Dead Mens Gold

A Story of the Early Days of Hannans. Written in Nov 1904.

I’m full up of Hannans Find,” remarked my mate. ” I’m off back to Coolgardie”. “You’ll go alone,” I laconically added. I felt a bit disappointed in Dick. I was a curious fellow in those days  and usually without a mate, but I took a fancy to Dick, perhaps it was because be was something of a scholar like myself and we had many tastes in common. I did not forget that he had not been all his life accustomed to dryblowing and living on tinned dog and damper, but still I thought he might have shown a little more grit and not have given in so easily. We had come to Hannans with the first rush several weeks previously, but we had not met with any very encouraging success. We had toiled from morning until evening for barely sufficient gold to keep us in tucker and water. Our luck was completely out. Others were daily striking it rich on the fields, but we could get no more than a miserable pittance. I sometimes now feel as I look back on what we went through that I was too hasty in my condemnation of Dick or his want of perseverance. “It’s no good our remaining Tom,” continued Dick. “I am heartily sick of the whole of these fields and wish to Heaven I was out of the colony and even within coo-ee of civilisation.” “You can go then,” I answered, ignoring the sarcasm in his allusion to West Australia, “I will probably go on to some of the new finds to the eastward, perhaps to the I.O.U. or the Roaring Gimlet, but in any case I’m not going to turn my back on the fields until I have made a pile. I’d rather die like a dog in the bush than feel that all I have gone through so far has been for nothing.” “What rot,” said Dick. “You’re a stubborn fool. You had better clear out while you can.” “Dick, my boy, I want to ask you a question. How would you describe a young law student who a few months ago threw up his studies in Sydney to go to make his fortune on the Coolgardie goldfields in order that he might be able to return in a year or two wealthy enough to make a certain little bright-eyed girl his bride. How, I say, would you describe that young man, when, because he was unable to collect nuggets as easily as the Israelite’s of old gathered manna off the ground, now wishes to return to his love and to ask her to leave a comfortable home where she wants for nothing, and become the wife of a man who has utterly failed in his endeavours to make certain that she, and possibly others now unborn, may not have to face in the future, the wolf of hunger and all the evils of poverty? Would I be too severe in calling that man a coward? Dick looked somewhat ashamed, for he was the law student, but I went on, “I wonder if that young man, when he is so strongly abusing West Australia, ever imagines that he has only himself to blame. The colony never asked him to come to the goldfields.” I knew it was idle endeavoring to persuade him to remain. It was the old, old story; I often caught him peeping at a girl’s photograph, and letters that came for him, addressed in a woman’s handwriting, were very bulky. I often tried to get him to escape from the toils. “Love is all very well, Dick,” I said, “as an amusement but it is too trying an affair to be considered in relation to so very serious a business as matrimony.” “Tom, you have no right to talk of love,” answered Dick,” you haven’t a ‘heart as big as a pea, or a soul the size of a threepenny-bit. There are other things in the world beside gold worth living for.” “Quite true, my boy, but you want gold to get them.” Next day we parted company, and once more I was without a mate. Dick humped his swag, and started on the track for ‘Coolgardie.

I set my teeth and firmed my resolve to pursue my luck to the bitter end. The day after Dick left I rolled up my swag and set my face eastwards with a view of prospecting new country. I had a different training from Dick. I was reared on my father’s cattle station in Queensland, and the bush is as dear to me as the blue ‘heatherclad hills of Scotland to the true Highlander, or the bustle and rush and roar of London to the Cockney. To my mind it has a weird grotesque beauty peculiarly its own. To some its aspect my be stern and uninviting, but to me it has no more terrors than the ocean had to Byron. I had, therefore, no hesitation in starting away alone in the clear cool of the early morning from the collection of tents and mullock heaps then known as Hannan’s Find, and entering the trackless depths of the bush. Hannans was practically worked out we thought, and but a few fossickers remained. There was little to indicate the glorious future before it. I cannot say that tramping through the bush without a companion is not monotonous and fatiguing, but to some natures it has its compensating pleasures. I am now a wealthy man, but I still engage in speculations, and have at present every reason to think that I am on the eve of making the most colossal fortune yet acquired in West Australia.

I have good cause to be pleased with my lot, but I still sometimes, even as I lie back in the most easy of easy chairs and watch the smoke wreaths curl upwards from my cigar, feel a pang of regret that those happy-go-lucky days of a dozen years ago have gone never to return. I then often drank my billy of tea in the evening before my camp fire with a greater relish than I now sip the most expensive champagne. I had no worries about stocks or business, and curled myself in my blanket and slept as sound as a bell until awakened by the rising sun. Many of my readers are men who are almost daily brought face to face with the hardships of pioneering.

