Days and months went by, hot and still, with dust-storms and blue skies, fading to grey. Their happenings were so alike that there was scarcely any remembering one from the other of them. The twilights and dawns were clear, with delicate green skies. On still nights the moon rose golden, flushing the sky before it appeared, as though there were fires beyond the Ridge.
Usually in one of the huts a concertina was pulled lazily, and its wheezing melodies drifted through the quiet air. Everybody missed Sophie's singing. The summer evenings were long and empty without the ripple of her laughter and the music of the songs she sang.
"You miss her these nights, don't you?" Michael said to Potch one very hot, still night, when the smoke of a mosquito fire in the doorway was drifting into the room about them.
Potch was reading, sprawled over the table. His expression changed as he looked up. It was as though a sudden pain had struck him.
"Yes," he said. His eyes went to his book again; but he did not read any more. Presently he pushed back the seat he was sitting on and went out of doors.
Michael and Potch were late going down to the claim the morning they found George and Watty and most of the men who were working that end of the Ridge collected in a group talking together. No one was working; even the noodlers, Snow-Shoes and young Flail, were standing round with the miners.
Potch remembered having seen a gathering of the men, like this, only once before on the fields.
"What's up, George?" he asked, as Potch and he joined the men.
"Rats, Michael," George said, "that's what's up. They've been on our place and cleaned out a pretty good bit of stuff Watty and me was working on. They've paid Archie a visit ... and Bully reck'ns his spider's been walking lately, too."
Michael and Potch had seen nothing but a few shards of potch and colour for months. They were not concerned at the thought of a rat's visit to their claim; but they were as angry and indignant at the news as the men who had been robbed. In the shelters at midday, the talk was all of the rats and ratting. The Crosses, Bill Grant, Pony-Fence, Bull Bryant, Roy O'Mara, Michael, and Potch went to George Woods' shelter to talk the situation over with George, Watty, and Cash Wilson. The smoke of the fires Potch and Roy and Bully made to boil the billies drifted towards them, and the men talked as they ate their lunches, legs stretched out before them, and leaning against a log George had hauled beside the shelter.