Ghost Stories and Mysteries (26 page)

“Of course they did, naturally. But he answered in a way that made ’em think that Sid was still down there, and he had just come up for rations. Leastways, he bought rations, and vamoosed, without a word to anybody. This made some people who didn’t like him—for he was an ugly tempered animal—suspect that something was wrong, and a party was made to go down. Well, they went down there, but devil a thing could they find, beyond old tracks and old camps. Some think, maybe, that you brother and Radforth went across the Victoria River, and so on to West Australia, but I don’t.”

“I’ll go down there at once, and alone, too. I’ll find this thing out for myself, by God! If my brother has met with foul play, I’ll hunt up this Radforth if he’s on earth.”

“Steady! There’s no proof that your brother is dead, nor that Radforth killed him; but the rumour has got about here. Still there may be no truth in it.”

“Anyhow, I’m going down to have a look at the place. I suppose you can tell me how to find it?”

“Simple as possible. You have only to follow the range round, and the mountain is right on the bank of the river. You’ll see scores of old tracks. But look out for the niggers! Look here, boy; they’ll get the next man.”

“I’m going, and I’ll find out what’s become of my brother,” said Thomson; “and I’ll start tomorrow.”

To a man who had been through the Palmer rush, and finally overland to the Northern Territory, a trip of 60 miles was neither here nor there. Following the range along, he came on the second day to the Mount of Misfortune, round the base of which ran the Railly River. Lonely as was the place, young Thomson did not feel it so, so much was his mind occupied with his brother’s fate, but although there were no fresh tracks of blacks about, visible to his experienced eye, he took the precaution of camping some way up the slope of the mountain. There was good food on the flat, and there was no fear of his horses straying far during the night. It was a beautifully clear moonlight night, and Thomson lay for some time smoking and thinking of the quest he was engaged in, when suddenly he heard a sound that caused him to raise himself up on his elbow and listen attentively. There was no mistake. Somebody was working with a pick on some part of the mountain. The night was noiseless, there was not even a wild dog howling, or a breath of wind stirring, and clearly and distinctly came the sounds of the strokes of a pick.

Thomson did not hesitate long. He picked up his Martini carbine, and stole carefully and as silently as possible in the direction of the mysterious sound. It was hard to trace, the echoes amongst the ranges were confusing, but at last he located it, and leaning over the edge of the rocky descent into a steep gully, he saw the worker.

A man was digging down in the bed of the dry creek that ran down the bottom of the gully. Working, and had been working for some long time, as Thomson’s digger’s eye could see by the long heap of washdirt piled up. Someone had penetrated the mystery of the mountain, and the source of the intermittent patches of gold, and was working it out quietly for himself. Who was the man? “I’ll watch till daylight, but I’ll find out,” thought Thomson.

For hours the solitary worker continued his labor, and the watcher at his post watched him. He congratulated himself on bringing his carbine; a man with the lust of gold in his brain would not hesitate to commit murder to preserve his secret. It was about 1 o’clock in the morning before the digger ceased his toil, put down his tools, and straitened and stretched himself. Then he commenced to follow the gully down, and Thomson strode silently after him. Down, down, following every turn and twist, the two went, for Thomson had now descended into the gully, and kept his man well in sight. Soon the river was in view, and still the stranger kept on until he reached the bank. He never looked back, but descended the path by a well-worn pad, and went out on the sand to the edge of a deep waterhole that extended down the river for a long way. There was an island covered in undergrowth just behind where he had taken up his position, and here Thomson concealed himself, so close that he could hear every word the man uttered. He wondered much that his presence had not been detected before; but the man before him seemed as though he was acting in a trance.

He was sitting at the edge of the water, looking down into its moonlit surface, and talking strangely to himself, as was natural in a “hatter.”

“Are you there, Sid? Was it painful when the crocodiles took you? Come up and tell me about it. I’ve got the lead right enough, and the secret of the mountain. Come up, old man, and don’t grin down there. Bah! It wasn’t painful—you were killed quick. Come up, man, and see how well I’m getting on.”

