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

Roy flushed and sprang to his feet.

“I’m in the same boat with Archie and Ted,” he said. “Except about the family⁠ ⁠… mine isn’t so big yet as it might be. But it’s a fact, I funked, not having had much luck lately.⁠ ⁠… But if ever I go back on the Ridge again⁠ ⁠… may the lot of you go back on me.”

Exclamations of approbation and goodwill reverberated as Roy subsided into his chair again.

“That’s all there is to be said on the subject, I think,” George Woods remarked.

“Michael wanted his mates to know what he had done⁠—and why he had done it. He’s asked for judgment from his mates.⁠ ⁠… If he’d wanted to go back on us he could have done it; he could have done it quite easy. Armitage would have shut up on his suspicions about the stones. Charley could have been bought. Michael need never ’ve faced all this as far as I can see⁠ ⁠… but he decided to face it rather than give up all we’ve been fightin’ for here. He’d rather take all the dirt we care to sling at him than anything they could give him⁠ ⁠… and that’s why M’Ginnis has been up against him like he has. Michael has queered his pitch, and most of us have a notion that M’Ginnis has been here to do Armitage’s work⁠ ⁠… work up discontent and ill-feeling amongst us, and split our ranks; and he came very near doing it. If Michael hadn’t ’ve stood by us, like he’s always done, we’d have the Armitage Syndicate on our backs by now.”

“To tell you the truth, boys,” George went on, after a moment’s hesitation, and then as if the impulse to speak a secret thought were too strong for him, “I’ve always thought Michael was too good. And if those stones did get hold of him for a couple of weeks, like he says, all it proves, as far as I can see, is that Michael isn’t any plaster saint, but a man like the rest of us.”

“That’s right!” Watty called, and several men shouted after him.

Pony-Fence moved out from the crowd he was sitting with.

“I vote this meeting records a motion of confidence in Michael Brady,” he said. “And when we call Michael in again we’d ought to make it clear to him⁠ ⁠… that so far from its being a question of not having as much confidence in him as we had before⁠—we’ve got more. Michael’s stood by his mates if ever a man did.⁠ ⁠… He’s come to us⁠ ⁠… he’s given himself up to us. He’ll stand by what we say or do about him. And what are we goin’ to do? Are we goin’ to turn him down⁠ ⁠… read him a bit of a lecture and tell him to go home and be a good boy and not do it another time⁠ ⁠… or are we going to let him know once and for all what we think of him?”

Exclamations of agreement went up in a rabble of voices.

Bully Bryant rose from one of the back forms with a grin which illuminated the building.

“I’ll second that motion,” he said, pushing back the sleeve on his left arm. “And his own mother won’t know the man who says a word against it⁠—when I’ve done with him.”

Watty was sent to bring Michael back to the meeting. They walked to the end of the hall together; and George Woods told Michael as quietly as he could for his own agitation, and the joy which, welling in him, impeded his speech, that men of the Ridge found nothing to censure in what he had done. His mates believed in him; they stood by him. They were prepared to stand by him as he had stood by the Ridge always. The meeting wished to record a vote of confidence.⁠ ⁠…

Cheers roared to the roof. Michael, shaken by the storm of his emotion and gratitude, stood before the crowd in the hall with bowed head. When the storm was quieter in him, he lifted his head and looked out to the men, his eyes shining with tears.

He could not speak; old mates closed round to shake hands with him before the meeting broke up. Every man grasped and wrung his hand, saying:

“Good luck! Good luck to you, Michael!” Or just grasped his hand and smiled with that assurance of fellowship and goodwill which meant more to Michael than anything else in the world.

It was one of those clear days of late spring, the sky exquisitely blue, the cuckoos calling, the paper daisies in blossom, their fragrance in the air; they lay across the plains, through the herbage, white to the dim, circling horizon.

Horses and vehicles were tied up outside the grey palings of the cemetery on the Warria road. All the horses and shabby, or new and brightly-painted carts, sulkies, and buggies of Fallen Star and the Three Mile were there; and buggies from Warria, Langi-Eumina, and the river stations as well. Saddle horses, ranged along one side of the fence, reins over the stakes, whinnied and snapped at each other.

The crowd of people standing in the tall grass and herbage on the other side of the fence was just breaking up when Sophie and Potch appeared, coming over the plains from the direction of the tank paddock, Sophie riding the chestnut Arthur Henty had left behind her house, and Potch walking beside the horse’s head. Sophie had been gathering Darling pea, and had a great sheaf in one hand. Potch was carrying some, too: he had picked up the flowers Sophie let fall, and had a little bunch of them. She was riding astride and gazing before her, her eyes wide with a vision beyond the distant horizon. The wind, a light breeze breathing now and then, blew her hair out in wisps from her bare head.

All the men of Warria were in the sombre crowd in the cemetery. Old Henty, red-eyed and