This sad and poignant story from the pen of N E Gledhill is kindly shared by his Great Nephew Allen Gledhill with thanks.
STEVE HARDING lived with his wife in a tumble-down shanty on the outskirts of the Golden Mile. They were a queer couple. She, a diminutive, white-haired old woman, with deep-set eyes and a prominent nose, looked the reincarnation of a witch. He was reckoned queer, too, by his mates. Quiet and secluded, he seldom ventured further than his backyard, unless it was to the City Arms. Even then he drank alone. Occasionally, if he happened to meet one of his work-mates there, he would nod to the barman to pull another drink, saying: “A man needs a jar on a day like this.” His mates never tried to draw him out; it might have hurt his feelings, but they were satisfied he was “queer.”
Harding was a “louser” and poor; which means that he was honest. “Lousing” was a job for a trusted man. It was seldom that anyone popular with the crowd got a chance at it.
When a new lode was located running in from the chute, the rock was drilled, a charge placed in it and the fuse ignited. After the explosion, the “louser” was the first man allowed in. He picked up the loosened lumps of visible gold and watched them safely on the cage. He was searched each time he came out, as a matter of form; but he was trusted. They realised that he had plenty of opportunities of planting anything in the stope.
Still, the gold was disappearing. In fact, during the past few months, the losses had become serious. Everyone was suspected; even among the men themselves, each one vaguely doubted the next. But had anyone suggested that Harding might be “in on the deal” he would have been laughed at.
At each change of shift, when the men came to the surface, they were searched thoroughly. It was useless. Whoever they were they were certainly making a good job of it. Then Harding was informed that in the future he would do all day shifts. He knew what that meant; he was under suspicion, along with the rest. It hit him hard.
“Strike me dead,” he said, “before I’d pinch an ounce of it!
But he was interested. He had a shrewd idea that the stuff disappeared without actually being taken to the surface by the men. Of course, it was no business of his; but he decided to keep an eye open. It was puzzling. Besides Walters, his mate, and himself there were twenty men working on the level. It might be any one of them.
The chute was bare enough; a thousand feet straight drive to the stope. On one side a few drills lay in a heap; on the other was an open cut in which stood two sanitary pans. It was not in the stope, of that he was certain and unless the men were getting it away under their armpits! “Wake up, Steve!” He ceased his calculations and smiled as Walters clapped him on the back and, walking over to one of the pans, carelessly threw something in it and continued on along the chute.
There was really nothing unusual in the action, but it set Harding thinking. Supposin’? No, it was too unlikely; yet today was Wednesday, tomorrow Thursday — tomorrow the pans’ would be taken up and emptied. There was just a chance — at least it was possible. He walked over to the pan and turned it around. Then he tilted it on one side and looked underneath. Just as he had suspected; a small cross chalked on the bottom to single it out. “Damned clever.” he grinned, as he replaced the pan in position and proceeded back to the stope.
He had gone about twenty yards when he saw Walters leaving the stope and coming in his direction. Slinking against the wall in the shadow of an air-blower, he waited. Walters passed, walked to the pans, and after glancing casually around to see if he was observed, opened his shirt and drew out a handful of specimens.
“Jack!” Harding stepped out of the shadow and approached him. “Hell’s delight: You, Steve? You frightened six months’ growth out of me.” “What have you got there, Jack? Have a bit. of sense, will you? You’ve got a wife and kids to think of. Strike me, it ain’t worth it. What are you goin’ to get out of it?” Walters was silent.
“A drop of beer, and a few bob. p’rhaps an’ p’rhaps a few months if you’re pinched. Here give me this; we’re goin’ to get rid of while we’ve got a chance. I’ll put it back in the stope after the next blast.” He took the stones. “Now beat it, Jack, an’ if you take a mug’s advice you’ll leave this alone. It’ll get you nowhere – and, what’s more, it ain’t yours.”
He watched Walters disappear along the chute and examined the colors, “good stuff.” he said to himself; “a man could hardly blame ’em!”. So engrossed was he in the stones that he had failed to notice the cage stop at the level and someone alight. He had scarcely put them in his shirt when he became aware of someone alongside him. He glanced up.
