Nevermore. Rolf Boldrewood
to the morrow. They ever welcomed the irruption of the heterogeneous army of strangers which invaded their hitherto rather close borough. They treated their rash migration, made upon the flimsiest reports, as a humorous incident wholly appropriate to goldfield life. As for the risks to which such an admixture might fairly be held to expose the safety and solvency of the community, they were contemptuously indifferent.
CHAPTER VI
Among the new arrivals who came in numbers to swell the gathering crowd, whose huts and tents were now scattered for miles around the original gully, which, owing to the chronic discontent of the prospectors, had given its name to the locality, were some people from a distant part of the neighbouring colony of New South Wales. They constituted a large family party, comprising brothers, cousins, the mother of the young men, their sister, and a friend or two. Their tents were pitched in an open flat at no great distance from claim Number Six, and without any special overture on either side, a casual acquaintance commenced which bade fair to ripen into friendship. The migrating party were all native-born Australians. Gold-lured, they had travelled in one encampment from their homesteads on the upper waters of the Eumeralla, a tributary of the Snowy River. In that mountainous region, thinly settled with scattered families, tending their herds of wild cattle and wilder horses, had these stalwart men and fearless girls been born and reared. The men were fine athletic fellows, free and cordial in their manners, apparently liberal and obliging in such small matters as came into notice. Apart from his natural curiosity, too, as to the characteristics of this company of 'Sydney natives,' as they were generally called – people of pure British race and descent, who had never seen Britain – Lance was attracted by their riding feats as well as by the high quality of the unusually large number of horses which belonged to the party. That they were consummate horsemen, he, a fair judge and performer in the hunting field, at once perceived. Their ways of managing the animals, catching, handling and saddling them, were all new to him. He came to walk over to their tent in the evening, to talk over the gold news of the 'day', to hear their stories of adventure by flood and field, to him novel and interesting, and by no means unattractively rendered. Besides all this, there was another appendage to the Lawless family – one which, since the ancientest days, has sufficed to attract the ardent susceptible male of whatever age and character with steady resistless force. There was a woman in the case, and a fairly prepossessing damsel she was. The sister of the young men, Kate Lawless, was indeed a very handsome girl. Bush-bred and reared as she was, uneducated and wholly unacquainted with many of the habitudes of civilisation, she comprised much of the perilous fascination of her sex. Tall and slight, but with a rounded symmetrical figure, there was an ease and unstudied grace in all her attitudes, which an artist would have recognised as true to the training of nature. Like her brothers, more at home in the saddle than in a chair, she compelled admiration when mounted on her favourite horse, a gray of grand action; she swept through the forest paths or amid the awkward traps and obstacles of a goldfield with such perfection of seat and hand as can only be obtained by that practice which commences with earliest childhood. Her complexion was delicate, indeed, unusually fair, save where an envious freckle showed that the summer sun had been all too rashly defied, her soft brown hair was unusually abundant, while her bright dark gray eyes had a glitter at times, in moments of mirth or excitement, which denoted, either for good or ill, a character of no ordinary firmness.
Lance Trevanion had been out of the way of female fascinations for a considerable period. The o'ermastering strength of his feelings after the quarrel with his father; the fierce, persistent determination with which he had followed up the fortune which he had vowed to gain in Australia, had for the time being dispossessed the minor frailties. But, now that wealth had begun to pour in with a flowing tide, now that leisure had succeeded ceaseless toil (for he had felt justified in putting on a 'wages man'), now that flattery, spoken or implied, commenced to indicate him as Trevanion of Number Six, 'a golden-hole man,' and the half-owner of one of the richest claims on the field, the ordinary results of more than sufficing money and time commenced to exhibit themselves.
'I don't know that I like that Lawless crowd over-much,' said Hastings to him one day. 'I'd be a little careful, if I were you.'
'Why, what's wrong with them?' answered Lance, rather hotly. 'They're fine, manly fellows, and pretty good all round. They can ride and shoot – they're very good with their hands – and I never saw smarter men to work. Quite different from what I expected Sydney natives to be.'
'And their sister's a very pretty girl – eh! Come, don't be offended, I'm only advising you for your good. But I met an old friend, who was a squatter in their district, and he says they are a bad lot – gamblers and horse-thieves – more than suspected of worse things, indeed.'
'Well, of course, your friend may be a little prejudiced,' answered Trevanion, trying his best to repress his rising irritability. 'They may have fallen out. What's the difference between squatters and drovers? That's what they are. They told me – '
'What's the difference between country gentlemen and poachers?' replied Hastings. 'You haven't been long enough in the country to know the ins and outs of things. But, take my word for it, the sooner you drop your native friends the better.'
'Really, my dear fellow,' answered Lance, putting on a lofty and superior air, which his friend had never before observed, while the strange glitter in his eyes became more intense with every word, 'you must permit me to manage my own affairs and choose my own friends. I have not been so long in the country as yourself, but I am not quite devoid of common sense, and have seen a little life before I came here. The Lawlesses are pleasant, manly fellows – quite as good as most of the men we meet out here; and Miss Kate is a friend of mine of whom I shall allow no one to speak disrespectfully.'
Hastings was an exceptionally cool man, or he would doubtless have requested his interlocutor, shortly, to go to the devil his own way, and, thereafter, have washed his hands of him. But he owed a debt of gratitude for his first generous service which he was too sincere and genuine to forget.
'You must take your own way, I suppose,' he said good-humouredly. 'We won't quarrel, if I can help it. But I hope you won't have reason to regret not taking my advice. Have you heard who the new Police Magistrate is?'
'His name is Mac, something or other; comes from Tasmania, and knows every escaped convict in the colonies by sight, they say.'
'Oh, Launceston Mac! Is that the P.M. who is to reign over us? No doubt he's a good man, but a little too fond of appearing to know everybody, and awfully severe. He's too quick in his decision, for my taste. I feel like the sergeant in Rob Roy, who considers that, "Were it the Bailie's own case, he would be in no such dashed hurry."'
'Oh, well, there are plenty of rascals here and to spare. He may try his hand on them, and welcome.'
'There's a new Sergeant of Police, too,' he continued. 'Can't remember his name; something like Barrell or Farrell. They say he's a "regular terror," as Joe Lawless expressed it.'
'Frank Dayrell! Is he come?' asked Hastings, with a change of tone. 'I used to know him in a wild district out back, before the gold. There was great joy when he left Wanaaring.'
'Why, what was the matter with him? I heard he was a very smart, active officer.'
'All that,' said Hastings, 'but more besides – much more. Sergeant Francis Dayrell bore the name of being one of the most unscrupulous, remorseless men that ever touched a revolver. When he has duty to do, he's all right. But, above everything, he must have a conviction. If he can manage that, with his prisoner, well and good. If not —caveat captivus.'
'Whatever he is,' answered Lance, 'it won't matter much to us. We can afford to pay for "Miner's Rights" now,' he added laughingly, 'and there's nothing else likely to bring us within the talons of the law.'
'I wouldn't make too sure of that,' his companion returned half musingly, and with a strangely altered expression. 'Dayrell is a most extraordinary man.'
That there was, in the early days of the great Australian gold irruption, a large proportion of remarkable and exceptional characters on all the goldfields, few who have the faintest recollection of that socially volcanic period will be found to deny. It could hardly have been otherwise. Adventurers of every sort and condition, of all ages and both sexes, from every