Do You Dare? Eureka Boys Page 6

  Looking very solemn, Frank shook Eliza’s hand. ‘Sure, I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Eliza. How can I help? Shall I wash or dig?’

  ‘Dig,’ said Henry.

  Eliza pouted. ‘I want to dig.’

  ‘But I need you to work the cradle,’ Henry pointed out. ‘You’re good at that now.’

  ‘I am, aren’t I?’ Eliza rolled her sleeves up, ready to start.

  Henry handed Frank a shovel. ‘Good luck!’ He grabbed the other shovel and the pick, fitted with its new handle, and climbed down the ladder into the mine.

  After weeks of digging Father had made the hole big enough to swing a pick comfortably. The mine was now almost twice as high as Henry was tall. Its sides were partly contained by timber planks to stop them from caving in.

  Henry began to dig a new tunnel to one side. He shovelled the loosened dirt into a bucket, and when it was full he called out, ‘Haul away!’ Frank wound the bucket to the surface on a rough windlass, and emptied it onto the mullock heap.

  It was hot down in the mine, and dust got in Henry’s eyes and up his nose. Soon every muscle in his body ached. Sweat trickled down his face, and flies crawled around in the sweat, driving him mad.

  At midday they all sat down on the log for a rest. They shared a pie Frank had brought, and a bottle of rather warm water. Afterwards, Frank stretched himself out beside the mullock heap, tipped his hat over his face, and settled down for a snooze. Henry prodded him in the ribs with the toe of his boot. ‘Wake up!’

  Frank yawned. ‘Let me have forty winks, will you? This is hard work we’re doing.’

  ‘And there’s more to do,’ Henry said.

  He went back down the shaft into the mine. How could Father do this, day after day? The work was back-breaking.

  The day dragged on, and the sun grew hotter and hotter. Bucket after bucket of dirt was lifted on the creaking windlass and disappeared over the lip of the mine. Then Henry shouted ‘Haul away!’ and the filled bucket just hung there, not moving. When he climbed halfway up the ladder to see what was going on, he saw Frank and Eliza happily splashing each other in the creek.

  ‘Lazy beggars,’ he said aloud. Wishing he was cooling down in the water with them, he went back and jabbed angrily at the wall of his new tunnel. The earth was dry, and so hard that even with the pick it was slow going. He must have come to a line of rock.

  He chipped at the wall again, and the pick rang out with a smart chink. A small piece of rock fell to the ground.

  Henry put down the pick and began to shovel the loose dirt out of the way. As he moved, a ray of sunlight shone directly on the piece of rock lying at his feet.

  Something glittered.

  Henry stared. He rubbed his eyes, filling them with grit. He blinked, hard. No, of course he’d imagined it. It was just the sun shining off a rough bit of the rock.

  Or was it?

  Henry picked up the piece of rock. He wet his finger with spit and wiped it across the bit that was shining. Whatever was in the rock kept on shining.

  Henry had struck gold.

  Henry’s heart pounded so hard he could feel it thudding against his ribs. False hope was a common thing on the goldfields. There were so many stories about promising leads that had bottomed out, or a flash in a gold-panning dish that was just that and no more. Days and days of washing and sifting dirt often produced only the tiniest amount of gold, or nothing at all.

  But this was different.

  He squatted down and looked at the line of rock in the wall of the new tunnel. It was a while before he saw the glint of gold, but it was there.

  ‘I can only see it because the sun is at just that angle,’ he said aloud, wonderingly. ‘If it wasn’t for the sun, I wouldn’t have noticed it at all.’

  He climbed up the ladder and stood breathing the fresh air. He was shaking. It had been quiet on the goldfields earlier because nearly all the miners, apart from the Chinese, had gone to the meeting at Bakery Hill. Now they were back, and all around him Henry could hear the usual racket of the diggings: the laughing and shouting and occasional bursts of song, the creak and thud of windlasses and cradles and horse-drawn whims.

  For as far as Henry could see, people were working hard, swinging picks, shovelling earth, sinking shafts, working, working, working.

  Out of all these people, he thought, I have been successful. I’ve made the sort of discovery everyone dreams of making. The sort of discovery that will change our lives.

  Holding the piece of rock, he walked over to where Frank and Eliza were working the cradle.

