For answer Peters held out the lid of the billy-can, and Tony saw in it four large nuggets and a quantity of coarse gold dust.
"That came out of the first two dishes," he said.
"We've struck it rich since you've been away, lad, struck it rich, which is all through killing that damned shark," Palmer Billy cried, capering up to him. "But—what price?" he exclaimed, as he stopped and stared at the horse. "Where did you raise this?"
"Down by the creek. Gleeson's was there as well," Tony answered.
"It's your own horse?" Peters said. "The one that was stolen?"
"That's so," Tony replied. "But there were only the two, and I left Gleeson's where it was."
"It's right into our hands," Peters went on. "We were just yarning about it as soon as we saw there was gold in the creek."
"Tucker, lad, tucker," Palmer Billy interrupted. "We're going to work along the creek while the stores last, but there's only enough for a few days, and we were wondering. Now it's all straight. You can ride off for enough to keep us going for a month if needs be."
While the stores lasted they worked in the creek; when the stock became so low as to threaten a famine, Tony, with the gold already won in his possession, started off, riding bare-backed for the spot where the saddles had been "planted," and carefully avoiding the men along the other creek. Finding the saddles where they had been left, he took his own and rode away towards Birralong, anticipating the entertainment he would have at the expense of the wise men who had prophesied so freely about the results of following up a wild-cat scheme.
The sun was nearing the horizon when he came out on the Birralong road, after a short cut across country, a little above the township. He made direct for Marmot's store, on the verandah of which he saw that several men were gathered. As he rode up, they looked round at him with apparent indifference, not even replying to the wave of the hand he gave when they turned their heads towards him. It did not occur to him that, as he was coming from the direction of Taylor's Flat, each of the men believed that he had returned to the selection after discovering that the gold-field yarn was all a wild-cat scheme, as they had prophesied, and had been lying low at the selection ever since, keeping out of the way until something else should have transpired so as to prevent them dwelling on the folly he had shown. The coolness the men displayed nettled him, and he rode up to the store in a free, careless fashion, while Marmot and his companions sat still looking at him, resenting the fact that he should not have come in at once and given them the opportunity of reminding him, constantly and plainly, that they had "told him so" before he set out on the trip with gully-raking dead-beats.