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long; and I went. No, I tell you: the day I cleared out, I was all black and blue from his great fondness for me. Ah! he was always a bit of a character. Look at that shovel now. Off his chump? Not much. Thats just exactly like my dad. He wants me here just to have somebody to order about. However, we two were hard up; and whats five quid to himonce in sixteen hard years? Oh, but I am sorry for you. Did you never want to come back home? Be a lawyers clerk and rot herein some such place as this? he cried in contempt. What! if the old man set me up in a home to-day, I would kick it down about my earsor else die there before the third day was out. And where else is it that you hope to die? In the bush somewhere; in the sea; on a blamed mountain-top for choice. At home? Yes! the worlds my home; but I expect Ill die in a hospital some day. What of that? Any place is good enough, as long as Ive lived; and Ive been everything you can think of almost but a tailor or a soldier. Ive been a boundary rider; Ive sheared sheep; and humped my swag; and harpooned a whale. Ive rigged ships, and prospected for gold, and skinned dead bullocks,and turned my back on more money than the old man would have scraped in his whole life. Ha, ha! He overwhelmed her. She pulled herself together and managed to utter, Time to rest now. He straightened himself up, away from the wall, and in a severe voice said, Time to go. But he did not move. He leaned back again, and hummed thoughtfully a bar or two of an outlandish tune. She felt as if she were about to cry. Thats another of your cruel songs, she said. Learned it in Mexicoin Sonora. He talked easily. It is the song of the Gambucinos. You dont know? The song of restless men. Nothing could hold them in one placenot even a woman. You used to meet one of them now and again, in the old days, on the edge of the gold country, away north there beyond the Rio Gila. Ive seen it. A prospecting engineer in Mazatlan took me along with him to help look after the waggons. A sailors a handy chap to have about you anyhow. Its all a desert: cracks in the earth that you cant see the bottom of; and mountainssheer rocks standing up high like walls and church spires, only a hundred times bigger. The valleys are full of boulders and black stones. Theres not a blade of grass to see; and the sun sets more red over that country than I have seen it anywhereblood- red and angry. It is fine. You do not want to go back there again? she stammered out. He laughed a little. No. Thats the blamed gold country. It gave me the shivers sometimes to look at itand we were a big lot of men together, mind; but these Gambucinos wandered alone. They knew that country before anybody had ever heard of it. They had a sort of gift for prospecting, and the fever of it was on them too; and they did not seem to want the gold very much. They would find some rich spot, and then turn their backs on it; pick up perhaps a littleenough for a spreeand then be off again, looking for more. They never stopped long where there were houses; they had no wife, no chick, no home, never a chum. You couldnt be friends with a Gambucino; they were too restlesshere to-day, and gone, God knows where, to-morrow. They told no one of their finds, and there has never been a Gambucino well off. It was not for the gold they cared; it was the wandering about looking for it in the stony country that got into them and wouldnt let them rest; so that no woman yet born could hold a Gambucino for more than a week. Thats what the song says. Its all about a pretty girl that tried hard to keep hold of a Gambucino lover, so that he should bring her lots of gold. No fear! Off he went, and she never saw him again. |
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