Читать книгу The Black Opal - Katharine Susannah Prichard - Страница 6

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The unwritten law of the Ridge was that mates pooled all the opal they found and shared equally, so that all Jun held was Rouminof's, and all that he held was Jun's. Ordinarily one man kept the lot, and as Jun was the better dealer and master spirit, it was natural enough he should hold the stones, or, at any rate, the best of them. But Rouminof was like a child with opal. He wanted some of the stones to handle, polish up a bit, and show round. Jun humoured him a good deal. He gave Paul a packet of the stuff they had won to carry round himself. He was better tempered and more easy-going with Rouminof, the men admitted, than most of them would have been; but they could not believe Jun was going to deal squarely by him.

Jun and his mate seemed on the best of terms. Paul followed him about like a dog, referring to him, quoting him, and taking his word for everything. And Jun was openly genial with Paul, and talked of the times they were going to have when they went down to Sydney together to sell their opal.

Paul was never tired of showing his stones, and almost every night at Newton's he spread them out on a table, looked them over, and held them up to admiration. It was good stuff, but the men who had seen Jun's package knew that he had kept the best stones.

For a couple of weeks after they had come on their nest of knobbies, Jun and Paul had gouged and shovelled dirt enthusiastically; but the wisp fires, mysteriously and suddenly as they had come, had died out of the stone they moved. Paul searched frantically. He and Jun worked like bullocks; but the luck which had flashed on them was withdrawn. Although they broke new tunnels, went through tons of opal dirt with their hands, and tracked every trace of black potch through a reef of cement stone in the mine, not a spark of blue or green light had they seen for over a week. That was the way of black opal, everybody knew, and knew, too, that the men who had been on a good patch of fired stone would not work on a claim, shovelling dirt, long after it disappeared. They would be off down to Sydney, if no buyer was due to visit the fields, eager to make the most of the good time their luck and the opal would bring them. "Opal only brings you bad luck when you don't get enough of it," Ridge folk say.

George and Watty had a notion Jun would not stick to the claim much longer, when they arranged the night at Newton's to settle his and Paul's account with each other. Michael, the Crosses, Cash Wilson, Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant, Bully Bryant, old Bill Olsen, and most of the staunch Ridge men were in the bar, Charley Heathfield drinking with Jun, when George Woods strolled over to the table where Rouminof was showing Sam Nancarrow his stones. Sam was blacksmith, undertaker, and electoral registrar in Fallen Star, and occasionally did odd butchering jobs when there was no butcher in the township. He had the reputation, too, of being one of the best judges of black opal on the fields.

Paul was holding up a good-looking knobby so that red, green, and gold lights glittered through its shining potch as he moved it.

"That's a nice bit of stone you've got, Rummy!" George exclaimed.

Paul agreed. "But you should see her by candle light, George!" he said eagerly.

He held up the stone again so that it caught the light of a lamp hanging over the bar where Peter Newton was standing. The eyes of two or three of the men followed the stone as Paul moved it, and its internal fires broke in showers of sparks.

"Look, look!" Paul cried, "now she's showin'!"

"How much have you got on her?" Sam Nancarrow asked.

"Jun thinks she'll bring £50 or £60 at least."

Sam's and George Woods' eyes met: £50 was a liberal estimate of the stone's value. If Paul got £10 or £15 for it he would be doing well, they knew.

"They're nice stones, aren't they?" Paul demanded, sorting over the opals he had spread out on the table. He held up a piece of green potch with a sun-flash through it.

"My oath!" George Woods exclaimed.

"But where's the big beaut.?" Archie Cross asked, looking over the stones with George.

"Oh, Jun's got her," Paul replied. "Jun!" he called, "the boys want to see the big stone."

"Right!" Jun swung across to the table. Several of the men by the bar followed him. "She's all right," he said.

He sat down, pulled a shabby leather wallet from his pocket, opened it, and took out a roll of dirty flannel; he undid the flannel carefully, and spread the stones on the table. There were several pieces of opal in the packet. The men, who had seen them before separately, uttered soft oaths of admiration and surprise when they saw all the opals together. Two knobbies were as big as almonds, and looked like black almonds, fossilised, with red fire glinting through their green and gold; a large flat stone had stars of red, green, amethyst, blue and gold shifting over and melting into each other; and several smaller stones, all good stuff, showed smouldering fire in depths of green and blue and gold-lit darkness.

