THE ADVENTURE OF THE BROAD ARROW

An Australian Romance

BY

MORLEY ROBERTS

London Hutchinson & Co. 34 Paternoster Row, E.C. 1897

CONTENTS

Chap.

I. NEW FIND II. A SPECULATION III. GOING IT BLIND IV. TWO IN A DESERT V. LOOKING FOR WATER VI. THE BILLABONG VII. RUNNING UP THE BILLABONG VIII. THE ASHES OF A FIRE IX. THE WHITE MAN X. THE BRODARRO XI. A SOLUTION XII. THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE XIII. THE FATHER OF THE TRIBE XIV. THE GOLD OUTCROP XV. THE FIGHT ON THE RIVER XVI. THE RIVER SINK XVII. THE SAND TORNADO XVIII. THE ROAD WITH PITS XIX. DELIVERANCE

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BROAD ARROW

CHAPTER I. NEW FIND.

"It's possible to be damned without being dead," said Smith, as he drank his nobbler at the Pilbarra Hotel. "And miners are the men who know it, in such a place as this."

He looked out of the reeking bar-room on the light brown glare of waterless desert, with a few thirsty trees scattered over it.

"We're in the pit, so to speak," he continued, "but not the lowest, for there are drinks here still. Fill 'em up again, Bob, and have one yourself. As for me, I feel I could blue my skin and shirt for a last one before I tumble to pieces and rot finger by finger in this hole."

The men in the bar stood and drank with him silently. Yet one who was mad drunk with brandy and sunlight smashed his tumbler on the bar top, and pitched the bottom at a mongrel dog slinking outside in a thin shadow.

"What's the best news, Smith?" asked Bob, who was the only cheerful man in the crowd.

"The best news," answered Smith, "is that we are back, and the water's nearly done here, and the rain is not coming, and the camp is rotting. Tinned meats and fever water are doing for us. I might as well have stayed out yonder and got sun-dried in mulga and spinifex."

And he went off foolishly into the blazing sun, which came down at a slant of ninety degrees, and shone back from the hot dust with a glare that could blister a man under his chin.

The town that he strode through was of boards and canvas and corrugated iron. It stank in the still air, and, as man, or horse, or camel went by, the dust rose thick, and empty cans rang.

But into the stagnant desolation came men perpetually. They came in with gold fever, and went out with typhoid; and still their empty places filled up. The Western Australian papers screamed "no water," and the Eastern papers copied them with jealous additions; but men came in to drink thick mud and rot like silly sheep piled against a windward fence in a dry season, when the creeks and tanks are dry, and grass is not.

From Albany, Perth, and Freemantle, from Kimberley, Murchison, and Coolgardie, men rushed in, till New Find, so greatly boomed, was full of good men and thieves, of workers and loafers, of white men and of Chinamen, and they were all bent on gold, till the fever got them, and they yelled under canvas which was no shelter from the sun. But ants and spiders and scorpions gloried while men died, and the flies were thick on sick men's mouths, and ownerless dogs dug up corpses and died of blood-poisoning.

For the ways of men under ancient stresses are as the ways of ancient instinct, inevitable in unalterable channels. They drift where gold is, or where the thought of its possibility lies; they march like locusts into a ditch which is death. They pour out of the towns like ants from a disturbed ant-hill, they try the absurd, and storm the impossible; they rot and stick in the mire; they perish, and are known no more; they wither like grass, and are of no avail.

Yet each individual man is even there the centre of his world, and thinks that he will do this and do that, and each day he does what the dead day willed, and the night subscribed to, but does no more and does no other. And such as these was Smith, who braved sudden death in a bitter sun as he walked through the hideous town to his mate's hut out west on the plain.

As he went out of the sunlight into shadow, which was thick darkness after the glare of the noonday light, he stumbled across some one.

"Where the devil are you treading?" growled the somnolent man he had disturbed.

"Can't see after being in the sun," said Smith. "Is that you, Tom?"

"Yes," said Tom the water-carter, whose job looked like giving out. For water now was bought by rich men in measured buckets, and by poor ones in mean tin pannikins. "You mean you can't see after soaking in whisky at the Pilbarra, don't you?" he added.

"A little of both," said Smith, lying down on a pile of dirty gunny sacks. "I've been out facing the Earth-destroyer and the Drier-up of water, and I wanted to get blind."

