Should he accept the warning so solemnly given by this strange girl, who, before this, had manifested but little interest in his career, and had lived a merely negative and defensive life?
'How little we know of people's natures,' thought he, 'women's especially. Who would have thought this quiet girl had all this fire and earnestness in her? Her warning squared curiously with all that he had gathered from other sources. Was there something mysterious and by no means fair and above-board about these Lawlesses? It looked like it. And Kate! What an artful treacherous jade she had proved herself to be, if what her cousin said was true. Well, at any rate, he would go and see for himself. He knew, or thought he knew, enough of life not to entirely trust one woman's word about another. If Kate was false and deceitful, he would have the satisfaction of telling her so to her face. If she was true, well, he really did not know what was to be done in that case. At any rate, he would go and see. Yes, he would show he was not afraid to meet them all, there or anywhere else.'
The fateful letter was short, badly written and worse spelled. It merely stated that her brothers had settled to move to Balooka, naming a new digging nearly a hundred miles away, and not far from the foot-hills of the great Alpine range. They had gone into a large purchase in horses, and were going to drive them to Melbourne in another month, when they expected to make a lot of money out of them. 'If he cared to see her again he might meet them next week at Balooka. The road went by Wahgulmerang.' This precious epistle was signed, 'Your true friend and well-wisher, Kate Lawless. P.S. If you only seen the black mare that was gave me by a friend.'
There was nothing alarming in this apparently simple and guileless missive. A ride to a new digging was not only a pleasant novelty, but distinctly in the line of his occupation as a miner, now that he was an authority as a 'golden-hole man' with local fame and reputation. He had a good horse, and though stabling was expensive he had felt justified in being well mounted, as the companion of such a horsewoman as Kate Lawless. The reference to the black mare and the generous friend rather piqued him, as was probably intended. He had never encountered any one in the guise of a rival, and felt curious to see what kind of admirer had come forward.
His preparations were not long in making. He informed Hastings and his mate Jack that he was going to Balooka and might be absent for a week or two.
They evidently suspected the nature of the magnet which was attracting him, and by their manner showed anything but cheerful approval of his plans; wise by experience, however, they refrained from expostulation.
CHAPTER VIII
More than once—many times, in fact—Lance Trevanion revolved in his mind the strange mysterious warning which he had received from Tessie Lawless. Careless, indeed reckless, as he had become lately in the gratification of his caprices; safe in the possession of wealth hitherto undreamed of and daily increasing; basking in a local splendour of reputation based on the broad pedestal of success, there was yet something in the girl's earnest tones and candour of mien which awed and impressed him. Did she—could she—know anything really important? What could there be behind the scenes likely to operate prejudicially as far as he was concerned? Why should he not go to this place which Kate had named, stating playfully that it was rather an out-of-the-way hole, but one which, as he was always praising up the beauties of English scenery, he might like to see? 'She couldn't talk that sort of rubbish, but there was a big dark mountain, a running river, not like this ditch of a creek, and a flat beside it, like a small plain; snow, too, in the winter. He'd better come up and see. It would be a change after this beastly hot, dusty diggings.' So between idleness, irresolution, and the lure of womanly wiles not weakened in witchery, in a latter day and a newer world, Lance Trevanion finally decided to go to Balooka. 'He had given his word,' he told himself, 'and what a man says he should stand by, in great things or small. Such, at least, has always been the wont of the Trevanions of Wychwood.'
So next morning he sent for and saddled his horse—an upstanding, well-bred bay, with a star and two white hind legs, which he had bought a month or two since from Ned Lawless. There was no finer horse on the goldfield. More than once he had been asked from whom he had purchased him, where he was bred, what his brand was, by inquiring admirers, after a fashion which he was apt to dispose of hastily, if not rudely, as betraying the ignorance and bad form of colonists.