‘It’s up to you,’ Caleb said. ‘Mr Penrose and I will depart this place, but we will be back with Sergeant Maidment, who, I hear, takes a dim view of claim jumpers.’

‘Get off this land,’ O’Riley snarled.

Caleb pulled Penrose to his feet. ‘Come, Penrose. Time for us to return to town.’

O’Riley followed them up the path and saw them off with a shot above their heads that spooked Penrose’s bay mare. He brought the animal back under control with an effort.

When they were well clear of the O’Riley brothers, they stopped to draw breath.

‘Bloody claim jumpers,’ Penrose said with feeling.

‘I’m not sure that’s strictly true. It looks like Hannigan cheated them as he did me—took their money and registered the claim in his name alone. I wonder how he was planning to explain it to them when he got back?’

‘They can’t read, so they’d have no reason to disbelieve him,’ Penrose said. ‘That is, if he intended to come back. He’d got them digging in the wrong place to begin with.’

They rode on in silence.

As Maiden’s Creek came into view, Caleb turned to Penrose.

‘Do you think I’m as big a dupe as the O’Rileys?’

Penrose shrugged. ‘It’s going to take money and hard work for some time before you will know one way or another.’

‘I took a risk and sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn’t,’ Caleb said, adding, ‘I’m going to call it the Shenandoah. The Shenandoah Creek and the Shenandoah Mine.’

‘You can call it whatever you please,’ Penrose said. ‘It’s not going to mean gold will magically appear.’ He paused. ‘Shenandoah has a nice ring to it, though, and now you mention it, isn’t it a song too?’

‘I come from the Shenandoah Valley and it’s a river, quite a bit larger than the creek.’ Caleb smiled, remembering the broad expanse of the beautiful river. ‘But yes, it’s a song too.’

He serenaded Penrose as they turned their horses’ heads down the steep track into Maiden’s Creek.

They stopped at the police station, a solid building with cells built into the hillside behind it. Sergeant Maidment, a cadaverously thin man with bright, shrewd eyes met them at the main desk.

‘This mine of yours is more trouble than it’s worth,’ Maidment said. ‘I know the O’Riley brothers. I’ll go up and have a quiet word with them. Their bark is worse than their bite.’

Caleb and Penrose exchanged a quick glance. ‘Not the impression we got.’

‘They didn’t actually shoot you, did they?’

‘No, but—’

Maidment glanced at the Colt at Caleb’s waist. ‘I consider you may be more dangerous, Hunt. I don’t hold with carrying weapons in this town—people run the risk of getting hurt. I’d thank you to leave it behind in future.’