Thomson could no longer restrain himself. There was no doubt in his mind that this was Radforth, the murderer of his brother in order to gain and keep to himself the secret of the mysterious mountain. He sprang down from the island, and stood beside the talker.

Radforth jumped upright, and looked at him aghast. The resemblance between the brothers was only a general one, but in the moonlight it sufficed.

“So you’ve come at last. Come at last,” cried Radforth, falling back. “Go, take it; I’ll take your place.” Turning quickly away, he plunged into the bottomless hole, where the crocodiles that haunted it received him joyfully. He never rose again. Thomson watched for long, but the moonlit surface was unrippled after the commotions of the plunge had subsided.

In the morning he found the camp of the recluse, whom solitude and remorse had evidently driven crazy, and, in a diary, found his worst fears confirmed. His brother and Radforth had discovered what promised to be the true lead of the mountain source of the gold. They had not quarrelled, but the prospects were so rich that the greed of gold grew in Radforth’s breast, and he killed his unsuspecting comrade. He took his body to the waterhole, where one could always see the small eyes of a crocodile and a snout floating on the surface. There he left it, but the crocodiles did not touch it. Day after day, night after night, it lay there, and the crocodiles would not touch the dead body, nor hide the murder. Then in desperation he buried it in the sand, and that night the crocodiles dug it up, and in the morning it was floating on the brink of the sand-spit. And there it floated till the flesh dropped from the bone, and the awful thing sank. But the curse was on the man, and every night after his hidden toil in the gully he was constrained to go down to where the bones were lying; and all this he had written down.

In the morning Thomson went down to the edge of the waterhole, and under the clear water opposite where Radforth had been sitting he saw the bones and skull of what he felt sure was his brother’s body. He recovered them, and buried them, before he returned to the old camp. He told old Franks and they kept silence, and went back to the mountain on the Railly River.

The first leads of washdirt piled up by the wretched murderer washed out handsomely. The remainder, which they were too disgusted to go all through, contained but specks. The man had been driving himself mad over piling up load after load of worthless dirt. The mystery of the Mountain of Misfortune is a mystery still.

THE BLOOD-DEBT

(1899)

Part 1: How the Debt was Incurred

“WELL, I don’t see what you have to grumble at, Hunt,” said Jenkins to his friend and partner.

“Perhaps not,” returned the doctor, looked at from an everyday standpoint; but I’ve never told you that I ought to have about four hundred thousand pounds to my credit.”

“No; you certainly never have. But would you be any happier if you had it? We’ve a fairly good practice—not astonishing, but rising,—and our patients pay their fees.”

“Yes, they pay up, like the good, respectable people they are, and we lead a nice, easy, middle-class existence; but I had a patient once who did not pay up, and never will pay up until I get him in my power some day; and he is one of the richest men in Australia.”

“How much does he owe you?”

“One way and another, about four hundred thousand pounds.”

“That’s a tidy sum. Is this a joke or reality?”

“True as we’re sitting here. Lambert Dunaston, whom I suppose you know well enough by name, owes me that figure.”

“How did he come to owe you that figure?”

“He bought his life at that price.”

“Didn’t know you were, or had been a bandit.”

“No, it was not that way. I’ll tell you how it was. It’s a long story, and you’d better know it, and keep it secret to the end, for there’s no end to it yet. Dunaston and I went West when the first big “rush” was on. I had no practice then and I thought of setting up out there. By Jove! when we got there it seemed that every hard-up ‘medical’ in Victoria and New South Wales had been struck with the same idea, and anticipated me. Seeing how things stood, Dunaston persuaded me to invest what little money we had left between us in the purchase of the necessary outfit to join a couple of men, whom he knew, and who were going out prospecting. It was the best thing to do under the circumstances, and I agreed. We clubbed our money and bought camels, and the four of us made a start.

