Читать книгу The Tale of Timber Town - Grace Alfred Augustus - Страница 7

Bill the Prospector

He came down the street like a dog that has strayed into church during sermon-time; a masterless man without a domicile. He was unkempt and travel-stained; his moleskin trousers, held up by a strap buckled round his waist, were trodden down at the heels; under the hem of his coat, a thing of rents and patches, protruded the brass end of a knife-sheath. His back was bent under the weight of his neat, compact swag, which contained his six-by-eight tent and the blankets and gear necessary to a bushman. He helped his weary steps with a long manuka stick, to which still clung the rough red bark, and looking neither to left nor right, he steadfastly trudged along the middle of the road. What with his ragged black beard which grew almost to his eyes, and the brim of his slouch hat, which had once been black, but was now green with age and weather, only the point of his rather characterless nose and his two bright black eyes were visible. But though to all appearances he was a desperate ruffian, capable of robbery and cold-blooded murder, his was a welcome figure in Timber Town. Men turned to look at him as he tramped past in his heavy, mud-stained blucher boots. One man, standing outside The Lucky Digger, asked him if he had “struck it rich.” But the “swagger” looked at the man, without replying.

“Come and have a drink, mate,” said another.

“Ain’t thirsty,” replied the “swagger.”

“Let ’im alone,” said a third. “Can’t you see he’s bin working a ‘duffer’?”

Benjamin Tresco, standing on the curb of the pavement, watched the advent of the prospector with an altogether remarkable interest, which rose to positive restlessness when he saw the digger pause before the entrance of the Kangaroo Bank.

The ill-clad, dirty stranger pushed through the swinging, glass door, stood with his hobnailed boots on the tesselated pavement inside the bank, and contemplated the Semitic face of the spruce clerk who, with the glittering gold-scales by his side, stood behind the polished mahogany counter.

But either the place looked too grand and expensive, or else the clerk’s appearance offended, but the “swagger” backed out of the building, and stood once more upon the asphalt, wearing the air of a stray dog with no home or friends.

Tresco crossed the street. With extended hand, portly mien, and benign countenance, he approached the digger, after the manner of a benevolent sidesman in a church.

“Selling gold, mate?” He spoke in his most confidential manner. “Come this way. I will help you.”

Down the street he took the derelict, like a ship in full sail towing a battered, mastless craft into a haven of safety.

Having brought the “swagger” to a safe anchorage inside his shop, Tresco shut the door, to the exclusion of all intruders; took his gold-scales from a shelf where they had stood, unused and dusty, for many a month; stepped behind the counter, and said, in his best business manner: “Now, sir.”

The digger unhitched his swag and dropped it unceremoniously on the floor, stood his long manuka stick against the wall, thrust his hand inside his “jumper,” looked at the goldsmith’s rubicund face, drew out a long canvas bag which was tied at the neck with a leather boot-lace, and said, in a hoarse whisper, “There, mister, that’s my pile.”

Tresco balanced the bag in his hand.

“You’ve kind o’ struck it,” he said, as he looked at the digger with a blandness which could not have been equalled.

The digger may have grinned, or he may have scowled – Tresco could not tell – but, to all intents and purposes, he remained imperturbable, for his wilderness of hair and beard, aided by his hat, covered the landscape of his face.

“Ja-ake!” roared the goldsmith, in his rasping, raucous voice, as though the apprentice were quarter of a mile away. “Come here, you young limb!”

The shock-headed, rat-faced youth shot like a shrapnel shell from the workshop, and burst upon the astonished digger’s gaze.

“Take this bob and a jug,” said the goldsmith, “and fetch a quart. We’ll drink your health,” he added, turning to the man with the gold, “and a continual run of good luck.”

The digger for the first time found his full voice. It was as though the silent company of the wood-hens in the “bush” had caused the hinges of his speech to become rusty. His words jerked themselves spasmodically from behind his beard, and his sentences halted, half-finished.

“Yes. That’s so. If you ask me. Nice pile? Oh, yes. Good streak o’ luck. Good streak, as you say. Yes. Ha, ha! Ho, ho!” He actually broke into a laugh.

Tresco polished the brass dish of his scales, which had grown dim and dirty with disuse; then he untied the bag of gold, and poured the rich contents into the dish. The gold lay in a lovely, dull yellow heap.

“Clean, rough gold,” said Tresco, peering closely at the precious mound, and stirring it with his grimy forefinger. “It’ll go £3 15s. You’re in luck, mister. You’ve struck it rich, and” – he assumed his most benignant expression – “there’s plenty more where this came from, eh?”

“You bet,” said the digger. “Oh, yes, any Gawd’s quantity.” He laughed again. “You must think me pretty green, mister.” He continued to laugh. “How much for the lot?”

Tresco spread the gold over the surface of the dish in a layer, and, puffing gently but adroitly, he winnowed it with his nicotine-ladened breath till no particle of sand remained with the gold. Then he put the dish on the scales, and weighed the digger’s “find.”

“Eighty-two ounces ten pennyweights six grains,” he said, with infinite deliberation, and began to figure on a piece of paper. Seemingly, the goldsmith’s arithmetic was as rusty as the digger’s speech, for the sum took so long to work out that the owner of the gold had time to cut a “fill” of tobacco from a black plug, charge his pipe, and smoke for fully five minutes, before Tresco proclaimed the total. This he did with a triumphant wave of the pen.

“Three hundred and nine pounds seven shillings and elevenpence farthing. That’s as near as I can get it. Nice clean gold, mister.”

He looked at the digger; the digger looked at him.