  ‘Have a look at this,’ he said to Frank.

  Frank glanced at it. ‘It don’t look like much.’

  ‘Look again,’ Henry said. ‘See? That’s gold, isn’t it?’

  Frank grabbed the rock. ‘Where?’

  ‘Show me,’ said Eliza, reaching for it. ‘Show me! Let me look!’

  Henry grabbed it back and held it up to the sun. The gold glittered. ‘There!’

  ‘I can see it,’ crowed Eliza.

  ‘Me too.’ Frank stared at the rock. ‘But I don’t believe it.’

  ‘I didn’t believe it either,’ Henry said. ‘But it’s there, isn’t it?’ His feeling of shock was changing to one of excitement. Wait till he told Father! ‘There could be a whole lot of gold down there,’ he went on. ‘Father told me our claim could be on an old buried river bed. It could even be part of a new lead.’

  Frank opened his eyes wide. ‘Does that mean we’re rich? Really rich?’

  Henry ignored the ‘we’, because Frank was his friend. He nodded. ‘We could be.’

  Frank shook Henry’s hand. Then he hugged him in a bear hug. ‘We’re rich,’ he shouted. ‘We’re rich! We’re rich!’

  ‘We’re rich!’ yelled Eliza.

  They held hands and jumped up and down, screaming. People around them looked up from their work and came over to see what was happening. ‘Well done, bairns,’ said Alex McGregor. ‘I’m right pleased for ye.’

  ‘What he means is he’d be even more pleased if it was his find,’ said another miner, a young man in dirty moleskins. But he thumped Henry on the shoulder. ‘Good for you, lad. It just goes to show that you should never lose hope.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Henry. He couldn’t stop smiling. ‘You never know what’s around the corner, do you?’

  As he said it, he heard a familiar shout. ‘Joe! Joe! Joe!’

  ‘I know what’s around the corner,’ said Alex McGregor. ‘The wallopers, that’s what. You bairns had best make yourselves scarce.’

  In the distance Henry could see a couple of blue-uniformed troopers on horseback. Were they riding in his direction? Yes, they were.

  He put the piece of rock in his coat pocket.

  ‘Come on,’ said Eliza. ‘We mustn’t get caught.’

  They raced each other as far as the main road and then stopped, panting and laughing. When they had their breath back, they walked up and down the street, looking in the shop windows.

  ‘We can have as many cream buns as we like now,’ Henry said, gazing at the baker’s display and breathing in the smell of fresh-baked bread. ‘And we can have eggs and toffee and chocolate and . . .’

  ‘I can have new clothes,’ Eliza chimed in. ‘With lace on. And a parasol.’

  ‘I’ll get a gold watch for Father,’ said Henry. ‘And a horse for me.’

  ‘New shoes for me and the children,’ Frank said, looking down at his battered old boots. ‘And a fine house for Ma.’

  ‘A house for us, too,’ said Henry. ‘With a proper outhouse. No more holes in the ground.’

  ‘An outhouse!’ said Frank. ‘Sure, we’ll have one of those as well.’

  There was nothing they couldn’t have! The thought made Henry feel dizzy. ‘We should get back to the claim,’ he said at last. ‘The traps must’ve gone by now.’

  He put his hand in his pocket and touched the rock, just to make sure of it. Had he really found gold? It was like a dream. But the rock was t
here, as real as he was.

  Nearer to the claim, Henry stopped. Something was wrong. A horse was hitched to the fallen log. He prayed that it belonged to somebody just passing through. But what if it belonged to one of the traps? And what if –

  Oh Lord.

  He began to run.

  ‘Master Hood,’ drawled a familiar voice. ‘It’s quite extraordinary, isn’t it, how we keep running into each other.’

  ‘My name’s Henry,’ said Henry. ‘Henry Bird.’ But he was almost out of breath, and his voice came out as a squeak.

  ‘Oh, my apologies, Master Bird,’ said Sergeant Nockles. ‘But I expect apologies aren’t necessary, because you must be a very happy fellow at this moment. The word around here is you’ve had a rare bit of luck. Now, as I happen to be passing, I’ll ask to see your licence to mine what you’ve found. Or perhaps you’ve burned it, like those fools at Bakery Hill?’

  ‘I – I haven’t . . .’ Henry’s voice had nearly disappeared.

