Luck at the Diamond Fields Part 22

"He knows where he's going to finish--it's Stella Land he is making for, and my opinion is he will get there, for none of our men have anything that will catch him," the Kimberley inspector said, and he looked at the grey-haired man with grim smile.

"Where is that man who interfered with me? Ah, it's you, is it?" the latter said as he saw McNeil, who was straining his eyes at the race, not on the card, which was now taking place; "so you knew me, did you?

I fancy I know you."

"Know you, old man! I'd have known yer made into soup. Glad you remember me, for you've no old accounts against me," the big man answered cheerily enough.

In the mean time George Marshall, the rider of Lone Star, had gone to the weighing-room.

"I'll weigh in at once, I think; and I fancy old Lone Star has won this race after all, for Sir Harry Ferriard won't pa.s.s the scales unless he loses the race he is riding now, and it's long odds on him for that," he said to the stewards who were superintending there.

The rider of Induna, Sir Harry Ferriard, _alias_ Slim Jim, _alias_ Captain Barton, _alias et cetera_, never did come back to weigh in. He never came back to Kimberley at all.

Mr Lascelles never saw his aristocratic acquaintance or his horse Induna again. The former turned out to be a well-known criminal, who was wanted by the London police for a heavy Bill forgery case.

Inspector Sharp of Scotland Yard had tracked him out to the Diamond Fields, and just arrived by the coach in time to get up to the racecourse and see him go down to the start on Induna.

The inspector does not often speak about that trip to South Africa, which he hoped would have been such a successful episode in his professional career. He has a mean opinion of a country where a fast horse enables a fugitive to get away from the police.

Joe Warton won the bets he was in such a hurry to make, and he spent the money in furnis.h.i.+ng a house for Pretty Polly Short, who became Mrs Warton after all. She told him that before the sensational end of that queer race she had determined to give up the idea of becoming Lady Ferriard, on the chance of making it up with him again, and he believed her.

Story 12.

A COMPACT.

It was at the 'George Hotel' at Portsmouth (said Gordon, as we paced the deck of the 'Trojan' on our voyage home) that I spent my last evening in England with my brother. The next day I was to see him off for Cape Coast Castle, where he was going to serve with his regiment in the Ashantee war.

To-day I can remember the dingy old smoking-room in which we sat till late at night, talking over the home and school days which were over, and our lives, which having always run together, seemed then to be branching far apart. We had no other relations alive; our father had died that year. The old castle in Sutherland, in which we had been born, had been sold to a rich London stock-broker, and our old life seemed to have come to an end. My brother, he was the elder, had chosen the army for his profession. He would have little but his pay to live upon, but it seemed to him to be the proper career for one of his race.

I had determined to make money; it had been my dream that I would make my fortune in some distant part of the world where fortunes were to be made easily, though I did not quite know how. I was to come back to Scotland and settle down there, and we Gordons were to take our own place again. A few days after my brother sailed I was to start for South America, the country I had at last determined to be the land where that fortune would be soonest made. My brother had listened to all my schemes; and then we had talked about the campaign for which he was going to start. I think we both thought a good deal of the terrible climate he was going to face, and we became grave as the idea came into our minds that the next day's parting was likely to be a long one.

There was a story in our family that both of us must have been thinking of, for while it was in my mind my brother Donald suddenly spoke about it. The story was of a compact made between our grandfather and his brother. They were both soldiers, and their regiments were on service, one in Spain and the other in America. The agreement was that if one of them were killed, he would, if he were allowed to do so, appear to the other. Our uncle was killed in America, and it was always believed most religiously in our family that he was allowed to perform his promise, and that on the day he was killed my grandfather, who was in Spain, saw him and knew of his death. It was of this story, as we grew more thoughtful, on that last evening we were to spend together, my brother reminded me. "Let us make the same promise; the one who lives will be the last of our name and race, and perhaps it would be as well for him to know it at once," he said to me. We had both become grave and earnest enough, and as we grasped each other's hands and made that promise I think we felt it was not one lightly made. The next morning I saw him off. He said no more about our promise, yet as he stood on the deck of the troops.h.i.+p and I on the dockyard, I think we both thought of it.

Neither King Koffee or the more dire potentate King Fever hurt my brother, and he came home well and in good spirits, and got on in the service, and of what fighting there was managed to see plenty.

I am sorry to say that, unlike him, I did not fulfil the career I had mapped out for myself. I went to South America and did not succeed; and then tried one country after another, until one day, some nine years after I left England, I found myself in South Africa, finis.h.i.+ng a long tramp from the gold-fields to the Diamond Fields. So far that fortune which I had gone out to seek was as far away in the future as ever. I had ceased even to hope for it. I had been a proverbial rolling stone and had gathered no moss. I had tried my luck in Canada, Australia, and South Africa, and had found each country worse than the one I had been in before.