“What name?” asked Tresco. “To whom shall I draw the cheque?”

“That’s good! My name?” laughed the digger. “I s’pose it’s usual, eh?”

“De-cidedly.”

“Sometimes they call me Bill the Prospector, sometimes Bill the Hatter. I ain’t particular. I’ve got no choice. Take which you like.”

“‘Pay Bill the Prospector, or Order, three hundred and nine pounds.’ No, sir, that will hardlee do. I want your real name, your proper legal title.”

“Sounds grand, don’t it? ‘Legal title,’ eh? But if you must have it – though it ar’n’t hardly ever used – put me down Bill Wurcott. That suit, eh? – Bill Wurcott?”

Tresco began to draw the cheque.

“Never mind the silver,” said the digger. “Make it three hundred an’ nine quid.” And just then Jake entered with the quart jug, tripped over the digger’s swag, spilt half-a-pint of beer on the floor, recovered himself in time to save the balance, and exclaimed, “Holee smoke!”

“Tell yer what,” said the digger. “Let the young feller have the change. Good idea, eh?”

Jake grinned – he grasped the situation in a split second.

The digger took the cheque from Tresco, looked at it upside-down, and said, “That’s all right,” folded it up, put it in his breeches’ pocket just as if it had been a common one-pound note, and remarked, “Well, I must make a git. So-long.”

“No, sir,” said the goldsmith. “There is the beer: here are the men. No, sir; not thus must you depart. Refresh the inner man. Follow me. We must drink your health and continued good fortune.”

Carefully carrying the beer, Tresco led the way to his workshop, placed the jug on his bench, and soon the amber-coloured liquor foamed in two long glasses.

The digger put his pint to his hairy lips, said, “Kia ora. Here’s fun,” drank deep and gasped – the froth ornamenting his moustache. “The first drop I’ve tasted this three months.”

“You must ha’ come from way back, where there’re no shanties,” risked Tresco.

“From way back,” acknowledged the digger.

“Twelve solid weeks? You must have a thirst.”

“Pretty fair, you bet.” The digger groped about in the depth of his pocket, and drew forth a fine nugget. “Look at that,” he said, with his usual chuckle.

Tresco balanced the lump of gold in his deft hand.

“Three ounces?”

“Three, six.”

“’Nother little cheque. Turn out your pockets, mister. I’ll buy all you’ve got.”

“That’s the lot,” said the digger, taking back the nugget and fingering it lovingly. “I don’t sell that – it’s my lucky bit; the first I found.” Another chuckle. “Tell you what. Some day you can make me something outer this, something to wear for a charm. No alloy, you understand; all pure gold. And use the whole nugget.”

Tresco pursed his lips, and looked contemplative.

“A three-ounce charm, worn round the neck, might strangle a digger in a swollen creek. Where’d his luck be then? But how about your missis? Can’t you divide it?”

The digger laughed his loudest.

“Give it the missis! That’s good. The missis’d want more’n an ounce and a half for her share. Mister, wimmen’s expensive.”

“Ain’t you got no kid to share the charm with?”

“Now you’re gettin’ at me” – the chuckle again – “worse ’an ever. You’re gettin’ at me fine. Look ’ere, I’m goin’ to quit: I’m off.”

“But, in the meantime, what am I to do with this nice piece of gold? I could make a ring for each of your fingers, and some for your toes. I could pretty near make you a collarette, to wear when you go to evening parties in a low-necked dress, or a watch chain more massive than the bloomin’ Mayor’s. There’s twelve pounds’ worth of gold in that piece.”

The digger looked perplexed. The problem puzzled him.

“How’d an amulet suit you?” suggested the goldsmith.

“A what?”

“A circle for the arm, with a charm device chased on it.”

“A bit like a woman, that – eh, mister?”

“Not at all. The Prince o’ Wales, an’ the Dook o’ York, an’ all the elite wears ’em. It’d be quite the fashion.”

The digger returned the nugget to his pocket. “I call you a dam’ amusin’ cuss, I do that. You’re a goer. There ain’t no keepin’ up with the likes o’ you. You shall make what you blame well please – we’ll talk about it by-and-by. But for the present, where’s the best pub?”

“The Lucky Digger,” said Jake, without hesitation.

“Certainly,” reiterated Tresco. “You’ll pass it on your way to the Bank.”

“Well, so-long,” said the digger. “See you later.” And, shouldering his swag, he held out his horny hand.

“I reckon,” said the goldsmith. “Eight o’clock this evening. So-long.” And the digger went out.

Tresco stood on his doorstep, and with half-shut eyes watched the prospector to the door of The Lucky Digger.

“Can’t locate it,” he mused, “and I know where all the gold, sold in this town, comes from. Nor I can’t locate him. But he’s struck it, and struck it rich.”

There were birch twigs caught in the straps of the digger’s “swag,” and he had a bit of rata flower stuck in the band of his hat. “That’s where he’s come from!” Tresco pointed in the direction of the great range of mountains which could be seen distinctly through the window of his workshop.

“What’s it worth?” asked Jake, who stood beside his master.

“The gold? Not a penny less than £3/17/-an ounce, my son.”

“An’ you give £3/15/-. Good business, boss.”

“I drew him a cheque for three hundred pounds, and I haven’t credit at the bank for three hundred shillings. So I must go and sell this gold before he has time to present my cheque. Pretty close sailing, Jake.

“But mark me, young shaver. There’s better times to come. If the discovery of this galoot don’t mean a gold boom in Timber Town, you may send the crier round and call me a flathead. Things is goin’ to hum.”