“You, Mr. Teeney! We never expected you down here.” “Obviously,” was the reply. Very interesting specimens you were looking at, Harding. They’ll be handy.” He held out his hands and Harding emptied the contents of his shirt into them. “I thought you had more sense, Harding. This will go bad with you.” “But—but you don’t think I was thievin’ the rotten stuff. Mr. Teeney?” “No you probably found it here—or you were just minding it for someone, eh.’ Teeney grinned. “It has taken us two months to run this down. You’d better get your coat, Harding; the Chief will be anxious to see us.”
The news that Steve Harding had been arrested for gold-stealing came as a thunderbolt among the men. By most, it was regarded as a huge joke. But the fact remained, he had been caught red-handed. There could be no doubt about it. They thought it over; after all, it usually was the silent ones.
Five days he was in Kalgoorlie jail waiting for his trial. On the second day, he was allowed a visitor, and Walters was shown into the cell. Harding thought he could guess the reason for the visit, and it made him smile. They talked about health, mines, and luck until the warder strolled out of earshot. Then Walters moistened his lips. “By Hell, I’m sorry for this Steve. It’d have killed the missus if I’d have been caught. I came to see what you’re goin’ to do about it.”
Harding looked at him. “You’re a blasted idiot, Jack,” he said. “This is goin’ to hurt – I’ve got an old woman, too. Strike me, I wouldn’t have done a stretch for a thousand ounces of the stuff. But if you think I’m goin’ to the shelf you, you can rest your mind—I won’t. ‘Tisn’t a man’s game.” He shook the other by the shoulders. “Promise me you’ll look after the missus, Jack. Give her a few bob – I’ve got nothin’ — and—give her a hand with them fowls, will you? It’s her hobby, you know. You can come and see me sometimes an’ let me know how things are goin’ on.”
Three months was the sentence, and he worked it out at Coolgardie. Later they were stricter and it would have meant twelve at Fremantle. His wife was his only visitor, and it broke him up when she came to see him at the end of a week. Strictly, it was against prison rules; but Harding was too popular for them not to waive a few restrictions. So she arrived every Sunday, with her basket of food, and authority closed its eyes. He wished she wouldn’t; it only made her feel it more. He hated her to come – too far, he said, for an old woman. And yet he wanted her to stay.
When one Sunday passed without her coming, he was afraid. He was sure there was something wrong. The next morning the prison chaplain told him she was dead. The weight of the world seemed to settle about him then. The parson tried to comfort him with religious assurances, but he was brushed aside. “I know nothin’ about religion,” Harding told him; “and if it means they can take a man’s wife and tell him it’s for the best, I don’t want to know anythin’ about it.”
How he lived through the last month of his imprisonment he never knew. Two and a half months he served; two weeks off for good conduct. He laughed aloud at the idea— two weeks from three months for something he hadn’t done! He walked to the station, caught the express to Boulder, and made straight for his home. For the first time, he could have cried. It was of hessian, two rooms and a wash house. Everything was as he had remembered it; the papers in the same tidy heap the stove spick and span, the tea cloths flung over the fence to dry. But it seemed hollow and deserted. He unlocked the back door and walked slowly to the fowl yard. Empty!! He laughed again, but it was derisive. What else should he have expected, anyhow?
He pulled the front door after him and cut through a vacant block in the direction of the City Arms. He felt like a man who had suddenly been released to the light after being confined in darkness for years, and he hung his head slightly. Besides, what right had he to look honest people in the face. They might not like refusing to recognise him. But he must have money if he was to live. He would go to Dale and put it to him straight. Dale was a good chap – he had been a regular digger himself once. At least, Dale had always trusted him am he might give him another chance. A voice startled him;
“Hello, Steve! Well, I’ll be damned. When did you get out? Come on, I’ve got a deener—have a drink.”
All the hatred and loathing in Harding rose and throbbed about his ears. He knew the voice, carefree and happy; it sounded maddeningly jubilant. The last time he had heard it, it was cringing and imploring. He recalled it well: “What do you intend doin’ Steve?…. Yes, I’ll give her a few bob – I’ll look after her.”
She was dead.
He raised his head slowly. “Drink with you? I’d see you in Hell first, Walters. If it wasn’t for makin’ myself as big a skunk as you are, I’d see you where I’ve been for the last three months.” Harding pushed him aside and walked on. He went through the subway and over the leases until he could see Dale’s house in the distance, alongside the assay office. Then it took him half an hour before he could make up his mind to go any further.
“Three months don’t change a place much,” he thought to himself. I suppose they think I got enough to start an assay office o’ my own!” He smiled cynically. “If I weren’t broke I wouldn’t come near the lousy place again. But twenty years underneath don’t make a man too fit for other jobs.”
