In the Land of the Long White Cloud (96 page)

“I’m keeping a spare key,” the smith teased. “In case I have guests in town.”

“You can test it out right now, if you like,” Leonard threatened. “But seriously now—I’m afraid we’ll already be filled up tonight. Miss O’Rourke is planning an Irish evening. What do you bet half her customers end up beating up the other half?”

Helen frowned. “But it won’t get dangerous, will it, Leonard? Watch out for yourself! I…we…we need our constable in one piece!”

Leonard beamed. He was exceptionally pleased that Helen was worried about him.

Hardly three weeks later, Leonard was confronted with a problem more serious than the usual brawls among the prospectors.

In need of help, he waited in the O’Kay warehouse until Ruben had time for him. Voices and laughter came from the building’s back rooms, but Leonard did not want to intrude. After all, he was there
on official business. It was not Leonard waiting for his friend but the police officer seeking the justice of the peace. He breathed easier when Ruben finally broke free and came out to see him in the front of the store.

“Leonard! Sorry to make you wait,” Ruben said, evidently in good spirits. “But we have something to celebrate. It looks I’m going to be a father for the third time! But first, tell me, what’s this all about? How can I help?”

“An official matter. And a sort of legal dilemma. A certain John Sideblossom just appeared in my office; he’s a well-to-do farmer looking to invest in the gold mines. He was all worked up, said I had to arrest a man he saw in the prospectors’ camp. A certain James McKenzie.”

“James McKenzie?” Ruben asked. “The sheep thief?”

Leonard nodded. “The name rung a bell at once. He was caught a few years ago in the highlands and sentenced in Lyttelton to serve a term in prison.”

Ruben nodded. “I know.”

“Always had a good memory, Your Honor,” Leonard said respectfully. “Did you also know they commuted McKenzie’s sentence? Sideblossom says they sent him to Australia.”

“They deported him,” Ruben corrected him. “Australia was the closest place. The sheep and cattle barons would have preferred to see him in India or some far-off place like that. Most of all, they would have liked to see him in the belly of a tiger.”

Leonard laughed. “That’s exactly the impression this Sideblossom gave. Well, if he’s right, McKenzie’s back, even though he was exiled for life. That’s why this Sideblossom fellow said I needed to arrest him. But what am I supposed to do with him? I can hardly lock him up for life. And five years in prison wouldn’t make much sense either—strictly speaking, he already has those years behind him. Not to mention that I don’t have space for him. Do you have any suggestions, Your Honor?”

Ruben pretended to think about it—though Leonard could not help seeing the joy reflected in his face. Was he against McKenzie? Or for him?

“See here, Leonard,” Ruben finally said. “First, find out if this is really the McKenzie Sideblossom has in mind. Then lock him up for as long as this Sideblossom fellow is in town. Tell Sideblossom you’re taking this man into protective custody. Sideblossom was menacing Mr. McKenzie, and you didn’t want a rumpus.”

Leonard grinned.

“But don’t tell my wife anything about it,” Ruben said urgently. “It should be a surprise. Oh yes, and before you lock him up, see that Mr. McKenzie gets a shave and a decent haircut if it proves necessary. He’ll be receiving a lady visitor shortly after entering that grand hotel of yours.”

During the first weeks of being pregnant, Fleurette was always close to tears, and so she cried her eyes out when she went to visit James in jail. Whether out of joy at their reunion or desperation over his renewed capture was hard to tell.

James McKenzie himself, on the other hand, hardly seemed upset. Until Fleurette burst into tears, he had been in high spirits. Now he held her in his arms and awkwardly rubbed her back.

“Now, now, don’t cry, little one, nothing’s going to happen to me here. It would be much more dangerous out there. I still have a bone to pick with Sideblossom!”

“Why did you have to run into him straightaway?” Fleurette sobbed. “What were you even doing in the goldfields? You weren’t trying to stake a claim, were you?”

James shook his head. He did not look like one of the adventurers who set up camp on the old sheep farms close to the goldfields, and Leonard had neither needed to take him to the barber’s for a shave and haircut, nor had to help him out with money. James McKenzie looked more like a well-off rancher on vacation. Judging by his clothing and cleanliness, he was indistinguishable from his old enemy Sideblossom.

“I’ve staked enough claims in my life and even earned plenty from this last one in Australia. The secret is not to spend all the gold
you find right away by celebrating at an establishment like Daphne’s.” He laughed. “Naturally, in the goldfields here I was looking for your husband. Only to find out that he now lives on Main Street, throwing the book at harmless travelers.” He winked at Fleurette. Before seeing his daughter, he had met with Ruben and was very pleased with his son-in-law.

“What’s going to happen now?” Fleurette asked. “Will they send you back to Australia?”

James sighed. “I hope not. I could pay for the passage. That’s no problem…now, now, don’t give me that look, Ruben. I earned it all honestly! I swear. I didn’t steal a single sheep over there. It would have been another waste of time. Of course I was going to come back with different papers. I won’t go through something like I did with Sideblossom again. But I would have had to keep Gwyn waiting for so long if I had stayed in Australia. And I’m sure she’s tired of waiting—just like I am.”

