The Black Opal - Katharine Susannah Prichard (open ebook .TXT) 📗

morning as soon as the first cuckoos were calling. Michael had been at the windlass for an hour or thereabouts, when Watty Frost, who was going along to his claim with Pony-Fence Inglewood and Bully Bryant, saw Michael on the top of his dump, tossing mullock.

“Who’s Michael working with?” he asked.

Pony-Fence and Bully Bryant considered, and shook their heads, smoking thoughtfully.

Snowshoes, where he lay sprawled across the slope of Crosses’ dump, glanced up at them, and the nickering wisp of a smile went through his bright eyes. The three were standing at the foot of the dump before separating.

“Who’s Michael got with him?” Pony-Fence inquired, looking at Snowshoes.

But the old man had turned his eyes back to the dump and was raking the earth with his stick again, as if he had not heard what was said. No one was deafer than Snowshoes when he did not want to hear.

Watty watched Michael as he bent over the windlass, his lean, slight figure cut against the clear azure of the morning sky.

“It’s to be hoped he’s got a decent mate this time⁠—that’s all,” he said.

Pony-Fence and Bully were going off to their own claim when Potch came up on the rope and stood by the windlass while Michael went down into the mine.

“Well!” Watty gasped, “if that don’t beat cockfighting!”

Bully swore sympathetically, and watched Potch set to work. The three watched him winding and throwing mullock from the hide buckets over the dump with the jerky energy of a new chum, although Potch had done odd jobs on the mines for a good many years. He had often taken his father’s turn of winding dirt, and had managed to keep himself by doing all manner of scavenging in the township since he was quite a little chap, but no one had taken him on as a mate till now. He was a big fellow, too, Potch, seventeen or eighteen; and as they looked at him Watty and Pony-Fence realised it was time someone gave Potch a chance on the mines, although after the way his father had behaved Michael was about the last person who might have been expected to give him that chance⁠—much less take him on as mate. Like father, like son, was one of those superstitions Ridge folk had not quite got away from, and the men who saw Potch working on Michael’s mine wondered that, having been let down by the father as badly as Charley had let Michael down, Michael could still work with Potch, and give him the confidence a mate was entitled to. But there was no piece of quixotism they did not think Michael capable of. The very forlornness of Potch’s position on the Ridge, and because he would have to face out and live down the fact of being Charley Heathfield’s son, were recognised as most likely Michael’s reasons for taking Potch on to work with him.

Watty and Pony-Fence appreciated Michael’s move and the point of view it indicated. They knew men of the Ridge would endorse it and take Potch on his merits. But being Charley’s son, Potch would have to prove those merits. They knew, too, that what Michael had done would help him to tide over the first days of shame and difficulty as nothing else could have, and it would start Potch on a better track in life than his father had ever given him.

Bully had already gone off to his claim when Watty and Pony-Fence separated. Watty broke the news to his mates when he joined them underground.

“Who do y’ think’s Michael’s new mate?” he asked.

George Woods rested on his pick.

Cash looked up from the corner where he was crouched working a streak of green-fired stone from the red floor and lower wall of the mine.

“Potch!” Watty threw out as George and Cash waited for the information.

George swept the sweat from his forehead with a broad, steady gesture. “He was bound to do something nobody else’d ’ve thought of, Michael!” he said.

“That’s right,” Watty replied. “Pony-Fence and Bully Bryant were saying,” he went on, “he’s had a pretty hard time, Potch, and it was about up to somebody to give him a leg-up⁠ ⁠… some sort of a start in life. He may be all right⁠ ⁠… on the other hand, there may not be much to him.⁠ ⁠…”

“That’s right!” Cash muttered, beginning to work again.

“But I reck’n he’s all right, Potch.” George swung his pick again. His blows echoed in the mine as they shattered the hard stone he was working on.

Watty crawled off through a drive he was gouging in.

At midday Michael and Charley had always eaten their lunches in the shelter where George Woods, Watty, and Cash Wilson ate theirs and noodled their opal. They wondered whether Michael would join them this day. He strolled over to the shelter with Potch beside him as Watty and Cash, with a billy of steaming tea on a stick between them, came from the open fire built round with stones, a few yards from the mine.

“Potch and me’s mates,” Michael explained to George as he sat down and spread out his lunch, his smile whimsical and serene over the information. “But we’re lookin’ for a third to the company. I reck’n a lot of you chaps’ luck is working on three. It’s a lucky number, three, they say.”

Potch sat down beside him on the outer edge of the shelter’s scrap of shade.

“See you get one not afraid to do a bit of work, next time⁠—that’s all I say,” Watty growled.

The blood oozed slowly over Potch’s heavy, quiet face. Nothing more was said of Charley, but the men who saw his face realised that Potch was not the insensible youth they had imagined.

Michael had watched him when they were below ground, and was surprised at the way Potch set about his work. He had taken up his father’s gouging pick and spider as if he had been used to take them every day, and he had set to work where Charley