The Great Crushing at Mount Sugar-Bag | Page 4

the same. We don't like the look of the stone at all. Of course the gold is as fine as flour, and you can't tell what it's going to turn out till you get it under the stampers. We are thinking of raising some of that mullocky stuff out of Mason's and Crow's old claims. We got some good prospects lately."
"Vell, you'd better do somedings pretty qvick. I can't go on subblying you and your mates vid rations for noding," said Mr. Cohen, with an unpleasant look on his face. He was not in a pleasant temper, for he disliked Rody and his mates--the former in particular--and would have shut down on them long before only for the fact that all three men were such favourites on the field that an action like this would have meant a big hole in his bar profits.
"That's true enough," said Rody, with apparent humility, but with a look in his eye that had Ikey noticed it would have made him step back out of his reach, "and I've come to have a talk with you on the matter. Will you mind just showing us how we stand?"
"Here you are; here's your ackound up to the tay pefore yestertay--the last of the month," and the storekeeper handed him the bill.
Rody looked at--￡70 10s. 6d.
"You charge us pretty stiff, Mr. Cohen, for some of the tucker and powder and fuse."
"Vell, ven you can't bay gash!" and the little man humped his shoulders and spread his ten dirty fingers wide out.
Rody continued to scrutinise the items on the bill. "We're paying pretty stiff for keeping those mokes at Dotswood--eight quid is a lot of money when we get no use out of 'em."
"Vy, you vas full of grumbles. Vat haf you to comblain of? Thirty-two veeks' grass and vater for five horses at a shilling a veek each. My friend, if dose horses had not gone to Dotswood dey would haf died here."
"All right," said Rody, putting the bill in his pocket and turning to go, "as soon as Doyle and Patterson's stuff goes through, our crushing follows. They start to-day."
"Vell, I hopes ve do some good," snorted Cohen, as he sat down to his accounts.
"What the balzes is that for?" said Buller, as late on Thursday night rody came into the hut and dumped a small but extremely heavy parcel, tied up in a piece of baggin, down on the table.
Rody cut the string that tied it, and the mates saw that it contained a compact roll of sheet lead and a farrier's rasp.
"Never you mind; I know what I'm doing. Now, boys, we're got to slog into that mullocky stuff at Mason's all next week, and look jolly mysterious if any of the chaps tell us we're only bullocking for nothing."
A light began to dawn on Durham as he looked at the rasp and lead; a few days before he had seen Rody bringing home an old worn-out blacksmith's vice that he had picked up somewhere, and stow it under his bunk.
Taking up the articles again, Rody stowed them away, and then drew a letter out of his pocket.
"Read that," he said.
Durham took it up and read aloud -
"DOTSWOOD STATION, BURDEKIN RIVER,
"June 7, 188-- .
"DEAR SIR--In reply to your note, I beg to state that no horses with the brands described by you have ever been recieved on this station from Mr. Isaac Cohen, nor any other person.
"Yours, &c.,
"WALTER D. JOYCE,
"MR. RODY MINOGUE, "Manager.
"Sugar-bag."
"The thundering old sweep! Why, we could jail him for this," said Durham. "Are you quite sure about his using them ever since he took delivery of them?"
"Quite; I can bring a dozen people to prove that the two pack-horses have been running in the Charters Towers coach for the past six months, and the three saddle-horses have been carrying the Bowen mail from Townsville for five months."
Durham thumped his fist on the table. "I wish we could get him to tell us before a witness that the horses were at Dotswood."
"We needn't bother; this is better," and Rody, taking out Cohen's account, read -
"To 32 weeks' agistment for 5 horses at Dotswood Station, at 1s. per week--￡8."
"That's lovely, rody. We've got him now."
For the next week or so the three mates worked hard at Mason's and Crow's old shafts, to the wonder of the rest of the diggers at Sugar-bag. And they would have been still more surprised had they gone one Sunday into a thick scrub about a mile from the camp, and seen Rody Monogue fix an old vice on a stump, and spreading a bag beneath it, produce a rasp, and begin to vigorously file a thick roll of lead into fine shavings, that fell like a shower of silver spray upon the bag beneath.
Rody spent the