“Ah! too risky nowadays!” snaps Inspector Puttis, again interrupting his senior. “Can you get a written complaint? ‘We demand assistance,’ and that style of thing?”
“Oh! there’s Thompson, and that old German Bauer,—he wants to sell me a couple of cows. Either would do that for me, I think.”
“Umph!” grunts Inspector Puttis, “I’d like to see sergeant. Will think I’m up here about case.”
The white sergeant is summoned to the presence of the two superior officers, through the medium of a native constable who is weeding the garden close by, and, after a little word fencing, he settles down into an account of the occurrence which corresponds, in most particulars, with that of “our trustworthy correspondent.” In answer to a question put to him he continues,—
“I heard of the camp, sorr, from a young gintleman, yer honours, who kapes the stour at Riversleigh, an’ he tells me, sorr, that one of them miner chaps up at High Cliff had tould him as how two murthering thaves of nigger women was in the creek by their camp lately. ‘Divil tax ’em, sorr,’ he said, but the varmints they got away before the miner could get his mates to help catch ’em.”
“Were the miners glad to see you and the ‘boys’?” demands Puttis.
“Sure, sorr, it’s yourself has guessed the right words they spake, sorr. They was sulky as bandicoots, an’ never said a word till I amused ’em, with me arthful stories,—the ‘bhoys’ having started afther the fire on the hill. ‘We’re not afraid of the niggers,’ said one,—who I’ll kape me eyes on when he’s in town for a bit of a spree,—‘we hain’t afraid of niggers: let ’em bide.’”
“Wait a bit, sergeant. How do miners get tucker (provisions) up there?”
“It’s Thompson, sorr, the only settler, yer honours, on that side of the Cliffs; he kills fur ’em.”
“Is that Thompson who trained the bloodhounds for Inspector Versley?”