The Gold Seekers (10 page)

“We’re not stopping to eat,” Ned told him with asperity. “And when we do stop, it’ll be where and when I say. When I find the right place, I’ll show you how to make a fortune with my frying pan! How much farther is it to Summer Hill Creek, Johnny?”

Johnny Lister pointed ahead of them. “Down this valley, Mr. Hargraves, about another mile. Summer Hill joins with Lewes Ponds down there and what they call Yorky’s Corner, where Old Yorky Macgregor used to have his hut. Yorky was—”

“The shepherd who reported that he’d found a sizable nugget,” Ned finished for him. “Well, that’s probably as good a place as any to make a start.”

When they reached the junction of the two creeks, Ned’s spirits rose. The drought had reduced the water level, leaving sand and gravel exposed, and lower down and on the opposite side of the Summer Hill Creek there was a sandbar that reminded him vividly of those he had worked in California’s Stanislaus Valley. There he had found small nuggets of alluvial gold a few inches below the surface—as, no doubt, the now-dead Yorky had done—but a swift search revealed none here, so he unstrapped his pan and, squatting by the edge of the creek, gave his two young companions a lesson in panning for gold.

With only his fourth panful he let out a cry of triumph. “See!” he invited the skeptical Willie Tom. “I’ve struck pay dirt! Before heaven, I was right! This is gold country. Boys, you’re looking at gold dust, and I’ll take my oath that there’s plenty more where this came from.”

Despite this initial success, however, five more hours of careful panning yielded only a few grains of the precious metal. Ned Hargraves dried out their minute haul, wrapping it in his handkerchief.

“Tomorrow we’ll try lower down,” he said, clambering wearily to his feet. “I’ll take a pick to the creek bank, and we’ll construct a cradle as soon as I can find some suitable planks of wood. You can wash more dirt with a rocking cradle.”

For the ensuing three weeks, aided by the two young men, Ned took gravel samples from a wide area of the Macquarie River valley, finding sufficient dust to confirm all his hopes and dreams. They encountered only a few shepherds and

stockmen in their methodical search, but for all their efforts to conceal the reason for their presence, Ned became increasingly anxious lest word of what they had found come to the ears of men lately returned from California.

“I must be the first to approach the Governor,” he confided to Susan Lister. “We’ve worked hard, the lads and me, and it’s only right that we should claim a reward for what we’ve achieved. I’ll go back to Sydney in a day or so and seek an interview with the authorities. The cradle’s finished. I’ll show Johnny and young Willie how to operate it, and they can set it up at Summer Hill Creek or on Yorky’s Corner. I guarantee they’ll find gold in considerable quantity once they start rocking—because it’s there, Mrs. Lister. I’d stake my life on it!”

Two days later, after extracting a promise of silence from the Listers and Willie Tom, Ned mounted his big gray horse and set off to retrace his steps to Sydney.

The two boys watched him go, and then, both now as confident as their mentor, they loaded packhorses with the cradle and their camping gear and left on their mission. It was well into the afternoon when they reached their destination, descending the steep slope from Lucas Gully to reach the creek half a mile from where Old Yorky’s hut still stood.

“Let’s boil the billy,” Willie Tom suggested, mopping his heated face, “before we start unloading our gear. I’m parched, I don’t know about you.”

“All right,” Johnny agreed readily, untying the blackened billycan suspended from the pommel of his saddle. “We’re on our own, ain’t we? We can take our time, without Ned Hargraves to drive us. Here—” He handed the can to Willie. “You get the water. I’ll unsaddle the horses and hobble them.”

Willie grinned and slithered down the bank to the exposed sandbar. He dipped the billycan into the water and then drew it back, smothering a gasp. In a crevice of the rock just below the surface of the water he caught a glimpse of something that emitted a faint yellowy luster. Scarcely daring to believe his luck, he thrust his hand into the crevice and drew out a nugget about the size of a hen’s egg. And it was gold! Pure, alluvial gold, just as Hargraves had described.

He turned, scarcely able to contain his excitement, and yelled to Johnny to join him.

“Look!” he exclaimed in a strangled voice. “Stone the crows, John—just look what I’ve found! Hargraves was right —there’s gold here sure enough. And to think I used to wonder if he was off his rocker!”