My experiences were not very interesting, and they would only make a tale which has already been told many a time before. I had begun to laugh grimly at my old hopes of making a fortune and buying back some of the family property. And yet my ideas had not been so absurd either; I had seen men whose chances did not seem to be much better than mine succeed and make something like the fortune I had dreamt of. Still I laughed when I contrasted my life with what I had expected it would have been. Certainly there had been plenty of incident in it; but it was a better life to talk about than to live--a life full of long dreary days of rough uncongenial society, and I am sorry to say, of coa.r.s.e, brutalising dissipation and of degrading poverty brought about thereby.

I failed at first from bad luck, and afterwards from my own fault.

After one or two failures I came to South Africa and went up to the Diamond Fields. Kimberley, when I came there, seemed to be the city of the prodigal son. He was there devouring his substance and getting the worst of its kind for it, and feeding the swine, or rather, minding a bar, which is a good colonial equivalent, and only too ready to eat of the husk he served out. I had little substance to devour, and when I had used it up was not even as lucky as the prodigal, for I got nothing to do at all. From there I went up to the gold-fields in the Transvaal, and two years of varied luck in digging ended in my being on my way tramping back. I had not done much towards making my fortune, I had not a penny in my pocket, my boots were worn out, and I had not had a meal for twelve hours, and I was very doubtful as to how or where I should get the next one. I was doing my last day's tramp. Far away across the veldt I could see the mounds of earth that had been taken out of the Kimberley mine, and as slowly and painfully I dragged across that weary flat they seemed to grow longer every step I took.

It was with little feelings of hope I saw the distant view of that most hideous of towns, Kimberley. When I left the gold-fields I had thought that I could hardly be worse off than I had been there, and that I would get some work at the diamond mines. But, weary with my long journey, and weak from hunger and dysentery that had come over me, I had lost all strength, and thought that the best I could hope for would be that I should be allowed to crawl into the hospital at Kimberley and die there.

Every step I took pained me, for my feet were sore and swollen. I remember I had been thinking a good deal about my brother and contrasting his career with mine. Already he was known as one of the most promising young officers in the army. I had not heard from him for years, for I had left off writing, and he did not know where to write to me. But I had seen by the papers that he had gained the Victoria Cross in Afghanistan. I thought of him and I thought of myself, and cursed my luck then, for I was too weak and out of spirits to fool myself; I cursed my own folly, which I knew had been the cause of my having come down so low. Slowly and hopelessly I stumbled along through the sand.

"When should I get to Kimberley, what should I do when I got there?" I kept asking myself, and I felt too dull and tired out to answer the question. I had very few friends there, and my appearance, ragged, almost barefooted and obviously penniless, would not tell in my favour.

"What was the good of walking any faster? I might as well sleep there on the veldt as go on," I said to myself; and then stumbling over a stone, I half fell, half threw myself down beside the road, and lay there exhausted, thoughtless, and almost insensible. I was roused by some one lifting me up and pouring brandy down my throat.

"Played out, eh? well, take a good nip of this, it will pull you together if anything will, it's Eckshaw's Number One, the best brandy that comes to this cursed country. Where have you come from, eh?" The voice I somehow seemed to remember, and as the brandy revived me I took a look at the Good Samaritan who had come to my a.s.sistance. I knew him; the pleasant voice belonged to Jim Dormer, and it was his handsome reckless face I saw looking down at me.

"I have come from the gold-fields and have had a hardish time of it," I said in answer to his question.

"Well, I don't know that I'd have done myself up like that to come to this wretched hole Kimberley; but you'd better get into my cart--I'll give you a lift in anyhow," he said. Of course I was glad enough to accept his offer and to get into his cart, which was drawn up close to where we were, his Kaffir boy holding the reins.

"Let's see, ain't you Mr Gordon, who used to have claims at old De Beer's? Thought I knew you. Do you remember that day on the racecourse when c.o.c.kney Bill and his pals tried the system of going for the banker at faro and jumping his satchel? That system would have come off if it hadn't been for your taking a hand in the game." I remembered the incident he alluded to, which took place one evening after the races.

Some roughs had made an attack upon him and his partner, who were keeping a faro table, and I, who had been losing my money to him, came to his a.s.sistance. "I haven't forgotten it and shan't in a hurry.

'That's the sort of chap I'd like to have with me in anything that wanted good grit,' I said to myself when I saw you in that row," he said.

"Look here, Mr Gordon, where are you going to put up when you get to Kimberley?" he added, after thinking for some time. "If you like to come to my place I can look after you and give you as good a room as you will get at any of the hotels, and you'll be made quiet and comfortable." It was a good-natured offer, and all the more good-natured from the way he put it; but I hesitated before I accepted it.

