Dick found Harry moodily smoking in the garden, and addressed him through the fence.
“What d’ye think?” he said, with the air of one propounding a conundrum.
Harry was not in a guessing mood; he gave it up at once and Dick took another course.
“I got somethin’ p’tickler to tell you,” he said.
“Have you, Ginger?” Harry was quite alert now. “About this gold-stealin’?”
“No—o, not quite about that. I’m goin’ to tell all that to Downy, but it’s somethin’ jist as p’tickler—about a reef we found.”
“A reef? Nonsense, Dick. How could you find a reef?”
“By diggin’ fer it, I s’pose. What’d you think if I said we fellers’ ’ve got a mine—a really mine—me an’ Jacker Mack, an’ Ted McKnight, an’ Billy Peterson, an’ Phil Doon? What’d you say, eh?”
“I’d say you didn’t know what you were talking about, Ginger, my boy.”
“But if I took you down the shaft an’ showed you the reef, an’ showed you stone with gold stickin’ in it—suppose I done that, how then?”
“Where is this reef?” asked Harry, becoming impressed by the boy’s earnestness.
“Tellin’s!”
“But didn’t you come to tell me?”
“Come to tell you we’d found it, an’ to ask what to do, so’s no one can jump it. We want it took up on a proper lease, all right fer me an’ the rest o’ the fellers, an’ we’ll let you stand in.”
“I can’t take up a lease unless I know where the reef is, can I?”
“Well, it ain’t far from the Red Hand.”
“Nonsense, Dick! The bottom must be over three hundred feet deep there. You couldn’t cut a reef any shallower than that.”
“On’y we have.”
Harry sat for a moment lost in thought. He had suddenly recalled old talk about mysterious indications of a shallow reef in that locality, a reef the existence of which would have been in open opposition to mining traditions, and contrary to all locally known theories of scientific mining. He remembered hearing of a shaft that had been put down by a few believers, in defiance of local derision; he recalled, too, the eccentric and unheard-of drive thrown out by the Red Hand in some such absurd quest, and his respect for the boy’s opinion grew into something like conviction.
“It’s very queer, Dick,” he said; “but if you’ll show it to me I’ll do all I can for you.”
“That’s good! You see we’re all in it. We’re the Mount of Gold Quartz-minin’ Company—me an’ Jacker an’ them—but it’s on’y a make-believe company, an’ I’d like Mr. McKnight, an’ Mr. Peterson, an’ Mr. Doon to come, an’ the detective cove too, cause there’s somethin’ else there—somethin’ else p’tickler too.”
“Very well, we can go an’ see McKnight an’ Peterson, but they’ll laugh at us.”
“When they laugh we’ll show ’em this,” said Dick, producing a lump of quartz.
Harry took the stone in his hand; it was not larger than a hen’s egg and of a dark colour, but studded thickly with clean gold, and as he gazed at it his pipe fell from his mouth and his eyes rounded. He pursed his lips to whistle his astonishment, and forgot to do it; he lifted his hand to scratch his head and it stuck half-way; he turned and turned the stone, stupid with surprise.
“By the holy, your fortune’s made if there’s much o’ this!” he blurted at length.
“Think there’s heaps of it,” said Dick coolly.
“When can we go to it?”
“When the detective cove comes, an’ I’ve told him ’bout somethin’.”
“Somethin’ good for us, Dick?” asked Harry anxiously.
Dick nodded his head slowly several times.
“Well, if this don’t lick cock-fighting. Have you told your mother?”
“No,” said Dick.
“Nothing about this either? How’s that?”
“Oh,” said Dick with a man’s superiority, “she wouldn’t understand. She don’t know nothin’ ’bout minin’, you know.”
Harry looked down upon his young friend curiously for a moment.
“D’you know,” he said, “you’re a most amazing kind of a kid?”
“How?” asked Dick shortly.
“Why in the way you get mixed up in things.”
“’Tain’t my fault if things happen, is it?” asked the boy in an injured tone.
“S’pose it ain’t,” replied Harry with a grin; “but they all seem to come your way somehow. Look here—it can’t matter now—tell me how you came to be in the Stream drive that night?”
Dick kicked up a tuft of grass, bored one heel into the soft turf, and answered nothing.
“Come on, old man, I won’t turn dog.”
“I’m goin’ to tell it to Detective Downy first. ’Twasn’t nothin’ much anyhow. I jes’ went down.”
Dick would say nothing more. He found himself on the side of the law for the first time, and felt he owed a duty to Downy, whom he regarded as almost as great a man as Sam Sagacious. Downy had come to his rescue in an hour of dire peril, Downy had trusted him and taken him into his confidence to some extent, and he was determined to do the fair and square thing by the detective, at least so far as he could do so without interfering with his sacred obligation to handsome, unhappy Christina Shine.