The day dream of their lives is to reach a position of affluence such as I now occupy, and they will doubt my ‘veracity when I assert that I was quite as happy in the old days when I was prospecting as I am at present. I know that when I was humping my ‘bluey I would have considered any man who made such a statement as either a liar or a fool, and no doubt if I were to lose all my money tomorrow it would not be long before I would, if I had the chance, give a good many years of my life to get it back again. Such is life. Perfect contentment is unknown to human nature. After leaving Hannans I had no difficulty in finding water, as heavy rains fell a short time previously and a fair quantity was lying on the surface. A few days tramping brought me to an exceptionally well timbered district with likely looking outcrops showing gold freely. I spent some time there prospecting and was very favorably impressed with the prospects. I picked up altogether several ounces of gold, but I found that my tucker was running out, and so had no alternative but to return to Hannans for a fresh supply. I of course, meant to come back without delay, as I felt that at last my luck was in. I little thought that I was soon to meet with a strange and never-to-be forgotten experience that was to give a turn to all the subsequent events of my life. I reached a shady nook at noon the first day of my journey back to Hannans, and, as is my nature, enjoyed a siesta for several hours.

I often, by the way, have wondered thow it is that Australians have not generally adopted that splendid institution which provides for a rest during the blazing heat of noon, and is so common in Southern Europe. South America, and other countries. I suppose it is owing to the natural conservatism or pigheadedness of Britishers, which makes them so persistent in adhering to customs that are suited only to cold climates. That is the only way I can account for the incongruous spectacle often to be seen in Australian cities of an apparently sane man in the streets wearing a belltopper and heavy black clothes when the thermometer is any height from 1oo to 115 in the shade. That night the moon shone out fairly bright and in order to make up for the time I had lost at midday I tramped along for several hours after the sun had gone down. The moon sank soon after mid-night, and as she was dropping out of sight I was beginning to look around for a suitable spot for camping, when I noticed a long distance ahead the welcome glare of a camp fire. I had not seen a human being for some days, and was beginning to tire of my own society. It is only those who have been thus isolated from their fellows who understand the intense longing that occasionally arises to converse with a fellow human being, no matter how scanty or commonplace may be his ideas or how deficient may be his understanding.

I hurried forward in the direction of the light, but I had not gone far before I became aware that the occupants of the camp were disputing in language that was far from choice. “You know, Pat,” said a clear, cold voice that seemed to cut the air, “the arrangement was that I was to pay you £4 a ‘week.” “The devil a bit do I know anything of the sort, Jim, and you know that same,” was the answer that was roared back in an accent that denoted that the owner evidently hailed from the Green Isle. “I never heard a word of the £4 a week you talk of until now we’ve struck it rich. We have been together a month and you have not paid me a farthing. Begod its news for me to hear you were my boss all that time. I may look soft. Mr. Jim, and you may think you’re going to have the best of me, but I’m a bit smarter than that. Oh! no; we have been mates together and we go shares in the find.” “What rubbish you are talking. Did I not keep you in tucker and water all the time you were with me? Did not I get you your tools? You were in my employment, and now you talk of our sharing equally. I risked my money and my labor, you risked nothing, and were sure of your weekly wages.” “Don’t be wasting your breath; I’m not to be shoved one side like that.” The two men, roughly garbed in bush fashion, formed with the surroundings such a wild and picturesque scene as Rembrandt or Salvator Rosi would have loved to paint. The reddish circle of light cast by the flickering fire seemed intensely bright, because of the awe-inspiring blackness of the surrounding forest, while the flames as they danced upwards gave an air of almcst fiendish animation to the light. The man, whom I took to be an Irishman, was standing on one side of the fire, with his hands tightly clenched, and he was evidently getting very excited. Physically, he was almost a giant.

Over six feet in height, broad-shouldered, and in every limb well proportioned, he formed a striking contrast to his companion. The latter, who sat on an old stump opposite his companion, was of insignificant figure, and seemed more adapted for office life or other sedentary occupation than for “roughing it” in the bush. He was better able to control his temper than the other occupant of the camp but there was an objectionable expression of cunning about his mouth, and his eyes had a dangerous cold glitter.

“Do you know what would happen,” said the latter, “if I brought the case to court? I would win, and you would have to pay my costs, so that you would lose even the £4 a week that I owe you for the last few weeks.” “Queer things are done in the courts.” said the unsophisticated son of Erin, who knew he could not argue on the technicalities of the law with Jim. “Perhaps what you say is true. It’s not justice a man gets in the courts, but law, and justice and law appear to he two very different things.” The Irishman thus showed himself to be something of a philosopher in his rough way, but after a short pause his anger rose to boiling pitch, and he continued in a savage tone of voice “Neither you nor the law is going to deprive me of my rights. I have worked now for a good many months on the field, and, bejabers, I’m not going to be swindled. You are nothing but a dirty, low spalpeen, and I might have known that you’d treat me like this.” ‘There is no need Pat to talk like that,” answered Jim, adopting a more conciliating tone. “You cannot forget that I saved your life.

