Lost Lenore: The Adventures of a Rolling Stone

by Mayne Reid

As the man finished speaking, he produced from his pocket a lump of gold—weighing about eighteen ounces—and held it up before my eyes.

“But what has this to do with your partner’s leaving you?” I asked.

“That’s just the question I put to my wife,” said the man.

“And what answer did she make?”

“She said, that, after we had been about a week working in the claim, she was one day making some bread; and when she had used up the last dust of flour in the tent, she found that she wanted a handful to sprinkle over the outside of the damper—to keep it from sticking to the pan. With her hands in the dough, she didn’t care to go to the store for any; but stepped across to Tom’s tent to get a little out of his bag. There was no harm in this: for we were so well acquainted with him, that we knew he would not consider it much of a liberty. My wife had often before been into his hut, to borrow different articles; and Tom knew of it, and of course had said, all right. Well, on the day I am speaking of, she went in after the flour; and, on putting her hand into the bag to take some out, she laid her fingers on this here lump of yellow metal. Don’t you see it all now? It’s plain as a pike-staff. Tom had found the nugget, while working alone in the claim; and intended to keep it for himself, without letting either of us know anything about it. He was going to rob us of our share of the gold. He has turned out a damned thief.”

“Certainly it looks like it,” said I.

“I know it,” emphatically asserted Tom’s old associate. “I know it: for he has worked with me all the time he has been on the diggings; and he had no chance to get this nugget anywhere else. Besides, his having it hid in the flour-bag is proof that he didn’t come honestly by it. He never intended to let us know anything about it. My wife is a sharp woman; and could see all this, the moment she laid her hands upon the nugget. She didn’t let it go neyther; but brought it away with her. When Tom missed it—which he must have done that very day—he never said a word about his loss. He was afraid to say anything about it, because he knew I would ask him how he came by it, and why he had not mentioned it before. That of itself is proof of his having stolen it out of our claim.”

There was no doubt but that the married man and his “sharp” wife were correct in their conjecture, which was a satisfactory explanation of Tom’s strange conduct, in taking midnight leave of us. He had kept silent, about losing the nugget, because he was not certain how or where it had gone; and he had not left immediately after discovering his loss, because the claim was too good to be given up for such a trifle. By this attempt to rob us, he had lost the share of the nugget—which he would have been entitled to—while his fears, doubts, and other unpleasant reflections, arising out of the transaction, must have punished him far more effectually than the loss of the lump of gold. He could not have been in a very pleasant humour with himself, while silently taking down his little tent, and sneaking off in the middle of the night to some other diggings, where he might chance to be unknown. I have often witnessed ludicrous illustrations of the old adage, that “honesty is the best policy;” but never one plainer, or better, than Tom’s unsuccessful attempt at abstracting the nugget.

There is, perhaps, no occupation, in which men have finer opportunities of robbing their partners, than that of gold-digging. And yet I believe that instances of the kind—that is, of one mate robbing another—are very rare upon the gold fields. During my long experience in the diggings—both of California and Australia—I knew of but two such cases.

The man who brought me the nugget, taken from Tom’s tent, was, like the majority of gold-diggers, an honest person. His disclosing the secret was proof of this: since it involved the sharing of the gold with me, which he at once offered to do.