“You’ve heard of the famous Yellow Spindrift Mine?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“That mine was found that trip. The other two men were Winkelson and Martow. Did you ever hear of their names or mine in connection with it?”

“Never. Dunaston is the only one who is known with regard to the Yellow Spindrift.”

“Exactly. Winkelson and Martow are dead—murdered, in point of fact. Dunaston, from the sale and what was taken from the mine, cleared eight hundred thousand pounds. Half of that belongs to me. I don’t claim any of what he has made since. A majority of the men in the world have two natures. The hidden nature shows out differently in different men. In some, drink brings it to the surface. I suppose you have often noticed how intoxication completely reverses the nature of certain men. Circumstances perform the same thing for others. The man who in town is a mild, pleasant gentleman, becomes a coarse blackguard when out in the “bush” beyond the restraints of civilisation. Dunaston was one of these men. Once we got fairly into the wilderness, he seemed to change into the primal savage which every man is under his veneer. He was viciously cruel, and laid no restraint on his temper until Martow took him in hand and gave him a good thrashing one night. Then he vented his spite on the beasts, particularly the camel he rode—a good camel, too, called Crookshanks, from a malformation of its legs.

“‘You’d better go slow, beating that camel,’ said Martow to him one evening. ‘A camel, like a parrot, never forgets. Some day old “Crookshanks” will get hold of you when you are not expecting it, and then God help you!’

“They were two decent fellows, rest their souls! and if we had not had that devil with us it would not have been so bad, in spite of the wretched desert we were travelling through. As it was, we had a deuce of a hard time of it until luck changed, and we found the ‘Spindrift.’ What a wonderful find that was! The mine is played out now, but that is since Dunaston sold it. I often dream of it still. What an irresistible influence the sight of gold has upon men! and what a lovely thing it is to find! Clean and heavy. Not like gems that have to be cut before their beauty is apparent. But bright and beautiful from the start—like a pearl that needs no artificial aid.”

The doctor paused, and stared hard at the fire. Jenkins did the same.

“It does me good now to think of those days when we had nothing to do but gaze at the gold, and conjecture how deep it would go, and what we were worth each. We were in luck. Nobody had followed our tracks, and we tested the reef, and found it to exceed even our expectations. It was decided that Dunaston and Winkelson should go into Wonderranup, the nearest mining centre, obtain fresh supplies, and apply for the prospectors’ claim and reward. There was a ‘rock-hole’ close at hand that would suffice for the wants of the two of us who remained, and there was a salt marsh about five miles off that would supply water for condensing when that was gone, so they took all the camels with them. It was no good keeping things quiet, for the country swarmed with prospectors, and it was better to announce the find and go straight ahead working it.

“You would have thought it rather lonely for two men by themselves in that gaunt desert country, but, strange to say, Martow and I did not find it so; that gold-reef was the most pleasant and interesting companion men ever had, better than all the books and journals in the world. The choicest wines, the most charming women, the most witty comrades, I tell you, are nothing to a reef full of veins of yellow metal.

“In coming to what is now called the Spindrift township, we had naturally come a very roundabout course, but straight across through the bush it was much shorter, though the track would probably be without water. However, it was not too far to go with camels, unless the country proved very scrubby. Ten days had passed, and we were hourly expecting our two mates back, that being about the time we had calculated on; but they came not. The water in the rock-hole was getting low, and we began to feel anxious; gold would not satisfy hunger or thirst.

“From the top of the ridge, on the side of which was the reef, away to the westward we could see the crest of a granite hill peeping above the black scrub. As most of these bare granite mounds had rock-holes at the base, I proposed that we should go over one day and see if there was not more water there. Martow, however, would not consent to our both leaving the mine, so it was settled that I should go alone, and, as it was a fair moon, I decided to go that night. After our evening meal I started. In rather over an hour I reached the rock-hill, for it was sandy country and heavy walking. I found several rock-holes at the foot of it, but I had gone nearly round it before I came on one much larger than the one where we were camped, and with a good supply of water in it.