You know when I first met you, you were dead beat, you had no tucker or water,and would not have held out much longer. I came along in a cart and did I not do everything I could for you ever since?” “I have worked pretty hard and you have done very little,’ said Pat, but his voice was softer and it was clear that his mate had not in vain reminded him of the past. His generosity was awakened towards the man whom he believed had saved his life. “I’ll tell you what we’d better do,” said Jim, rising to his feet and taking a seat nearer to the Irishman. The conversation then became quieter and more confidential, but I could still hear that the Irishman was holding out to get half a share in the find. The presence of a third party in the camp would not, I felt, add to the comfort of the two men or the new arrival. I have a decided objection to be regarded as an intruder, so I passed on without making myself known to the disputers, and camped elsewhere that night. A couple of weeks later I was delayed in Hannans longer than I expected. I passed on my return journey the spot where the men had been camped. I was still without a mate. I would not be a true bushman if I were not keen of observation, and there were signs about the place that at once aroused my suspicions that something unusual had occurred. Bushes were trampled down, the ground was torn up as if a struggle had taken place, and on close investigation I noticed what I took to be blood clots. I resolved to learn the truth.

The men had a horse and cart, the tracks of which were easy to follow. They went in the opposite direction to Hannans, as if the couple had agreed to prospect further. I kept on the tracks. and at the end of about a mile came to where a halt had been made. I noticed that something bulky seemed to have been removed from the vehicle and dragged some distance to where the earth had been freshly disturbed.  An indescribable feeling of horror possessed me as the evidence was increasing that a foul and awful deed had been committed. I felt a cold perspiration breaking out, and for some time I stood incapable of action. I was still in hope that my worst fears had not been realised when I commenced to remove portion of the earth but I had not gone far when I discovered to my horror the corpse of the Irishman. A gruesome fascination urged me on until I had uncovered the whole body, when I found that it was marked in several places with bullet wounds. I went back to where the struggle had taken place, and made most careful investigations. The details of the tragic deed arose vividly before my mind. To a man with my knowledge of the bush, the tracks and the bullet wounds told the story as plainly as if it were printed in a hook. It needed no Sherlock Holmes to interpret such signs. I could mentally see the two men failing to come to an agreement. The Irishman could not be deceived by his clever but avaricious companion. I could picture Pat’s anger being aroused by Jim’s cool and grasping nature, until in his rage he shook him as a terrier might a rat. Then he cast him from him, and white as a ghost, with an ugly glare in his eyes, Tim lay writhing on the ground. giving vent to a storm of oaths.

Suddenly he was on his feet and rushed to the cart. His powerful assailant for a moment took no notice of the move, but the truth eventually flashed on his brain, and with a cry he rushed at him. It was too late, his more active mate ran backwards from the cart, but the glint of a revolver shone from his hand. The other recklessly rushed on, when the sharp report of a shot rang out in the stillness of the night. Pat was struck in the shoulder, and reeled slightly, but still rushed madly at his armed opponent, who had the nimbleness of a wild cat. The face of a fiend could not be more horrible than Jim’s. -He now meant murder, and a second time his revolver awakened the echoes of the forest, but this time the Irishman was but slightly wounded. Again Jim got out of his reach, and the tracks showed me that he must have dodged his mate in this way for some time. Three more shots did he discharge at Pat, who was hit each time, but the wounds were such as not to prevent him still rushing at Jim like an infuriated bull. There was but one chamber of the revolver now loaded and Jim hastily retreated backwards into the darkness of the forest, finally taking a stand behind a stump a few feet high, where he waited for Pat, with his revolver raised. It was his last chance.

The great bulky form of the Hibernian showed out clearly against the light of the fire as he ran blindly on until within a couple of yards from Jim, when there was a flash, and another report rang out through the night air. He was hit in the heart. He staggered on a few paces before the impetus with which he had been going was spent, and then fell headlong on the ground, quite dead. I could not prevent my thoughts from dwelling on the awful mental agony Jim must have endured that night when he fully realised the nature of the work he had done. I could imagine his planning fifty different ways of getting away undiscovered with the gold and his trembling with fear at even the crackling of a dry forest twig. I learned from the tracks he eventually harnessed the horse to the cart, and succeeded by a powerful effort for one so weakly and low-sized, in getting the cold, stiff corpse on the vehicle. I seemed to see the glaring eyeballs of the dead Irishman turned as it were to his murderer, whom I imagined as shuddering whenever he met their gaze.

