In the Land of the Long White Cloud

from the O’Keefes’ yard. Helen was frantic at the thought that Gerald would hold her husband responsible for the loss of his valuable animal. Minette had finally drawn attention to herself by whinnying and galloping around the yard. That did not happen, however, until hours later, after she had enjoyed her fill of the grass in the overgrown square, during which a desperate Fleurette wrongly believed her horse to be lost in the highlands or stolen by horse thieves.
    Thieves and rustlers in general…this was a subject that had been disquieting farmers in the Canterbury Plains for a few years now. Although the New Zealanders had prided themselves only a decade earlier on not being the descendants of convicts like the Australians, instead building a society of virtuous colonists, criminal elements were beginning to surface here. It was nothing surprising—the abundant livestock count of farms like Kiward Station and the steadily growing fortune of their owners aroused covetousness. In addition, climbing the social ladder was no longer so simple for new immigrants. The first families were already established, land was no longer to be had for free or close to it, and the whale and seal grounds were largelyexhausted. There was still the occasional spectacular gold find, so it was still possible to go from rags to riches—just not in the Canterbury Plains. But the great livestock barons’ foothills, flocks, and herds had become the center of operations and the barons themselves victims of brutal thieves and rustlers. It had all begun with one man, an old acquaintance of Helen and the Wardens: James McKenzie.
    At first Helen had not believed it when Howard had come home from the pub cursing Gerald’s former foreman by name.
    “Heaven only knows why Warden gave him the boot, but now we’re all paying the price. The workers talk about him as if he were a hero. He steals only the best animals, they say, ones from the money-bags. He leaves the small farmers alone. What nonsense! How’s he supposed to know the difference? But they take a devilish delight in it. Wouldn’t surprise me if the fellow gathered himself a band of thieves.”
    “Like Robin Hood,” had been Helen’s first thought, but then she reproved herself for the romantic lapse. The romanticization of the rustler was nothing more than people’s imagination at work.
    “How is one man supposed to manage all of that?” she remarked to Gwyneira. “Herding the sheep together, culling them, taking them over the mountains…you’d need a whole gang.”
    “Or a dog like Cleo,” Gwyneira suggested uneasily, thinking of the puppy she had given James in parting. James McKenzie was a particularly gifted dog trainer. No doubt Friday was no longer second to her mother anymore—more likely she had since lapped her. Cleo had grown very old by this time and mostly deaf. She still stuck to Gwyneira like her shadow, but she no longer served as a work dog.
    It wasn’t long before the odes to James McKenzie began including his brilliant sheepdog. Gwyneira’s suspicions were confirmed when Friday’s name was dropped for the first time.
    Fortunately, Gerald made no comment on James’s abilities as a shepherd or the missing pup, whose absence he must have noticed at the time. However, Gerald and Gwyneira had had other things on their minds during that fateful year. The sheep baron had probably simply forgotten about the little dog. In any event, he lost several head of livestock a year to McKenzie—as did Howard, the Beasleys, andall the other larger sheep breeders. Helen would have liked to know what Gwyneira thought about it, but her friend never mentioned James McKenzie if she could help it.
    Helen had by now had enough of her senseless search for Paul. She would begin class whether he showed up or not. Chances were pretty good that he would turn up eventually. Paul respected Helen; she might have been the only person he ever listened to. Sometimes she believed that his constant attacks on Ruben, Fleurette, and Tonga might be motivated by jealousy. The bright and attentive chieftain’s son was among her favorite students, and Ruben and Fleurette held a special place in her heart, of course. Paul, though certainly not stupid, was not exceptionally scholarly, preferring to play the class clown—and thus made Helen’s life difficult, as well as his own.

    That day, however, there was no chance that Paul would reach school during class. The boy was too far away