The Tale of Timber Town

“Holee Smoke!” cried the Prospector. “Look to your gold, gen’lemen – there’s thieves abroad, and one of us may be harbourin’ a serpent unaware. Ben, my lovely pal, consider yourself arrested.”

“Do I understand there’s a writ out?” asked Moonlight, serious, judicial, intensely solemn. “This must be put a stop to instantly. Imagine our virtuous friend in gaol.”

“Anyway, joking apart, the men I have brought know all about it,” said Scarlett. “You’ve got till to-morrow morning to make tracks, Benjamin.”

The goldsmith coughed, and stood up in the full blaze of the fire-light. “I confess to nothing,” he said. “My strong point hasn’t been my piety, I own to that. I’m not much of a hot gospeller. I can’t call to mind any works of unusual virtue perpetrated by me in unthinking moments. I’ll go even so far as this: I’ll acknowledge there are times when, if I let myself off the chain, I’d astonish all Timber Town; for there lurks somewhere inside my anatomy a demon which, let loose, would turn the town into a little hell, but, gentlemen, believe me, he is bound hand and foot, he’s in durance vile. I’m no saint, but I’m no forger or counterfeiter, or animal of that sort – not yet. I have notions sometimes that I’d make a first-class burglar, if I gave my mind thoroughly to the business: I’d go to work in a scientific way; I’d do the business in a workmanlike fashion. I’ve got a strong leaning towards the trade, and yet I never burgled once, I who take a pleasure in investigating locks and latches and all the hundred-and-one contraptions used against thieves. But what is Timber Town? – a trap. The man who goes housebreaking in a little tin-pot place like that deserves to be caught. No, it is too isolated, too solitary, too difficult of egress to foreign parts, is Timber Town. The idea is preposterous, foolish, untenable – excellent word, untenable – and as for forging, the thing is so ridiculous that it isn’t worth confuting. But what’s this about robbing mails? What mails?”

“The incoming English mail,” said Scarlett. “Someone went through the bags before they were delivered.”

“Ah!” said Benjamin, “we must look for the motive in the perpetration of such a crime as that. We’ll grant that the robbery took place – we’ll make that concession. But what was the motive? The thief would expect one of two things – either to enhance his wealth, or to obtain valuable information. Who does the cap fit? Personally, I am as poor as a crow but for this gold: as regards information, all the secrets of the citizens of Timber Town do not interest me – I have no use for scandal – and as I have no rivals in my calling, mere trade secrets have no charm for me. The police are chuckle-heads.” Tresco buried his face in his pannikin, and then re-lit his pipe.

“Very good argyment,” commented the hirsute Prospector, “very clear and convincin’, but the police aren’t open to argyment – they act on instinct.”

“Armed with a writ, a policeman is like a small boy with a shotgun,” remarked Moonlight – “he must let it off. I don’t say you’re guilty, Tresco, but I say the minions of the Law will have you in their clutches if you don’t make yourself scarce.”

“An’ just as I was accumulating the one little pile of my life,” murmured Benjamin. “Sometimes I think the gods show incompetence in the execution of their duty; sometimes I think there ain’t no gods at all, but only a big, blind Influence that blunders on through Creation, trampling promiscuous on small fry like me.” He pulled at his pipe contemplatively. “Decamp, is it? Obscure my fairy-like proportions from the common gaze? But who’s to look after my interests here? What’s to become of my half of the gold yet ungot?”

“Can’t you trust a mate?” said Bill. “Ain’t I acted square so far? What are you gettin’ at? I’ll work the claim to its last ounce, and then I’ll go whacks, same as if you’d bin here all the time. Then you can leave the country. Till then I’ll put you away in a hiding-place where all the traps in the blanky country” – Bill had worked on Australian fields, and showed it in his speech – “won’t find you, not if they search for years.”

Scarlett rose. He had put on his garments, now dry and warm. “So-long, Benjamin,” he said. “You may be the biggest criminal unhung, for all I know, but you have one thing in your favour: if you robbed those mails it must have been for the benefit of another man.”

Moonlight bade good-bye, but as though to make up for his mate’s aspersion, said, “I know nothing of this business, but I know the police. If they’re not turned into a holy show when they set foot in this camp to look for you, may I never find another ounce of gold. Keep your end up, Benjamin. So-long.” And he followed his mate into the darkness.

