Pigeon Post

  John and Nancy were hurrying ahead. Even Susan was walking faster than she had been. Dick, his eyes on the ground, and his hammer in his hand, was climbing doggedly away behind her.

  “Do tell us what the Topps are really like,” said Dorothea.

  “You’ll see them in a minute or two,” said Peggy. “It’s years since I’ve been there.”

  “Titty,” said Dorothea privately, “about Squashy Hat. Is he really prospecting too, or is Nancy just thinking so, to make it more exciting?”

  “If he knows about the gold,” panted Titty, “he’s sure to be prospecting. Anybody would be …”

  “But if he doesn’t know …?” said Dorothea.

  “Hurry up!”

  “We jolly well are,” said Roger grimly.

  Suddenly the track divided into two. One path turned sharply left through the bushes. The other went on. The trees were thinning. Close before them was a thicket of brambles at the foot of a wide steep face of rock with heather clinging to it here and there. A grassy gully, clear of brambles, led to the top of the rock. Nancy, John, and Susan were up there already. Dick, hammer in hand, was close below them.

  “Come on,” said Peggy, and the rest of the prospectors ran, panting, after her, hearts pounding in their chests after the long climb. They dodged round the bramble thicket, raced up the green gully, and, a moment later, from the top of the rock, were looking out over the wild, broken moorland of the Topps.

  *

  “Well, what do you think of it?” said Nancy, waving her arm as if she had somehow conjured the whole of High Topps into existence.

  Titty at first could hardly speak. That last run to the rock after the long climb from the valley had left her altogether out of breath. Spots swam before her eyes, but in spite of them she knew she was looking at a Klondyke, an Alaska, better than anything she had dreamed when they were talking of the goldfields in the camp at Beckfoot. Over there rose the great mass of Kanchenjunga. A huge arm stretched down from him towards the valley they had left, hiding all the Beckfoot country and the hills towards the head of the lake. A range of hills swept away to the south from the peak they had climbed the year before. Half circled by the hills there lay a wide plateau, broken with gullies, scarred with ridges of rock that rose out of a sea of heather and bracken, and close-cropped sun-dried grass. Away to the left the plateau sloped down and was crossed by a ribbon of white road. Behind the prospectors were Tyson’s wood, and the deep valley of the Amazon out of which they had climbed.

  “What’s that native road?” Titty asked, when she had got her breath again.

  “It goes over into Dundale,” said Nancy over her shoulder. “It’s the same road we trekked on coming to Tyson’s.”

  Roger was looking back down the smooth steep face of rock at the edge of the Topps.

  “What a place for a knickerbockerbreaker,” he said.

  “Landing in the brambles,” said Titty.

  “I could stop myself,” said Roger.

  “Don’t try,” said Susan hurriedly. “Who’s going to darn you? Mrs Tyson isn’t like Mary Swainson.”

  “Well, if I mayn’t slide down,” said Roger, “isn’t it my turn for the telescope?”

  “Let him have the telescope,” said Susan.

  “Here you are,” said John. “Two minutes a turn. Everybody wants to have a look.”

  “Where are the old workings?” asked Dick.

  “All over the place,” said Nancy. “You see Ling Scar? The big lump coming down from Kanchenjunga. That’s the one we were inside when we went to see Slater Bob. The tunnel we were in is supposed to come out this side, but it isn’t safe any longer. There are lots more along the ridge at the bottom, where the Topps begin. And there’s a working in almost every bit of valley or rise all over High Topps. You know, just a hole, and a heap of scratchings outside it. You can see one from here. Over there. That black spot under those rocks …”

  “Let’s begin looking right away.”

  “Oh look here, Captain Nancy,” said Susan. “We simply can’t. Mrs Blackett’s coming, and we’ve tents to pitch and grub to cook. We ought to start down again almost at once.”

  “First thing tomorrow then,” said Nancy.

  “Where’s the enemy?” said Titty.

  “Squashy Hat? He’s in the other farm. Where we ought to be getting our milk from really. It’s the other side of the road, just below where it turns down through the woods. You can’t quite see it from here. I wish you could. He’s probably there now.”

