Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/87

80 and such like, but that beats them all. Pray, why was it so called?”

“Well, you see, mate,” said Bill, “I am not much of a hand at pitching a tale, but, as you seem the right sort, I’ll try for once. It will be four years on the third of next month since first I came on to Kajunga. I had been working at Friar’s Creek, in tucker-holes, for some time previously, for my mate had been bad with the dysentery, and, of course, I couldn’t leave him. At last, however, he died, and having been told that there were some old shipmates of mine up here, I determined to come up and try my luck. Well, I soon picked up with a fresh mate, and a pretty tidy hole, too, for there was gold galore in these parts then. There was a rare rough lot about here, though. You see, it was a goodish way from the old established gold-fields, and the diggings were scattered over such a deal of ground, that what few troopers we had up here went pretty nigh for nothing, so that every man of us used to sleep with his loaded revolver under his head, as in the old times on Golden Point. I was camped a few miles higher up the creek, and in the next tent to us were a couple of chaps who had been working there some time; but, partly through want of luck, and partly through blowing all they earned in the grog-shanties, they were pretty well always down on their luck. The name of the youngest of them was Charley Smart—Smart Charley we used to call him, though; for of a Sunday he used to come out in a grey shirt all worked with scarlet silk, a great red sash round his waist, a real Panama hat, breeches, and knee-boots, all which swell dunnage he had brought with him from California, where he and his brother, who was then away at Ivor, had worked for some time. He was a very good-looking young chap, though he was as white in the face as a parsnip, but he was uncommon strong and hearty, and an out-and-out good workman. His mate Alick—or Black Alick, as we used to call him, on account of the darkness of his skin—was a chap of about fifty years of age, and as ill-looking a customer as you could well meet with on a day’s march, even in this country. I have heard since that he was tried in the old country for robbery and murder. There wasn’t quite evidence enough to bring the hanging matter home to him, though there wasn’t much doubt of his guilt; so he saved his neck, and came out to the colonies at government expense instead. He was a gloomy, morose kind of fellow, very quarrelsome when in drink, and as unsociable as a bear, for when he was out of cash to knock down in grog he used always to turn in as soon os ever he had swallowed his supper, never coming out to sit by the fire and smoke and yarn like the rest of us used to do. Smart Charley was quite another guess sort of chap. He would sit up half the night as long as any one was left to talk to, and seemed to dislike the blankets as much as Black Alick loved them.

“Now, a short distance from where we were camped, there was a grog-shanty—not one of your new-fangled, weather-boarded hotels, with a grand bar all set out with swell decanters full of bad liquor, but a jolly great tent, well put up, with a good fly over it, lined throughout with green baize, and a sod chimney to it that would hold an eight-foot log—as comfortable a crib as a man could wish to set foot in who was content to pour good stuff out of a black bottle, and drink it out of a pannikin. It was kept by a Yankee—a very fair specimen of one he was, too, and an uncommon good hand at drinks, to be sure. The way he could mix a julep was a caution. Well, a whole lot of us chaps used to frequent this shanty more or less, and, though I never was much of a one for drink, I used to go up pretty regular of a Saturday night, and have a hand at yuker or cribbage, and a glass or two of hot whiskey-and-water, real Scotch, and first-rate at that. The Yankee boys who came there said it was nothing to Monongohela; but Charley, who had been some time in America, said that that was all gas. However, as I never tasted the liquor in question, I can’t say. Among the fellows who used the shanty—the ‘Stars and Stripes, ’ as we called it—was one who dropped in occasionally, who went by the name of Indian Hepe, though he was no more an Indian than you are, for his father was a Scotchman and his mother a Mexican woman of Sonora; but he had been stolen away when a lad by the Indians who live on horseback—Comanchees, I think, they call them—and had passed pretty nigh twenty years of his life among them. I have heard that he became a chief, and had raised a deal of hair in his time; but whether this was true or not I can’t say, for he was a silent sort of chap, and never said much about his past life. He had come on to the California diggings soon after they broke out, and afterwards came over to Sydney, and from there to Victoria. We used to think him a bit mad, for he would go away with his gun all alone for weeks, living upon what he could shoot, and when he came back to work he used to prefer spending half the night by himself in the bush, stretched out on his back, staring up at the stars, to sitting comfortably by the fire and smoking his pipe like a Christian. There were queer tales afloat about his having told some fellows’ fortunes up on Eaglehawk, and how all he said had come true. Well, one Saturday night—I remember it well, for we had nuggeted pretty nigh thirty ounces that day—we were all of us up at the Stars and Stripes. Alick and Charley had been pretty well in luck that week, and they insisted on shouting all round, time after time, till we all, I fancy, had taken a little more than was good for us, and even Hepe began to talk a bit. Charley seeing this began gammoning and chaffing him about his powers of fortune-telling. The Indian took it very quietly at first; but, when Charley went on too much at him, he got riled, and said he:

‘Charley, I can tell you something that will happen to you, as sure as you are sitting before that fire.’

‘What is it, Indian?’ says Charley; ‘speak up!’

‘Well, the best hole of the best rush that ever was or ever will be on Kajunga shall be found by you, and yet you will never handle an