Jun held the biggest of the opals at arm's length from the light of the hanging lamp. The men followed his movement, the light washing their faces as it did the stone.

"There she goes!" Paul breathed.

"What have you got on her?"

"A hundred pounds, or thereabouts."

"You'll get it easy!"

Jun put the stone down. He took up another, a smaller piece of opal, of even finer quality. The stars were strewn over and over each other in its limpid black pool.

"Nice pattern," he said.

"Yes," Watty Frost murmured.

"She's not as big as the other ... but better pattern," Archie Cross said.

"Reckon you'll get £100 for her too, Jun?"

"Yup!" Jun put down the stone.

Then he held up each stone in turn, and the men gave it the same level, appraising glance. There was no envy in their admiration. In every man's eyes was the same worshipful appreciation of black opal.

Jun was drunk with his luck. His luck, as much as Newton's beer, was in his head this night. He had shown his stones before, but never like this, the strength of his luck.

"How much do you think there is in your packet, Jun?" Archie Cross asked.

Jun stretched his legs under the table.

"A thou' if there's a penny."

Archie whistled.

"And how much do you reckon there is in Rum-Enough's?" George Woods put the question.

"Four or five hundred," Jun said; "but we're evens, of course."

He leaned across the table and winked at George.

"Oh, I say," Archie protested, "what's the game?"

They knew Jun wanted them to believe he was joking, humouring Paul. But that was not what they had arranged this party for.

"Why not let Rum-Enough mind a few of the good stones, Jun?"

"What?"

Jun started and stared about him. It was so unusual for one man to suggest to another what he ought to do, or that there was anything like bad faith in his dealings with his mates, that his blood rose.

"Why not let Rum-Enough mind a few of the good stones?" George repeated, mildly eyeing him over the bowl of his pipe.

"Yes," Watty butted in, "Rummy ought to hold a few of the good stones, Jun. Y' see, you might be run into by rats ... or get knocked out—and have them shook off you, like Oily did down in Sydney—and it'd be hard on Rummy, that—"

"When I want your advice about how me and my mate's going to work things, I'll ask you," Jun snarled.

"We don't mind giving it before we're asked, Jun," Watty explained amiably.

Archie Cross leaned across the table. "How about giving Paul a couple of those bits of decent pattern—if you stick to the big stone?" he said.

"What's the game?" Jun demanded, sitting up angrily. His hand went over his stones.

"Wait on, Jun!" Michael said. "We're not thieves here. You don't have to grab y'r stones."

Jun looked about him. He saw that men of the Ridge, in the bar, were all standing round the table. Only Peter Newton was left beside the bar, although Charley Heathfield, on the outer edge of the crowd, regarded him with a smile of faint sympathy and cynicism. Paul leaned over the table before him, and looked from Jun to the men who had fallen in round the table, a dazed expression broadening on his face.

"What the hell's the matter?" Jun cried, starting to his feet. "What are you chaps after? Can't I manage me own affairs and me mate's?"

The crowd moved a little, closer to him. There was no chance of making a break for it.

George Woods laughed.

"Course you can't, Jun!" he said. "Not on the Ridge, you can't manage your affairs and your mate's ... your way ... Not without a little helpful advice from the rest of us.... Sit down!"

Jun glanced about him again; then, realising the intention on every face, and something of the purpose at the back of it, he sat down again.

"Well, I'm jiggered!" he exclaimed. "I see—you believe old Olsen's story. That's about the strength of it. Never thought ... a kid, or a chicken, 'd believe that bloody yarn. Well, what's the advice ... boys? Let's have it, and be done with it!"

"We'll let bygones be bygones, Jun. We won't say anything about ... why," George remarked. "But the boys and I was just thinking it might be as well if you and Rum-Enough sort of shared up the goods now, and then ... if he doesn't want to go to Sydney same time as you, Jun, he can deal his goods here, or when he does go."

No one knew better than Jun the insult which all this seemingly good-natured talking covered. He knew that neither he, nor any other man, would have dared to suggest that Watty, or George, or Michael, were not to be trusted to deal for their mates, to the death even. But then he knew, too, they were to be trusted; that there was not money enough in the world to buy their loyalty to each other and to their mates, and that he could measure their suspicion of his good faith by his knowledge of himself. To play their game as they would have played it was the only thing for him to do, he recognised.

