"I should not be surprised at it--with him," G.o.dson answered.

"Oh, he's----" she gathered up her work instead of finishing the sentence. "But I would like to go over to the station and see Mrs.

d.i.c.kson," she added brightly. "It's the first time she has agreed even to let us go near the house, so w.i.l.l.y says, and both Nellie and I want to go. Do you think we ought?"

"Would it keep you away if I said no?" G.o.dson asked, with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Of course it would," she replied, looking at him quickly.

"Umph," he said. "Wait till Tony comes back, and ask his opinion."

"Oh, bother Tony!" she exclaimed sharply. "Nellie and I said we would go over on Thursday. Nellie said she would make Bobby come as well. Do you see the idea? He and I can ride together, and that leaves----"

"Oh, that's it, is it?" G.o.dson asked, with a smile.

Ailleen nodded, and the smile grew on G.o.dson's face. It pleased him better than if it had been the other way about.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ROUT OF BOULDER CREEK.

Cudlip's Rest originally owed its existence to a small rush that set in on Boulder Creek in the early sixties, that period in Australian history when the gold fever was badly abroad, and men were leaving everything--hearth, home, kith, kin, and often life as well--to join in the mad scurry after the will-o'-the-wisp which they were pleased to call fortune. Boulder Creek, a small stream--when rain fell--full of big stones, and with here and there a patch of yellow sandy gravel lying in corners and crevices, wound its way through country which was equally rocky, but with just enough soil above the rock to spa.r.s.ely nourish the gnarled, scraggy gums which waged with the spear-gra.s.s a constant struggle for existence.

The road to the west from Birralong crossed Boulder Creek, running along the summit of a dwarfed ridge, parallel with the valley of the stream, until it took a sudden turn downwards towards a spot where the stones were less numerous, and which was locally known as the Ford. Halfway down from the top of the ridge to the level of the creek, about an acre spread out flat on the left-hand side, and here Cudlip's Rest was built.

There was gold in the creek at the time, tradition said, and men trooped down to it from all parts, camping along the ridge, and climbing down with the dawn to the bed of the creek and digging where they could in the sandy gravel, or picking at the boulders and dollying the fragments in the hopes of discovering some of the gold which report said was to be found in the creek. As the sun went down at the end of each day, the men climbed back to their tents on the ridge, cursing their luck--or the want of it--to satisfy their hunger. Then they wandered with one accord to the flat where Cudlip's Rest was situated, and a.s.sisted in making the only "pile" which was ever ama.s.sed on the diggings of Boulder Creek.

Most of the men who first came out from civilization to make their piles on Boulder Creek wandered back again, their piles still to make--with that one exception; but the reputation of his success, though he never rocked a cradle nor b.u.mped a dolly in the whole course of his stay on the field, hung about the place, growing in magnitude as the years pa.s.sed on, and inspiring many a simple heart with that blind faith and patience necessary to spend one's life chipping at rocks well nigh innocent of pyrites, and sluicing gravel which sometimes carries a grain to the dish--for, after the first-comers had gone back to civilization, there were many who came to take their places.

With the departure of its founder, the Rest lost a good deal of its glory. The men who were camped along the ridge had no more money to spend, and only an occasional traveller, pa.s.sing along the road from the east to the west, kept the place going as a solvent concern. Now and again some prospectors, who had heard tales round distant camp-fires of the hidden riches of Boulder Creek, journeyed down its course, scrambling over the rough, tumbled boulders, and venting their opinions in hot, scorching words as they remembered the tellers of the tales, till they saw on the flat, halfway up the ridge, the symbol of civilization in the form of Cudlip's Rest. Then the occupier for the time being had some chance of making a profit on the year's occupation; but otherwise, no one but a new chum would grant credit for drinks against such payment in kind as cut timber and split rails for a whole settlement of fossickers.

So the years went on, the men along the ridge dreaming of the leads and pockets they one day might discover, and the owner of Cudlip's Rest trying to persuade himself that there was a future in the field--until one day a whisper went abroad. It ran from tent to tent and from shaft to shaft, travelling up and down the gullies and the ridges by the creek; bringing men to the surface from the bottom of the holes they had been digging for months, and drawing them out of the drives and cross-cuts they had been developing for years, and making them stand with wide-open eyes gleaming in the sunlight, as they tried to reach back through the profitless years for the mislaid energy of youth. It travelled far and wide, wherever a man lived and toiled; and wherever it sounded, men's eyes grew bright, and hope came again to faces that had long since lost it, and to hearts that had long since grown numb.

No one knew who had spread it; no man heard another tell him that it was true; but in the air it quivered, and every man heard it, and left his work and his tent and his tools where they lay, whilst he hastened to Cudlip's Rest for further news of the rumour that had reached him as he laboured in his loneliness--that gold had been found; gold in payable, ay, in richly payable, quant.i.ties.

