Chapter I: Front Matter

THE TALE OF TIMBER TOWN.

THE TALE OF TIMBER TOWN

BY A. A. GRACE (_Author of "Tales of a Dying Race," "Maoriland Stories," "Folk-Tales of the Maori," "Hone Tiki Dialogues," &c._)

GORDON & GOTCH Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Launceston, Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, N.Z.

1914

CONTENTS.

PAGE
PROEM 9
CHAPTER
I. The Master-Goldsmith 11
II. The Wreck of The Mersey Witch 15
III. The Pilot's Daughter 18
IV. Rachel Varnhagen 24
V. Bill the Prospector 30
VI. The Father of Timber Town 33
VII. Cut-Throat Euchre 35
VIII. The Yellow Flag 43
IX. What looked like Courting 48
X. Hocussed 51
XI. The Temptation of the Devil 57
XII. Rock Cod and Macaroni 62
XIII. What the Bush Robin Saw 65
XIV. The Robbery of the Mails 68
XV. Dealing Mostly with Money 73
XVI. The Wages of Sin 77
XVII. Rachel's Wiles 81
XVIII. Digging 83
XIX. A Den of Thieves 86
XX. Gold and Roses 91
XXI. The Foundation of the Gold League 96
XXII. Women's Ways 101
XXIII. Forewarned, Forearmed 108
XXIV. The Goldsmith Comes to Town 112
XXV. Fishing 119
XXVI. A Small, but Important Link in the Story 124
XXVII. The Signal-Tree 127
XXVIII. The Goldsmith Comes to Town the Second Time 130
XXIX. Amiria Plays her Highest Card in the Game of Love 134
XXX. In Tresco's Cave 139
XXXI. The Perturbations of the Bank Manager 145
XXXII. The Quietude of Timber Town is Disturbed 147
XXXIII. The Gold League Washes Up 150
XXXIV. The Goldsmith Comes to Town the Third Time 153
XXXV. Bail 156
XXXVI. In Durance Vile 160
XXXVII. Benjamin's Redemption 164
XXXVIII. The Way to Manage the Law 173
XXXIX. Tresco Makes the Ring 178
EPILOGUE 183

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

Carlyle Smythe, in his interesting reminiscences of Mark Twain, printed in _Life_, says that, of all the stories which interested the great American writer while travelling with him through Australasia, the tragical story which is the basis of "The Tale of Timber Town" fascinated the celebrated author more than any other. The version which Mark Twain read was the re-print of the verbatim report of the most remarkable trial ever held in New Zealand, and perhaps south of the Line, and there is no cause for wonder in his interest. I, too, have studied and re-studied that narrative, with its absorbing psychological and sociological problems; I have interrogated persons who knew the chief characters in the story; I have studied the locality, and know intimately the scene of the tragedy: and even though "The Tale of Timber Town" has in the writing taxed my energies for many a month, I have by no means exhausted the theme which so enthralled Mark Twain.

I have tried to reproduce the characters and atmosphere of those stirring days, when £1,000,000 worth of gold was brought into Timber Town in nine months; and I have sought to reproduce the characters and atmosphere of Timber Town, rather than to resuscitate the harrowing details of a dreadful crime. I have tried to show how it was possible for such a tragedy to take place, as was that which so absorbed Mark Twain, and why it was that the tale stirred in him an interest which somewhat surprised Carlyle Smythe.

Here in Timber Town I met them--the unassuming celebrity, and the young _entrepreneur_. The great humorist, alack! will never read the tale as I have told it, but I am hopeful, that in "The Tale of Timber Town," his erstwhile companion and the public will perceive the literary value of the theme which arrested the attention of so great a writer as Mark Twain.

"The Tale of Timber Town" first appeared in the pages of _The Otago Witness_, whose proprietors I desire to thank for introducing the story to the public, and for the courtesy of permitting me to reserve the right of reproduction of the work in book-form.

_Timber Town._ A.A.G.

PROEM.

Timber Town lay like a toy city at the bottom of a basin. Its wooden houses, each placed neatly in the middle of a little garden-plot, had been painted brightly for the delight of the children. There were whole streets of wooden shops, with verandahs in front of them to shade the real imported goods in their windows; and three wooden churches, freshly painted to suit the tastes of their respective--and respectable--congregations; there was a wooden Town Hall, painted grey; a wooden Post Office, painted brown; a red college, where boys in white disported upon a green field; a fawn-coloured school, with a playground full of pinafored little girls; and a Red Tape Office--designed in true Elizabethan style, with cupolas, vanes, fantastic chimney-tops, embayed windows, wondrous parapets--built entirely of wood and painted the colour of Devonshire cream, with grit in the paint to make it look like stone.

