"He'll get that--if we can fix it," Watty Frost said.
"Yes," Michael agreed.
"Can't think why you're taking so much trouble with this place if Paul and Sophie are going away soon, Michael," George Woods remarked at the end of their talk.
"They're not gone yet," Michael said, and went on fastening a sapling across the brushwood he had laid over the roof of the shed.
The men laughed. They knew Paul well enough to realise that there was no betting on what he would or would not do. They understood Michael did not approve of his plans for Sophie. Nobody did. But what was to be done? If Paul had the money and got the notion into his head that it would be a good thing to go away, Sophie and he would probably go away.
But the money would not last, people thought; then Sophie and her father would come back to the Ridge again, or Michael would go to look for them. Being set adrift on the world with no one to look after her would be hard on Sophie, it was agreed, but nobody saw how Rouminof was to be prevented from taking her away if he wanted to.
CHAPTER III
The unwritten law of the Ridge was that mates pooled all the opal they found and shared equally, so that all Jun held was Rouminof's, and all that he held was Jun's. Ordinarily one man kept the lot, and as Jun was the better dealer and master spirit, it was natural enough he should hold the stones, or, at any rate, the best of them. But Rouminof was like a child with opal. He wanted some of the stones to handle, polish up a bit, and show round. Jun humoured him a good deal. He gave Paul a packet of the stuff they had won to carry round himself. He was better tempered and more easy-going with Rouminof, the men admitted, than most of them would have been; but they could not believe Jun was going to deal squarely by him.
Jun and his mate seemed on the best of terms. Paul followed him about like a dog, referring to him, quoting him, and taking his word for everything. And Jun was openly genial with Paul, and talked of the times they were going to have when they went down to Sydney together to sell their opal.
Paul was never tired of showing his stones, and almost every night at Newton's he spread them out on a table, looked them over, and held them up to admiration. It was good stuff, but the men who had seen Jun's package knew that he had kept the best stones.
For a couple of weeks after they had come on their nest of knobbies, Jun and Paul had gouged and shovelled dirt enthusiastically; but the wisp fires, mysteriously and suddenly as they had come, had died out of the stone they moved. Paul searched frantically. He and Jun worked like bullocks; but the luck which had flashed on them was withdrawn. Although they broke new tunnels, went through tons of opal dirt with their hands, and tracked every trace of black potch through a reef of cement stone in the mine, not a spark of blue or green light had they seen for over a week. That was the way of black opal, everybody knew, and knew, too, that the men who had been on a good patch of fired stone would not work on a claim, shovelling dirt, long after it disappeared. They would be off down to Sydney, if no buyer was due to visit the fields, eager to make the most of the good time their luck and the opal would bring them.
"Opal only brings you bad luck when you don't get enough of it," Ridge folk say.
George and Watty had a notion Jun would not stick to the claim much longer, when they arranged the night at Newton's to settle his and Paul's account with each other. Michael, the Crosses, Cash Wilson, Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant, Bully Bryant, old Bill Olsen, and most of the staunch Ridge men were in the bar, Charley Heathfield drinking with Jun, when George Woods strolled over to the table where Rouminof was showing Sam Nancarrow his stones. Sam was blacksmith, undertaker, and electoral registrar in Fallen Star, and occasionally did odd butchering jobs when there was no butcher in the township. He had the reputation, too, of being one of the best judges of black opal on the fields.
Paul was holding up a good-looking knobby so that red, green, and gold lights glittered through its shining potch as he moved it.
"That's a nice bit of stone you've got, Rummy!" George exclaimed.
Paul agreed. "But you should see her by candle light, George!" he said eagerly.
He held up the stone again so that it caught the light of a lamp hanging over the bar where Peter Newton was standing. The eyes of two or three of the men followed the stone as Paul moved it, and its internal fires broke in showers of sparks.
"Look, look!" Paul cried, "now she's showin'!"
"How much have you got on her?" Sam Nancarrow asked.
"Jun thinks she'll bring 50 or 60 at least."
Sam's and George Woods' eyes met: 50 was a liberal estimate of the stone's value. If Paul got 10 or 15 for it he would be doing well, they knew.
"They're nice stones, aren't they?" Paul demanded, sorting over the opals he had spread out on the table. He held up a piece of green potch with a sun-flash through it.
"My oath!" George Woods exclaimed.
"But where's the big beaut.?" Archie Cross asked, looking over the stones with George.
"Oh, Jun's got her," Paul replied. "Jun!" he called, "the boys want to see the big stone."
"Right!" Jun swung across to the table. Several of the men by the bar followed him. "She's all right," he said.
He sat down, pulled a shabby leather wallet from his pocket, opened it, and took out a roll of dirty flannel; he undid the flannel carefully, and spread the stones on the table. There were several pieces of opal in the packet. The men, who had seen them before separately, uttered soft oaths of admiration and surprise when they saw all the opals together.
Two knobbies were as big as almonds, and looked like black almonds, fossilised, with red fire glinting through their green and gold; a large flat stone had stars of red, green, amethyst, blue and gold shifting over and melting into each other; and several smaller stones, all good stuff, showed smouldering fire in depths of green and blue and gold-lit darkness.
Jun held the biggest of the opals at arm's length from the light of the hanging lamp. The men followed his movement, the light washing their faces as it did the stone.
"There she goes!" Paul breathed.
"What have you got on her?"
"A hundred pounds, or thereabouts."
"You'll get it easy!"
Jun put the stone down. He took up another, a smaller piece of opal, of even finer quality. The stars were strewn over and over each other in its limpid black pool.
"Nice pattern," he said.
"Yes," Watty Frost murmured.
"She's not as big as the other ... but better pattern," Archie Cross said.
"Reckon you'll get 100 for her too, Jun?"
"Yup!" Jun put down the stone.
Then he held up each stone in turn, and the men gave it the same level, appraising glance. There was no envy in their admiration. In every man's eyes was the same worshipful appreciation of black opal.
Jun was drunk with his luck. His luck, as much as Newton's beer, was in his head this night. He had shown his stones before, but never like this, the strength of his luck.
"How much do you think there is in your packet, Jun?" Archie Cross asked.
Jun stretched his legs under the table.
"A thou' if there's a penny."
Archie whistled.
"And how much do you reckon there is in Rum-Enough's?" George Woods put the question.
"Four or five hundred," Jun said; "but we're evens, of course."
He leaned across the table and winked at George.
"Oh, I say," Archie protested, "what's the game?"
They knew Jun wanted them to believe he was joking, humouring Paul. But that was not what they had arranged this party for.