Part 124 (1/2)
”And we never shall till you take my advice, and trace the gold to its home in the high rocks. Here we are plodding for dust, and one good nugget would make us.”
”Well! well!” said Robinson, ”the moment the dry weather goes you shall show me the home of the gold.” Poor George and his nuggets!
”That is a bargain,” said George, ”and now I have something more to say.
Why keep so much gold in our tent? It makes me fret. I am for selling some of it to Mr. Levi.
”What, at three pounds the ounce? not if I know it.”
”Then why not leave it with him to keep?”
”Because it is safer in its little hole in our tent. What do the diggers care for Mr. Levi? You and I respect him, but I am the man they swear by. No, George, Tom Weasel isn't caught napping twice in the same year.
Don't you see I've been working this four months past to make my tent safe? and I've done it. It is watched for me night and day, and if our swag was in the Bank of England it wouldn't be safer than it is. Put that in your pipe. Well, Carlo, what is the news in your part?”
Carlo came running up to George, and licked his face, which just rose above the hole.
”What is it, Carlo?” asked George, in some astonishment.
”Ha! ha!” laughed the other. ”Here is the very dog come out to encourage his faint-hearted master.”
”No!” said George, ”it can't be that--he means something--be quiet, Carlo, licking me to pieces--but what it is Heaven only knows; don't you encourage him; he has no business out of the tent--go back, Carlo--go into kennel, sir;” and off slunk Carlo back into the tent, of which he was the day sentinel.
”Tom,” remarked George, thoughtfully, ”I believe Carlo wanted to show me something; he is a wonderful wise dog.”
”Nonsense,” cried Robinson, sharply, ”he heard you at the old lay, grumbling, and came to say cheer up, old fellow.”
While Robinson was thus quizzing George, a tremendous noise was suddenly heard in their tent. A scuffle--a fierce, m.u.f.fled snarl--and a human yell; with a cry, almost as loud, the men bounded out of their hole, and, the blood running like melting ice down their backs with apprehension, burst into the tent; then they came upon a sight that almost drew the eyes out of their heads.
In the center of the tent, not six inches from their buried treasure, was the head of a man emerging from the bowels of the earth, and cursing and yelling, for Carlo had seized his head by the nape of the neck, and bitten it so deep that the blood literally squirted, and was stamping and going back snarling and pulling and hauling in fierce jerks to extract it from the earth, while the burly-headed ruffian it belonged to, cramped by his situation, and pounced on unawares by the fiery teeth, was striving and battling to get down into the earth again. Spite of his disadvantage, such were his strength and despair that he now swung the dog backward and forward. But the men burst in. George seized him by the hair of his head, Tom by the shoulder, and with Carlo's help, wrenched him on to the floor of the tent, where he was flung on his back with Tom's revolver at his temple, and Carlo flew round and round barking furiously, and now and then coming flying at him; on which occasions he was always warded off by George's strong arm, and pa.s.sed devious, his teeth clicking together like machinery, the snap and the rush being all one design that must succeed or fail together. Captain Robinson put his lips to his whistle, and the tent was full of his friends in a moment.
”Get me a bullock rope.”
”Ay!”
”And drive a stout pole into the ground.”
”Ay!”
In less than five minutes brutus was tied up to a post in the sun, with a placard on his breast on which was written in enormous letters--
THIEF
(and underneath in smaller letters--)
Caught trying to shake Captain Robinson's tent.
First offense.
N B--To be hanged next time.
Then a crier was sent through the mine to invite inspection of brutus's features, and ere sunset thousands looked into his face, and when he tried to lower it pulled it savagely up.