"I should think it did just," answered Geordie, with an excited laugh; "and listen to this," he added, as he took up his bag and bumped it on the rock to make the pieces lie close together. "Doesn't that noise suggest wealth? No paltry clinking, but a good rich solid thud, like a piece of cold plum pudding."
"Yes, delicious! And only think that all of this is going to swell old Crosby's coffers." Alec spoke regretfully, and with a sound of avarice in his voice that was not at all natural to it. There is something terrible about great quantities of gold that seems to instil a spirit of miserliness into most men, however generous, or even prodigal, they may be. Geordie noticed this novel tone in Alec's voice, and said—
"But I don't think anything of the sort; I don't consider old Crosby's or anybody else's coffers; all I think of, and so do you, is that we shall be out of debt, and able to call Wandaroo our own again. If I thought the gold was going to change you, and turn you into a money-grub and a screw, I'd slit every bag open, and let the beastly stuff roll out in the scrub as we rode along. So pull yourself together and don't talk like that." Geordie got rather red in the face over this long speech, which he delivered with great energy, for although these two fellows always spoke out to each other, without fear of misunderstanding, what they thought, neither of them liked to sermonize.
Alec only said, "Right you are, younker; it is beastly stuff in some ways, and I won't think of it in that manner any more. What a beggar you are to spot what I am thinking of. How many bags does that make?"
"I am just filling number nine. I should almost think that——"
But what it was that George Law almost thought at that interesting moment was never known, for as he was speaking they heard a loud shout at the camp, just round the bend of the gully. Como, who was lying basking in the early sunshine, raced off to see what it was, and the boys, leaving their filled bags on the rocky wall of the pool, scrambled up the stones and leaped down to the bed of the stream. Just as they started to run to the humpie, Murri, with a face of a dirty slate colour from fright, came tearing round the cliff.
"Run, run!" he shouted; "um Wyobree fellows here one more time; plenty much myall, um kill us all. Climb up along o' that place," he said, pointing to the cliff over which the waterfall poured; and only waiting for him to come up to them the boys scrambled like cats up the crag, and hid themselves in the thick brushwood at the top. Como had not come back, but they could trust to his good sense to keep out of harm's way.
No sooner had they reached this place of vantage than six Wyobree men, in full paint and finery, and fully armed, came rushing round the bend of the ravine. They had seen Murri run thither, and without waiting to search the humpie, had followed in hot pursuit.
It was evident that their friendly feelings of the night before were completely changed. The desire to possess the white men's goods had been too strong for them to resist.
From where they lay crouching the boys could see the myalls stop, evidently puzzled at the surprising way their quarry had so entirely vanished, but it was only for a moment; one of them very soon found some of their old traces, and followed their tracks along the now dry bed of the drained stream till they came to the emptied pool. The astonishment of the Wyobree men at the change that had taken place there was beyond measure; they looked about them in bewilderment and talked rapidly together.