"Ah, you think that stopping with Jim Dormer won't sound over well, and I don't say you're not right; but times are bad in the camp and there isn't much chance of your getting a billet all at once, so you might stop at my place till you get over your tramp down; but you won't hurt my feelings by refusing, I ain't one of the respectable crowd and don't want to be."

He had guessed my thoughts. He was a pleasant, well-mannered fellow enough, but he had acquired rather a doubtful character, and I am afraid to a certain extent deserved it. It would be difficult for any one who wished to do so in a friendly spirit to say how he lived and had lived for the last ten years. He himself would probably admit that he was a professional gambler. His enemies would declare that in the matter of buying stolen diamonds he was not altogether without reproach. This charge, however, was not true, for he preferred winning money from the buyers of stolen diamonds to indulging in such a risky trade on his own account. He never for one moment was able to see that he was one whit worse than the people who belonged to what he called the respectable crowd.

He won money from some of the biggest thieves in the camp, so he was called a sharper and an a.s.sociate of bad characters, while your respectable men got hold of honest men's money with their bubble companies. "He wished he got as much the best of it at a deal of faro as honest Mr Bowker, the member of the Legislative a.s.sembly, did when he started the Boschfontein Mining Company. He was too straight to be respectable, that's where he went wrong," he would say to me when I got to know him better; and I believe he thought it.

"Thanks, you're a good fellow, but I don't like to sponge on you; I am dead broke," I said in answer to his invitation.

"Dead broke be blowed! No man's dead broke till his neck's broke; and as for sponging on me, one never loses anything by doing a good turn to one of your sort who has good grit. You're looking pretty bad though-- dysentery do you say? Well, you'd better watch it; come up to my place and I'll put you straight," he said.

It was not, perhaps, a very wise thing to do, but beggars can't be choosers, and I was very little more than a beggar, besides I liked Jim Dormer's cheery, free-and-easy manner. It was pleasant to meet a man who seemed to think something of one although one was unsuccessful and dead broke. So I accepted his offer, and leaned back in the cart, relieved to think that I should have a place to rest in after my long weary journey.

Jim Dormer was on his way back from a visit to a roadside canteen, where a man he was interested in was training for a foot-race. "I am glad I met you; I like a man who has got grit; maybe it will be a lucky meeting for the pair of us," he said somewhat enigmatically. I did not take much thought about what his motives might be, I was too tired. "Take a man as you find him; he has been a good friend to me anyhow," I thought as I drove through the well-known street. The town looked dull and depressed; there was a marked change, one could see that bad times were felt more than they were when I left some months before. Bars, stores, and billiard-rooms that used to be doing a roaring business were empty.

Several stores were to let; there was not as much traffic in the streets, while I fancied there was something in the listless gait of the men one saw lounging about which expressed bad times. Glad enough was I when we pulled up at a neat iron house where Jim lived, and where that great luxury, as it seemed to me then, a bed, was to be found provided for me after I had attempted a meal.

A fortnight afterwards found me still staying with Jim. The morning after I had arrived at his house I had found myself too ill to get up; and nothing could have been kinder than he was to me, nursing me very carefully and seeing that I had everything that I wanted. When I had become well enough to go out and look for work he did not show much sympathy with my endeavour to find something to do. He had, I found out, a deep-rooted conviction that any attempts to get on in life by what people called honest labour was a vanity and a delusion. To make a pile and clear out of the country ought to be the aim and object of every one, and it was absurd being too particular as to how that pile was to be made, was the doctrine he was always preaching. Of all the more generally accepted modes of making a fortune he was most sceptical.

Digging was a losing game, he considered. Even canteen keeping was hardly good enough. "What one wanted," he would say with much candour, "was to go in for one good swindle and then clear off."

"You bet what you and I want to do is to get hold of a few thousands, and then say good-bye to the country. Don't tell me we can't do it, there is lots of money in the camp, though times may be so bad," he said to me one evening as I was sitting in the verandah after a tiring day spent walking round the mines looking for work. "I was thinking of something in the New Mine line; there is a good deal to be done at that, but I hardly care to go in for the game; it's too much one of your respectable man's swindles for me, taking some poor devil's last sov or two, who thinks the new rush is going to turn up trumps: it's always your poor devils who are landed by that sort of swindle, now I only want to catch the big fish." I made some remark in answer to this, more or less commending him for indulging in his conscientious scruples. I am afraid in my then frame of mind Jim Dormer's peculiar code of morality was very taking. I began to agree with him that every one was more or less of a swindler, and that the more prosperous men were the adroiter scoundrels. Tramping about all day looking in vain for work put one in a suitable frame of mind for listening to my friend's notions of things in general and of the Diamond Field public in particular.