  “No, he isn’t,” said Roger urgently. “I’m looking at him now. Do be quiet.”

  Roger was lying flat on his stomach, with his elbows dug into the ground, while he steadied the little telescope with both hands. One of his feet was kicking in the air. Its kicking meant “Shut up, everybody!” but nobody knew the code because Roger himself had only that minute invented it.

  Everybody, however, could see which way the telescope was pointing.

  “Lurk!” said John suddenly, and the three other Swallows flung themselves flat on the ground.

  “Lurk,” cried Nancy, and she and Dorothea and Peggy dropped together.

  “Lurk! Lurk!” said Dorothea. “Oh, Dick!”

  Dick turned and saw that he alone was left standing. He understood, and crouched beside Dorothea.

  “Sure it’s him?” said John.

  “Let’s have that telescope,” said Nancy. “It’s him all right.”

  About a mile away a grey figure was sitting on a rock.

  “Got his back to us,” said Nancy. “That’s lucky. Look here, if he turns round he’s bound to see us. We must get down into cover. Go on, Peggy. Reversing snake. You know. Quick. Wriggle away. Never mind getting your frock dirty, Dot. It’ll get dirty anyway when we’re prospecting … and everything’s bone dry. It’ll dust off. Well done, John.”

  John, who had practised the reversing snake wriggle before, had been moving backwards over the ground from the moment he had seen that seated figure far away. He had slipped over the edge of the rockface and was hanging on there quite comfortably, able to look out, and able also at any moment to drop another few inches and be out of sight altogether. In another two minutes the whole expedition was in cover, some of them hanging, like John, along the upper edge of the steep rockface, and others crouching in the narrow gully where the old track came down the rock from High Topps into the wood.

  “What’s he doing?” said Roger.

  “Just resting,” said Susan.

  “Safest to lurk, anyway,” said Nancy. “But he isn’t just resting. Look. Look. He’s got a map.”

  “It may be only a newspaper.”

  “Can’t be,” said John.

  Even without the telescope they could all see a sheet of something white in the hands of the solitary man out there in the middle of High Topps. The man was standing up now, looking at the white sheet in his hands, and then up at the hills.

  “He’s looking at a compass,” Nancy almost shouted. “Won’t you believe now? Go on. Take the telescope and see for yourself. Giminy. He’s in the very middle of prospecting.”

  One after another they looked through the little telescope and saw first, that the man was indeed Squashy Hat, and second, that he had put something on a rock, and kept looking at the map, then at the hills, then at the thing on the rock, and then back at the hills again.

  “Well?” said Nancy.

  “It looks jolly like it,” said John.

  “I say,” almost groaned Titty. “You don’t think he’s got the map Old Bob was talking about.”

  Nancy thought for a moment.

  “No,” she said at last. “He wouldn’t be looking so puzzled if he had. He’d simply be scooping the gold out. He’s been up here three days at least. He was coming down the other side of that ridge the day we saw him go into Slater Bob’s.”

  “He’s turned round,” whispered Dorothea.

  Squashy Hat had folded up the map or whatever it was he was looking
at. He had picked up the thing he had set on the rock and had put it in his pocket. He stood for a moment looking towards Kanchenjunga, then turned, and set off walking over the uneven ground.

  “He’s coming this way,” said Roger.

  “He’s seen us,” whispered Dorothea.

  “Dead still, everybody,” said Nancy.

  The distant figure was moving fast, now across bare rock, now knee-deep in bracken, now working along the sheep tracks through the heather.

  “He hasn’t seen anything,” said John.

  “He’s going down to the Dundale Road,” said Nancy.

  “Going home to Atkinson’s farm,” said Peggy.

  They watched him till he struck the road, turned left along it, and vanished where the road dipped towards the woods.

  “Let’s scout after him,” said Titty.

  “We can’t,” said Susan. “Mrs Blackett’ll be at Tyson’s before we get down there.”

