“Or he’s swum the Wawirra an’ been washed off,” suggested one Job’s comforter.
“He ain’t got no marks of bruising,” said another, more hopeful.
“Rider fallen off drunk, maybe,” said a bluff old sheep-farmer. “I kin remember,” he continued, “coming into town ’bout this hour myself, with my head in my holster, an’ thinking I was a six-chambered revolver—mighty drunk I was.”
“Maurice had a good seat; he’d never be washed off.”
“Not he.”
“The horse has a weal on its off fore-quarter,” remarked another, more observant than the rest.
“A blow from a whip, maybe.”
“It would be a darned hard one.”
“Where’s Chicago Bill?” said someone; “he’ll know.”
Thus invoked, a strange, gaunt figure stepped out in front of the crowd. He was an extremely tall and powerful man, with the red shirt and high boots of a miner. The shirt was thrown open, showing the sinewy throat and massive chest. His face was seamed and scarred with many a conflict, both with Nature and his brother man; yet beneath his ruffianly exterior there lay something of the quiet dignity of the gentleman. This man was a veteran gold-hunter; a real old Californian ’forty-niner, who had left the fields in disgust when private enterprise began to dwindle before the formation of huge incorporated companies with their ponderous machinery. But the red clay with the little shining points had become to him as the very breath of his nostrils, and he had come half way round the world to seek it once again.