In the Land of the Long White Cloud (84 page)

When they returned two weeks later with a fully laden wagon, all that was missing was a place to open their business. Fleurette had not planned ahead with regard to that, having counted on continued good weather. Autumn in Queenstown, however, was rainy, and in the winter a great deal of snow fell. However, few had died in Queenstown recent months, so the justice of the peace let them use his coffin warehouse for their shop. He was the only one who did not ask for new tools, though he did have Ruben explain his legal texts to him, to which a few dollars in McKenzie’s fortune had gone.

The shop’s brisk sales brought the money back in quickly. The prospectors stormed Ruben and Stuart’s business; by the second day, all the tools were already sold out. The ladies required a little longer to make their selections—in part because the justice of the peace’s wife was initially hesitant to offer her salon as a changing room for every woman in the region.

“You could, of course, use the warehouse’s side room,” she said with a deprecatory look at Daphne and her girls, who were burning with anticipation to try on the clothes and lingerie that Fleur had bought in Dunedin. “Where Frank usually keeps the corpses.”

Daphne shrugged. “If it’s not being used, it doesn’t bother me. Well, and if it is—what do you bet none of these fellows ever had such a nice send-off?”

It was easy to convince Stuart and Ruben to make another trip to Dunedin, and by their second round of sales, Stuart was head over heels in love with the barber’s daughter and did not want to go back to the mountains at any price. Ruben took over the little shop’s bookkeeping and realized with amazement what Fleurette had known all along: every trip filled their coffers with considerably more money than a year in the goldfields would have done. It was also clear that he was much more suited to being a merchant than a prospector. By the time the last blisters and cuts on his hands had healed, after he had been wielding a pen instead of a shovel for six weeks, he was completely convinced of the merits of the business.

“We should build a shop,” he said finally. “A sort of warehouse. Then we could also expand our stock.”

Fleurette nodded. “Household items. The women desperately need proper pots and pans and nice dishes…now don’t wave it off, Ruben. The demand for those kinds of goods will grow over time since there will be more women. Queenstown is becoming a real town!”

Six months later, the O’Keefes celebrated the grand opening of the O’Kay Warehouse in Queenstown, Otago. The name had been Fleurette’s idea, and she was very proud of it. In addition to the new salesrooms, the budding enterprise had come into possession of two more wagons and six heavy cart horses. Fleurette could once more ride her cobs, and the community’s dead could once more be drawn to the cemetery respectably instead of being dropped off in the handcart. Stuart Peters had cemented trade deals with Dunedin, and with that retired from his position as chief purchaser. He wanted to get married and was tiring of the constant trips to the coast. Instead, with his portion of the profits he opened a blacksmith’s workshop, which proved to be a considerably more lucrative “gold mine” than any in the area. Fleurette and Ruben hired an old prospector to take his place as head of the haulage division. Leonard McDunn was easygoing, knew his way around horses, and knew how to treat people. Fleurette worried only about the deliveries for the ladies.

“I can’t seriously expect him to pick out my underwear,” she complained to Daphne, whom Fleurette had befriended, much to the horror of the now
three
respectable women in town. “He blushes when he just brings me the catalog. I’ll have to ride along at least every second or third trip.”

Daphne shrugged. “Just send the twins. They may not be the brightest—you can’t trust them to handle negotiating and the like—but they have good taste. I’ve always valued that. They know how to dress like a lady and what we need in the ‘hotel,’ naturally. Besides, it’ll give them a chance to get out a bit and earn their own money.”

Fleurette was skeptical at first but was quickly convinced. Mary and Laurie brought back an ideal combination of modest articles of clothing and wonderfully wicked little articles that sold like hotcakes, to Fleur’s surprise—and not only to the whores. Stuart’s blushing bride purchased a black corset, and a few miners thought they were sure to please their wives with some colorful lingerie. Although Fleur was not sure that it was her sort of thing, business was business. And
discreet changing rooms—supplied with large mirrors instead of a depressing dais for coffins—were installed.

The work in the store still left Ruben plenty of time for studying law, which he still found enjoyable, even if he had given up his dream of becoming a lawyer for good. To his delighted surprise, he soon put his studies into practice: the justice of the peace came to him for counsel with increasing regularity and began to bring him along to trials as well. Ruben proved himself authoritative and just at these proceedings, and when the next election time came, the incumbent justice created a stir. Instead of putting himself up for reelection, he proposed Ruben as his successor.