He had reached the gate. It was not until he had raised the latch that he noticed Dale standing smoking on the front verandah. “Good day, Mr. Dale.” “Well?” “I’m sorry I had to come to see you, Mr. Dale. I suppose you think I’ve got a darned cheek. But I want work, I’ve got to live somehow and you always trusted me. You were the only one I could come to.”
Dale frowned and was silent. “Believe me, I never pinched an ounce of that stuff, Mr. Dale. Twenty years I put in there, and nothin’ more than the suit o’ clothes I stand up in.” “Harding, I found it hard to believe that you were dishonest. I had always trusted you, and it seems as if that was my reward. I can’t think you’re a common thief, though, but you know a man’s chance of getting back on the mines after he has been convicted of stealing. It is impossible!”
Harding nodded. He knew that quite well – he had known it would be wasting time to try, but he had come in spite of it: “See here. Harding – I’d rather have you than a hundred others that are there now. I’m willing to take a big step if you’ll play up to it. I can’t put you back on the Horseshoe, you know that, but we have amalgamated with the Chaffers, and I am sending some of the men over there. I’ll give you a chance. Have I your word that you’ll make the most of it? It is my reputation as a judge as well as yours as a man that is at stake, and I think I can trust you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dale, thank you, I” – He put out his hand but withdrew it hastily, and bowed and backed his way to the gate. “Thank you, Mr. Dale; you won’t be sorry. I’ll work up to it.” “Very well. Harding. Number two-shaft, day-shift, Monday. Go down to the eleven hundred and report to Mr. Wright.”
At seven-thirty on the following Monday Harding was mooching around the change-room, crib-bag in one hand, a “spider” in the other. The exhilaration of an honest job – hard work didn’t matter – was exciting him. He paced up and down impatiently until the whistle blew eight, and the winders roared, and dripping men stepped out of the cages and cracked lewd jokes with those who took their places. “Eleven hundred!”
“Right you are!” came in a chorus. Several men alighted, candles in hands, and, still unused to the darkness, walked half-blinded along the oozing, clammy chute to their respective stopes. Mechanically, Harding followed. Cockroaches—great green things that never see the light of day scattered everywhere. “Eat a man alive if he went to sleep for five minutes, them damn things,” someone remarked!
They hung their crib bags from the pipe which ran along the roof of the chute. “Make a man crook. There” – said a big fellow, hanging his crib bag and addressing one of the insectsm – “if you get hold of that we’ll call you Houdini.”
Harding was puzzled. To him, the voice sounded uncommonly familiar. “Hell! Walters !” he exclaimed, only to himself, as the realisation came to him. Walters turned as he had heard his name. “You, Stevem- well I’ll be damned! On the eleven? We’re workin’ here, too. These are my mates. Ted, Dave – this is, Steve Harding. How the hell did you get here?”
“Stow it, Walters. I’m here, and I’m stoppin’ here because I’ve got to get a crust. And it looks as if I’ve got to work with you – all right, I will. But listen, don’t talk to me, Walters, because I don’t want to hear you – you’re a louse. And when a man’s a louse he’s not a man, and that’s enough.” He spat deliberately, hitched up his dungarees, and walked off.
Walters looked at his mates with a grin. “Go quiet, boys; he’s got rather particular who he talks to now. His holiday must have turned his head a bit.” The three roared; Harding heard from where he stood. In spite of himself, he winced. Three days passed, uneventfully enough; and except for a nod or an occasional word to the other two, Harding was silent. It was a four-man job, and, as they had the stope to themselves, the silence hurt him.
They divided the work; one day he would truck, the next he would watch the charges while another took his turn at pushing, the next he would handle the drills, and so on. Mechanically he took a new – job each day, and the others sorted themselves accordingly. He was like a foreigner isolated in the babble of tongues around him. Some of the jokes he could have roared at, but he would only feign indifference and assume a more sombre look. It broke him up to do it. It made a machine of a man, he thought. But he was determined. “The other two are all right,” he said to himself, “but he’s a cur, and I wouldn’t spit in the same paddock as him.” It was not so bad while they were working; a man could work and think of the past, or guess at the future and forget other people.