"Right!" he said, "I'm more than willing. In fact, I wouldn't have the thing on me mind—seein' the way you chaps 've taken it. But 'd like to know which one of you wouldn't 've done what I've done if Rum-Enough was your mate?"

Every man was uneasily conscious that Jun was right. Any one of them, if he had Paul for a mate, would have taken charge of the most valuable stones, in Paul's interest as well as his own. At the same time, every man felt pretty sure the thing was a horse of another colour where Jun was concerned.

"Which one of us," George Woods inquired, "if a mate'd been set on by a spieler in Sydney, would've let him stump his way to Brinarra and foot it out here ... like you let old Olsen?"

Jun's expression changed; his features blenched, then a flame of blood rushed over his face.

"It's a lie," he yelled. "He cleared out—I never saw him afterwards!"

"Oh well," George said, "we'll let bygones be bygones, Jun. Let's have a look at that flat stone."

Jun handed him the stone.

George held it to the light.

"Nice bit of opal," he said, letting the light play over it a moment, then passed it on to Michael and Watty.

"You keep the big stone, and Paul'll have this," Archie Cross said.

He put the stone beside Paul's' little heap of gems.

Jun sat back in his chair: his eyes smouldering as the men went over his opals, appraising and allotting each one, putting some before Rouminof, and some back before him. They dealt as judicially with the stones as though they were a jury of experts, on the case—as they really were. When their decisions were made, Jun had still rather the better of the stones, although the division had been as nearly fair as possible.

Paul was too dazed and amazed to speak. He glanced dubiously from his stones to Jun, who rolled his opals back in the strip of dirty flannel, folded it into his leather wallet, and dropped that into his coat pocket. Then he pushed back his chair and stood up.

Big and swarthy, with eyes which took a deeper colour from the new blue shirt he had on, Jun stood an inch or so above the other men.

"Well," he said, "you boys have put it across me to-night. You've made a mistake ... but I'm not one to bear malice. You done right if you thought I wasn't going to deal square by Rum-Enough ... but I'll lay you any money you like I'd 've made more money for him by selling his stones than he'll make himself—Still, that's your business ... if you want it that way. But as far as I'm concerned, I'm just where I was—in luck. And you chaps owe me something.... Come and have a drink."

Most of the men, who believed Jun was behaving with better grace than they had expected him to, moved off to have a drink with him. They were less sure than they had been earlier in the evening that they had done Rouminof a good turn by giving him possession of his share of the opals. It was just on the cards, they realised as Jun said, that instead of doing Rouminof a good turn, if Jun had been going to deal squarely by him, they had done him a rather bad one. Paul was pretty certain to make a mess of trading his own stones, and to get about half their value from an opal-buyer if he insisted on taking them down to Sydney to sell himself.

"What'll you do now your fortune's fixed up, Rummy?" George Woods asked, jokingly, when he and two or three men were left with Paul by the table.

"I'll get out of this," Paul said. "We'll go down to Sydney—me and Sophie—and we'll say good-bye to the Ridge for good."

The men laughed. It was the old song of an outsider who cared nothing for the life of the Ridge, when he got a couple of hundred pounds' worth of opal. He thought he was made for life and would never come back to the Ridge; but he always did when his money was spent. Only Michael, standing a little behind George Woods, did not smile.

"But you can't live for ever on three or four hundred quid," Watty Frost said.

"No," Paul replied eagerly, "but I can always make a bit playing at dances, and Sophie's going to be a singer. You wait till people hear her sing.... Her mother was a singer. She had a beautiful voice. When it went we came here.... But Sophie can sing as well as her mother. And she's young. She ought to make a name for herself."

He wrapped the stones before him in a piece of wadding, touching them reverently, and folded them into the tin cigarette box Michael had given him to carry about the first stones Jun had let him have. He was still mystified over the business of the evening, and why the boys had made Jun give him the other stones. He had been quite satisfied for Jun to hold most of the stones, and the best ones, as any man on the Ridge would be for his mate to take care of their common property. There was a newspaper lying on the table. He took it, wrapped it carefully about his precious box, tied a piece of strong string round it, and let the box down carefully into the big, loose pocket of his shabby coat.