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You keep quiet, don't you, and work behind our backs! Jack, are you going to stand for it? He'll get you, too!" Jack moved a little away from Shand, grim and suspicious. "What grounds have you?" he demanded of Joe. Joe had no grounds except his anger. "I see it in his face!" he cried. "It's a damned lie!" said the dark man thickly. "I play fair." Joe renewed and enlarged his accusations.
For the next few minutes the cabin presented a scene of great activity. Every man, with the tail of an eye on the guest, was anxious to contribute a share to the preparations. Husky went to the lake for water; Shand cut bacon and ground coffee for the cook; Big Jack produced a clean, or fairly clean, white blanket to serve for a tablecloth, and set the table.
Big Jack Skinner, the oldest and most philosophic of the party a lean, sandy-haired giant sat in a rocking chair he had contrived from a barrel and stared into the fire with a sullen composure. Husky Marr and Black Shand Fraser were playing pinocle at the table, bickering over the game like a pair of ill-conditioned schoolboys.
Whether any one else was in the tent, she could not say, but she knew that there were others at the entrance. The tent was hardly large enough for more than five or six. Dick Shand had not been there, because he had always been her enemy, and had tried to prevent the marriage. And she was quite clear about the letter. There was a great deal said about the letter.
'Allan, the Wesleyan who married us, has gone out of the colony, no one knows where, but I send you the copy of the certificate; and all the four of us who were there are still together. And there were others who were at Ahalala at the time, and who remember the marriage well. Dick Shand was not in the chapel, but Dick knew all about it. There is quite plenty of evidence.
I hope you may be successful. 'You seem to doubt it. 'Of course it is doubtful. If not, the thing would be common and hardly worth the doing. Will Mr. Shand be very persistent as a working miner? 'I hope so. 'He seems to me to have great gifts of idleness, which on board ship are a blessing. How I do envy men when I see them smoking! It seems to me that nothing is wanting to them.
Shand strayed away to Queensland, and then returning was again admitted to a certain degree of partnership, and then again fell into drink, and at last, deserting the trade of a miner, tried his hand at various kinds of work, till at last he became a simple shepherd.
He stole a glance of compassion at her. Big Jack, having the loudest roar, battered the ears of the disputants until they were silenced. "You fools!" he cried. "Are you going to waste the night chewing the rag like a parcel of women?" They looked at him sullenly. "Well, what are we going to do? That's what I'd like to know," said Shand. A significant silence filled the cabin.
To all these his colleague replies in a low and reproachful whisper. The pair represent two schools of military thought a fact of which their respective subalterns are well aware, and act accordingly. "In preparing troops for active service, you must make the conditions as real as possible from the very outset," postulates Shand. "Perform all your exercises just as you would in war.
Beat that if you can!" Sam, obliged to await the result without participating, was suffocating with suspense. When the cup passed to Shand he touched the girl. She looked at him inquiringly. None of the other four were paying the least attention to them then. Sam asked her with a sign if she understood the game. He had heard that the natives were inveterate gamblers. She nodded.
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