Like the remnants of a routed army they came upon the old hotel, some up the road, some down it, and others through the bush. A few had stopped to get their coats, but most of them wore nothing over their soil-and toil-stained shirts and moleskins. But as they came up to the house, and stamped on to the verandah and through into the long, bare room that once had been festive with many a merry gathering, they all had one expression on their faces and one inquiry on their tongues.

Round the bar, which stretched across the end of the room, they found four men standing, with pipes in their mouths and filled gla.s.ses in front of them, and only a glance was needed to reveal to every one as he entered that not one of the four was a new chum or a sundowner. They stood smoking in silence, like men who have known one another's society for many days, and had no need for words to express the enjoyment they felt in a smoke and a nip. Occasionally one would glance towards the door as man after man trudged into the room, toil-stained and unkempt, and stood covertly watching the four with hungry eyes.

Cudlip--all the keepers of the Rest took the name with the house--was behind the bar, glancing suspiciously from the new arrivals to the incoming residents.

"And you say it's payable?" he said at length; and every ear in the room was strained and every eye turned upon the silent four.

"You take your colonial," one of the four answered.

"And a poor man's field? Good alluvial?" Cudlip added.

The man who had answered before looked round at him.

"Ain't we going there?" he said.

The crowd round the door and along the walls of the room surged forward.

Good alluvial and a poor man's field? And four men going there? The questions were in every mind and the answer as well. For years the gully-rakers round Boulder Creek had been living and longing to hear such things, and the hungry eyes grew more hungry and the faces more alert. If four, why not forty? Why not----

"Where's the lay?" one of the Creekers asked sharply and shortly; and the room was silent till the answer came.

"Over the ridge," the man answered, nodding towards the west.

"How far?" some one inquired.

"Twenty mile or so."

"And you've been there?"

"That's so."

"You and your mates?"

"Not the four of us."

"How do you know it's a boomer?"

The man looked round slowly on the still gathering crowd.

"I found it," he said.

For a moment every man in the room held his breath. They had had faith in the creek for years without seeing more than specks of gold--faith so great that they would all have scorned to leave their shafts and drives for the sake of fossicking neighbouring streams and gullies.

But--payable alluvial and plenty of it only twenty miles away! They needed time to take that in all at once.

"I found it a month ago--I and some mates. I left them working on it while I went and proclaimed it and got our reward claims registered. Now we're safe we don't care who knows of it. There's men in hundreds coming out along the road behind us, though we have got two days' start. But what is that to us? There will be thousands soon--thousands all seeking our gold-field, for there's gold across the ridge, boys--gold for the lot of us."

The sun-dried walls and roof of the room shivered and cracked at the reverberation of the mighty shout that went up from the throats of the a.s.sembled men. The wild fever that had sent them roaming years and years before in search of the fortune of yellow metal they had never yet found, broke out in all its former vigour in their blood. There was gold only twenty miles away! Gold to be had for the digging; gold in sand and gravel that only needed washing and sluicing; gold that would give them all their youth back again, and enable them once more to journey to the homes they had left so long ago--it dazzled and maddened them, wiping out their disappointments and blotting out their miseries. All the furies of unmeasured imagination that had swept them off their mental balance when first they had sought the bubble fortune came again upon them anew, and in their shouting, capering frenzy they surged round the four strangers and round and over Cudlip's bar. What liquor there was to be seized was taken and swallowed before its owner could raise a protest; but a dozen promises to pay ten times over for every n.o.bbler was made on all sides, and, like a wise man, Cudlip hesitated before he opposed overwhelming odds.

The shout with which the news was greeted spread far beyond the Rest--as far as the barren rocks and spear-gra.s.s covered patches of sandy soil over which the outlying fossickers were hurrying for corroboration of the news--and the sound of the mighty shout made their pulses tingle and their blood run free.

Only one thing could make the men of the Boulder Creek dirt-holes shout like that. Gold, more than specks and grains, had been found somewhere, and the outlying stragglers quickened their pace in their haste to reach the place before all the good fortune had gone round. When they reached the house there was a babel of sounds in the bar-room, for round the four strangers the entire population of the field was crowding, every man firing off his questions as fast as he could utter them, with no one answering him, and no one heeding him in the general noise and excitement. The four were trying to reach the door so as to get on the way to their El Dorado, but a solid wall of perspiring humanity surrounded them, through which they were helpless to make their escape.

The late arrivals, gathering a word here and there, managed to understand that there was a great field of alluvial discovered just over the ridge, and seeing that every one in the room was fairly well occupied for the time being, the idea found favour among them that it would be a useful application of the knowledge to start out at once and peg out a few claims ahead of the others. The man to whom the idea came whispered it to his neighbour, who happened to be the owner of the next hole to his on the Creek, and from whom he had, at times, borrowed some flour for his damper, when his stores had run out.

"Jim," he said, leaning his head forward and executing a portentous wink, "git."

Jim looked at him for a moment before he realized the significance of the tip.

"Good for you," he answered. "We'll best these----" and he used a mining term which signified the others.