The Prospector was wrapped in thought. He sat, gazing into the fire, for fully ten minutes. Then he said, “There’s three ways – the Forks, the Saddle, and the Long Valley. I give ’em my own names. The Saddle’s the safest. It’s a bit of a tough climb, but it’s sure. There’s no hurry, but we must leave here at dawn, before these newsters reach the claim, which Moonlight’ll see isn’t jumped. So we’ll sleep happy and comfortable, pack our swags just before daylight, take all our gold along with us, and cook our tucker when we make our first halt. All serene, my lovely Bishop; all thought out and planned, just like in a book. Never hurry in the bush, my beautiful ecclesiastic, as nothing’s ever gained by that. More haste, less speed – in the bush, my learned preacher. What a pity they didn’t catch you young and turn you into a sky-pilot, Ben. The way you jawed them two was fit for the pulpit. But now I know where you got the money to repay me that £117. I don’t want any explanation. I know where you got it.”

CHAPTER XXIV

The Goldsmith Comes to Town

Timber Town was in a state of commotion. The news of the discovery of the new gold-field had spread far and wide, and every steamer which came into the port was crowded with clammering diggers. Every boarding-house was full to overflowing, every inn was choked with men in heavy boots and corduroy trousers; the roads on the outskirts of the town were lined with rows of tents; everybody talked of the El Dorado in the mountains; there was no thought but of gold; men were buying stores in every shop; pack-horses stood with their heavy loads, in every inn-yard; and towards the bush, threading their way through the tortuous gorge that led into the heart of the mountains, a continual string of diggers, laden with heavy “swags” or leading patient over-laden horses, filed into the depths of the forest.

Jake Ruggles had lived a troubled life since his legal head and overlord, the official sponsor of his promising young life, had dropped out of his existence, as a stone drops to the bottom of a well and is no more seen. Upon his immature shoulders rested all the worry of the goldsmith’s business. He was master of Tresco’s bench; the gravers and the rat-tail files, the stock-drills and the corn-tongs were under his hand for good or for evil. With blow-pipe and burnisher, with plush-wheel and stake-anvil he wrought patiently; almost bursting with responsibility, yet with anxiety gnawing at his heart. And the lies he told on behalf of his “boss”! – lies to men with unpaid accounts in their hands, lies to constables with bits of blue paper from the Clerk of the Court, lies to customers whose orders could not be executed except by the master-goldsmith. On all sides the world pressed heavily on Jake. His wizened face was quickly assuming the aspect of a little old man’s; his furtive eyes began to wear a scared look; sleep had ceased to visit his innocent couch with regularity; his appetite, which formerly had earned him a reputation with his peers, was now easily appeased with a piece of buttered bread and a cup of milkless tea; the “duff” and rice puddings, of the goldsmith’s making, had passed out of his life even as had the “boss” himself. Never was there a more badgered, woe-begone youth than Jake.

It was night time. The shutters of the shop were up, the door was bolted, the safe, with its store of gold-set gewgaws, was locked, and the key rested securely in the apprentice’s pocket, but by the light of a gas-jet, his head bent over the bench, Jake was hard at work on a half-finished ring. In one hand he held a tapering steel rod, on which was threaded a circle of metal which might have been mistaken for brass; in the other he held a light hammer with which he beat the yellow zone. Tap-tap. “Jerusalem, my ’appy ’ome, oh! how I long for thee!” Tap-tap-tap went the hammer. “If the ‘old man’ was on’y here to lend a hand, I’d give a week’s pay. The gold’s full o’ flaws – all along of the wrong alloy, in smeltin’ – full o’ cracks and crevices.” He took the gold hoop off the steel rod, placed it on a piece of charred wood, pulled the gas-jet towards him, and with the blow-pipe impinged little jets of flame upon the yellow ring. “An’ the galloot that come in this afternoon said, ‘I always find the work turned out of this shop ah – excellent, ah – tip-top, as good as anything I ever bought in the Old Country, don’tcherknow.’ Yah! Gimme silver, that’s all. Gimme a butterfly buckle to make, or a monogram to saw out, an’ I wouldn’t call the Pope my uncle.” His eye lifted from his work and rested on a broken gold brooch, beautiful with plaited hair under a glass centre. “An’ that fussy old wood-hen’ll be in, first thing to-morrow, askin’ for ‘the memento of my poor dear ’usband, my child, the one with the ’air in it’ – carrotty ’air. An’ those two bits of ’air-pins that want them silver bangles by ten o’clock, they’ll be here punctual. I’m just fair drove silly with badgerin’ wimmen. I’m goin’ ratty with worry. When the boss comes back from his spree, I’ll give ’im a bit o’ my mind. I’ll tell ’im, if he must go on a bend he should wait till the proper time – Christmas, Anniversary of the Settlement, Easter, or even a Gov’ment Holiday. But at a time like this, when the town’s fair drippin’ with dollars … stupid ole buck-rabbit! An’ when he can’t be found, the mutton-headed bobbies suddenly become suspicious. It’s no good for me to tell ’em it’s his periodical spree —they say it’s robbery. Oh, well, I back my opinion, that’s all. But whether it’s the one, or the other, of all the chuckle-headed old idiots that ever was born” – Tap-tap. It was not the noise of Jake’s hammer, but a gentle knocking at the side-door of the workshop.