The detective returned to the township in the afternoon to prosecute the search for Ephraim, of whom nothing had yet been heard. In the presence of his mother and Mrs. Hardy and Harry, Dick faced the officer to tell his story; but he found it hard to begin.
“Well, my lad,” said Downy, “you’re going to tell all you know?”
Dick nodded, abashed by his new importance.
“Out with it then. You were in that drive?”
“Yes.”
“You went down with Rogers and Shine?”
“I didn’t.”
“Very well, my boy, how did you go?”
“Went by myself. Out of a drive what I know into the Red Hand workin’s, an’ down the Red Hand ladders.”
“But why? Go ahead—why?”
“To—to drag Harry out o’ the water.”
There were three distinct gasps at this, and even the detective’s eyelids went up a trifle.
“Go on, Dick.”
Now having started, Dick told his story in full. The incidents were not told consecutively, and he needed considerable cross-examining before the tale was properly fitted together and his audience of four had grasped the full details. Then Mrs. Hardy arose from her seat and moved towards him somewhat unsteadily; knelt by his side, took him in her arms softly and quietly, kissed him, and said in a very low voice:
“God bless you, Richard; God bless you, my brave boy.”
This, for some reason quite incomprehensible to the boy, caused a lump to swell in his breast and gave him an altogether uncalled-for inclination to blubber; but he swallowed it down with an effort, and then his mother hugged him in that billowy energetic way of hers. After which Harry took his hand and shook it for quite a long time without speaking a word. The detective alone was undemonstrative.
“Now,” said he, “what about this gold? You hid it?”
“Yes. In our shaft.”
“Look here, Master Dick, why have you kept all this so quiet? Why did you go down that mine in stead of running for help? Come, there is something at the back of all this; out with it!”
Dick’s lips closed in a familiar way, and their colourlessness indicated a stubborn defiance of all argument and persuasion.
“Did you want to steal the gold yourself?”
“No,” cried the boy angrily.
“Then you were afraid of something. By heaven! I have it. You rip! ’twas you gave warning to Ephraim Shine. You deserve six months.”
“Shame!” murmured Mrs. Hardy.
“’Tisn’t fair!” expostulated Dick’s mother. Dick’s lips were closed again, and he stared defiantly at the detective.
“Well, well,” groaned Downy, “this is the most extraordinary thing in boys that I have ever encountered, but he’s a mass of grit—for good or bad, all grit. Shake hands, Dick.”
Dick brightened up, and shook hands cheerfully.
“You’re quite sure about that gold? You hid it securely?” queried the detective.
“Yes, I buried it under the reef quite safe.”
“And nobody knows of this hole but yourself?”
“Yes, Jacker knows, an’ Ted, an’ Billy Peterson, an’—”
“Bless my soul, the whole township knows! We won’t get an ounce of that gold—not a colour. We’d better make the search at once, Mr. Hardy. You’ll need a rope and tools, I suppose. Hunt up the men you spoke of as quickly as possible, will you?”
Harry and Dick started off together in quest of McKnight. He was on the night shift, and they found him in bed. Harry explained. McKnight was scornful and profane.
“What—that boy Haddon again?” he cried. “Now what’s his little game? What devilment’s he up to?
“But this looks all right,” Harry expostulated.
“All right, my grandmother’s cat! You’ll be findin’ quartz reefs in a gum-tree next.”
“You ask Jacker an’ Ted,” put in Dick resentfully, hurt to find his well-intentioned efforts so ungraciously received.
“Ask Jacker, is it? If Jacker comes playin’ any of your monkey tricks with me, my lad, I’ll make him smell mischief, I tell you.”
“But hang it all, Mack! you might as well come an’ see. I own the chances o“ finding a shallow reef in that locality look blue, but you know there was talk o’ something of the kind years ago.”
“Yes, talk by fellers that didn’t know a quartz lode from a load o“ bricks or a stone wall. Get out, I’m sleepy.”
“Show him the specimen,” said Dick.
Harry handed it over.
“The boy says this is from his show. How’s that?” he said.
McKnight took the stone indifferently, cast his eye over it, and then sat up with a jerk. He moistened the stone here and there, glared again in a strained silence, and one leg shot out of bed. He weighed the specimen in his hand, and the second leg followed. Then McKnight fell to dressing himself; he literally jumped into his clothes, and as he buttoned his vest all askew, he gasped:
“Hold on there—I’ll be with you in two twos!”
“Wouldn’t break my neck about it, old man,” said Harry sarcastically, “p’raps the boy made that specimen out of a door knob an’ a bit of brick.”
“Did he, but—That’s just the same class o’ stone as the specimen Henderson found in the back paddock twelve years ago, that sent everyone daft after a reef there. Come on.”
