Dave's Sweetheart

JENNY CARTER leaned over the bar-counter, her elbows on the rough
planks among the glasses and tin pannikins, and her chin in her hands.
Her face was tanned and freckled by the strong winds and fierce sun of
Northern Victoria, and her yellow hair had a bleached look as if that
sun had stolen some of the colour from it. Still, she was not counted
pretty without reason, for her big brown eyes looked out wistfully
from under their long lashes, and the rare smile that parted her red
lips showed a row of milk-white teeth.

But Jenny Carter had not yet learned her own value in a land where
women of any sort were scarce, and a pretty unmarried one a valuable
commodity, and very evidently no thought of her personal appearance
had ever come either to trouble or to gratify her. Her yellow curls
had been tossed and tumbled by the wind all day long, and her lilac
cotton gown was buttoned all awry. It had seen service, too, that
gown, and was faded in some parts to a dull and dingy white, and the
rents and tears that were pretty numerous had been mended in a fashion
that could only be called slipshod. It was open at the neck a little
for coolness, for the January day had been a sweltering one, and the
line where the sun-tan ended showed as a dark ring round her white
neck; the sleeves, too, were rolled up to the elbows, but that was
evidently their normal condition, for the round young arms were all
one golden brown, like her face. The Lucky Digger hotel and store was
a poor enough place, half canvas tent, half bark and corrugated iron
shanty, and the counter, which ran the whole length of the room,
merely consisted of rough boards laid along the tops of casks, some
empty and some full. The floor was bare earth beaten hard by the
passage of countless feet. The stock-in-trade was stored in numerous
bottles on the shelves nailed up against the walls, wherever the walls
would bear shelves; and, for the rest, bags of flour, cases of gin and
brandy, boxes of tobacco, kerosene, matches--in fact, all the
necessaries of a digger's life--were piled up in the corners and on
the floor in seemingly hopeless confusion.

It was early yet, and the place was comparatively empty. One or two
idlers and loafers stood about, trying to cadge a drink or win a smile
from the proprietor's pretty daughter, but in a desultory, half-
hearted fashion. The business of the day would not fairly begin till
the sun had set over the ranges in the west and the diggers came
trooping in for a song and a chat, and, maybe, if Sailor Joe were
there, and was not too drunk to play his fiddle, a bull dance would be
attempted. Then, indeed, the competition for Jenny's hand would be
keen.

There were no other women besides Jenny and her stepmother within many
miles, and the men who did not succeed in getting them must needs
console themselves with each other; but there was no hurry--that was
three or four hours off yet. It was hopeless to think of securing
Jenny beforehand, for though she might promise readily enough--but,
again, she might not--it would all come to the same thing if Black
Anderson happened to be there. The sergeant from the police camp on
the plateau overlooking the diggings was bad enough--he always
regarded Jenny as his own property--but when Black Anderson was there
it was hopeless.

Not that the girl made any show of liking one way or another. It was
patent that she did care for Black Anderson, infinitely preferred him
to any of the many who nightly visited that shanty, though no man
could have told exactly how he knew it any more than he could have
said why he knew she hated the sergeant. She neither sought the one
nor avoided the other, but it was common talk on Deadman's that Buck
Carter's Jenny was 'dead nuts' on Black Dave Anderson, and that she
feared the police sergeant.