The stone made him think, too. Tons of it, and a nuisance, carted away in loads, just for the sake of a bit of yellow stuff, which, after all, was only another coloured metal. Supposin’ they – he wondered who the “they” were – supposin’ they were to stop buyin’ gold and offer a big price for quartz? We’d be shovellin’ gold in here, and they’d risk anythin’ to lay their hands on a lump of stone just like they do gold now – the blasted fools. – And he would shovel faster at the heap, as though it eased his mind.
He was too open-natured not to feel the brunt of silence that he hated. He detested crib-time because he ate and smoked alone. Throwing stones at the toecap of a boot was a poor pastime when there were others to whom he could but wouldn’t talk to. He dreaded the hour more than he did a day’s graft.
The water mains were on the plats. As the stope they were working was three or four hundred yards from the shaft, the men were forced to walk back for their water and carry it to where they had hung their cribs. They could have gone up to eat, but it saved time to have it in the chute. Besides, it allowed them a chance to have a decent smoke. Each day, when the whistle blew at twelve, the men. with clock like precision, downed tools. Automatically arms were stretched, caps pulled off and faces wiped with them, and the three men set off along the chute to the water mains, with Harding, as usual, a few paces behind.
The fourth day on the new job was what the men called a trimmer: up on top it was 106 degrees in the shade. “Blasted hot! What – a man wants down ‘ere is a couple o’ ice pipes. “Harding looked up at the speaker. “Yes,” he said, lowering: the drill: “I think I’ll have to get a booze… It’s near dinner, anyway”; and as he went along’ the chute the three followed.
He reached the tap, put his. mouth under it, let the water run on his head, and, squatting on an oil drum a few yards away, rolled a cigarette. The other three, flinging themselves on the ground by the water main, followed his example. “Queer cuss, Harding,” said one of them; “damned if I can understand a man making a hermit of himself like that, can you?” The voice, subdued as it was, reached Harding where he sat. He turned on the drum and smiled at the wall in front of him as Walters replied—it seemed to Harding to be for his benefit: “He doesn’t like me, Ted; we were in a bit of a clean-up once, and he was annoyed with his share of it.”
Walters glanced behind, but Harding was vacantly drawing figures on the ground. “You know, Jack, the best thing we can do is to clean up the stuff that’s on hand while we’ve got a chance.” “Good idea Jack.” interposed the other. “Teeney’s been hangin’ around the last couple o’ days, and it’s a million to one he’ll be down any time. We’ve had a good spin, and we’d be mugs to go up now.” Harding cursed to himself.
“Gold, nothin’ but gold!”
That fool couldn’t keep his hands off it if it was red hot!” “We’re as safe as in God’s pocket,” laughed Walters. “Leave it where it is. Go about hidin’ the damned stuff and they’ll ferret around ‘till they collar it. Leave it in a crib bag and hang it under their noses, and they’ll pass it a hundred times in a mornin’.” Harding sat bolt upright. “Leave it in a crib bag! Hang it under their noses! But they couldn’t mean that his bag was with them! If they were found!” –
He kicked the drum out of the way and swung around on Walters. “You low-down, thievin’ cur! Them fools don’t know any better; but – can’t you keep your rotten hands off anything’? By God, if Teeney comes down here!” He threw down his cigarette and dashed along the chute in the direction of the stope.
“Leave those damned bags where they are, you fool!” shouted Walters hoarsely. But Harding was beyond hearing. Reaching the stope he grasped his bag and tore it away. Immediately, and without warning, there was an ominous crack in the wall above him, and a flying “pale” struck him, felling him. Then with a rumble and a deafening roar the sides of the stope crashed upon him, burying him beneath ten tons of mullock.
Distress bells rang, sirens shrieked; the cages rattled, and men came running from all directions. Desperately they dug to shift the huge heap of earth and rock. Dale pushed his way through the crowd with the mine doctor. “Get the trucks – every man on to it. Any one underneath?” “Steve Harding!” came in a chorus, and someone added: “He’s a goner.” “Shift it. Double time if you get him alive.” They tackled the mass from all sides, and as one dropped out exhausted he was replaced by another. But it was hopeless. By midnight they rolled away the last stone and dragged out the mangled body, still clasping in one hand a fracture bag, with the others burst open alongside him.
The gold lay scattered around.
Dale stooped, picked up one of the yellow slugs, and gazed down at the body. “He was honest once, honest as the day. But it got him just like it gets the rest of them—the cursed stuff! Once a man gets his hands on this he can’t leave it alone. ‘
Moya Sharp
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