The apprentice rose quietly, and put his ear to the key-hole. Tap-tap-tap.

“Who’s there?”

“Open the door,” said a soft voice. “It’s me. I want to come in.”

“Very likely you do. There’s many more’d like to come in here.”

“Is that you, Jake?”

“Never you mind. Who’re you?”

“You weasel-faced young imp, am I to burst open my own door?”

The mystery was at an end. In a moment, the bolt was withdrawn and Benjamin Tresco stood in his workshop.

But before he spoke, he bolted the door behind him. Then he said, “Well?”

“So you’ve come back?” said Jake, fiercely.

“Looks like it,” said the goldsmith. “How’s things?”

“Gone to the devil. How d’you expect me to keep business goin’ when you go on a howling spree, for weeks?”

“Spree? Me? My dear innocent youth, I have clean forgotten the very taste of beer. At this present moment, I stand before you a total abstainer of six weeks’ duration. And yet what I ask for is not beer, but bread – I’m as hungry as a wolf; I’ve hardly eaten anything for two days. What have you got in the house?”

“Nothin’.”

“What!”

“I don’t ’ave no time to cook. When I can find time, I go up to The Lucky Digger and get a good square feed. D’you expect me to do two men’s work and cook as well?”

Tresco undid the small “swag” which he carried, and before the astonished eyes of his apprentice he disclosed fully a hundred ounces of gold.

“Jee-rusalem! Blame me if you ain’t been diggin’!”

“That’s so, my son.”

“And the police are fair ratty because they thought you were hiding from the Law.”

“So I am, my son.”

“Garn!”

“Solemn fact – there’s a writ out against me.”

“Well?”

“I ain’t got a mind to be gaoled at such a glorious time in the history of Timber Town. I want to get more gold, stacks of it.”

“An’ where do I come in?”

“You come in as owner of this business by and by – if you’re a good boy.”

“Huh! I want to go diggin’ too.”

“All in good time, my energetic youth, all in good time. But for the present, give me some food.”

“Didn’t I tell you there isn’t any?” yelled Jake.

“Very good, very good, but don’t talk so loud. Take this half-crown, and go to The Lucky Digger. Tell the young lady in the bar that you have a friend who’s dying of hunger. Tell her to fill a jug with a quart of beer, and a basket with tucker of sorts. And hurry back; for, by my sacred aunt, if I don’t get something better presently, I shall turn cannibal and eat you!”

While the boy was gone, Tresco weighed the gold that lay on the bench. It came to 111 ounces, and this, valued at the current price of gold from Bush Robin Creek – the uninitiated are possibly unaware that as one star differeth from another star in glory, so the gold from one locality differs in price from that found in another – came to £430 2s. 6d.

Finding the safe locked, Tresco, whistling softly, turned down the gas, and sat at his bench in the gloom.

When Jake returned he was cautiously admitted, the door was re-bolted, and the gas was turned up sufficiently to show the goldsmith the way to his mouth.

“Where’s the key of the safe, Jake?”

“Where it ought to be.”

“You young imp, anty up.”

Jake produced the key from his pocket. “D’you suppose I label it and put it in the winder?”

“Put this gold away – there’s 111 ounces. I’ll bring some more next time I come. Now.” He lifted the jug, and drank. When he set it down again, it was half empty. “That’s what I call a moment of bliss. No one who hasn’t spent a month in the bush knows what a thirst really is; he ain’t got no conception what beer means. Now, what’s in the basket?” He lifted the white napkin that covered his supper. “Ham!” A beautific smile illumined his face. “Ham, pink and white and succulent, cut in thin slices by fair hands. Delicious! And what’s this? Oyster patties, cold certainly, but altogether lovely. New bread, cheese, apple turn-over! Couldn’t be better. The order of the menu is; first, entrees – that means oysters – next, ham, followed by sweets, and topped off with a morsel of cheese. Stand by and watch me eat – a man that has suffered semi-starvation for nearly a month.”

Jake lit a cigarette, an indulgence with which in these days of worry and stress he propitiated his overwrought nerves. He drew in the smoke with all the relish of a connoisseur, and expelled it through his nostrils.