  “Lucky beast he is,” said Nancy. “Having his base camp right up here … If only there was a drop of water in the beck … You should just see the place I meant us to camp in …”

  “Where is it?” said Titty.

  “Here,” said Nancy. “Close to the Topps. Better even than Atkinson’s. Come along and have a look at it.”

  She hurried down from the rock, dodged round the bramble thicket at the bottom of it, and pushed her way through the bushes.

  CHAPTER IX

  TWO KINDS OF CAMPING PLACES

  ONLY twenty or thirty yards below the steep rock face from the top of which they had been watching their rival, Nancy, followed by the others, came out from under the trees on a round piece of cleared ground.

  “What a gorgeous place,” said Titty.

  “It jolly well is,” said Nancy. “This was the place I was thinking of, close to the Topps, close to Atkinson’s, no time wasted anywhere, and if only it wasn’t for the drought, there wouldn’t be any dead sheep, and the beck would be full, and that puddle you saw where there used to be a waterfall would be a bathing pool big enough for a herd of hippopotamuses …”

  “Not a herd,” said Dick doubtfully.

  “Two or three little ones, anyway,” said Nancy.

  John and Susan had seen the place the day before. Peggy had seen it long ago. Dick, Dorothea, Titty, and Roger were seeing it for the first time. It was a round, level platform. Anybody could see that it had been levelled on purpose. One side of it had been built up from below. The other had been levelled by scooping away rock and earth out of the steep side of the hill. Not a tree was growing on it, though trees and bushes hedged it in so that people could have walked past it only a few yards away and not known that it was there. There were a few small bushes at the edge of it, and stumps of old trees were just to be seen among the foxglove leaves, but most of the platform was bare of anything but dead leaves, and moss, with here and there a tuft of thin grass. At one side of it was something that looked at first like an untidy heap of larch poles.

  “Someone’s camped here before,” said Dorothea. “Savages probably.”

  “The very best kind of savages,” said Titty eagerly. “They may be the very ones we knew.”

  Roger was looking at the weathered, moss-covered larch-poles. “I bet once upon a time it was a wigwam just like the one I slept in. I wonder if they had an adder in it, too.”

  Dick and Dorothea looked at them with puzzled faces.

  “It’s an old charcoal-burners’ pitstead,” said Nancy.

  “You know,” said Peggy, “where they had their piles of wood, and covered them up to burn slowly and turn into charcoal. These poles are what’s left of the wigwam they lived in.”

  “The ones we know are the Billies,” said Roger. “Young Billy’s about a hundred years old, and Old Billy is his father and even older.”

  “There just couldn’t be friendlier savages,” said Titty. “They might almost have left the place specially for us.”

  “They didn’t, really,” said Susan. “Nobody’s been charcoal-burning here for years. Look at the moss on those poles.”

  “I know they didn’t,” said Titty. “But they might have. Look at the way Young Billy made a crutch for Roger. What I mean is, it’s such a lovely place that you might almost think it was a present from them.”

  “Hidden from everywhere,” said Dorothea.

  “Ahoy! Nancy!”

  John’s voice sounded from above them. They looked up and saw him astride a branch at the top of a tall old ash that towered above the other trees at the side of the clearing.

  “I can see Atkinson’s from here,” he called down. “I can see the garden, and those beehives, and the door … Squashy Hat’s just gone in … And looking the other way I can see a lot of the Dundale road.”

  “Gosh,” said Nancy. “What a place it is. And a look-out post all ready for us.”

  “And room for all our tents,” said Titty.

  “And no danger of setting fire to anything,” said Peggy.

  “Let’s camp here, anyhow,” said Roger.

  “We’ll never find a better place,” said Titty.

  “It’s no good,” said Susan. “We could manage all right if it was only getting milk from the valley every day. But we simply can’t cart every drop of water.”

  “We could go without washing,” said Roger. “Unnecessary washing, I mean,” he added as he happened to catch Susan’s eye.

  “And anyway,” said Susan, “we’ve got to camp where Mrs Tyson will let us.”

