The Great Crushing at Mount Sugar-Bag

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The Great Crushing at Mount Sugar-Bag
A Queensland Mining Tale
by Louis Becke

"Let's sling it, boys. There's no fun in our bullocking here day after day and not making tucker! I'm sick to death of the infernal hole, and mean to get out of it."
"So am I, Ned. I was sick of it a month ago," said Harry Durham, filling his pipe and flinging himself down at full length upon his luxurious couch--a corn-sack suspended between four posts driven into the earthen floor of the hut. "I'm ready to chuck it up to-morrow and drive a mob of nanny-goats to the Palmer, like young Preston did the other day."
"How much do we owe that old divil Ikey now?" said Rody Minogue, the third man of the party, who sat at the open doorway looking out upon the disreputable collection of bark humpies that constituted the played-out mining township of Mount Sugar-bag.
"About ￡70 now," said Durham; "but against that he's got our five horses. The old beast means to shut down on us, I can see that plainly enough.
When I went to him on Saturday for the tucker he had a face on him as long as a child's coffin."
"Look here, boys," said Buller, the pessimsit, "let the infernal old vampire keep our three saddle-horses--they are worth more than seventy quid--and be hanged to him. We'll have the two pack-horses left. Let us sell one, and with the other to carry our swags, we'll foot it to Cleveland Bay, or Bowen, I don't care which."
"An' what are we goin' to do whin we get there?" asked Rody.
Buller shrugged his shoulders. "Dashed if I know, Rody; walk up and down Bowen jetty watch the steamers come in."
"And live on pack-horse meat," said Durham.
"Now, look here," and Rody got up from the doorway and sat upon the rough table in the middle of the room, "I want you fellows to listen to me. First of all, tell me this: Isn't it through me entirely that we've managed to get tick from old Ikey Cohen at all?"
"Right," said Durham; "no one but you, Rody, would have had courage enough to make love to greasy-faced Mrs. Ikey."
"Don't be ungrateful. Every time I've been to the place I've sympathised with her hard lot in being tied to an uncongential mate like Ikey Cohen, and for every half a dozen times I've squeezed her had you fellows have to thank me for a sixpenny plug of sheepwash tobacco."
"By Heavens! how you must have suffered for that tin of baking-powder that we got last week, and which didn't go down the bill!"
Rody laughed good-naturedly.
"Well, perhaps I did. But never mind poking fun at me, I'm talking seriously now. Here we are, stone-broke, and divil a chance can I see of our getting on to anything good at Sugar-bag. We've got about forty tons of stone at grass, haven't we? What do you think it'll go?"
"About fifteen pennyweights," said Durham.
"I say ten," said Buller
"And I say it's going to be the biggest crushing on Sugar-bag since the old days," said Rody.
"Rot!" said Durham.
"Now just you wait and listen to what I've got to say. We've got forty tons at grass now. Now, we won't get a show to crush for some weeks, because there's Tom Doyle's lot and then Patterson's to go through first. It's no use asking old Fryer to put our stuff through before theirs. Besides, we don't want him to."
"Don't we? I think we want to get out of this God-forsaken hole as quick as we can."
"So we do. But getting our stuff through first won't help us away. Reckon it up, my boys! Forty tons, even if it goes an ounce, means only about ￡140. Out of that old Cohen gets ￡70--just half, that would leave us ￡70; out of this we shall have to give Fryer ￡40 for crushing. That leaves us ￡30."
"That'll take us to Townsville or Cooktown, anyway," said Durham.
"Yes," said Rody, "if we get it. But we won't. That stone isn't going to crush for more than ten pennyweights to the ton."
A dead silence followed. Rody was the oldest and most experienced miner of them all, and knew what he was talking about. Then Buller groaned.
"That means, then, that after we've paid Fryer ￡40 for his crushing we'll have ￡30 for old Cohen and nothing for ourselves.
"That's it, Ned."
No one spoke for a moment, until Durham, who had good Scriptural knowledge, began cursing King Pharaoh for not crossing the Red Sea first in boats and blocking Moses and his crowd from landing on the other side.
"Well, wait a minute," resumed Rody, "I haven't finished yet. We have our mokes to old Cohen, didn't we, as a guarantee? He said he'd send them to Dotswood Station, because there was no feed here. What do