[274]
]‘Then we takes a squint around, an’ there, right against our noses, as one might say, ran the reef, with bits o’ gold stickin’ out o’ the surface-stone an’ glimperin’ in the sun.
‘I don’t believe the Germans tumbled for a while. You see they was all new chums. Most likely none of ’em hadn’t ever seen a natural bit o’ gold afore.
‘But the others did, quick. An’, presently, a rather hot sort o’ argument begins to rise.
‘For a short time me an’ Bill stands and listens to the wranglin’. Then I looks at Bill, and he nods his head, and I shoves my spoke in.
‘“Look here, chaps!” I says, “this may be only a surface leader, as some of you appears to think, or it may be a pile. I don’t care a damn which it is! It’s Fairleigh’s first say. His kid, as lies there dead, found it! An’, by the Lord, his father’s goin’ to be first served! I’m goin’ now to peg out what I considers a fair prospectin’ claim for him. That’ll be seen to after. When that’s done you can strike in as you likes. If you objects to that you ain’t men. Bill, here, ’ll back me up, an’, if you don’t like it, we’ll do it in spite o’ you. We’re all poor enough, God knows! But none of us ain’t just lost an only child, an’ self an’ wife gone half mad with the sorrow of it.”
‘Well, sir, the Germans, who was beginning to drop to how the thing lay, set up a big shout o’ “Hoch! Hoch!” meanin’ in their lingo, “Hooray.” An’ the rest, what was right enough at bottom, an’ only wanted showin’ like what was the fair an’ square thing to do, [275] ]quick agreed. All ’cept, that is, one flash sort of a joker from the Barossa. But, while I steps the groun’, Bill put such a head on him in half-a-dozen rounds that his own mother wouldn’t know him again.
‘It were only a couple o’ miles in a straight line from the settlement, through the ranges, to that bit of a bald hill.
‘Exactly, almost, where you stood to-day, lookin’ at the windin’ plant o’ the El Dorado, was where we found Dot.
‘When the field was proclaimed the Warden didn’t have much alteration to make in the p.c. I’d marked off for Fairleigh.
‘You see it was only one man’s groun’ then. An’ it turned out rich from the jump. An’ it’s gettin’ better every foot. None o’ the others, as the Company’s bought an’ ’malgamated with it, although joinin’, can touch “Dot’s.”