'Not a colour! The heart nugget you gave me long ago has worn tender places all over me.' She tugged at the thin ribbon about her neck. 'I'll carry no more.'
Done did not press the point, although he knew that she took gifts of quaintly-shaped nuggets from the other men with the indifference of a queen accepting tribute.
Mrs. Ben Kyley greeted the mates with noisy joviality when they met, and Ben took his pipe from his mouth, and said he was 'right down blarsted glad,' which amounted to quite a demonstration, coming from him. Within two days the tents were up, and Mrs. Kyley's business was resumed, and was carried on as at Diamond Gully, and with much the same success. But here for some time Ben's services as 'chucker-out' were more in requisition, spirits being more unruly on Jim Crow. One night he even had to fight a five-round battle with a riotous young Cousin Jack, in which engagement Done seconded him by special request. Ben triumphed, but came out of the contest with a black eye and an inflamed nose of a preposterous size, at which Mary was virtuously indignant.
'You, a professional, fighting for diversion like any fool of a gentleman!' she said scornfully.
'Man mus' keep his hand in,' replied Ben.
'If you can't attend to your duties without making such a mess of yourself, you'd better have a month's notice. What was the good of me taking on a pugilist if I'm to have fighting about the place continually?'
'Come, come, Mrs. Ben,' said Jim; 'if you treat him like this when he wins, what would you do if he lost?'
'Divorce him and take up with the Cornishman!' replied the raffish washerwoman, exploding into Gargantuan laughter.
Done had often thought of Ryder since the night of the troopers' raid on
Mrs. Kyley's grog-store, but had seen nothing of him in the meantime.
Mike recalled him to his mind again as they were lying out in the
moonlight on a Sunday night about two weeks later.
'Remember the chap that tried to throttle Stony that night in the Black
Forest?' he said. 'Saw him on the lead to-day.'