Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

It was not, perhaps, a very wise thing to do, but beggars can’t be choosers, and I was very little more than a beggar, besides I liked Jim Dormer’s cheery, free-and-easy manner. It was pleasant to meet a man who seemed to think something of one although one was unsuccessful and dead broke. So I accepted his offer, and leaned back in the cart, relieved to think that I should have a place to rest in after my long weary journey.

Jim Dormer was on his way back from a visit to a roadside canteen, where a man he was interested in was training for a foot-race. “I am glad I met you; I like a man who has got grit; maybe it will be a lucky meeting for the pair of us,” he said somewhat enigmatically. I did not take much thought about what his motives might be, I was too tired. “Take a man as you find him; he has been a good friend to me anyhow,” I thought as I drove through the well-known street. The town looked dull and depressed; there was a marked change, one could see that bad times were felt more than they were when I left some months before. Bars, stores, and billiard-rooms that used to be doing a roaring business were empty. Several stores were to let; there was not as much traffic in the streets, while I fancied there was something in the listless gait of the men one saw lounging about which expressed bad times. Glad enough was I when we pulled up at a neat iron house where Jim lived, and where that great luxury, as it seemed to me then, a bed, was to be found provided for me after I had attempted a meal.

A fortnight afterwards found me still staying with Jim. The morning after I had arrived at his house I had found myself too ill to get up; and nothing could have been kinder than he was to me, nursing me very carefully and seeing that I had everything that I wanted. When I had become well enough to go out and look for work he did not show much sympathy with my endeavour to find something to do. He had, I found out, a deep-rooted conviction that any attempts to get on in life by what people called honest labour was a vanity and a delusion. To make a pile and clear out of the country ought to be the aim and object of every one, and it was absurd being too particular as to how that pile was to be made, was the doctrine he was always preaching. Of all the more generally accepted modes of making a fortune he was most sceptical. Digging was a losing game, he considered. Even canteen keeping was hardly good enough. “What one wanted,” he would say with much candour, “was to go in for one good swindle and then clear off.”

“You bet what you and I want to do is to get hold of a few thousands, and then say good-bye to the country. Don’t tell me we can’t do it, there is lots of money in the camp, though times may be so bad,” he said to me one evening as I was sitting in the verandah after a tiring day spent walking round the mines looking for work. “I was thinking of something in the New Mine line; there is a good deal to be done at that, but I hardly care to go in for the game; it’s too much one of your respectable man’s swindles for me, taking some poor devil’s last sov or two, who thinks the new rush is going to turn up trumps: it’s always your poor devils who are landed by that sort of swindle, now I only want to catch the big fish.” I made some remark in answer to this, more or less commending him for indulging in his conscientious scruples. I am afraid in my then frame of mind Jim Dormer’s peculiar code of morality was very taking. I began to agree with him that every one was more or less of a swindler, and that the more prosperous men were the adroiter scoundrels. Tramping about all day looking in vain for work put one in a suitable frame of mind for listening to my friend’s notions of things in general and of the Diamond Field public in particular.

“Yes, we must get hold of some money somehow. See there, look at that cart,” he said, pointing to the mail-cart that was being driven along the road past the house, “there is not less than thirty thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds going across the veldt to-night, for that is a good bit less than the average amount they send home every week! Thirty thousand pounds, my boy! that would be a good haul, eh?” I watched the cart being driven along towards the open veldt, and I thought of how it was going to travel across miles of desert veldt with only one policeman upon it to guard its precious contents. So far as I knew, that mail, which started on Thursday with the week’s finds to catch the home steamer, had never been robbed. My friend did not say anything more about the cart, though I noticed he watched it till it was out of sight, and then he smoked in silence for some time. Then he returned to the subject, and made some remark about how strange it was that the mail had never stuck up; and we began to discuss how easily it could be done. “Nobody would lose one penny except the insurance companies and banks, for the diamonds are insured for more than they will sell for; yes, it’s just the thing sticking out; sooner or later it will be done, and then they will put on a stronger guard,” he said, looking at me rather carefully as he spoke, as if he wished to see how I took what he was saying. My evil genius led me to grumble out some sort of agreement with what he said.

“Believe me, I’d like to collar that pool, or take a half or a third share of it,” he answered, “then I’d leave this cursed country. And it ain’t so tough a job neither. One only has to wait with a string across the road to upset the horses, and as they go down jump on the cart, get the mail-bags, tie up the driver and the guard, and get back to camp, and the next morning at breakfast look as mild as milk while every one’s jawing about one’s work the night before. It would be a pretty little game to play, eh, my boy? Better than going round to those managers and asking for a job as an overseer and being treated like a nigger, and being told to clear off and be damned by ’em.”

“But there’s the policeman; he is armed and would show fight, and I shouldn’t like to hurt a chap who was only doing his duty,” I answered.

“Well, nor would I; but I never see that mail-cart pass without wondering who will take the pool; some one will, mind you,” he said, and then turned the conversation to some other subject.

A week or so more passed and I got nothing to do. At one time I thought I ought not to go on staying with Dormer and living upon him, but he laughed away my scruples. “What did it matter? it wasn’t as if I was always going to have bad luck. Was I ashamed of staying with him?” he would remark when I talked of going away. It always ended in my staying on. I was generally seen with him, I used to get money on for him when he played billiards or shot pigeons or made any other match, and to do some other little things for him; in fact, I began to be identified as Jim Dormer’s pal.

Very few visitors came to see us at the house. Dormer carried on his business down the town in billiard-rooms and canteens; he never asked me to help him at faro or roulette or any of the games he played, nor did he impart to me any of the tricks of his trade. Nothing could be kinder than his manner to me; but nevertheless I felt that I was bound to repay him for his kindness, and that I was under a great obligation to him. After some time he once or twice stayed at home of an evening and a man came in to see him. The visitor was not a pleasant-looking person. He had a shifty, half-ashamed expression, and as he sat clumsily playing cards with Dormer he looked as if he knew he ought not to be where he was.