A FIND ON BUTTAGONG.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 9156, 13 July 1895, Page 3

A FIND ON BUTTAGONG.

| — • j Bt E. T. Fbickbu. [ That Amos Meredith, the manager of Buttagong, was keen, and could be passionate upon occasion, I knew ; but I was unprepared for tho almost franti. rsge that mustered him when he learned that the rouieab.nt with the lurching walk and the broad stain of red across his cheek had been permitted to~ leave the sheds. He did not strike the overseer who gavtthe news, bur, lif ing his heavy whip (w. had just returned from riding) hi_-h above hishesrl, be brought it down with swinging forca upon the plank table in front of us, waking all the dusty echoes of the place and giving even my seasoned nerves a twheh. The first few words that Meredith spoke were of the sort that need no r.ccirding. Then he broke out with— "The road, tasn ? Five Springs way, you .ay' S-jnd tho horses round again, and quick. Two hours' start has he ? TVe should catch lain then before he ia at The Forks?" '"Maurice!" he exclaimed to mc thr.e minutes later as he dung into the saddle, ''You can come or leave it alone, as you like ; but it will be a smart canter." I was beside him 'ere he had finished speaking, aud, tired as our horses were, we were at full stretch again for miles, half smothered in the fine white dust. In the fli-Rt breathing space I remonstrated, chiefly oat of curiosity. " The man cannot shear." '•'He was not engaged to." "Ua is no use in either sheds or stockyards, so Dunstable says." "Likely enough." '• He will work at nothing. " He will not need." Being thus enigmatically answered, I was prepared to be surprised at nothing, nob even at the elaborate duplicity that caused Meredith to rein into a leisurely pace long before we drew upon the dirt-grimed figure slouching along in the scrub by the roadside. He even rodo past apparently unnoticing, but a dozen yards ahead pulled round and confronted the swagman, as though iv obedience toa sudden recollection. "By the way," he said, " Dunstable mentioned to mc that you were off. The job not to your fancy, eh? ' ''Not by chalks." replied the fellow surlily: " nor the jobmaster either, if that's what he calls himself." Tho man was tough and nugtjetty enough, but not a station hand, as one could sea at a glance. A sailor, perhaps, by his bronzed skin and keen eyes, or, more likely still, an old digger, judging by his hands. " Get back to Butfcagong," said Meredith, shortly ; '"I've got a softer thing." The fellow stood dubiously as though inclined to question, but was given no opportunity. •* To Buttagong 1" repeated the manager; "you know the road thereabouts well enough, my man, if I am not mistaken. We shall overtake you again before you are back and come to mc at the homestead directly you go in. It will be worth your while." Then Meredith cantered on, and I beside him, and looking round in the saddle presently, we saw that the discharged rouacabout had solved his doubts by obeying, and was tramping back along tbe road he had come. Out of sight, we offsaddled, bobbled tbe horses, and rested for an hour or more under the shade of the leafiest gum. After a few abortive queries I smoked in silence, for Meredith was either prodigiously out of temper or preoccupied to actual abstraction. He frowned and whistled, and was seemingly unconscious how exasperatingly glum and uncompanionable he had become. That evening, upon our return to the station, Meredith's manner underwent a change, hi. fit of silence giving place to subdued restlessness and excicen_ent. When we had lit our pipes at the conclusion of the evening meal, be rose, and glancing at his watch, observed :— " In ten minutes, Joseph Hatchett—that is the man we held iv cha.e this morning —should be here. I named half-past seven* You are puzzled at present; but be patient, and if we have luck, you shall assist at a discovery." "A discovery!" I replied, with an assumption only of unconcern, for my curiosity was in reality strongly aroused. "And is our mysterious swagman con nected with it?" " He can help us; ab least, I hope so. See here," continued Meredith, " this is the lock which I suspect our friend the rouseabout has a key to fit." He drew from his pocket-book a slip of paper, dingy either from age or exposure, and spread it upon tho table before him. Glancing over his shoulder, I saw that the stains were chiefly weather marks. Blotches of moisture had discoloured the surface here and there, completely obliterating much of the