The whole tragedy up to the time he buried the corpse passed before my mental vision as vividly as if I had witnessed it from beginning to end. My duty I felt to be clearly to follow up the murderer and bring him to justice. I carefully examined the clothes of the corpse, but could find nothing that revealed his name or gave any information as to his identity. I followed the track that day and knew from the direction it was going that Jim’s idea was to reach Coolgardie by a circuitous route, avoiding Hannans altogether. The next day I came to where he had camped, and found that his horse had got away during the night, and that he had to abandon his cart. The thought then struck me for the first time. What had he done with the gold? I was too experienced a bushman not to quickly solve the problem. There were several tracks leading backwards and forwards to the cart to a thick portion of the bush almost half a mile away. A large tree was marked by an axe as if someone had begun to cut it down but subsequently abandoned the intention. I knew the tree had been cleverly marked in that way by Jim to disguise that it had any significance, and was not long in the vicinity before I found another tree similarly marked. In a direct line from the two marked trees

I discovered a spot where a number of bushes were thrown over some freshly disturbed ground, and at once came to the conclusion that the gold was underneath. I was not mistaken, for on digging down I came to a numlber of nuggets that must have weighed collectively about 500 oz. There was no time for delaying then, so I hastily refilled the hole and continued to follow up Jim’s tracks. For several days I kept on the trail. I soon found that Jim’s scanty knowledge of the bush would not be sufficient to enable him to get to Coolgardie, and that he wandered about as if he were hopelessly bushed. He also missed a couple of soaks not far from the track, which I was attracted to by the aspect of the vegetation. I thus was enabled to replenish my water supply, but I knew that he must be suffering the pangs of thirst, and that in all probability his end was not far off. I first came across a coat with the pockets full of nuggets, then a waistcoat, and after that I found all Jim’s articles of clothing strewn along the track. These signs told me very plainly what to expect, ,and so I was not surprised when I came to the stark naked body of Jim almost as black as a cinder. The murderer had met a worse fate than his victim. I knew I was not then more than a score of miles from Hannans, and resolved to make straight for there to report the whole occurrence to the local authorities. I camped that night where the cart had been left, and by a stroke of luck I found and caught the lost horse. Soon after midnight I was awakened by rain which poured down in torrents It lasted for several hours to my great discomfort and was one of the heaviest downpours I have ever seen in the district. Streamlets ran in all directions, and in low-lying places the ground was covered with water of varying depth. Then it was that the thought struck me that all the tracks recently made would be obliterated, and that led me on to wonder who would get the gold after the police had done with the affair.

I had been unable to procure any evidences as to the identity of either men, but even if their relatives were known it would be almost impossible to prove the amount of each man’s share. I convinced myself that the gold would go to the Crown. Then I remembered that I had carefully filled in the Irishman’s shallow grave and covered it with a good heap of clay. I thought that if the grave were ever noticed it would receive scant attention, as, unfortunately, scores of men ,were buried in the early days in the bush where their bodies were found and no public notification was ever given of their deaths. I alone knew anything of the terrible crime that thad been perpetrated, and except through me there was no chance of its ever being made public.

The feeling came over me that I had as much right to the gold as the Crown. I argued that I would injure no one by appropriating it to myself and keeping my mouth shut. I was poor and the Crown was rich, and I had as much right to it as the Crown. In the morning I harnessed the horse in the cart, put the gold on board, and travelled to Coolgardie, avoiding Hannans for many reasons. I turned the horse adrift a few miles from Coolgardie and broke one of the wheels of the cart to imply that it had to be left there by its owners through an accident. I planted portion of the gold, and made one or two journeys backwards and forwards before I got it all to Coolgardie. I sold it in different quarters to avoid suspicion, and at the end of a few weeks found I had over £2ooo to my credit. That was the foundation of my present fortune.

I invested the money in good mines and land, with the result that my wealth has grown enormously and it is still growing. I never revealed my secret until now, but I often have had advertisements published in the leading newspapers of the colonies giving full descriptions of Jim and Pat, and offering large rewards for information leading to the discovery of their relatives. I have put the matter in the hands of private detectives, of course giving them no information concerning the crime of which I am cognisant. I hope some day they will be successful in the search, and then the relations of each shall have half the value of the gold with interest added. Some people think me generous. I give largely to hospitals and charitable institutions. I met my old mate Dick in Sydney about a year after the tragic events I have recorded. He was slaving in a musty lawyer’s office, but was just about to be married to the brighteyed girl I used to lecture him about, and between them they had hardly enough cash to jingle on a tombstone. I told him he was a fool and said he should go back to West Australia. The luxuries of trams, telephones, regular water supply, gardens, and such like had not then reached Kalgoorlie. It was still a dusthole with a bad name and when I suggested that he should go back to the West he eyed me more with pity than with anger and said that his girl was dearer to him than all the gold in the world. I laughed scornfully, but he thinks me an awfully decent fellow, because I sent him and his wife a cheque for £100 as a wedding gift.