“Is this gold the result of six weeks’ work?” he asked.

“No, barely one week’s,” answered Tresco, his mouth full of ham and new bread.

“Crikey!” Jake inhaled more cigarette smoke. “’Seems to me our potty little trade ain’t in it. I move that we both go in for the loocrative profession of diggin’.”

“Mumf – mumf – muff – muff.” The ham had conquered Tresco’s speech.

“Jes’ so. That’s what I think, boss.”

Benjamin gave a gulp. “I won’t take you,” he said, as plainly as possible.

“Oh, you won’t?”

“I won’t.”

“Then, suppose I go on my own hook, eh?”

“You’ve got to stop and look after this shop. You’re apprenticed to me.”

“Oh, indeed!”

“If a man chooses to spend a little holiday in the bush, is his apprentice to suppose his agreement’s cancelled? Not a bit of it.”

“An’ suppose a man chooses to spend a little holiday in gaol, what then?”

“That’s outside the sphere of practical politics, my son.”

“I don’t know so much about that. I think different. I think we’ll cry quits. I think I’ll go along with you, or likely there’ll be trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“Yes, trouble.”

“What sort of trouble, jackanapes?”

“Why, crimson trouble.”

“Indeed.”

“I’ve got you tied hand and foot, boss. You can take that from me.”

“Is that so? What do you think you can do?”

“I intend to go along with you.”

“But I start to-night. If I can scrape together enough food to last a week or two. But I’ll take you along. You shall come. I’ll show you how I live. Now, then, what d’you say?” There was a twinkle in Tresco’s eye, and the corners of his mouth twitched with merriment.

“Think I don’t know when I’ve got a soft thing on?” Jake took off his apron, and hung it on a nail. “Shan’t want that, for a month or two anyway.” Then he faced the “boss” with, “Equal whacks, you old bandicoot. I’ll find the tucker, and we’ll share the gold.”

Tresco’s smile broke into a hearty laugh. He put his hands to his sides, threw back his head, and fairly chortled.

“I don’t see any joke.” Jake looked at his master from beneath his extravagant eyebrows.

“You’ll … you’ll get the tucker … see?”

“Why, yes – how’s a man to live?”

“An’ you’ll help swag it?”

“’Course.”

“You’ll implicitly obey your lawful lord and master, out on the wallaby?”

“’Spect I’ll ’ave to.”

“You won’t chiack or poke borak at his grey and honoured head when, by reason of his endowment of adipose tissue, his wind gives out?”

“Oh, talk sense. Adipose rabbits’ skins!”

“All these several and collective points being agreed upon, my youthful Adonis, I admit you into partnership.”

“Done,” said the apprentice, with emphasis. “It’s a bargain. Go and sleep, and I’ll fossick round town for tucker – I’m good for a sixty-pound swag, and you for eighty. So-long.”

He turned off the gas, took the key of the side door, which he locked after him, and disappeared, whilst Tresco groped his way to bed.

The surreptitious goldsmith had slept for two hours when the stealthy apprentice let himself quietly into the dark and cheerless house. He bore on his back a heavy bag of flour, and carried on his arm a big basket filled with minor packages gleaned from sleepy shopkeepers, who had been awakened by the lynx-eyed youth knocking at their backdoors.

In the cheerful and enlivening company of an alarum clock, Jake retired to his couch, which consisted of a flax-stuffed mattress resting on a wooden bedstead, and there he quickly buried himself in a weird tangle of dirty blankets, and went to sleep.

At the conclusion of three brief hours, which to the heavy sleeper appeared as so many minutes, the strident alarum woke the apprentice to the stress of life. By the light of a tallow candle he huddled on his clothes, and entered the goldsmith’s chamber.

“Now, then, boss, three o’clock! Up you git!”

Benjamin rubbed his eyes, sat up in bed, and yawned.

“‘’Tis the voice of the sluggard, I heard him complain:You’ve waked me too soon – I must slumber again.’

What’s the time, Jake?”

“Ain’t I tellin’ you? – three o’clock. If we don’t want to be followed by every digger in the town, we must get out of it before dawn.”

“Wise young Solomon, youth of golden promise. Go and boil the kettle. We’ll have a snack before we go. Then for fresh fields and pastures new.”

The goldsmith bounded out of bed, with a buoyancy which resembled that of an india-rubber ball.

“Ah-ha!

‘Under the greenwood treeWho loves to lie with me,And tune his merry noteUnto the sweek bird’s throat,Come hither.’

