" Gleeson retorted. "I'm a mining expert--that's my
business. There's money in that; there's none in mining; and I'm after
money, if you want to know."

The outspoken frankness of the man momentarily checked the feeling of
anger or antagonism that was rising in the minds of the other three.
Tony, with the memory of what he had heard in Birralong of the engineers
of wild-cat schemes, winced at the discovery that his leader was only a
specimen of the tribe after all.

"What's the use of talking? You're after the same lay yourselves,"
Gleeson went on. "It's money you want, only you haven't got the savee to
see the quickest way to get it."

Palmer Billy, his hat at the back of his head and his face working,
moved a couple of steps nearer Gleeson.

"See here, young feller," he began. "I'm more than fifty by a long
chalk, and I've been mining since I was fifteen; mining, I say--earning
every slab of damper and pannikin of tea I've swallerd, not to mention
'bacca and sometimes a bender on rum, by as tough a share of graft as a
man wants whose muscles ain't flabby. Fifty times I've struck a duffer
on one field or another; twenty times I've struck a good show that
petered out in a week; three times I struck it rich--rich enough to set
me up if I'd stuck to the find, but always I've been had--had by darned
dirty I-talyans from the towns on the coast, who've come up with their
glib tongues and doctored tangle-foot and bested me, me and my mates,
and shunted us to yacker and graft while they fattened on our find. And
for years I've waited for the chance of meeting one of those scabs, just
to get a bit even on one of them. There's three of you here, and there's
one of me, but----"

"Don't make no error," Peters exclaimed quickly. "I'm a miner myself. I
joined this show as a fair deal, and so did the lad there."

"Good for you," Palmer Billy replied. "The lad maybe don't know, but you
and I don't want telling what's the pay for mining sharks. Here, put up
your dooks," he added, as he sparred up to Gleeson.

"We're mates, don't I tell you?" Gleeson said. "I'm on for a square
deal. I'm full of the others. I'll stand in----"

Palmer Billy, sparring round him in the approved methods of Boulder
Creek, came within reach and hit. Behind the blow there was a lifetime
of outraged humanity, as well as the strength of a toil-trained,
toughened frame, and Gleeson fell like an ox under the pole-axe. He lay
where he fell, and Palmer Billy