“Look at it this way, people!” the old coffin maker explained in his speech. “There was always a conflict of interest with me: if I kept the people from killing each other, no one needed a coffin. When you look at it that way, my office ruined my business. It’s different for young O’Keefe, since whoever gets his head bashed in can’t buy any more tools. It’s in his own best interest to keep law and order. So vote for him and let me have a break!”

The citizens of Queenstown took his advice and elected Ruben as the new justice of the peace by an overwhelming majority.

Fleurette was happy for him, though she did not quite follow the former justice’s line of reasoning. “You could also bash someone’s head in with our tools,” she whispered to Daphne. “And I very much hope Ruben doesn’t prevent his customers too often from that laudable deed.”

The only drop of bitterness in Fleurette and Ruben’s well of happiness in the growing gold-rush town was the lack of contact with their families. Both would have liked to write to their mothers but didn’t dare.

“I don’t want my father to know where I am,” Ruben made clear when Fleurette was getting ready to write her mother. “And it’s better that you keep it hidden from your grandfather as well. Who knows what will get into their heads otherwise? You were underage when we married. They could decide to make trouble for us. Besides, I’m afraid my father would take out his anger on my mother. It wouldn’t be the first time. I still try not to think about what happened after I left.”

“But we have to get word to them somehow,” Fleurette said. “You know what? I’ll write to Dorothy. Dorothy Candler. She can tell my mother.”

Ruben gripped his own head. “Are you crazy? If you write to Dorothy, Mrs. Candler will hear about it too. And then you might as well scream out the news in the marketplace in Haldon. If you have to write, write to Elizabeth Greenwood. I trust her to be more discreet.”

“But Uncle George and Elizabeth are in England,” Fleur objected.

Ruben shrugged. “And? They have to return home sometime. Our mothers will just have to be patient until then. And who knows, maybe your mother will have learned something from James McKenzie. I understand he’s in prison somewhere in Canterbury. It’s possible she’s gotten in contact with him.”

J
ames McKenzie’s trial was held in Lyttelton. Initially, there was a fuss because John Sideblossom favored having the trial in Dunedin. If the trial were held there, he argued, they would have a better chance of catching those who had accepted the stolen goods as well, thus eradicating the whole criminal enterprise.

Lord Barrington, however, spoke up vehemently against that idea. In his opinion, John Sideblossom just wanted to drag his victim to Dunedin because he knew the judge there better and saw more hope of hanging the thief in the end.

He would have liked to do that right after capturing James McKenzie. He had since taken to attributing this triumph entirely to himself; after all, he was the one who had beaten James McKenzie and taken him prisoner. The other men thought the beating in the riverbed hardly necessary. In fact, if John Sideblossom had not knocked the thief from his mule and then beat him up, the hunters could have set off after his accomplice. As it was, the second man—though some of the people in the search party believed it to have been a woman—had escaped.

Nor had the other sheep and cattle barons approved of John dragging the captive along like a slave tied to his horse. They saw no reason why the already badly beaten man should have to walk when his mule was available. At some point, levelheaded men like Lord Barrington and Reginald Beasley had stepped forward and censured John Sideblossom for his behavior. Since James had committed the majority of his crimes in Canterbury, it was the almost unanimous opinion of the group that he should answer for his crimes there. Despite John Sideblossom’s protests, Barrington’s men had freed the
livestock thief and made him give his word not to flee, then led him only lightly bound to Lyttelton, where he would be held until the trial. John insisted, however, on keeping his dog, Friday, which seemed to hurt James more than the bruises from the beating and the shackles on his hands and feet, with which John Sideblossom had bound him at night after locking him in a barn. In a hoarse voice, he asked the men to let the dog stay with him.

But John proved inflexible. “The dog can work for me,” he explained. “Somebody will be able to make it obey. A first-class sheepdog like that is worth a lot. I’ll keep him as a small repayment for the damages that bastard’s caused.”

So Friday stayed behind, howling heartbreakingly as the men led her master away from the farm.

“John won’t have much fun with it,” Gerald said. “These mutts get stuck on their masters.”

Gerald stood between the two factions on the subject of how James McKenzie should be handled. On the one hand, John was one of his oldest friends; on the other, he had to get along with the men from Canterbury. And like almost all the others, he felt, despite himself, a sort of respect for the ingenious thief. Naturally, he was angry about his losses, but the gambler in him knew that a person did not always take the most honorable path to making a living. And if that person made it for more than ten years without being caught even once, he deserved some respect.