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

Michael. They knew Michael had the sort of affection for Charley that a man has for a dog he has saved from drowning.

Charley Heathfield had been down on his luck when he went to the Ridge, his wife and a small boy with him; and the rush which he had expected to bring him a couple of hundred pounds’ worth of opal at least, if it did not make his fortune, had left him worse off than it found him⁠—a piece of debris in its wake. He and Rouminof had put down a shaft together, and as neither of them, after the first few weeks, did any more work than they could help, and were drunk or quarrelling half of their time, nothing came of their efforts.

Charley, when his wife died, was ill himself, and living in a hut a few yards from Michael’s. She had been a waitress in a city restaurant, and he had married her, he said, because she could carry ten dishes of hot soup on one arm and four trays on the other. A tall, stolid, pale-faced woman, she had hated the back-country and her husband’s sense of humour, and had fretted herself to death rather than endure them. Charley had no particular opinion of himself or of her. He called his youngster Potch⁠—“a little bit of Potch,” he said, because the kid would never be anything better than poor opal at the best of times.

Michael had nursed Charley while he was ill during that winter, and had taken him in hand when he was well enough to get about again. Charley was supposed to have weak lungs; but better food, steady habits, and the fine, dry air of a mild summer set him up wonderfully. Snowshoes had worked with Michael for a long time; he said that he was getting too old for the everyday toil of the mine, though, when Michael talked of taking on Charley to work with them. It would suit him all right if Michael found another mate. Michael and Charley Heathfield had worked together ever since, and Snowshoes had made his living as far as anybody knew by noodling on the dumps.

But Charley and Michael had not come on a glimmer of opal worth speaking of for nearly twelve months. They were hanging on to their claim, hoping each day they would strike something good. There is a superstition among the miners that luck often changes when it seems at its worst. Both Charley and Michael had storekeeper’s accounts as long as their arms, and the men knew if their luck did not change soon, one or the other of them would have to go over to Warria, or to one of the other stations, and earn enough money there to keep the other going on the claim.

They had no doubt it would be Michael who would have to go. Charley was not fond of work, and would be able to loaf away his time very pleasantly on the mine, making only a pretence of doing anything, until Michael returned. They wondered why Michael did not go and get a move into his affairs at once. Paul and Sophie might have something to do with his putting off going, they told each other; Michael was anxious how Paul and his luck would fare when it was a question of squaring up with Jun, and as to how the squaring up, when it came, would affect Sophie.

Some of them had been concerning themselves on Paul’s account also. They did not like a good deal they had seen of the way Jun was using Paul, and they had resolved to see he got fair play when it was time for a settlement of his and Jun’s account. George Woods, Watty Frost, and Bill Grant went along to talk the matter over with Michael one evening, and found him fixing a shed at the back of the hut which he and Potch had put up for Sophie and her father, a few yards from Charley Heathfield’s, and in line with Michael’s own hut at the old Flash-in-the-Pan rush.

“Paul says he’s going away if he gets a good thing out of his and Jun’s find,” George Woods said.

“It’ll be a good thing⁠—if he gets a fair deal,” Michael replied.

“He’ll get that⁠—if we can fix it,” Watty Frost said.

“Yes,” Michael agreed.

“Can’t think why you’re taking so much trouble with this place if Paul and Sophie are going away soon, Michael,” George Woods remarked at the end of their talk.

“They’re not gone yet,” Michael said, and went on fastening a sapling across the brushwood he had laid over the roof of the shed.

The men laughed. They knew Paul well enough to realise that there was no betting on what he would or would not do. They understood Michael did not approve of his plans for Sophie. Nobody did. But what was to be done? If Paul had the money and got the notion into his head that it would be a good thing to go away, Sophie and he would probably go away. But the money would not last, people thought; then Sophie and her father would come back to the Ridge again, or Michael would go to look for them. Being set adrift on the world with no one to look after her would be hard on Sophie, it was agreed, but nobody saw how Rouminof was to be prevented from taking her away if he wanted to.

III

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