faint pencilling which had covered it. The words, still legible, ran as follows— " Canter lies . . . lead he struck . . . find . . . pegged out . . . his own claim." I whistled softly. "This is the enigma, is it? You are en the track of a gold find, eh 1 But that is apt to be a tantaliting quest, Meredith." Ha rested his elbows on the table, and dropping his chin upon his hands, scrutinised the document with bent brows, as no doubt he had done many and many a time before. "Have you ever heard," he asked presently, "of David Dalton—Black Dalton they used to call him hereabouts ?" "The original owner of Buttagong," I replied promptly. "The first lessee. Yes. At his death, eighteen years ago, the station passed into the bands of the company, which had a flrßt mortgage over the place and the stock upon it. It is for that same company, as you may know, that I still manage the concern. Dalton left neither kith nor kin so far as we could discover, so that the fate of the property mattered little. But it seemed siugular that a grasping niggardly man as he was, and a shrewd contriver too, should have allowed his affairs to drift so hopelessly to the bad. He never would have done it, that may be regarded as a certainty, but for the mental or moral breakdown which overtook him." I podded and waited for more. "Of that breakdown, this unintelligible scrawl found in his hand as he lay dead near his own eastern boundary fence is tbe final evidence." Again Meredith dropped his eyes upon tbe paper fragment before him. "Of all prejudices deep-rooted in the mind of old Dalton, the traditional distrust and aversion of the small pastoralists towards the gold seekers was the most intense. He bated the vsry mention of prospectors, and their appearance from time to time upon his run roused him to fury none the less acute because of its impotence. He was powerless, and he knew it, to oppose their coming, but whatever bitter spite could do to hamper their operations and discourage their hopes he did. Rations were either refused on Buttagong or grudgingly given and dearly charged tor, and the di.gers who chose to linger in the locality lived in a state of perpetual hostility with the station hands. They gave as good as they got generally, but if they were decern, peaceable men they found the game grow wearisome after awhile. One of tbe l_~»t prospectors to earn the anathemas of Dalton by visiting Buttagong was a maa called Ferdinand Canter, whose .iame occurs here. He was young, sanguine, and endowed, moreover, with as much native obstinacy as old Dalton himself. Hence the more unwelcome his presence was seen to be, the more persistently he stayed, P*©g.

pects were poor, but he refused to relax his efforts. He sank holes which the j station hands had subsequently to fill up, j and cradled perseveringly for weeks together without, so far as could be ascertained, achieving any success worth speaking of. At last, however, came the day when Canter must have seen his reward within his grasp. There was an interview between him and lsi-j enemy, whereat ha must have exultiagly told Black Dal'or. oi his liud, snd po.sibly taken a malicioa.-- pleasure ia prophesying a time near as haad when his holding should be cut up by a miiiers' army, of which the wandering prospectors had been merely the advance guard. The men h_il met not far from the homestead, and several of the bauds heard Daltoh's vo'ce raised high and the lucky prospector answering him in a quieter but a jeering i one." "So fcr," continued Meredith, "there are facts to give. The rest to tell is necessarily, in a larger deg-.e, surmise." "None the les3 worth hearing," I interjectsd ; " go on." "That D.Alton presently temporised wi'h his opponent is certai'i that he purchased, or thought he purchased, from him his secret is more than probable. The two rode together from the spot where they had conversed to an outlying portion of the run, heading iv their course away from the locality where most of the prospectors had been sinking, and presumably in the direction that Canter had made his boasted find. But Dalton, it would seem, was hood-vviuked after all, and the true spot was never discovered to him. For although Canter left the run with the price of his information presumably in bis pocket, the lead spoken of was nob worked then, nor has it ever been. Months passed, and Dalton wandered like a restless spirit about his holding neglecting the duties that had formed his daily routine, searching always for what he never found, and sinkiug