It was after one o'clock in the morning when Cow Flat was reached. The little township slept, steeped in darkness, beside its sluggish strip of creeping 'slurry' miscalled a creek. Beyond, on the rise, a big mine clattered and groaned, and puffed its glowing clouds of steam against the sky; but Cow Flat had settled down into silence after the midnight change of shifts, and a mining township sleeps well. For all that it was a stealthy and cautious band Moonlighter led down to the old battered engine-house by the edge of the common, where the goats of Cow Flat were known to herd in large numbers. Sure enough here were goats of both sexes, and all sorts and sizes—sleeping huddled in the ruined engine-house, on the sides of the grass-grown tip, in the old bob-pit, and upon the remains of the fallen stack. Carefully and quietly the animals were awakened; slyly they were drawn forth, with gentle whispered calls of 'Nan, nan, nan!' and insidious and soothing words, but more especially with the aid of scraps of carrot, sparingly but judiciously distributed. An occasional low, querulous bleat from a youthful nanny awakened from dreams of clover-fields, or a hoarse, imperious inquiry in a deep baritone 'baa' from a patriarchal he-goat, was the only noise that followed the invasion. Then, when the animals within the ruin were fully alive to the situation and awake to the knowledge that it all meant carrots, and that outside carrots innumerable awaited the gathering, they streamed forth: they fought in the doorways, they battered a passage through the broken wall; faint plaintive queries went up from scores of throats, answered by gluttonous mumblings from goats that had been fortunate enough to snatch a morsel of the delectable vegetable. Down from the tips and up from the bob-pit they came, singly and in sets, undemonstrative matrons with weak-kneed twins at their heels, skittish kids and bearded veterans, and joined the anxious, eager, hungry mob.
'Away with them, my boys,' ordered Moonlighter. 'Head 'em fer the common.
We'll have every blessed goat in the place.'
He sent away three bands in three different directions, fully provisioned, and commissioned to collect goats from all quarters.
'Bring 'em up to the main mob on the common, an' the man what makes a row I'll hang in his shirt to the nearest tree. Don't leave the beggars any kind of a goat at all.'
Dick had undertaken a big contract. Cow Flat was simply infested with goats; every family owned its small flock, and the milk-supply of the township depended entirely upon the droves of nannies that grubbed for sustenance on the stony ridges or the bare, burnt stretch of common land. Probably Cow Flat was so called because nobody had ever seen anything remotely resembling a cow anywhere in the vicinity; consequently goats were hold in high esteem, for ten goats can live and prosper where one cow would die of hunger and melancholy in a month.
Jacker Mack, Peterson, and Parrot Cann had recognised their billies in the heard, but Butts was still missing. On an open space near the road by which Moonlighter's gang had come, and at a safe distance from the township, a few of the raiders held the main body of the goats. Parrot Cann, with a bag of cabbages on his shoulder, was the centre of attraction, and the dropping of an occasional leaf kept the goats pushing about him, some uprearing and straining toward the tantalising bag, others baa-ing in his face a piteous appeal. Suddenly, however, an astute billy with a flowing beard came to the rescue. He drove at Cann from the rear with masterly strategy and uncommon force, and brought him down; then in a flash boy and bag were hidden under a climbing, butting, burrowing army of goats, from the centre of which came the muffled yells of poor Parrot clipped in a hundred places by the sharp hoofs of the hungry animals.
Moonlighter promptly led a desperate charge to the rescue, and after a hard struggle Cann was dragged out, tattered and bleeding; but the bag was abandoned to the enemy.
In about twenty minutes Jacker Mack and a couple of subordinates brought up a herd gathered from the hill on the left bank of the creek; Peterson came soon after with a good mob from the right, and Dolf Belman and another followed with a score or so from about the houses. But still Butts had not been captured.
'You fellers take 'em on slowly,' said Moonlighter. Me an' Gardiner'll go back an' have a try after Butts.' Ted McKnight represented Gardiner in this enterprise.
The hunt for Butts had to be conducted with great circumspection. The boys crept from place to place; Dick called the goat's name softly at all outhouses and enclosures, and won a response after a search of over a quarter of an hour, Butts's familiar 'baa' answering from the interior of a stable in a back yard. Ted was stationed to keep 'nit,' and Dick stole into the yard, broke his way into the stable, and was leading the huge billy out of captivity when the savage barking of a dog broke the silence; and then an adjacent window was thrown up and a woman's voice called 'Thieves!' and 'Fire!