When Charlie and Carew rode up to the store they did not see Pike,
nor did they expect to see him. By some mysterious Providence they
had arrived the very day the coach started on its monthly trip
down to Barcoo; and in front of the hotel were congregated quite a
number of people--Pike's wife and his half-wild children, a handful
of bushmen, station hands, opal miners, and what-not, and last,
but not least, a fat lady of about forty summers, with flaring red
hair.
She was a fine "lump" of a woman, with broad shoulders, and nearly
the same breadth all the way down to her feet. She wore a rusty
black dress, which fitted perilously tight to her arms and bust; on
her head was a lopsided, dismantled black bonnet with a feather--a
bonnet that had evidently been put away in a drawer and forgotten
for years. Any want of colour or style in her dress was amply
made up for by the fact that she positively glowed with opals. Her
huge, thick fingers twinkled with opal rings; from each of her ears
there dangled an opal earring the size of a form; her old dress
was secured round her thick, muscular neck by a brooch that looked
like an opal quarry, and whenever she turned to the sun she flashed
out rays like a lighthouse.
Her face was fat and red, full of a sort of good-humoured ferocity;
she moved like a queen among the bystanders, and shook hands
gravely with each and all of them.
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