day by day deeper into a morass of difficulties. It was ona morning early that the old couple, who, with himself, constituted the entire household at Buttagong, missed their master from the homestead. He had risen and st*rted out upon his pe.r_m.bult*tion* sooner than customary it was at first thought. Subsequently it became apparent that he had not retired to rest tbe previous night. The demon of disquiet possessing him had led him far afield, and not until two days later, in the dusk of a winter's evening, was bis body found utark under a clump of wattle bushes, the face set as grimly iv death as it hf-d been in life, and the paper clutched in his hanc*. offering a vindictive testimony both to the deception that had been practised upon him and to the triumph that had arrived too late. Old Dalton, beyond doubt, had succeeded at last in the quest that had so long baffled him. What says he here." Again Meredith raised the scrap of paper he held—"Canter lies ; the lead he struck——" Now comes the hiatus, upon supplying which the issue really hangs— "What is the locality which Dalton's pencil traced and which the rain wiped out as he lay in his damp sleep ? "Ah," I said, peering anew over my friend's shoulder and by tbis time fairly infected with the eagerness that stirred him, " who can tell us that 9" "No one," replied Meredith, "unless it be the man who w&3 Canter's mate at that time, who had worked by hi 3 side for months, and quitted the ground only when he did." " And that man is " "Is here now," said Meredith, as the door opened and the swagman we had ridden after stood before us. In the penetrating light of the lamp, which Meredith instantly turned up, I could hardly recognise the newcomer, for, in a cursory inspection from the saddle, I had evidently failed to read his features. The forehead waa lofty, and hot lacking in Intellectuality, the e-(-*skeeu and Piercing, and the face-^althbu^hTmarred by.'a broad discolouration—was stamped with a kind of power strangely out of consonance with the man's humble .rank in life. "Keduced from better things," I reflected inutantly. "Another instance of the social tragedies ! played out year by year in the Australian bush." As the man entered, Meredith waved him affably to a seat, and replied to his look of inquiry with the briefest of explanations. ." I told you this morning," he remarked, 'that I had easier work for you to do. Yon can be of use to mc, not in ths capacity for which you were rated on the station books, but as the former mate of Ferdy Canter. You were with him on this very run ?" "Six months and more," said Joseph Hatchett, "we were together; fair weather and foul, good luck and bad, and a straighter partner no man need hope to have." " Good luck and bad, you say. The bad came first, but the good did follow. Ferdy Canter struck it rich at last on Buttagong." "You know that?" queried the man, his eyes opening in surprise that impressed mc as either genuine or well-assumed. " I know it," rejoined Meredith, watching him narrowly, "as well as needs be. If you know it too, and a little more besides, tbe knowledge shall be worth the best season's work you ever put in." Still the same look of mute amazsment, and Meredith a trifle impatiently flung tbe discoloured slip of paper across the table. "Fill in those blanks," he said, shortly, "and it shall be as much to your profit as to mine. You, at least, can tell where Canter was last at work." In a few words he recounted the circumstances under which the document was found. A dark flush rose to the man's countenance as he listened, and it deepened as he scanned the writing. Minutes passed without further speech upon either side. Then Hatchett raised his face, transfigured with either greed or hatred. " Eighteen years," he said hoarsely, " and Ferdy had never come back to claim his own. Give mc your reading as far as you have got, and maybe I can complete the job." For answer, Meredith pushed over s slip in his own handwriting. "I have put within brackets," he said, 'a few of what seem to mc the likely, worde. Do you supply the rest." I glanced curiously at tha paper, which, with Meredith's interpolations, now ran as follows :— "Canter lies (in the story he has told. Tbe] lead he struck [is situated] . . . Land the] find [has been] pegged out Las] his own claim." Hatchett threw his arms above his head and laughed uproariously, but unmirth fully, as a man labouring under strong excitement. "Name your price," he cried, "and get trap and horses. If you have been