Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

“What’s to be done? What shall I do for all that money? I can’t lose two thou, and it seemed so good. Oh dear! oh dear me!” Gideon almost sobbed out.

“Well, it ain’t lost yet, guv’nor. Kildare might go wrong,” said Nat Lane with an evil grin.

“Oh, what a blessing that would be. Don’t you think now, Nat, something might be done?”

“The Captain looks after the horse night and day, nothing could be done on the quiet; but Buffels is a very solitary place to keep a valuable animal like Kildare. Look here, now, suppose you put me on a thou, of that two thou. I might show you how to save that bet, and make a good bit more.”

After a little haggling Mr Gideon consented to give Nat Lane a thou, if Kildare was made a dead ’un and The Pirate won.

“It will have to be done with a rush if it is done at all, but there is a party in camp just now who can do the job if any man can, and I will go and see him,” said Nat. “It’s no good your coming, I will drop round to your place afterwards.”

Mr Gideon walked off feeling much out of sorts and out of conceit with himself. His old acquaintance Crotty had got the best of him and had known just as much as he did and a little more when he made the bet. When Mr Gideon left him Nat Lane walked back into the town, or camp, as it was more often called, though its canvas age was over and it was gradually changing from iron to brick, and turning up a street by the side of the mine, which had already, though Kimberley was not ten years old, acquired a very evil reputation, made his way to a canteen known as the Red Bar. This establishment, which consisted of a room, billiard-room and bar combined, seemed to be doing a roaring business. A perspiring barman was hard at work opening bottles of champagne, spirits, and soda-water, while two very smartly-dressed young women were busy serving the crowd of customers who thronged round the bar, and at the same time carrying on a conversation with a favoured few. The majority of the company had an unmistakable Jewish type of face, but there were men of every other white race there. Few if any towns three times the size of Kimberley could produce such a choice selection of scoundrels as the guests at the ‘Red Bar,’ and Jews and Gentiles alike bore on their faces a hunted, a bird-of-prey look which denoted that they were at enmity with the honest portion of society. The most conspicuous figure in the place was that of a tall dark man, whose face might have been called a handsome one were it not for his sinister expression, exaggerated by a scar which reached from his mouth to his eye, and seemed to stand out all the more as the drink which he was taking flushed his face. From the way in which he lounged against the bar, taking up more room than three or four men might have done, though there were many men trying to get up to it to be served, and from the silence which was kept when he was speaking and the laughter and applause with which his not over-brilliant remarks were received, it was clear that he was a man who had managed to gain the respect of his associates.

“Bill, I want to speak to you; I can put you on to a good job,” Nat Lane whispered into his ear.

“Right; if there are good pieces in it, for I want some. They cleared me out at faro properly last night,” he answered as he left the bar and went out with Nat Lane. “Now, then, what do you want?” he said when they were outside.

“It’s like this: I can put you on to a good game, for I suppose you’re on the same lay up yonder you were always on, and have one or two working with you?”