"Why are you back?" asked Tom. "I came in and saw the Baker yonder, and I found Hicks, too, so I just lay down. You had a bad time?"

The men he spoke of were at the far end of the hut; one was in an old bush bed made of stakes and sticks, and stretched sacking, while the other sat at the table, and scraped grease from it with a clasp knife.

"We funked it," said Smith. "There's no other word for it. Oh—blazes! I can't lie still."

He rose and went to the table, and sat opposite to Hicks. Reaching over, he borrowed the other man's knife without ceremony, and scratched his name in big capital letters in the wood. When he had finished SMITH, he jabbed the knife into the I of his name, and went on talking.

"We got sixty miles out across the sand, the mulga, and the porcupine grass; yes, sixty miles into the desert, and we saw its red rim dance, and its scrub crackle, and the water bags looked mean betting against the sun. So we put our tails between our legs, and crawled back sick, and ready to rot here. But when the rain comes, we're there, we're there."

"Why didn't you take camels?" asked Tom.

Smith smiled.

"Why didn't we organise an expedition? Camels and Afghans cost money. And I don't like their ways. Horses are good enough for me. You wait till the rain comes."

But another chipped into the talk.

"It'll never rain no more," said the man who lay on the bed. "I'm going home to my ma, and I'll live where there's water, and make love to the 'alf-a-crown a week slavey, and be a toff in a back street. What did I come out 'ere for? It's better to be a sneak, and be jugged in London, than be 'ere. If they did anythin' 'alf so bad to long timers as make 'em come to such a place as this 'ere, they'd 'ave a bally h'agitation in Hengland, and a meetin' in the Park."

"Dry up, you Cockney baker, you," said Smith, more good-humouredly than he had yet spoken. "It's never home you'll get. You and I will fill a sand-pit here, and I'll dig yours. We'll scrape it out with a broken bottle and a kerosene tin, and we'll write your name on the hide of your dead dog, and plant him with you to keep you faithful company."

But the Cockney took it all in good part, and only pretended to weep at his mate's brutal suggestions.

"Boo-hoo, boo-hoo!" said he, "that I should ever be mates with a man whose name is Smith when mine is Mandeville."

"And that you stole with your passage money," said Hicks, who had not spoken yet. But now he angered Mandeville, who suggested forcibly in the very choicest Australian, that if he didn't dry up he would soon put the kibosh on him.

But Hicks laughed. As he was six feet four in height and five stone the heavier man, he could afford to let the Cockney say what he pleased. And Mandeville said it till Smith interfered.

"Now then, leave each other alone. It's not you that's quarrelling. It's the sun, moon, and stars, the wind and sand and weather you've a fight with. Get out and claw the sand, man. Hurrah, hurrah! Go it, dear boys, against the devil, who is the patron saint of Pilbarra."

He lighted his pipe and smoked, and there was silence for a space in that sweet heaven.

CHAPTER II. A SPECULATION.

"You'd better come with us, Tom," said Smith, a few days after. "There's not much need for you here now. This rain has done you out of a job which would never make you rich."

They were walking together on the outskirts of the barren town, close by the New Find, which had turned the inside of the earth up to the sky. They were making money there, though every night the men working it had nightmares, and sweated to think the gold was done. Smith waved his hand towards it.

"They've taken out fifty thousand already, Tom," he said.

"And I daresay they'll take out no more," said red-faced Tom, whose natural good-humour and hopefulness were a little off in colour.

"What then? They'll float it," said Smith. "It would do us four. I could show my peeled nose in England again."

He rubbed his aquiline beak, which was badly skinned. His blue eyes were bright and eager and courageous.

"Oh, if you didn't drink such a lot, you'd be a daisy," said Tom, who had spent years in America, and mixed his talk as the other did his drinks.

"Hang it," said Smith, "I give you my word I'm off drink. I tell you honestly that I mean it. And out yonder we sha'n't be able to get it."

Tom looked out across the north-east plain, and shook his head.

"No, perhaps not," he answered.

But Smith grew impatient.

"This rain has filled up the holes," he cried, "and there'll be plenty for a week or two, even if no more falls."

"No more will fall," said Tom. "It's rare luck as this fell."

But, all the same, before they went back, he promised to go with the others upon their expedition.

"It must be out there somewhere," said Hicks that night, when everything was ready for the morning's start. "For Bill Herder, that brought that bit of stuff in, was only gone a fortnight. And if he was off his nut with the fever, I believe he spoke the gospel truth. And, anyhow, that lump of stuff doesn't lie, and where it came from is not more than a week's journey."