Along the streets ran a toy tram, pulled by a single horse, which was driven by a man who moved his arms just as if they were real, and who puffed genuine clouds of smoke from his tobacco-pipe. Ladies dressed in bright colours walked up and down the trim side-paths, with gaudy sunshades in their hands; knocked at doors, went calling, and looked into the shop windows, just like actual people.

It was the game of playing at living. The sky shone brightly overhead; around the town stood hills which no romantic scene-painter could have bettered; the air of the man with water-cart, of the auctioneer's man with bell, and of the people popping in and out of the shops, was the air of those who did these things for love of play-acting on a stage.

As a matter of fact, there was nothing to worry about, in Timber Town; no ragged beggars, no yelling hawkers, no sad-eyed, care-worn people, no thought for to-morrow. The chimneys smoked for breakfast regularly at eight o'clock every morning; the play of living began at nine, when the smiling folk met in the streets and turned, the men into their offices to play at business, the women into the shops where meat and good things to eat were to be had for little more than love. Between twelve and two o'clock everybody went home to dinner, and the cabs which stood in front of the wooden Post Office, and dogs which slept on the pavement beneath the verandahs, held possession of the streets.

But if anyone would see the beauty and fashion of Timber Town, from four to five in the afternoon was the hour. Then wives and daughters, having finished playing at house-keeping for the day, put on their gayest costumes, and visited the milliners. Southern Cross Street buzzed with gaudy life; pretty women bowed, and polite men raised their hats--just as people do in real cities--but, as everybody knew everybody else, the bowing and hat-raising were general, just as they are when the leading lady comes into the presence of the chorus on the stage. Then the vision of gossiping, smiling humanity would pass away--the shops put up their shutters at six o'clock; the game was over for the day, and all the chimneys smoked for tea.

Timber Town by night, except when the full moon shone, was sombre, with nothing doing. The street lamps burnt but indifferent gas; people stayed indoors, and read the piquant paragraphs of _The Pioneer Bushman_, Timber Town's evening journal, or fashioned those gay dresses which by day helped to make the town so bright, and went to bed early and slept with a soundness and tranquillity, well-earned by the labour of playing so quaintly at the game of life.

The hills which surrounded the little town pressed so closely upon it, that by sheer weight they seemed likely to crush its frail houses into matchwood. On one side mountains, some bare and rugged, some clothed with forest, rose behind the foot-hills, and behind them more mountains, which seemed to rise like the great green billows of an angry sea. On one side stretched the blue of the distant forest-covered ranges, upon the other the azure of the encroaching ocean, which, finding a way between the encircling hills, insinuated its creeping tides into the town itself. And overhead spread the blue sky, for the sky above Timber Town was blue nine days out of ten, and the clouds, when they came, performed their gloomy mission quickly and dispersed with despatch, that the sun might smile again and the playing of the people continue.

No nest in the forest was ever more securely hid than was Timber Town from the outside world. Secreted at the end of a deep bay, that bay was itself screened from the ocean outside by an extensive island and a sandspit which stretched for many a mile.

Inaccessible by land, the little town was reached only by water, and there, in that quiet eddy of the great ocean, lived its quiet, quaint, unique existence.

In such a place men's characters develop along their own lines, and, lacking that process of mental trituration which goes on in large cities where many minds meet, they frequently attain an interesting if strange maturity. In such a community there is opportunity for the contemplation of mankind ignorant of poverty; and such a happy state, begotten of plenty and nurtured by freedom, has its natural expression in the demeanour of the people. It was not characteristic of Timber Town to hoard, but rather to spend. In a climate bright through the whole year, it was not natural that the sorrows of life, where life was one long game, should press heavily upon the players.

But we come upon the little timber town at a time of transition from sequestered peace to the roar and rush of a mining boom, and if the stirring events of that time seem to change the tranquil aspect of the scene, it is only that a breeze of life from outside sweeps over its surface, as when a gust of wind, rushing from high mountains upon some quiet lake nestling at their feet, stirs the placid waters into foam.

So through the wild scene, when the villain comes upon the stage and the hidden treasure is brought to light, though the play may seem to lose its pastoral character, it is to be remembered that if tragedy may endure for the night, comedy comes surely enough in the morning.

* * * * *

THE TALE OF TIMBER TOWN.