  ‘You haven’t a licence? Now, that is a shame,’ said Nockles. ‘Ah!’ He turned as two men came up on foot. ‘Here are my good friends at last. I believe they are keen to take over your claim, Master Bird, and I wouldn’t object to a share in it myself.’

  One of the men was short and muscular and bearded; the other had a pock-marked face and wore an eye-patch. Henry recognised him straightaway as one of the men who had tormented the joey, and the claim-jumper Father had fought off weeks ago.

  ‘We have a right to work this claim,’ Henry said. Anger made him feel strong. ‘We paid for our licence with a watch, remember?’

  Nockles stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘A watch?’ he said. ‘I don’t recall a watch.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ Henry said. ‘And if you take our claim I’ll report you.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll report us, will you? To the police, would that be?’ Nockles laughed, and the other men laughed too. ‘You are operating this claim illegally, Master Bird. If you cannot produce your licence, you must forfeit your right to it.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ said Frank.

  ‘Or else, of course, I could inform the magistrate. And there’s a fine to be paid – what is it? Five pounds? No, it’s ten pounds, I think, for a repeat arrest.’ Nockles grinned like a wolf, and Henry’s last tiny bit of hope vanished. What could he do? Nothing. Not even Father could save him this time.

  ‘What do you say, Master Bird?’

  ‘I say you can go to blazes,’ Henry said. He could hear Eliza choking back sobs, and that made him angrier than ever. How dare Nockles make his sister cry! ‘Take the claim and welcome. It was just a joke, what I said about finding gold. There’s nothing there at all. It’s a shicer.’

  ‘Well, let’s see what we can find, shall we?’ said Sergeant Nockles. ‘Because, Master Bird, I don’t believe a word you say.’

  ‘We should go home,’ said Eliza. ‘It’s getting late, and I don’t like sitting in the gutter, and Papa will be worried about us.’

  ‘I don’t feel like going home yet,’ Henry replied. ‘I’d sooner stay here in town.’ He looked up at the baker’s shop window. There would be no treats for his family now. Not now, not ever.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ whined Eliza. ‘And I’m tired. Why don’t you want to go home?’

  Henry picked up a stick and broke it into tiny pieces. He didn’t want to go home because nothing mattered any more. He felt empty, as if he’d been squeezed out and hung up to dry. ‘I couldn’t wait to tell Father about finding gold. It was the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to us. Now we’ve lost the claim, and we’ve lost the gold, too. That means Father mustn’t ever know about it. Do you understand, Eliza? It has to be our secret.’

  ‘Why?’

  Henry spoke patiently. ‘Can you imagine how furious Father would be if he knew we’d lost a fortune? A fortune. Now we have nothing.’

  Frank stood up. ‘It’ll be dark soon,’ he said. ‘I’m off home.’

  ‘If only the traps hadn’t showed up when they did,’ Henry said. ‘We could be sitting on a pile of gold now. If only!’ He smacked the ground next to him with both fists. ‘Frank, d’you think Nockles believed what I said about the mine being a shicer?’

  ‘Are you joking?’ Frank replied. ‘He and his eejit mates will be down that pit like rats down a drainpipe. And there’s never a blind thing we can do about it.’

  ‘You’re very late, Henry,’ Father said as Henry came through the door of the hut, Eliza trailing behind him. ‘You’d better have a good reason.’ He hitched himself up in his chair, wincing with the pain of his shoulder. ‘Well?’

  ‘Papa, you’ll never guess! We –’ began Eliza.

  ‘There’s plenty happening on the diggings,’ Henry said quickly, shooting a warning look at Eliza. ‘There was another meeting at Bakery Hill today. A lot of the miners burned their licences.’

  ‘So I heard,’ Father said. ‘The fools. This is just the start, and there’ll be more rioting and bloodshed before it’s over.’

  ‘Well . . . yes,’ said Henry. Then he dared to add, ‘But you can’t blame the miners, can you? There are some things that aren’t fair –’

  ‘Never mind that,’ Father said irritably. ‘Tell me how your day went. Did you find anything?’

  ‘No,’ Henry said, treading hard on Eliza’s foot. ‘Nothing. But something did happen.’

