"Call yourself a leader!" he grumbled. "Here's a pretty state of things! If we ain't all killed in half an hour it won't be your fault. I'm full of your tricks, first losing our horses, then our——"
"If you don't like it, clear," Gleeson exclaimed, wheeling round sharply. The treatment he had received at the hands of the fossickers had not improved his temper, and there was trouble enough ahead from the others without having it in his own camp.
"Clear?" Walker retorted. "Do you think I'm a jackeroo, or what? I'm on my own claim. You and your mates can get off it as soon as you like."
"It's our claim; it belongs to the four of us," Gleeson answered angrily.
"I pegged it out, and I was on it before you, and I'm not going any more shares with you and your mates," Walker shouted; and the men on the claims nearest caught the words, and withdrew their attention from the wrangle between Palmer Billy and the jumper of his ground, in favour of the squabble between the four discoverers of the field.
A wealth of suggestions came from every side, first to one set of disputants, and then to the other, until the arrival of another party added to the confusion.
Gathering the nature of the babel, the new-comers quietly passed up and down the creek, pegging out their claims on either side of those already occupied before they turned their attention to the disputes, yelling out their views and opinions until the noise of the shouting reached other approaching parties and hastened their advance.
"It seems to me it's no use fooling round like this," Peters exclaimed, when for a moment there was silence between Gleeson and Walker. "If he wants the claim, let him have it, and we'll shove along up the creek. Come on, Tony, my lad; there's no points in this game."
He slung his swag over his shoulder, and Tony did the same. Their action was greeted with derisive cheers from the men scattered along the banks of the creek. Palmer Billy, beaten in the matter of words, came to meet them as they started up the rise beyond the creek.
"There's no luck where there ain't no 'armony," he said, with aggressive earnestness in his voice. "If me and my accordion gets the shove-along, we takes it; and as for them hungry gully-scrapers—darned dirty I-talyans, I call them—why, let 'em rake the creek by theirselves; there's water in it, and some of that won't hurt some of them, either outside or in. Misters, if you likes 'armony, I'm with you; if you don't——"