McKnight was now much the most eager of the three, and led the way at a great pace to Peterson’s house. Peterson was more easily convinced, and in a few minutes the four joined Downy at Mrs. Hardy’s. The detective had borrowed a coil of rope, the necessary tools were provided, and the party set off. The five no sooner appeared on the flat with their burdens than they were sighted by many of the people of Waddy, now eagerly on the lookout for adventure, and before they reached the bush they had quite a mob at their heels, fed by a thin stream of men, women, and children hurrying to witness the newest development of Waddy’s latest and greatest affair.
Dick led the men into the Gaol Quarry, and at the spring turned and pointed the way through the scrub growth under which he and his mates always crawled to get at the opening leading into the Mount of Gold.
“In there,” he said, “agin the wall.”
Harry and McKnight broke a passage through the saplings and ti-tree.
“’Tween them two rocks,” said Dick; “low down under the fern.”
“Yes,” cried Harry, “here we are! Let’s have the hammer, Peterson.”
Harry broke away projecting pieces of stone, widening the aperture, and Dick and the detective joined them at the opening.
“I’ll go first,” said the boy. “I can go down the ladder we made, but it mightn’t bear a man.”
Dick went below and lit a couple of candles. Nothing had been touched in the drive, and he peeped into the shaft and saw that the loose dirt there was as he left it. Harry joined him in a few minutes and McKnight followed. The men came down on the boys’ curious ladder, but with a rope about their waists, paid out from above. Downy was the last to go below, Peterson remaining on the surface to keep the crowd back from the entrance.
McKnight seized a candle, crawled to the extremity of Dick’s diminishing drive, and examined the place curiously.
“It’s right,” he cried, “right as the bank. She’s a dyke formation, I should say, an’ rich. By the holy, we’re made men—made men, Hardy!
Detective Downy was too deeply interested in his own quest to pay much attention to the miners.
“Now, my lad,” he said, “where are we?”
“The bag’s there under them lumps.” Dick held his candle low, throwing its light into the shaft. Downy dropped from the slabs placed across from drive to drive into the bottom, and going on his knees threw aside the lumps of mullock indicated by the boy. Dick followed him holding the candle, and watching his movements, anxiously at first, and then with terror. He flung himself down beside the detective, and plunged his hand amongst the rubble, then ceased and faced the detective, mute, despairing.
“Well, well,” cried Downy in alarm, “what is it?
“Gone!” whispered Dick.
“Gone? Are you sure? We have not searched yet.”
“It’s gone!”
“You may have made a mistake. Hardy, Mc Knight, lend a hand here.”
“No good,” said Dick, “it’s gone.—it’s stolen. I put it right here, coverin’ it with this flat junk an’ a lot o’ small stuff. I know—I know quite well.”
Harry and McKnight went into the shaft with shovels, and turned over the dirt stowed there to the depth of two feet, but the bag was gone.
“Show a light here,” Downy said suddenly, looking up at Dick from the slab on which he was seated above the two workers. He took the candle and examined the edge of the slab closely.
“You said the bag containing the stolen gold was made of hide.”
“Yes,” said the boy, “green hide—just a calfskin bag, with the hair on.”
“Humph! Then here is proof that part of your story is true anyhow.” He held up a little tuft of reddish hair.
“Rogers had a skin bag, a red-an’-white one. Used to use it fer haulin’ in the shallow alluvial at Eel Creek. I’ve seen it at his hut often,” said McKnight. “But, I say, mister, if you take the advice of an old miner you’ll get out o’ this just as quick as you can lick. See, the timber’s been taken out o’ this shaft, an’ it’s a wonder to me it ain’t come down in a lump an’ buried them kids long since. It’s damn dangerous, I tell you.”
“Very good,” said Downy. “First have a look into these drives and then we’ll clear. Show me how you got through into the Red Hand workings, Dick.”
Dick led him along the drive and pointed out the little heap covering the opening where he had broken through.
“Do you think that dirt’s been touched by anyone since you piled it there?” asked Downy.
“No,” said Dick, “it seems jist the same.”
“Then the thief did not come that way.” The detective scattered the heap and examined the rough edges of the opening carefully. “No cow hair there,” he said. “We must hunt for that skin bag somewhere up aloft, Dick.”
When Dick reached the surface he found Hardy, McKnight, and Peterson standing apart from the crowd, with elate faces, talking earnestly.
“She’s a rich dyke,” McKnight was saying, “an’ she’ll go plumb down to any depth. We must get the pegs in at once, an’ apply fer a lease. She just misses Silver Stream ground, an’ the ole Red Hand is forfeit long ago. Boys, it’s a fortune fer us.”
“Remember Phil Doon’s a shareholder, too; his father’s got to be in it,” said Dick.
“To be sure, lad, to be sure; all honest an’ fair to the boy pioneers.”
Dick felt little enthusiasm about the Mount of Gold just then, for the loss of the bag of stolen gold troubled him sorely. He feared that Detective Downy regarded him as a liar and a cheat.