"Yes, we must get hold of some money somehow. See there, look at that cart," he said, pointing to the mail-cart that was being driven along the road past the house, "there is not less than thirty thousand pounds'

worth of diamonds going across the veldt to-night, for that is a good bit less than the average amount they send home every week! Thirty thousand pounds, my boy! that would be a good haul, eh?" I watched the cart being driven along towards the open veldt, and I thought of how it was going to travel across miles of desert veldt with only one policeman upon it to guard its precious contents. So far as I knew, that mail, which started on Thursday with the week's finds to catch the home steamer, had never been robbed. My friend did not say anything more about the cart, though I noticed he watched it till it was out of sight, and then he smoked in silence for some time. Then he returned to the subject, and made some remark about how strange it was that the mail had never stuck up; and we began to discuss how easily it could be done.

"n.o.body would lose one penny except the insurance companies and banks, for the diamonds are insured for more than they will sell for; yes, it's just the thing sticking out; sooner or later it will be done, and then they will put on a stronger guard," he said, looking at me rather carefully as he spoke, as if he wished to see how I took what he was saying. My evil genius led me to grumble out some sort of agreement with what he said.

"Believe me, I'd like to collar that pool, or take a half or a third share of it," he answered, "then I'd leave this cursed country. And it ain't so tough a job neither. One only has to wait with a string across the road to upset the horses, and as they go down jump on the cart, get the mail-bags, tie up the driver and the guard, and get back to camp, and the next morning at breakfast look as mild as milk while every one's jawing about one's work the night before. It would be a pretty little game to play, eh, my boy? Better than going round to those managers and asking for a job as an overseer and being treated like a n.i.g.g.e.r, and being told to clear off and be d.a.m.ned by 'em."

"But there's the policeman; he is armed and would show fight, and I shouldn't like to hurt a chap who was only doing his duty," I answered.

"Well, nor would I; but I never see that mail-cart pa.s.s without wondering who will take the pool; some one will, mind you," he said, and then turned the conversation to some other subject.

A week or so more pa.s.sed and I got nothing to do. At one time I thought I ought not to go on staying with Dormer and living upon him, but he laughed away my scruples. "What did it matter? it wasn't as if I was always going to have bad luck. Was I ashamed of staying with him?" he would remark when I talked of going away. It always ended in my staying on. I was generally seen with him, I used to get money on for him when he played billiards or shot pigeons or made any other match, and to do some other little things for him; in fact, I began to be identified as Jim Dormer's pal.

Very few visitors came to see us at the house. Dormer carried on his business down the town in billiard-rooms and canteens; he never asked me to help him at faro or roulette or any of the games he played, nor did he impart to me any of the tricks of his trade. Nothing could be kinder than his manner to me; but nevertheless I felt that I was bound to repay him for his kindness, and that I was under a great obligation to him.

After some time he once or twice stayed at home of an evening and a man came in to see him. The visitor was not a pleasant-looking person. He had a s.h.i.+fty, half-ashamed expression, and as he sat clumsily playing cards with Dormer he looked as if he knew he ought not to be where he was.

"Who's that? Don't like his looks, can't look one in the face," I asked Jim one night when he had left.

"That! oh, he's a most respectable man, a sergeant in the police. We are thinking of going in for a little spec together, and you ought to be in it too. That's the chap who goes down with the diamond mail. Old Jacobus the driver is going to be made a little drunker than usual, the policeman is to make a desperate resistance, and to be overpowered by us two, and then the three of us divide the swag, do you see?"

Though I had not been boarding very luxuriously for some time, I had been drinking heavily. There was always drink to be had at Dormer's house and when I went about with him, and lately I had drunk to drown my anxiety. I don't intend to ape the canting cry of the criminal who, when he's convicted of jumping upon his wife, tells the judge that "it's all the drink wot's done it." Drink of itself doesn't often make a criminal of a man, but it often enough robs him of all that sense of prudence which men mistake for conscience. If my brain had been clear of alcohol I think I should have refused Dormer's suggestion at once; as it was there was something in it that took my fancy. Instead of refusing, I began to question him as to how it could be done. His answer was that it would be easy enough. The mail-cart was to be stopped by a rope tied across the road; the guard and the driver were to be tied up--the latter would not be likely to make a very determined resistance, while the former would be our confederate. When we had secured the diamonds we had nothing to do but to get back to Kimberley.

Our confederate would take care not to be able to identify us, and there would be, so Jim urged, very little risk of our getting into trouble or failing to secure the rich booty.

"It's our last chance of making a good pile in the country; every day I expect that some one else will try the trick, and then they will put on a strong guard. It's the one good thing left in the country," he said; and then he began to talk about the rich prize we should secure without any one except the banks and insurance people being one bit the worse.

"I don't know whom to go to if you won't go in for this; there are plenty of men in the camp who would jump at the chance, but they ain't the sort I'd like to trust, but you're good grit and I'd trust you any day," he said; "come, I know you will stick to a pal." For a second or two I hesitated, and then I said I would go in for it, and we shook hands over the agreement.