“False papers aren’t a solution, either,” Ruben said. “They would be fine if you wanted to live in Queenstown, on the West Coast, or somewhere on the North Island. But if I’m understanding you correctly, you want to ride back to the Canterbury Plains to marry Gwyneira Warden. It’s just that—every child knows you there!”

James shrugged. “Also true. I would have to abduct Gwyn. But I don’t have any scruples about that!”

“It would be better to make you a legal citizen,” Ruben said sternly. “I’ll write to the governor.”

“But Sideblossom will be doing that already!” Fleurette seemed to be on the verge of bursting into tears again. “Mr. McDunn already said he was raving like a madman because my father’s being handled like a prince here.”

John Sideblossom had come by the police station around midday when the twins had been in the midst of serving both the guard and the prisoner a glutton’s feast. He was livid when he saw how the prisoner was being treated.

“Sideblossom is a rancher and an old scoundrel. If it’s his word against mine, the governor will know what to do,” Ruben said,
appeasing her. “I will describe the situation to him in detail—including your father’s secure financial situation, his family connections, and his marriage plans. In addition, I will stress his services and qualifications. So he stole a few sheep. He also discovered the McKenzie Highlands, where Sideblossom now pastures his sheep. He should be grateful to you, James, instead of planning your demise. And you’re an experienced shepherd and sheep breeder, a definite gain for Kiward Station, especially now, after the death of Gerald Warden.”

“We could also offer him a job,” Helen joined in. “Would you like to be manager of O’Keefe Station, James? That would be an alternative, should dear Paul throw Gwyneira out on the street anytime soon.”

“Or Tonga,” Ruben remarked. He had studied Gwyneira’s legal status in the conflict with the Maori and was not very optimistic. From a legal perspective, Tonga’s demands were justified.

James McKenzie shrugged. “O’Keefe Station is as good as Kiward Station to me. It’s all the same to me as long as I can be with Gwyneira—though I suspect that Friday will want a few sheep.”

Ruben sent his letter off to the governor the next day, but no one expected a swift response. So James struggled with his boredom in jail while Helen spent a wonderful time in Queenstown. She played with her grandchildren, and watched, with an anxiously beating heart, as Fleurette set little Stephen on the pony for the first time. Helen, meanwhile, tried to comfort little Elaine, who cried in protest. Prepared for the worst, she inspected the little school that had just opened. Perhaps she could make herself useful there, so that she could stay in Queenstown forever. At the time, however, there were only ten students, and the young teacher, a likeable girl from Dunedin, handled them perfectly well on her own. There was not much for Helen to do in Ruben and Fleurette’s shop either, and the twins fell all over themselves in their desire to keep their beloved former teacher from having to lift a finger. Helen finally heard Daphne’s whole story.
She invited the young woman to tea, even though it might set the respectable women in Queenstown to gossiping.

“First thing after I had taken care of that brute, I went to Lyttelton,” Daphne said of her flight from the lascivious Mr. Morrison. “I would have liked to take the next ship back to London, but of course that wasn’t an option. No one would have taken a girl like me. I thought about Australia too. But God knows they have enough…ahem, women of easy virtue over there who could not find a job selling Bibles. And then I found the twins. They were headed the same place I was: away from here—and ‘away’ meant a ship.”

“How exactly did they find each other again?” Helen inquired. “They were in completely different areas.”

Daphne shrugged. “They’re twins, after all. What the one thinks, the other thinks too. Believe me, I’ve had them with me for more than twenty years, and I still think it’s uncanny. If I understood them correctly back then, they ran into each other on the Bridle Path. How they slogged all the way there, I have no idea. When I found them, they were running around the harbor, stealing their food together, and trying to stow themselves away on a boat. Utter nonsense; someone would have found them straightaway. So what was I supposed to do? I held onto them. I was a bit nice to a sailor, and he got me the papers of a girl who died on the way from Dublin to Lyttelton. Officially my name is Bridey O’Rourke. Everyone believed it too, with my red hair and all. But the twins kept calling me Daphne, naturally, so I kept my first name. It’s a good name anyway for a…I mean, it’s a Biblical name; it’s not easy to let something like that go.”

Helen laughed. “They’ll canonize you someday!”

Daphne giggled, looking for a moment like the young girl from back then. “So then we left for the West Coast. We traveled around a bit at first, finally ending up in a broth…ahem, in the establishment of a certain Madame Jolanda. It was pretty run-down. First thing I did was clean the place up, which really caused business to pick up. That’s where your friend Mr. Greenwood smoked me out, though I didn’t leave because of him. It was rather that Jolanda was never
satisfied. One day she told me that she wanted to start putting the girls to work the following Saturday. It was time, she said, that they were broken in…ahem, that they knew somebody, as it says in the Bible.”

Helen had to laugh. “You really have your Bible memorized, Daphne,” she said. “Next we’ll have to test your knowledge of
David Copperfield
.”