In the Land of the Long White Cloud

equipment here. And the little that we’ve eked out so far has gone to new tools. Stuart’s right; that fellow Ethan only sells junk. A few of the miners still have the pans and pickaxes they brought over from Australia. But what we buy here only lasts a few days and costs a small fortune.”
    Fleur laughed. “Then let’s just use this for something else,” she said, pulling out her father’s pouch for the second time that day. This time Ruben looked inside—and became ecstatic at the sight of the gold dollars.
    “Fleur! That’s wonderful! Where did you get it all? Don’t tell me you robbed your grandfather. But, so much money! With that, we could finish the sluice box, build a cabin, maybe hire a few workers. Fleur, with that we can get all the gold there is out of this land.”
    Fleurette did not say anything to these plans, and instead told him the story of her flight.
    “I can’t believe it! James McKenzie is your father?”
    Fleurette had had her suspicions that Ruben might already know. After all, their mothers kept practically no secrets from one another, and as a rule, what Helen knew trickled down to Ruben. The boy really had had no idea, though, and took it for granted that Helen had also not been told.
    “I only ever thought there was a secret about Paul’s birth,” he said. “My mother seemed to know something about that.”
    As they talked, the two of them had taken up the work at the stream, and Fleur learned how to work with the gold pan. Until then, she had always thought that gold was shaken out, but reallytheir method of extraction was simply to flush out everything but the gold. It required some skill to flick and shake the pan so that the lighter components in the soil were flushed out until only a black mass remained, the so-called “black sand.” Only then did the gold finally come to light. Ruben found it difficult, but Fleur soon had the hang of it. Both Ruben and Stuart admired her for her obvious natural talent. Fleur was less enthusiastic herself because, regardless of how skillfully she panned, the tiny traces of gold only rarely stuck in the pan. By evening she had worked intensively for almost six hours, during which the men had worn out two more saw blades while working on their sluice box without making notable progress. Fleur no longer thought it mattered since she believed that getting gold from a sluice box was a hopeless endeavor. The faint traces of gold she had panned out that day would have been victims of the stream’s current through a sluice box. And would it be worth the effort? Stuart valued what she had collected that day at less than a dollar.
    Yet the men still raved about big gold finds while they roasted the fish that Fleurette had caught in the stream earlier. She would have earned more money selling the fish, she thought bitterly, than with all her gold panning.
    “Tomorrow we need to go to Queenstown to buy new saw blades,” Stuart said with a sigh when he finally retired, once more going out of his way to give the young couple some privacy. He insisted that he could sleep just as well under the trees by the horses as in the tent.
    “And get married,” Ruben said seriously, taking Fleurette in his arms. “Do you think it would be wrong if we celebrated the wedding night ahead of time?”
    Fleur shook her head, snuggling up to him. “We just won’t tell anyone.”

8
    I t was as though the sunrise over the mountains had been made for a wedding day. The mountains glowed red-gold and mauve; the scent of forest and fresh grass filled the air, and the murmur of the brook mixed with the whooshing of the river—together they seemed like a unique form of congratulations. Fleurette felt happy and fulfilled when she woke in Ruben’s arms and stuck her head out of the tent. Gracie greeted her with a wet dog-kiss.
    Fleurette petted her. “Bad news, Grace, but I found someone who kisses better than you,” she said, laughing. “Now go, wake Stuart, I’m making breakfast. We have a lot to do today, Gracie! Don’t let the men sleep through the big day.”
    Stuart noticed good-naturedly that Fleurette and Ruben could hardly keep their hands off each other as they prepared for their ride. Both men found it peculiar, however, that Fleur insisted on taking half the camp along.
    “We’ll be back no later than tomorrow,” Stuart said. “Sure, if we really go about shopping for things for the mine and such, it could take a little longer,