You see, Jakey, mine, we were eddicated when we was young.” Benjamin had jumped into his clothes as he talked. “A sup and a snack, and we flit by the light of the moon.”

“There ain’t no moon.”

“So much the better. We’ll guide our steps by the stars’ pale light and the beams of the Southern Cross.”

By back lanes and by-roads the goldsmith and his boy slunk out of the town. At the mouth of the gorge where diggers’ tents lined the road, they walked delicately, exchanging no word till they were deep in the solitude of the hills.

As the first streak of dawn pierced the gloom of the deep valley, they were wading, knee-deep, a ford of the river, whose banks they had skirted throughout their journey. On the further side the forest, dank, green, and dripping with dew, received them into its impenetrable shades, but still the goldsmith toiled on; his heavy burden on his back, and the panting, weary, energetic, enthusiastic apprentice following his steps.

Leaving the track, Tresco led the way up a steep gully, thickly choked with underscrub, and dark with the boughs of giant trees. Forcing their way through tangled supple-jacks and clinging “lawyer” creepers which sought to stay their progress, the wayfarers climbed till, as day dawned, they paused to rest their wearied limbs before a sheer cliff of rock.

“It’s not very far now,” said the goldsmith, as he wiped his dripping brow. “This is the sort of work to reduce the adipose tissue, my son. D’you think you could find your way here by yourself, indomitable Jakey?”

“Huh! ’Course,” replied the breathless youth, proud to be his master’s companion in such a romantic situation, and glorying in his “swag”. “Is this your bloomin’ camp?”

“No, sir.” Tresco glanced up the face of the great limestone rock which barred their path. “Not exactly. We’ve got to scale this cliff, and then we’re pretty well there.”

A few supple-jacks hung down the face of the rock. These Tresco took in his hand, and twisted them roughly into a cable. “’Look natural, don’t they?” he said. “’Look as if they growed t’other end, eh? Now, watch me.” With the help of his rope of lianas he climbed up the rugged cliff, and when at the summit, he called to Jake to tie the “swags” to separate creepers. These he hoisted to the top of the cliff, and shortly afterwards the eager face of the apprentice appeared over the brow.

“Here we are,” exclaimed Benjamin, “safe as a church. Pull up the supple-jacks, Jake.”

With an enthusiasm which plainly betokened a mind dwelling on bushrangers and hidden treasure, the apprentice did as he was told.

Out of breath through his exertions, he excitedly asked, “What’s the game, boss? Where’s the bloomin’ plant?”

“Plant?” replied the goldsmith.

“Yes, the gold, the dollars?”

“Dollars? Gold?”

“Yes, gold! ’Think I don’t know? Theseyer rocks are limestone. Who ever saw gold in limestone formation? Eh?”

“How do you know it’s limestone?”

“Yah! Ain’t I bin down to the lime-kiln, by Rubens’ wharf, and seen the lime brought over the bay? What’s the game? Tell us.”

“The thing that I’m most interested in, at this present moment,” – the goldsmith took up his heavy “swag” – “is tucker.”

Without further words, he led the way between perpendicular outcrops of rocks whose bare, grey sides were screened by fuchsia trees, birch saplings, lance-wood, and such scrub as could take root in the shallow soil. Turning sharply round a projecting rock, he passed beneath a tall black birch which grew close to an indentation in the face of the cliff. Beneath the great tree the heels of the goldsmith crushed the dry, brown leaves deposited during many seasons; then in an instant he disappeared from the sight of the lynx-eyed Jake, as a rabbit vanishes into its burrow.

“Hi! Here! Boss! Where the dooce has the ole red-shank got too?”

A muffled voice, coming as from the bowels of the earth, said, “Walk inside. Liberty Hall… Free lodging and no taxes.”

Jake groped his way beneath the tree, surrounded on three sides by the limestone cliff. In one corner of the rock was a sharp depression, in which grew shrubs of various sorts. Dropping into this, the lad pushed his way through the tangled branches and stood before the entrance of a cave.

Inside Tresco held a lighted candle in his hand. In front of him stood Jake, spellbound.

Overhead, the ceiling was covered with white and glistening stalactites; underfoot, the floor was strewn with bits of carbonate and the broken bases of stalagmites, which had been shattered to make a path for the ruthless iconoclast who had made his home in this pearly-white temple, built without hands.

Tresco handed Jake another lighted candle.

“Allow me to introduce you, my admirable Jakey, to my country mansion, where I retire from the worry of business, and turn my mind to the contemplation of Nature. This is the entrance hall, the portico: observe the marble walls and the ceiling-decorations – Early English, perpendicular style.”