‘Yes,’ muttered Jim abstractedly, ‘he’s accounted for. So is his mate—the one who laughed the loudest of any. But there were three of them, and there’s still another left somewhere. Not dead yet!’ he suddenly exclaimed in a loud voice. ‘Surely not! My God, no! After all these years of ceaseless search! That would be too hard!’ And here he stood up and gazed excitedly into the outer darkness.
‘But the story, Jim,’ I ventured to remark, after a long pause.
‘Right you are,’ he replied, as he again sat down, and calmly resumed. ‘Well, it was the year of the big rush, [126] ]the first one, to the Ovens. I was a strapping young fellow then, with all my life hopeful and bright before me, as I left the old mother and the girl I loved to try my luck on the diggings. Three years went by before I thought of returning to the little Victorian township on the Avoca, where we had long been settled; but then I struck it pretty rich, and made up my mind to go back and marry, and settle down alongside the old farm; for a pair of loving hearts were, I knew, growing weary of waiting for the return of the wanderer.
‘Like a fool, however, instead of sending down my last lot of gold by the escort, I all of a sudden got impatient, and, packing it in my saddle-bags, along with a tidy parcel of notes and sovereigns, I set off alone. The third night out I camped on a good-sized creek, hobbled my horses, and after planting my saddle-bags in
a hollow log, I started to boil the billy for supper. Presently, up rides three chaps, and, before I could get to my swag, I was covered by as many revolvers; while one of the men says, “Come along, now, hand over the metal. We know you’ve got it, and if you don’t give it quiet, why, we’ll take it rough.”
‘“You’ve got hold of the wrong party, this time, mates,” says I, as cool as I could. “I’m on the wallaby, looking for shearing, and, worse luck, hav’n’t got no gold.”
‘“Gammon,” says the first speaker. “Turn his swag over, mates.”
‘Well, they found nothing, of course. Then they searched all over the bush round about, and one fellow [127] ]actually puts his hand up the hollow of the log in which lay hid my treasure; and I thought it was all up with it, when he lets a yell out of him and starts cutting all sorts of capers, with half-a-dozen big sojurs hanging to his fingers.
‘Jakes (for he was the leader of the gang) now got real savage, and putting a pistol to my head, swore that he would blow my brains out unless I told where the gold was. Well, I wouldn’t let on, for I thought they were trying to bounce me, and that if I held out I might get clear off, so I still stuck to it that they’d mistaken their man.
‘Seeing I was pretty firm, they drew off for a while, and, after a short talk, they began to laugh like madmen; and one, taking a tomahawk, cut down a couple of saplings, whilst another gets ready some stout cord; and Jakes himself goes poking about in the saltbush as if looking for something he’d lost. Before this they had tied my arms and legs together with saddle-straps and greenhide thongs; and there I lay, quite helpless, wondering greatly what they were up to.