“He was always sure he was right, Willie,” Johnny asserted loyally. “And we’ve got to give him the credit. We’d never have found anything if he hadn’t told us how and shown us where to look, would we?”

“Maybe so.” Will shrugged and bent to dip the billycan into the creek. “But he’ll have his work cut out to convince Governor Fitzroy with the few grains o’ dust he took with him, I’ll warrant. He should’ve waited and taken this beaut with him.”

In fact, Ned experienced considerable skepticism when he was finally received by the colonial secretary, Edward Deas Thomson, after cooling his heels in the anteroom for the best part of a day. A man of fifty and the son-in-law of a previous governor, Thomson wielded considerable influence in the colony, having held office for fourteen years and served in the administration for more than twenty.

He listened to his visitor’s story in repressive silence, and when Ned produced the grains of gold dust to substantiate his claim, the secretary pointedly donned his spectacles in order to examine them.

“Hardly an impressive find, Mr. Hargraves,” he observed with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. “Ah, you were at the Californian gold diggings, you say?”

“That is so, sir. I spent over a year there.” Resenting the colonial secretary’s manner, Ned launched into his carefully prepared lecture but was abruptly cut short.

“I am sure you know what you are talking about, sir … whereas I do not,” Thomson assured him with a thin smile. “But to expect payment from the government on such flimsy evidence as you have produced is—well, somewhat optimistic, to say the least. If you are correct concerning the existence of a goldfield in this colony, it would undoubtedly halt the emigration to California. But, Mr. Hargraves, it would

do much else besides—none of it good or likely to benefit our pastoral society. There have been claims made before, you know, which earlier administrations deemed it wiser to suppress, for reasons that must be obvious to you.”

“California has been opened up as a direct result of the gold finds there, Mr. Thomson,” Ned argued. “The population of San Francisco quadrupled in the space of two years. Gold has brought prosperity and—”

“And lawlessness, from all accounts, sir.” The colonial secretary’s tone was discouraging. “Not to put too fine a point on it, lawlessness, in what has been until recently a penal colony, is not to be desired. We have our prosperity here, Mr. Hargraves, and a well-ordered, securely based prosperity. Frankly, I do not think that His Excellency Sir Charles Fitzroy will welcome your discovery—if that is what it is—or feel disposed to reward you for making it.”

“But, sir,” Ned began, unable to hide his chagrin, “gold, in the quantities I confidently estimate, will bring the colony more profit than wool or coal. And I’m asking only for a fair reward for the work I’ve done and the expense I’ve been put to. If His Excellency were to—”

“Put your request in writing, Mr. Hargraves,” Thomson invited. “My clerk will supply you with pen and paper, and you may leave your letter with him when it is done. I will see that His Excellency receives it without delay.”

Conscious of Thomson’s disapproval, Ned had no choice but to agree to his suggestion. Back in the anteroom once more, he spent more than an hour on the composition of his letter to Governor Fitzroy. He would, he assured the Governor, reveal the exact location of his discovery on payment of a reward that was in keeping with its value to the colony; and as an added inducement he offered his expert services in the capacity of … Dark brows knit, he sought for a title. Commissioner for gold … gold-bearing land commissioner … By heaven, Essie would be impressed if he returned to her with an official appointment! And the two boys who had assisted him—Johnny Lister and Willie Tom—they, too, were deserving of reward.

“It waxes late, sir,” the colonial secretary’s clerk reminded him reproachfully. “Have you not yet done?”

“I’ll not keep you above five minutes,” Ned answered with dignity. He wrote “Commissioner for Crown Lands “and signed his name with a flourish. Five hundred pounds, he decided, would not be too much to ask in the first instance, or perhaps … He picked up the pen again and wrote: “I leave it to the generosity of the government to make such additional reward as may be commensurate with the benefit likely to accrue to this colony as a result of my discovery.”

Leaving his epistle in the clerk’s hands, he went out into the street and, on impulse, asked a passerby to direct him to the office of Sydney’s leading newspaper, the Morning Herald.

Better, Ned Hargraves told himself, to be sure than sorry. Thomson had been the reverse of grateful, and as had happened in the past, he and Sir Charles Fitzroy might attempt to suppress the news of this momentous discovery. But were he to reveal it to the press, their hands would be effectively tied. He would insist that the Herald hold back publication until the Governor had replied to his report, but if he did not, or if his reply should be unfavorable, then … With a jaunty step, Ned followed the directions he had been given, his mouth set in a firm, determined line.

