In the Land of the Long White Cloud

when the company finally rode into Lionel Station. The farm lay idyllically by a lake; behind it rose a seemingly endless range of mountains. James McKenzie could be anywhere.
    Sideblossom grinned. “We have a little scout!” he revealed to the men. “I think by now he’ll be ready to show us the way. Before I left, he was still…how should I say…a bit uncooperative.”
    “A scout?” Barrington asked. “Don’t speak in riddles, man.”
    John Sideblossom leaped from his horse. “Just before I left for the plains, I sent a Maori boy to fetch a few horses from the highlands, but he didn’t find them. He said they had run away. So we tried to…well, make him more talkative, and then he said something about a pass or a riverbed, something like that. Regardless, there should be some land that’s still free behind it. He’ll show that to us tomorrow. Or I’ll give him nothing but bread and water until the sky falls.”
    “You locked up the boy?” Barrington asked, shocked. “What does the tribe have to say about that? Don’t stir up your Maori.”
    “Oh, the boy’s worked for me for ages. Probably doesn’t even belong to the local tribe, and even so, who cares? He’ll take us to this pass tomorrow.”
    The boy turned out to be small, starved, and scared witless. He had spent the days that John Sideblossom was gone in a dark barn and was now a jittery bundle of nerves. Barrington tried to make John let the child go first, but the farmer only laughed.
    “If I let him go now, he’ll run away. He can sod off tomorrow as soon as he’s shown us the way. And we’re setting out early tomorrow, gentlemen, at first light. So go easy on the whiskey if you can’t hold your liquor.”
    Comments such as these did not appeal to the farmers from the plains, and tepid representatives of the farmer barons like Barrington and Beasley had long since ceased to be enthused by their charismatic leader. Unlike previous expeditions to track down James McKenzie,this one seemed less like a relaxed hunting excursion and more like a military operation.
    John Sideblossom had systematically combed the foothills above the Canterbury Plains. He now divided the men up into small companies, overseeing them scrupulously. Until that moment, men had believed this undertaking was about the search for James McKenzie. But now, since John already had a specific idea of where the thief was hiding, it occurred to them that they were actually on the trail of Fleurette Warden, which a portion of the men thought a waste of their time. Half of them were of the opinion that she would show up of her own accord soon. And if she did not want to marry John Sideblossom, well, that was her prerogative.
    Regardless, they submitted, however unwillingly, to the farmer’s directions, giving up on their cherished notion of finding a good dinner and first-class whiskey waiting for them before McKenzie’s arrest.
    “We’ll celebrate,” Sideblossom confirmed, “after the hunt.”

    The following morning, the farmer waited for the other men at the stables, the howling, dirty Maori boy at his side. John Sideblossom had the youth walk out in front, promising him that horrible punishments awaited him if he tried to escape.
    That hardly seemed possible. After all, they were all riding horses, and the boy was on foot.
    Still, the boy was able to walk a good distance and hopped with light feet across the stony landscape of the foothills, which proved to be difficult terrain for Barrington’s and Beasley’s thoroughbreds.
    At one point he no longer seemed to be as sure of the way, but a few sharp words from John Sideblossom caused him to cave. The Maori boy led the search party across a stream in a dried-out riverbed that cut like a knife between stone walls.

    James McKenzie and Fleur might have been able to flee if the dogs had not just herded the sheep around a bend in the riverbed in front of them, in a spot where the riverbed had just widened. The sheep were still bleating heart-wrenchingly—another advantage for the pursuers, who fanned out at the sight of the flock in the riverbed in order to cut them off.
    James McKenzie’s gaze fell directly on John Sideblossom, whose horse had stepped to the front of the company. The sheep thief stopped his mule and sat there, frozen.
    “There he is! Wait, are there two of them?” someone in the search party suddenly yelled. The call tore James from his stupor. He looked desperately around for an escape