Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

“Who’s that? Don’t like his looks, can’t look one in the face,” I asked Jim one night when he had left.

“That! oh, he’s a most respectable man, a sergeant in the police. We are thinking of going in for a little spec together, and you ought to be in it too. That’s the chap who goes down with the diamond mail. Old Jacobus the driver is going to be made a little drunker than usual, the policeman is to make a desperate resistance, and to be overpowered by us two, and then the three of us divide the swag, do you see?”

Though I had not been boarding very luxuriously for some time, I had been drinking heavily. There was always drink to be had at Dormer’s house and when I went about with him, and lately I had drunk to drown my anxiety. I don’t intend to ape the canting cry of the criminal who, when he’s convicted of jumping upon his wife, tells the judge that “it’s all the drink wot’s done it.” Drink of itself doesn’t often make a criminal of a man, but it often enough robs him of all that sense of prudence which men mistake for conscience. If my brain had been clear of alcohol I think I should have refused Dormer’s suggestion at once; as it was there was something in it that took my fancy. Instead of refusing, I began to question him as to how it could be done. His answer was that it would be easy enough. The mail-cart was to be stopped by a rope tied across the road; the guard and the driver were to be tied up—the latter would not be likely to make a very determined resistance, while the former would be our confederate. When we had secured the diamonds we had nothing to do but to get back to Kimberley. Our confederate would take care not to be able to identify us, and there would be, so Jim urged, very little risk of our getting into trouble or failing to secure the rich booty.

“It’s our last chance of making a good pile in the country; every day I expect that some one else will try the trick, and then they will put on a strong guard. It’s the one good thing left in the country,” he said; and then he began to talk about the rich prize we should secure without any one except the banks and insurance people being one bit the worse.

“I don’t know whom to go to if you won’t go in for this; there are plenty of men in the camp who would jump at the chance, but they ain’t the sort I’d like to trust, but you’re good grit and I’d trust you any day,” he said; “come, I know you will stick to a pal.” For a second or two I hesitated, and then I said I would go in for it, and we shook hands over the agreement.

It was on a Monday that I had this conversation with him, and it was on the following Thursday that the cart was to be stopped. The next day the police sergeant came up to the house to finally arrange his plans. I didn’t like the man’s looks any better on that occasion. In his presence I began to feel ashamed of myself because I was going to become a thief. It seemed disgraceful to be mixed up in such a business with that shifty-looking scoundrel. Dormer’s society, on the other hand, made me reckless and in good spirits, while he took care that I had drink enough to prevent my thinking too much.

The place we had chosen to make our attack upon the cart was about twenty miles from Kimberley, and the cart would pass there about ten o’clock in the evening. An hour before that time Jim Dormer and I were sitting behind some rocks near the road at that place where we had agreed to stop the cart. We had the rope ready to put across the road when it was time for the cart to pass, while we both had our revolvers, with which we intended to make a great display of a determined attack.

“It’s no good being too soon with the rope, the cart won’t be before its time, and something else might pass,” Dormer said as he lit a match to look at his watch.

“How long have we to wait?” I asked, for I began to feel rather nervous and to wish the time for action had come.

“An hour or more before the cart is due here; take a drink,” he said, handing me a whiskey-flask. I half emptied the flask and lit a pipe, and listened to my companion, who, to cheer me up, I fancy, began to talk about the time we would have when we cleared out of the country with the nice little pile we would make by that evening’s work. Dormer’s conversation and whiskey had its intended effect, and I got back my careless, reckless spirits.