clever enough to do so much it will go hard if I cannot do the rest." Few more words were exchanged, but Mereditb, keen though he was, urged delay until the morning. Hatchett, however, would not hear of it. "The moon is up," he said, still in the queer hoarse voice that had seized him a few minutes earlier. "We shall hardly need a lantern ; still bring one." "Picks and a spade," he said again, just before driving on*. They were thrown into the vehicle and we were away. Jolting over tbe ruts cut by innumerable wheels near the station buildings, we emerged soon upon moderately level grass land, well cleared, and then again, inclining towards tbe eastward boundary, had to pick our way more cautiously among the scattered tree stumps. Hatchett held tbe reins as one familiar with the road, and drove in silence*

"Where the ground was scarred and tossed into mounds, now grass grown, he pulled up abruptly and leapt from the vehicle. We were on the site of old gold workings as a glance told mc. The camp was gone, the voices that had once echoed along the gully were perhaps hushed for ever, and it waa a stark solitude upon which the white rays cf the mccn now screamed down. But to Hatchett every foot of the ground was altered, though it j Beou-eu as familiar a,* the f»ce of aa old ; friend, albei. disused with the wrinkles i of age. ; He measured with his ova--.line between I one tall gum-tree and tho iittle creek flow- ! ing almost at our feet, and struck his pick I confidently upon tho earth. j '"Here," he exclaimed, "ia the spot where Ferdy Canter s.-.nk his last shaft." "Not his last," sku! Meredith, who had followed the proceeding:* with unconcealed j imp'-tience. " Thexe were tho workings known of by Dalton and everybody else. ! But ie was not here thut Canter made hi. i find. He must h_v<> wandered on a more | distant search, and if you cannot tell j whither you know no more than we do." I For answer, Hatchett lifted his dis- ! figured face in the moonlight and laughed | again, harshly—• repellantiy. The pick swung above his head ia quick nervous strokes, and presently, infected by his energy, though little grasping even yet the thought that directed hi. blow 3, we joined him in the work. To mc, at least, without knowing what was to come, there seemed something grim aud uncanny ahout the whole business, and tho vision of we throe men feverishly delving in the dim light to open up the pit that other arms had dug nearly a score of years before, has often recurred to mc as a strange dream, dreamt in infancy, will haunt the mind in after years. Even now 1 shudder aa I recall the exclamation, half of rage aud half of triumph, uttered by Hatchett when the implement he wielded struck at last upon a something which he stooped to raise from the mullock at his feet. "Boneal" There would, after all.be nothiug in that to marvel at so greatly. Many a sheep had fallen inro a deserted shaft, and its c :rca-.e been lefc to rot there. But this thing that Hatchett lifted was different. What the oddly shaped object was I knew instinctively, even before the man holding it aluf. had pointed to the small circular hole drilled by a pistol ball through the frontal bone." "The luck," said Hatchett in shaky tones, " that Ferdy Canter struck on Buttagong. He was no man to hide a secret from hi 3 mate, though he may have paid Jack Dalton for favours received with a parting jibe, which cost him denrly." " You mean," queried Meredith, whom amazement had hitherto stricken into silence, '* that here lies a true man treacherously murdered, perhaps, in a moment of passion by one who, thank heaven, found his crime difficult to rest on. I suspected ib from your story of their quarrel; I knew it when I saw the halting sentences in which, when hi 3 own end stored him iv the face, Black Dalton tried to make confession of his guilt." " Confession 1" stammered Mereditb. "P-haw! man ; the papar you read with your wits wool-gathering upon buried treasures and big nuggets. Let mc read it for you." And erasing the interpolations laboriously framed by Meredith, Joseph Hatchett scrawled his own interpretation beneath :— "Canter lies [near here, silenced by an ounce of] lead. He struck [mc before I fired. You will] find [him] pegged out [in] his own claim." The decision is not for mc to give. The roadiug of neither Meredith nor Hatchett deemed conclusive; but lam bound to say that the authorities to whom our find on Buttagong was reported inclined in favour of the latter.— Australasian JPasto'r*liats' Review.