Adventure Magazine Cover — page 121: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Go-Fever ‘was pickin’ teeth, either. We’re goin’ to mine it—right. Puta blast intoit. | “Tough luck for you chaps, but all’s fair in gold-minin’. You shudn’t have left an open trail all the way from Sydney. This duck, who has the grudge ag’in’ you, picked us up as partners in Townsville, knowin’ he’d warn’t long on bush trailin’. Easy enough to foller you up river an’ then we met these two blacks you had a row with. After that it was like takin’ ma pence from a blind beggar. “‘Natcherul you feel sore, but it ain’t no good callin’ hard names an’ gettin’ us that way. As it is, we’re feelin’ prime an’ in- clined to do the right thing. You can put down your hooks now. It’s all over, pro- vidin’ you don’t make a break. Glarin’ won't get you a —— thing, Yank. You lose an’ we win.”’ ‘“‘What are you goin’ to do with us?” de- manded Reynolds. ‘‘Ah! Now you show sense, cocky. You know when to quit. Why, we’re goin’ to give you these two Myalls for guides an’ hunters back to the coast. Back to Herbert River, anyway. You promise ’em plenty of suttongo at the other end an’ maybe they’ll get grub an’ water for you. We’ve promised ’em all the suttongo you’ve got with you, so you'll have to swear off smokin’. And we’ll be needin’ the rest of your stuff ourselves. More gold here than I hoped for. Goin’ to take us quite a while to clean it up proper. see us doin’ it an’ you’d cut heavy into the grub-pile, so off you go.” “You talked about swinging just now,”’ said Reynolds. “Sending us off with two blacks who’ve quarreled with us is just the same as murder. My pal here is sick. Myall grub’ll kill him. And you know what the blacks’ll do to us without arms. You’ve even taken our jack-knives, you thief!’’ The man shrugged his shoulders, his eyes grew cold and his voice lost its tone and manner of bluff raillery. “You heard me,” he said. ‘Now get to out of here, the three of you, and your mangy dog! Ill give you a last tip. Murder ain’t murder till it’s found out. You wouldn’t be the first to stay out in the scrub and no one find you but the dingoes. “I’m tellin’ you why I don’t put all of you out of the way an’ be done with it. Why I’m givin’ you a fightin’ chance to get Make you feel bad to - 119 through. Because no one won’t listen to your yarn, in the first place. Minin’ ways are rough an’ ready. Possession proves property. Second place, I don’t want to spoil our luck by christenin’ this find with blood. Otherwise I’d crack all of you on the head an’ blame it on the blacks.” “You standing for this, Alec Brown?” asked Reynolds. Brown’s eyes shifted and he looked shamefaced. “He'll stand for what we do or he'll never spend his share of the gold. Sievers ll keep him in order.” _ “Are you going to let us have our can- teens?”’ asked Petrie mildly, though his narrowed eyes were like those of his com- panions in expression. ‘‘They’ve got boiled water in them. We’ve all got dysentery and I’m pretty sick with it.” “Go get ’em,”’ the man said to Brown. The youngster limped off, turned as the other shouted after him. ‘And bring up their suttongo—their baccy. Come here, you two boys. This suttongo I promised you. Now you go back along your people. You take these white men along of you.” “Wainta? Where?’ asked Dango haugh- tily. ‘“‘Allinkpa kola along those malle. They shoot margin at us. All same malle vwkku. We two are angry with those men. They fired a gun at us. They are no good.” ‘““Maybe they give you plenty suttongo.” “No got suttongo, now we take. Malle vikku.” The scornful way in which Dango re- garded his late employers and the spite he put into his denunciation of them was ominous. They had spears and nolla- nollas. They might elect to kill them and leave their bodies for the ants in the spinifex to clean to white and disarticulated skele- tons, or they might merely desert them to the same ultimate fate through thirst and starvation. ‘““You come Dungeness belong to us, we give plenty suttongo,”’ said Reynolds with an air of indifferent bargaining. ‘Maybe you like boat we hide. You catch us plenty grub, plenty water, we give you that boat.” “Huh! Too easy we find that Loat.” Dango replied contemptuously. “You do your bargainin’ later,’”’ broke in the leader roughly. ‘Get out of camp, the lot of you.” , Alec Brown came up with the tobacco MICLOOOK © in