The Black Opal

by Katharine Susannah Prichard

It was cooler underground than anywhere else during the hot weather. Fallen Star miners told stockmen and selectors that they had the best of it in the mines, during the heat. They went to work as soon as it was dawn, in order to get mullock cleared away and dirt-winding over before the heat of the day began.

In the morning, here and there a man was seen on the top of his dump, handkerchief under his hat, winding dirt, and emptying red sandstone, shin-cracker, and cement stone from his hide buckets over the slope of the dump. The creak of the windlass made a small, busy noise in the air. But the miner standing on the top of his hillock of white crumbled clay, moving with short, automatic jerks against the sky, or the noodlers stretched across the slopes of the dumps, turning the rubble thrown up from the shafts with a piece of wood, were the only outward sign of the busy underground world of the mines.

As a son might have, Potch had rearranged the hut and looked after Paul when Sophie had gone. He had nursed Paul through the fever and delirium of sun-stroke, and Paul's hut was kept in order as Sophie had left it. Potch swept the earthen floor and sprinkled it with water every morning; he washed any dishes Paul left, although Paul had most of his meals with Potch and Michael. Michael had seen the window of Sophie's room open sometimes; a piece of muslin on the lower half fluttering out, and once, in the springtime, he had caught a glimpse of a spray of punti—the yellow boronia Sophie was so fond of, in a jam-tin on a box cupboard near the window. Potch had prevailed on Paul to keep one or two of the goats when he sold most of them soon after Sophie went away, and Potch saw to it there was always a little milk, and some goat's-milk butter or cheese for the two huts.

People at first were surprised at Potch's care of Paul; then they regarded it as the most natural thing in the world. They believed Potch Was trying to make up to Paul for what his father had deprived him of. And after Sophie went away Paul seemed to forget Potch was the son of his old enemy. He depended on Potch, appealed to, and abused him as if he were his son, and Potch seemed quite satisfied that it should be so. He took his service very much as a matter of course, as Paul himself did.

A quiet, awkward fellow he was, Potch. For a long time nobody thought much of him. "Potch," they would say, as his father used to, "a little bit of potch!" Potch knew what was meant by that. He was Charley Heathfield's son, and could not be expected to be worth much. He had rated himself as other people rated him. He was potch, poor opal, stuff of no particular value, without any fire. And his estimate of himself was responsible for his keeping away from the boys and younger men of the Ridge. A habit of shy aloofness had grown with him, although anybody who wanted help with odd jobs knew where they could get it, and find eager and willing service. Potch would do anything for anybody with all the pleasure in the world, whether it were building a fowl-house, thatching a roof, or helping to run up a hut.

"He's the only mate worth a straw Michael's had since God knows when, 't anyrate," Watty said, after Potch had been working with Paul and Michael for some time. George and Cash agreed with him.

George and Watty and Cash had "no time," as they said themselves, for Rouminof; and Potch as a rule stayed in the shelter with Paul when Michael went over to talk with George and Watty. He was never prouder than when Michael asked him to go over to George and Watty's shelter.

At first Potch would sit on the edge of the shelter, leaning against the brushwood, the sun on his shoulder, as if unworthy to take advantage of the shelter's shade, further. For a long time he listened, saying nothing; not listening very intently, apparently, and feeding the birds with crumbs from his lunch. But Michael saw his eyes light when there was any misstatement of fact on a subject he had been reading about or knew something of.

Soon after Sophie had gone, Michael wrote to Dawe Armitage. He and the old man had always been on good terms, and Michael had a feeling of real friendliness for him. But the secret of the sympathy between them was that they were lovers of the same thing. For both, black opal had a subtle, inexplicable fascination.

As briefly as he knew how, Michael told Dawe Armitage how Sophie had left Fallen Star, and what he had heard. "It's up to you to see no harm comes to that girl," he wrote. "If it does, you can take my word for it, there's no man on this field will sell to Armitages."