For Herder, who had helped to turn their faces to the north-east, had died in the very bed occupied by the Cockney. He dropped off his horse at the door one evening as the chums were at supper, and three days afterwards he collapsed and went out. All he had brought back with him was one lump of quartz and gold, weighing about eight pounds. He looked at them pitifully before he died, but could tell them nothing but that he got it "out yonder." So he was buried, and no one knew if he had a friend to whom news of his death should be sent.

The first expedition made by Hicks, Smith, and Mandeville, was an ill-considered and rash one. For Smith was reckless. He was always ready to take chances that any other man would shirk. He rushed his chums into a violent hurry, and got them a day out on the burning plain before they knew it. Some of the men in town believed they knew where they were going, and followed them from a distance. But when they saw the open dry horror of a flat world before them, those who sneaked behind failed in their hearts and turned back. They spread reports of the country in that quarter, which gave rise at last to circumstantial rumours that the Smith party was already dead of thirst.

But on the fourth day they came in.

Smith had growled even then, for he swore that another few hours would bring them to water. A faint cloud-line on the horizon he described as big trees by a creek. But the water in their big bags was nearly done, and one had leaked.

"This time," said Smith, "I'm going through, if I die like a dog on a wet sack."

"A dry sack," said Hicks.

But early in the dawn, the three faced the plain once more, and with them went Tom.

"I might just as well make a spoon, or spoil a horn," said Tom. "And there is gold in this all-fired rotten country anyhow."

It was still almost dark when they saddled up and struck out north-west upon the endless, mysterious plain, and, by the time the white-hot sun shot up on their right hands, and the light poured across the dead level, the town was ten miles behind them. But they could still see its tin roofs and tin walls gleaming.

"This reminds me that I once went from a ship in a boat," said Tom, "when it was dead calm, and the sea was thick blue oil. It's like being at sea here."

He was riding by the side of the Cockney, who nodded, and whistled.

"It's a blooming rum start, this is," said Mandeville. "To think that two years ago I was never outside London, and now to be on a plain like this 'ere. I was a moke ever to leave the bakery business. And yet I dunno, bakin' wasn't nice work. What was you at 'ome, Tom?"

"A pound a week clerk," said Tom.

"And what fetched you out 'ere?"

"I got sacked, and couldn't get another job, so I came to my brother in Melbourne, and there—"

"And there," cried Mandeville, "it's a sight worse than at 'ome."

"That's where you hit it," said Tom. "So then I went to San Francisco, and there or thereabouts I stayed for two years, and this gold racket fetched me back."

"Do you know who Smith was afore he came out?" asked Mandeville.

Tom shook his head.

"He was a real gent; a clergyman's son, and 'ad a lot of money. Drink done him, and a woman, I daresay. But he's a rare good sort, and a good plucked un. 'E'd fight 'Icks if so be 'e sauced him. I've seed 'im fight till 'e was a red rag, and cryin' because the other licked him. And when 'e's drunk 'e's a terror, an 'oly terror, and it's stand from under when 'e flies 'igh."

For Mandeville adored Smith, and felt that it was a high privilege to be the friend of a clergyman's son. He always spoke as if such a parentage was a kind of profession.

At about ten o'clock they made camp by a thickish bit of mulga scrub, where there was a little grass newly sprung up about a small water-hole. They ate a lunch of mutton and bread.

"No more good bread," said Smith, "our baker will have to come down to Johnny cakes and flap-jacks."

"Never mind us," said the Baker, which was one of Mandeville's names. "I'm thinking of the 'orses. It's little there is to pick. And with this 'ere sun like a h'oven for 'eat, it'll dry it up in two days."

"Don't croak," growled Hicks, whose vast length was stretched under the only bit of shade thereabouts.

"I ain't growling," said the Baker, "I'm only just expressing opinions. And your 'orse will want tucker if 'e's to carry your bloomin' carcass far."

Hicks laughed, and reached out for Mandeville, who rolled a foot further away from him.

"What kind of 'orses do you breed down on the 'Awksbery River, old man?" he asked. "Or does your folks go on foot? Or perhaps you're bigger than most."

"I'm the little un' of the family," said Hicks. And they all laughed.

"Lord save us from your brothers," said Smith. "But let's be getting a bit of a snooze."