Dusk was falling when Jenny Broome descended from the smart curricle that had brought her from the picnic she had shared with William De Lancey to her parents’ house in Elizabeth Bay, on the outskirts of Sydney.

William, a tall, handsome figure in his undress cavalry uniform, assisted her to alight, holding her hand for a trifle longer than good manners decreed.

“Did you enjoy our drive, Jenny?” he asked solicitously.

“Very much, Will,” she assured him, withdrawing her hand from his clasp and reddening a little as she saw his dark eyes light up. Their families were old friends; William’s father was one of the colony’s most respected judges, as well as her uncle through marriage, and she and Will, with only a year separating them, had known each other since childhood. But William had been commissioned into the British Army and had been on active service in India for the past five years, so that now, try as she might to revive their childhood relationship, Jenny found herself curiously shy of him. She had never been so before, and despite his long absence, she should not, she knew, regard him as a stranger now, or even … She lowered her gaze. Even as a suitor, because there was Edmund Tempest, with whom there had long been an understanding—on her parents’ part, as well as her own.

But Edmund, though, seemed always to be too occupied with his family’s farm on the Macquarie River, beyond Bathurst, to have much time to spend on what had always been a somewhat desultory courtship in Sydney… . Jenny bit back a sigh.

“You’ll come out with me again, won’t you, Jenny?” William urged. “I’ll not have much longer here; my leave will be up all too soon, confound it! But I hear the Fortieth Regiment intends to give a ball in their mess when their C.O. arrives, and I … that is, I’d deem it an honor as well as a pleasure if you would permit me to escort you to it. And of course there’s the race meeting next week. I was thinking of riding in the garrison officers’ race.”

Jenny hesitated, eyeing him uncertainly, taking in the strong, high-boned lines of his face and suddenly very conscious of his masculine attraction. He was much more mature than Edmund, she recognized, and she had heard that he had displayed remarkable courage in the recent war in India against the Sikhs—sufficient, at all events, to have earned him a commendation in the commander in chief’s dispatches. She had enjoyed his company this afternoon, for all her shyness, but … guiltily she recalled the reason for her haste to return home. Her mother’s illness was causing them all much anxiety, not least her father. The poor, dear soul had seemingly been ailing for some considerable time but had told nobody until her sudden collapse had caused her to take to her bed, almost a month ago, with frequent visits from Dr. Munro—of late twice a day.

“I don’t know, Will,” she evaded, unhappily. “There’s my mother, you see. I must be with her.”

“Is she very ill?”

“I’m afraid she is.” Jenny started to move toward the door of the house, her conscience pricking her. “Dr. Munro has been most kind and attentive, and Mama never complains, but she’s suffering a great deal of pain. I should not really have left her today, but she insisted that I needed a break and that it would do me good.”

“And has it?” William questioned. “Has it, Jenny?”

“Yes,” Jenny admitted. “I think it has, thank you, Will.”

“Call on me,” William begged, “anytime when you need a break and can be spared. I’m sorry about your mother, Jenny —truly sorry.”

He took his leave at last, with flattering reluctance, and Jenny hurried into the house. It was a pleasant, white-painted brick house, overlooking Elizabeth Bay and the blue expanse of the great harbor—quite a contrast from the cottage on the west side of Sydney Cove where she had spent her childhood. Her father had built the new house ten years

ago, when he had been promoted to post rank in the Royal Navy, and her mother loved it, the view of incoming ships a constant source of joy to her. So often it had been her father’s ships for which she and her mother had watched and waited together—always anxiously. But now his seagoing days were over, and he worked instead at building ships and superintending the construction of a new naval dockyard at Cockatoo Island, where—to her father’s disgust, she knew— it was planned to build and repair steam-propelled vessels, which even here were beginning to supersede the sailing ships he loved so passionately.

The young Irish maid, Biddy, came to relieve her of her hat and cloak, and Jenny, shocked and worried when she saw that the girl was in tears, quickly asked how her mother was. The doctor had called, Biddy told her, between sobs, soon after Jenny had left for her outing with William De Lancey.