Читать книгу The Last Chance: A Tale of the Golden West онлайн

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‘We can’t afford to take no risks,’ said the old man; ‘we might have another party comin’ along from “the Cross” way. And if they got there first—some men’s that smart, you’d a’most swear as they could smell the gold—there’d be a barney over it; and law, likely as not, which you never know how it might turn out. So I’m thinkin’ it’s best to go on, and collar right away—that’ll put an end to all bother in one act.’

ssss1As the other members of the party were, more or less, excited and ardent with the thought that the tedious journey was nearly at an end, with fame and fortune almost within their grasp (for when is fortune achieved without fame following dutifully behind the triumphal car?)—the Commissioner, with the far-off cottage ready to be illumined with the glad tidings, and the children’s shouts almost in his ears; the young men, fired with the idea of a return to England with a record rivalling that of the hero who ‘broke the bank at Monte Carlo,’—no objection was raised. And when the moon, nearly at her full, rose slowly over the horizon, commencing to flood the wide bare solitudes, the plain, the hill crags, the mighty sweep of waterless silent landscape, and deserted save for themselves, it seemed a weird mockery to expect anything of the nature of wealth won from a region so far removed from the benevolence of Nature or of man.