"Well, I reck'n we'd ought to have in the police," Watty remarked obstinately.
"The police!" Snow-Shoes stood up as if he had no further patience with the controversy. "It's like letting hornets build in your house to keep down flies—to call in the police. The hornets get worse than the flies."
He turned on his heel and walked away. His tall, white figure, straighter than any man's on the Ridge, moved silently, his feet, wrapped in their moccasins of grass and sacking, making no sound on the shingly earth.
Men whose claims had not been nibbled arranged to watch among themselves, to notice exactly where they put their spiders when they left the mines in the afternoon, and to set traps for the rats.
Some of them had their suspicions as to whom the rats might be, because the field was an old one, and there were not many strangers about. But when it was known next day that Jun Johnson and his wife had "done a moonlight flit," it was generally agreed that these suspicions were confirmed. Maud had made two or three trips to Sydney to sell opal within the last year, and from what they heard, men of the Ridge had come to believe she sold more opal than Jun had won, or than she herself had bought from the gougers. Jun's and Maud's flight was taken not only as a confession of guilt, but also as an indication that the men's resolution to deal with rats themselves had been effective in scaring them away.
When the storm the ratting had caused died down, life on the Ridge went its even course again. Several men threw up their claims on the hill after working without a trace of potch or colour for months, and went to find jobs on the stations or in the towns nearby.
The only thing of any importance that happened during those dreary summer months was Bully Bryant's marriage to Ella Flail, and, although it took everybody by surprise that little Ella was grown-up enough to be married, the wedding was celebrated in true Ridge fashion, with a dance and no end of hearty kindliness to the young couple.
"Roy O'Mara's got good colour down by the crooked coolebah, Michael," Potch said one evening, a few days after the wedding, when he and Michael had finished their tea. He spoke slowly, and as if he had thought over what he was going to say.
"Yes?" Michael replied.
"How about tryin' our luck there?" Potch ventured.