[Gutenberg 36710] • The Black Opal

CHAPTER I

A string of vehicles moved slowly out of the New Town, taking the road

over the long, low slope of the Ridge to the plains.

Nothing was moving on the wide stretch of the plains or under the fine,

clear blue sky of early spring, except this train of shabby,

dust-covered vehicles. The road, no more than a track of wheels on

shingly earth, wound lazily through paper daisies growing in drifts

beside it, and throwing a white coverlet to the dim, circling horizon.

The faint, dry fragrance of paper daisies was in the air; a native

cuckoo calling.

The little girl sitting beside Michael Brady in Newton's buggy glanced

behind her now and then. Michael was driving the old black horse from

the coach stables and Newton's bay mare, and Sophie and her father were

sitting beside him on the front seat. In the open back of the buggy

behind them lay a long box with wreaths and bunches of paper daisies and

budda blossoms over it.

Sophie knew all the people on the road, and to whom the horses and

buggies they had borrowed belonged. Jun Johnson and Charley Heathfield

were riding together in the Afghan storekeeper's sulky with his fat

white pony before them. Anwah Kaked and Mrs. Kaked had the store cart

themselves. Watty and Mrs. Frost were on the coach. Ed. Ventry was

driving them and had put up the second seat for George and Mrs. Woods

and Maggie Grant. Peter Newton and Cash Wilson followed in Newton's

newly varnished black sulky. Sam Nancarrow had given Martha M'Cready a

lift, and Pony-Fence Inglewood was driving Mrs. Archie and Mrs. Ted

Cross in Robb's old heavy buggy, with the shaggy draught mare used for

carting water in the township during the summer, in the shafts. The

Flails' home-made jinker, whose body was painted a dull yellow, came

last of the vehicles on the road. Sophie could just see Arthur Henty and

two or three stockmen from Warria riding through a thin haze of red

dust. But she knew men were walking two abreast behind the vehicles and

horsemen--Bill Grant, Archie and Ted Cross, and a score of miners from

the Three Mile and the Punti rush. At a curve of the road she had seen

Snow-Shoes and Potch straggling along behind the others, the old man

stooping to pick wild flowers by the roadside, and Potch plodding on,

looking straight in front of him.

Buggies, horses, and people, they had come all the way from her home at

the Old Town. Almost everybody who lived on Fallen Star Ridge was there,

driving, riding, or walking on the road across the plains behind

Michael, her father, and herself. It was all so strange to Sophie; she

felt so strange in the black dress she had on and which Mrs. Grant had

cut down from one of her own. There was a black ribbon on her old yellow

straw hat too, and she had on a pair of black cotton gloves.

Sophie could not believe her mother was what they called "dead"; that it

was her mother in the box with flowers on just behind her. They had

walked along this very road, singing and gathering wild flowers, and had

waited to watch the sun set, or the moon rise, so often.

She glanced at her father. He was sitting beside her, a piece of black

stuff on his arm and a strip of the same material round his old felt

hat. The tears poured down his cheeks, and he shook out the large, new,

white handkerchief he had bought at Chassy Robb's store that morning,

and blew his nose every few minutes. He spoke sometimes to Michael; but

Michael did not seem to hear him. Michael sat staring ahead, his face as

though cut in wood.

Sophie remembered Michael had been with her when Mrs. Grant said.... Her

mind went back over that.

"She's dead, Michael," Mrs. Grant had said.

And she had leaned against the window beside her mother's bed, crying.

Michael was on his knees by the bed. Sophie had thought Michael looked

so funny, kneeling like that, with his head in his hands, his great

heavy boots jutting up from the floor. The light, coming in through the

window near the head of the bed, shone on the nails in the soles of his

boots. It was so strange to see these two people whom she knew quite

well, and whom she had only seen doing quite ordinary, everyday things,

behaving like this. Sophie had gazed at her mother who seemed to be

sleeping. Then Mrs. Grant had come to her, her face working, tears

streaming down her cheeks. She had taken her hand and they had gone out

of the room together. Sophie could not remember what Mrs. Grant had said

to her then.... After a little while Mrs. Grant had gone back to the

room where her mother was, and Sophie went out to the lean-to where

Potch was milking the goats.