  ‘Oh, aye?’ Father leaned back in his chair. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Some men jumped our claim,’ Henry said. ‘When the traps came digger hunting, we ran away, you know, the way you always tell us to.’ He hoped this would make Father more sympathetic, maybe even save him from a thrashing. ‘Then, when we got back to the claim – Eliza and me, that is – there were three men there, and they said they’d taken it over. They said they could do that because we were mining illegally.’

  He expected an explosion of anger, but it didn’t happen. Instead, Father reached for his tobacco pouch and began to fill his pipe. ‘We could go to the troopers and explain why I’m unable to work the claim,’ Father said, after a while. ‘They may be prepared to listen. Do you know who these claim-jumpers are?’

  ‘That’s the problem,’ Henry told him. ‘One of the men who jumped the claim is Sergeant Nockles. The other two are mates of his. That fellow with the eye-patch is one of them.’

  ‘Him again? By God, if I’d been there with my pistol . . .’

  ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference, Father. Nockles is armed, too. He has a rifle.’

  ‘Of course,’ Father said. ‘The police will always have the upper hand, and when they use force . . . It’s wrong. I won’t deny that.’

  ‘I’ll try to make up for losing the claim,’ Henry said. ‘I’ll go into town every day and get whatever jobs I can.’ He thought of the gold he’d found, and squeezed his eyes shut to try to block it from his mind.

  Father lit his pipe. ‘I’m not happy you lost the claim, Henry, but I can see it’s not your fault. It’s not so long since the same thing nearly happened to me, is it? That ruffian must have had his eye on our claim ever since.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘His one eye.’

  Mostly with relief, Henry laughed too.

  ‘Frank said they’d be down our mine like rats down a drainpipe,’ Eliza said. ‘And they are like rats, aren’t they?’

  ‘Frank?’ Father frowned. ‘Frank Shanahan? How is he mixed up in this?’

  Henry gave Eliza a furious look. How could she be so stupid!

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He was . . . helping us,’ Henry said. ‘I asked him to.’

  ‘You asked him to?’ Father’s face had gone very red. ‘I told you to have nothing more to do with that boy.’

  Henry tried to speak firmly, but his voice shook. ‘I’m sorry, Father. I didn’t think I could work the claim on my own. Eliza’s too small.’

  ‘I am not!’

  ‘Hush, Eliza,’ said Father. He raised his voice. ‘I am bitterly disappointed in you, Henry. You know my feelings
about this. Your so-called friend is clearly on the rebel side, and that’s a side I’ll have no part of. I thought I could trust you to be sensible, but I see that I’ve been mistaken. You have disobeyed me, and you have lied to me. Your mother would have been ashamed of you.’ He turned away. ‘Get out of my sight.’

  Henry felt as if his brain had exploded. ‘It’s better to be a rebel than a coward,’ he yelled. ‘You don’t believe in anything any more. You don’t believe in me. You don’t even believe in yourself. I’ll take Jack and Frank over you any time, because we’re covies, and they care. You don’t care about anything since Mam died. You . . . you . . .’ He tried to think what would hurt his father most. ‘You’re the worst father in the world!’

  He closed his eyes and waited for the thrashing he was sure would come, but there was only silence, broken by the sound of Eliza crying. Then Father pushed past him, opened the door, and walked out into the night.

  Much later Father came back, smelling of alcohol. He must have been to one of those sly-grog tents he hated so much, Henry thought sourly. He waited for Father to say something, but Father ignored him. ‘I’m off to bed,’ he said to Eliza, as if Henry wasn’t there.

  The worst thing, the thing Henry couldn’t get over, was Father saying he was disappointed in him. No matter how hard he tried to be the sort of son Father wanted, Father was always disappointed in him. And it wasn’t fair to drag Mam into it. If Mam was still alive, she wouldn’t have been ashamed of him. He could have talked to her, and she’d have understood. Mam always understood.

  If only he could tell Father that he’d discovered gold on the claim! But to tell him now would just make everything worse. It would be much better if he never knew.

  Henry couldn’t believe how unfair everything was. Father didn’t care about him – never had, probably. Well, Henry thought, I don’t care about him, either.

  That night he couldn’t sleep. He lay on his mattress listening to Father’s snoring and Eliza’s soft breathing, and he looked at the moonlight streaming through the chinks in the shutters.