tin buyers.'

This had been the preliminary talk before dinner, but after they had dined on some of the slaughtered fowls, with green peas and new potatoes out of Joe's garden, and drunk half a bottle of whisky, they formulated a working plan for the new company.

They would start it with a plant of twenty-four geese, two hundred ducks, and five hundred fowls.

'But this will only be for a beginning,' said the Major, 'it will be a sort of horse-shoe problem, one penny for the first nail and double it each time. Poultry lay eggs, and from these we shall raise additional stock with incubators. That will give a proportionately increased return of mineral output.'

Smart did a good bit of figuring out in his pocket-book after this, the accuracy of which, however, cannot be vouched for. Joe watched him with interest, and was very nearly getting down his diary to make an entry; but just then the Major seemed to have finished.

'Say, for the first four months £250, for the following four months £500, and with a further increased output, say £1,000 for the year. Not a big thing, of course, but a handsome return on a capital of, say, ten thousand shares, paid up to fifteen shillings.'

'But suppose the gold and tin should not hold out?' suggested Joe, who was amazed at the magnitude of Smart's figures, and the ease and confidence with which he manipulated them.

'Don't interrupt me, man,' said the Major, who stopped, however, to pour out another tot of whisky for himself, 'that's a matter for the shareholders. If there were no risks in mining ventures, we should all be millionaires. But I was about to say that there would be certain bye-products to come in: we are about to inaugurate a new industrial departure. Our strain of birds would be trained with special instincts to fill their crops with gold and tin. Our clutches of eggs will be worth a hundred per cent. more than those of ordinary poultry; and birds of our special breeding, will, for some time at any rate, bring fancy prices. I will put all this into the prospectus; I am not sure that I haven't already hit upon a plan for wonderfully improving the breed in this respect.'

'Couldn't you manage to empty their crops at regular intervals, without killing them?' asked Joe thoughtfully.

'That would be a matter for the scientific experts of the Company to consider,' said the Major loftily. 'Anyhow, all you will have to do now will be to look well after the young working stock I shall send up, and keep the scheme dark. I'll see that you get five hundred fully paid up shares when the Company is floated, and maybe a bit of cash, with a good salary as local manager.'