So they lay and sweated, and hunted off the infernal ubiquitous flies, and got sticky and bad-tempered, till the sun was two hours past the meridian.

And before them, as they rode on again, was the eternal plain, which ran ahead of them for ever.

But when they camped at night, they were thirty miles, or perhaps more, from the New Find.

CHAPTER III. GOING IT BLIND.

The second day found all the four men cheerful, but it left them a little apprehensive. For, as the day went on, though it appeared impossible for the morning's heat to be greater, it still grew and grew till noon. That seemed its full flood, and yet they knew it must be worse. And after one o'clock, when they guessed the time intuitively, as bushmen will—for Hicks was their clock—the little breeze that blew from the south-east failed.

They were then pushing across a patch of dense, thick scrub with openings in it, which were partially overgrown with dry spinifex, the colour of ripe wheat straw, and every piece of exposed whitish ground shone with reflected heat which was as intense as the sun. And about two o'clock a breeze came from the north. Hicks shook his head and pulled up his horse, for they took no noon-time that day. It was better to push on even through the spinifex, which murdered the horses.

"What's wrong?" asked Smith, who was riding with both legs on one side like a woman.

"What's wrong?" said Hicks. "Well, and don't get narked about it, I should say a north wind here was nothing to yearn for. It will soak every pool of water up in twenty-four hours, and we shall be done."

"Tut, man," cried Smith, but Hicks went on.

"And now we are almost as far as we were last time, or even further. Where's your creek that you gassed about?"

They wrangled for ten minutes, and then rode on rather sullenly. Tom and Mandeville, who knew least about the country, said little. But the Baker would say "ditto" to Smith if Smith said "die." That was evident.

The north wind blew steadily at about ten miles an hour, and it was in truth like a breath from a furnace; it caught the men on the left cheek, and Tom's skin fairly burnt and blistered. The others grinned and were silent, and rode through the living invisible flame. Their horses were evidently distressed, and their legs streamed with blood from wounds made by the porcupine grass.

At last, about six, when Hicks' big horse was almost done for, they came to a water-hole. Before they could check them, the animals were half up to their knees. They drank till they stretched their girths almost to breaking point.

That night, by their little fire of scrub, there was the usual discussion, which now bore more continually on the thing most to be considered. They did not divagate into common ribaldry, neither did they discuss horse flesh in general. They spoke only of their own horses, of water now and water to-morrow, and the prospects of getting through to some place where they could stay and prospect, or to some rise in the ground which they looked for. For so much they had gathered from Herder's dying delirious gabble.

And now it began to seem to Tom, and to Hicks, who was influenced by the condition of his horse, that they had gone out into the Big Impossible without much chance of doing anything. What had they to go on in estimating their chances? A heavy lump of gold mixed with quartz, a quantity of fevered talk streaked with a possible vein of real consciousness.

"How can we know he had his senses, even when he talked most sensibly?" asked Hicks. "I daresay, the fever invented it for him."

"It didn't h'invent the gold," urged the Baker.

Hicks grinned.

"Yes; but he might have got that anywhere. And, who's to know, now I come to think of it, that he didn't get it and the tip from another chap?"

This damped them a little.

"But it's all the same if he did," said Smith; "and with water and a bit of grass I'm for going on. I'll go by myself."

"Not you," said Mandeville.

"I will, by the Powers," cried Smith; but, recognising what the Baker meant, he reached out his hand to his faithful chum.

"If you go, I go," said the Baker, with tears in his eyes.

"Good old man," murmured Smith.

And they lay down on their spread blankets, and sweated through an intolerable night, while the stars winked hotly in the drying air.

At early dawn Tom filled up all the water-bags, and they ate breakfast in comparative silence. They opened no new discussion, and saddled their horses at the same time. If Hicks was a little behind the others, that was only customary.

"Is it 'go on'?" said he, as Smith mounted. And he saw Smith turn his head to the north-east. There was no more said, and they followed their leader.

But by noon Hicks stopped.

"My horse is nearly done," he said gloomily, and the others paused.

"Give him a mouthful of water in your hat," said Tom.

And Hicks grumbled, but gave it.

"And don't hist your carcass on him again," said the Baker. "Such a man as you should 'ave an elephant."

"Dry up," said Hicks. "That's enough."

And Smith frowned at Mandeville, who rode on a yard or two.

"If we go easy, he can do the rest of the day," said Smith. "And if there's no water, why, we can get back to-morrow."