“By Jove! old fellow, I shall be glad if you buy Kaburie, for you'll have to put in some of your time there, of course, and I've applied for a removal from the Cape York District to Port Denison. I'm sick to death of nigger chasing in the Far North, and want to be somewhere where I can feel I'm not entirely an outcast from the world, with no one to talk to but my own black troopers, any one of whom would put a bullet into my back if I turned rusty.”
“Oh, well, I think it is pretty certain I shall buy Mrs Tallis's station. I like Ocho Rios very well, but now, since this last trip of mine South, I feel as you do—I want to be a little less out of the world. I might, perhaps, sell Ocho Rios, and fix myself at Kaburie. If I don't, I'll put a manager there, and keep the place going, for I have a great belief that there will be some rich gold discoveries in the Batavia River country before long—and thousands of meat-hungry diggers means pots of money to a cattleman.”
“I'm certain, too, that there will be some big fields opened up that way soon,” said Aulain. “In that valise of mine, there under the bed, are three or four ounces of alluvial gold which my troopers and I washed out in one day at the head of a little creek running into the Batavia.”
“Place with a hunking big boulder standing up in the middle of a deep pool, with a lot of fish in it?” queried Gerrard.
“Yes; but how the deuce did you come across it? I've never seen a beast of yours within fifty miles of it—the country is too rough even for cattle—and I thought that my troopers and I were the first that ever saw the place.”
“When were you there?”
“About a month after you left Ocho Rios for Sydney.”
“Well, my dear little laddie, I was there a year ago, camped there for a couple of days, and did a little washing out—with two quart billy cans for a dish.”
“Get anything?”
“Seven ounces, sonny; mostly in coarse gold too.”