The accommodation for housing an unlimited number of visitors, however, was not quite so apparent, but when those visitors were men who had for years past known no other roof than a tent, and often none other than the sky, sleeping quarters were not difficult to obtain, especially as each man had his blankets—or what passed for such—with him. There were paddocks round the Rest and calico enough for a hundred tents in Marmot's store, and with gold in their pockets, the fossickers of Boulder Creek asked for nothing more—in the way of shelter.
The diggers shared their good fortune royally with their comrades and friends, and song and jest circulated, as well as the encourager of both, and the atmosphere in the big, lumbering room which served the purpose of a bar, was filled with laughter and tobacco-smoke on the first night of the arrival.
Subsequently other elements supervened—elements which had their origin in the influence of potent libations acting on natures by no means warped by conventional thought, but which, under that influence, were stripped of the scanty robes they wore, and stood before the world naked in all the simplicity and crudity of first principles.
There was a guest already staying at the Rest when the crowd of diggers arrived—a guest whose suave manner and smooth tongue had been used to ingratiate himself with the proprietor of the Rest, but which had only tended to induce a lurking suspicion against him. Men used to the blunt methods of unadulterated human nature are prone to be sceptical of the motives which underlie what they tersely define as "chin-oil."
He, a slim, long-limbed man, with a sharp-featured face and shifty eyes, who said his name was Tap, lingered round the bar as the diggers trooped in, and smiled and cringed as he heard the order given to "Fill 'em up, fill 'em all up." When his glass was charged, he sidled up to a group, and asked, in his smooth voice, whether any one had found a nugget.
The man nearest, a burly, sunburned specimen, with a voice like a bull's and a vocabulary limited in everything save profanity, turned and looked at him.
"Nuggets?" he said, with a large embellishment of adjective, as he produced a canvas bag from inside his shirt and opened the mouth of it, revealing a store of gold. "We've all got 'em—enough to buy"—and he indicated Birralong.
"Oh, I am glad," the smooth-tongued Tap rejoined. "You must have worked hard; and in the hot weather too."
The man swallowed the contents of his glass, and set it down with a bang on the table as he fixed his eyes on Tap's face, and from the succeeding observations Tap realized that his sympathy and would-be friendly overture had been as gall in the mouth of his companion, who, unused to anything save the rugged bluntness of a wild, free life, took the mealy-mouthed sentence as a slight on his intelligence. The storm was averted by Tap inviting him to "have another," and, with delicate humility, taking the burly man's glass up to the bar in order to have it replenished—and also charged against the score of the burly man. Then he discreetly moved away, and mingled with other groups, always reaching one as the order was being given, and moving on to another before the time came for the "shout" to get round to his turn, until he had learned conclusively that every one of the men had a fair-sized bag of gold somewhere in his possession, and felt satisfied that he had imbibed as much as he could conveniently carry at their expense.
Slipping out of the room quietly and unostentatiously, he went round to the paddock where his horse was, saddled it, and rode away. The sounds of uproarious mirth came to him from the direction of the Rest, and he smiled furtively.