“Oh! Jack!” said the damsel, indifferently; “he won’t come in here, he’s at the second table with the coachman and the drovers. This is the gentlemen’s room.”
“How very curious!” he exclaimed. “I thought every one was alike in this part of the world; all free and equal, that sort of thing. I shouldn’t the least mind spending the evening with er – John Carter – or any other respectable miner.”
The girl looked him over before she spoke. “Well, Mr. Blount (Jack said that was your name), you mightn’t, though you’re just from England, but other people might. When the police magistrate, the Goldfields Warden, and the District Surveyor come round, they always stay here, and the down river squatters. They wouldn’t like it, you may be sure, nor you either, perhaps, if the room was pretty full.”
He smiled, as he answered, “So this is an aristocratic country, I perceive, in spite of the newspaper froth about a democratic government. Well, I must take time, and learn the country’s ways. I shall pick them up by degrees, I suppose.”
“No fear!” said the damsel. “It’ll all come in time, not but there’s places at the back where all sorts sit down together and smoke and drink no end. But not at Bunjil. Would you like some apple-pie to follow, there’s plenty of cream?”
Mr. Blount would. “Apple-pie reminds one of Devonshire, and our boyhood – especially the cream,” thought he. “What fun I should have thought this adventure a few years ago. Not that it’s altogether without interest now. It’s a novelty, at any rate.”
CHAPTER II
Mr. Blount, as he sat before the fire, enjoying his final pipe before retiring for the night, was free to confess that he had rarely spent a more satisfactory evening – even in the far-famed, old-fashioned, road-side inns of old England. The night was cold – Carter’s forecast had been accurate. It was a hard frost, such as his short stay in a coast city had not acquainted him with. The wide bush fire-place, with a couple of back logs, threw out a luxurious warmth, before which, in a comfortable arm-chair, he had been reading the weekly paper with interest.
The well-cooked, juicy steak, the crisp potatoes, the apple-pie with bounteous cream, constituted a meal which a keen-edged appetite rendered sufficient for all present needs. The difficult ride and too hazardous adventure constituted a fair day’s work – being indeed sufficiently fatiguing to justify rest without bordering on exhaustion. It was a case of jam satis.
He looked forward to an enjoyable night’s sleep, was even aware of a growing sense of relief that he was not required to take the road next morning. The cob would be better for a few days’ rest, before doing more mountain work. He would like also to ramble about this neighbourhood, and see what the farms and sluicing claims were like. And a better base of operations than the Bunjil Hotel, no man need desire.
He had gone to the stable with Carter, as became a prudent horse-owner, where he had seen the cob comfortably bedded down for the night with a plenteous supply of sweet-smelling oaten hay before him, and an unstinted feed of maize in the manger.
“They’re all right for the night,” said Carter. “Your nag will be the better for a bit of a turn round to-morrow afternoon, just to keep his legs from swellin’. I’ll be off about sunrise, and back again the fourth day, or early the next. They’ll look after you here, till then.”
Mr. Blount was of opinion that he could look after himself from what he had seen of the establishment, and said so, but “was nevertheless much obliged to him for getting him such good quarters.” So to bed, as Mr. Pepys hath it, but before doing so, he rang the bell, and questioned Sheila – for that was her name, as he had ascertained by direct inquiry – as to the bath arrangements.
“I shall want a cold bath at half-past seven – a shower bath, for choice. Is there one?”
“Oh, yes – but very few go in for it this time of year. The P.M. does, when he comes round, and the Goldfields Warden. It’s one of those baths that you fill and draw up over your head. Then you pull a string.”
“That will do very well.”
“All right – I’ll tell George; but won’t it be very cold? It’s a hard frost to-night.”
“No – the colder it is, the warmer you feel after it.”
“Well, good-night, sir! Breakfast at half-past eight o’clock. Is that right? Would you like sausages, boiled eggs and toast?”
“Yes! nothing could be better. My appetite seems improving already.”
The Kookaburra chorus, and the flute accompaniment of the magpies in the neighbouring tree tops, awakened Mr. Blount, who had not so much as turned round in bed since about five minutes after he had deposited himself between the clean lavender-scented sheets. Looking out, he faintly discerned the dawn light, and also that the face of the country was as white as if it had been snowing. He heard voices in the verandah, and saw Little-River-Jack’s horse led out, looking as fresh as paint. That gentleman, lighting his pipe carefully, mounted and started off at a fast amble up the road which skirted the range, and led towards a gap in the hills. Mr. Blount thought it would be as well to wait until Sheila had the fire well under way, by which he intended to toast himself after the arctic discipline of the shower bath, with the thermometer at 28 degrees Fahrenheit.
The bi-weekly mail had providentially arrived at breakfast time, bringing in its bags the local district newspaper, and a metropolitan weekly which skimmed the cream from the cables and telegrams of the day. This was sufficiently interesting to hold him to the arm-chair, in slippered ease, for the greater part of an hour, while he lingered over his second cup of tea.
His boots, renovated from travel stains and mud, standing ready, he determined on a stroll, and took counsel with Sheila, as to a favourable locality.
The damsel was respectful, but conversed with him on terms of perfect conversational equality. She had also been fairly educated, and was free from vulgarity of tone or accent. To him, straight from the old country, a distinctly unfamiliar type worth studying.
“Where would you advise me to go for a walk?” he said. “It’s good walking weather, and I can’t sit in the house this fine morning, though you have made such a lovely fire.”
“I should go up the creek, and have a look at the sluicing claim. People say it’s worth seeing. You can’t miss it if you follow up stream, and you’ll hear the ‘water gun’ a mile before you come to it.”
“‘Water gun?’ What ever is that?”
“Oh! it’s the name of a big hose with a four-inch nozzle at the end. They lead the water for the race into it, and then turn it against the creek bank; that undermines tons of the stuff they want to sluice – you’ll hear it coming down like a house falling!”
“And what becomes of it then?”
“Oh! it goes into the tail-race, and after that it’s led into the riffles and troughs – the water keeps driving along, and they’ve some way of washing the clay and gravel out, and leaving the gold behind.”
“And does it pay well?”
“They say so. It only costs a penny a ton to wash, or something like that. It’s the cheapest way the stuff can be treated. Our boys saw it used in California, and brought it over here.”
So, after taking a last fond look at the cob, and wishing he could exchange him for Keewah, but doubting if any amount of boot would induce Carter to part with his favourite, he set out along the bank of the river and faced the uplands.
His boots were thick, his heart was light – the sun illumined the frost-white trunks, and diamond-sprayed branches of the pines and eucalypts – the air was keen and bracing. “What a glorious thing it is to be alive on a day like this,” he told himself. “How glad I am that I decided to leave Melbourne!” As he stepped along with all the elasticity of youth’s high health and boundless optimism, he marked the features of the land. There were wheel-tracks on this road, which he was pleased to note. Though the soil was