  “When the charcoal-burners were here,” said Nancy, “it can’t have been a year like this. Oh, bother the drought. Well, you see why I wanted to come here. It’s going to make it a lot harder for us, having to climb up from Tyson’s every day …”

  “And go back at night,” said Peggy.

  “And Squashy Hat at Atkinson’s, right on the edge of our goldfield …”

  John came down from the tree.

  “I’m going up,” said Nancy. “I won’t be a minute …”

  “Oh come along, Nancy,” said Susan. “We must get down to the farm. There’s the baggage wagon to unpack, and the dromedaries and then all the stuff Mrs Blackett’s bringing for us. And we’ll make a gorgeous camp somewhere else …”

  “Not like this one,” said Roger.

  “What a camp it might have been,” said Titty.

  “Might have been,” echoed Dorothea.

  “Camp Might Have Been,” said Nancy. “Jolly good name for it. Oh well, it can’t be helped. Come on down and get our tents up, and we’ll have breakfast early and be up here before Squashy Hat stops yawning and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.”

  “Which way?” said Roger.

  “Through here,” said Nancy.

  An old track partly bushed over, so that they had to hold the branches out of each other’s way, led from the open pitstead into the path by which they had climbed out of the valley. Susan and John, as soon as they were back on the path, set out at a steady jog-trot down the hill.

  “Stir your stumps,” said Nancy, as she hurried after them.

  *

  The old track wound zigzagging to and fro down through the wood.

  It had seemed a long climb, when, after the trek, they had left their baggage in the farmyard and gone on, travelling light, to have a look at the goldfields of High Topps. It seemed a great deal longer now, although instead of going up they were hurrying down. With every step now they were going further from the country they had to search. Every step now meant so much more time wasted at the beginning and end of every day. The sight of their rival had changed things for all of them. They had seen him, with a map, in the middle of the goldfields. There had been a doubt even in Nancy’s mind. Squashy Hat might after all be no more than a casual visitor. It might have been just romantic curiosity that had brought him to Slater Bob’s. Atkinson’s farm might have been chosen as a lodging by someone not in the least interested in prospecting. But now, what doubt could there be? They had heard what
Slater Bob had said. They had seen Squashy Hat waiting till they were out of the way and then going into the mine to talk to the old man. And now, each one of them had seen him messing about with a map in the very country they hoped to search.

  “It’ be a race who finds it first,” said Dorothea.

  “That’s just it,” said Titty. She trotted on a few more steps before finishing what she had to say. “And living up there he gets such a tremendous start.”

  For a long time they jogged on down the winding track, clump, clump, down the straight bits, slowing up for the sharp turns, careful not to slip on the dry moss. Every time they came near the beck, or rather the place where once the beck had leapt sparkling from stone to stone, from waterfall to ferny pool, from pool to waterfall again, its dry bed reminded them of the perfect camp that might have been. illustration

  “Bother the drought,” said Roger.

  “You can see there’s been plenty of water,” said Dick. “Look how green the ferns are even though there isn’t a drop coming down the stream.”

  “We’ll never have a camp as good as that one,” said Dorothea.

  “It’s going to be an awful way to climb in the morning,” said Peggy.

  They trotted on.

  “And what about getting back to camp for dinner in the middle of the day?” said Roger.

  “We’ll have to carry it with us,” said Peggy. “Susan and I’ll have to cook it at the same time as breakfast.”

  A shrill whistle sounded far below them in the wood.

  “That’s the mate’s whistle,” said Titty.

  “Coming. COMING!” they shouted.

  They found the others waiting for them near the bottom. All three of them were close together, and there had been some kind of an argument. John was just winding it up.

  “Look here, Nancy, Susan’s right. It’s no good thinking of a camp up there without a drop of water. Even if we hadn’t promised.”

  “And we may have a really good place down here,” said Susan.

  *

  As soon as they came back into the farmyard, they saw that Mrs Blackett had already been there. Someone had spread a tarpaulin on the ground. On it was a great pile of bedding and mattresses and rolled-up tents.