It Began in Te Rangi

by Gloria Bevan

  ‘Oh, she’s got a young bloke there, but he’s only learning the game too.’

  ‘Couldn’t Tony help?’ she asked, for something to say.

  ‘Tony! On a horse? Rounding up cattle? Riding hell for leather through heavy bush on steep hillsides? Can you see him? I can’t! Oh, he means well enough—’ to Maggie the faint praise was more damning than outright criticism, ‘but he’s just not cut out for that sort of life.’

  Some devil of contrariness urged her to argument. ‘Well, I think it’s pretty marvellous of him, giving up a ’Varsity career to come home and take over the family property.’

  ‘Giving up?’ The thick dark brows rose in an ironical glance. ‘Somehow I got the idea that ’Varsity had given him up!’

  ‘He can try again!’ Maggie flashed back. ‘I think it’s to his credit if he does go back and have another go at the exams. Far more praiseworthy than those students who just fly though with no effort at all—’ She caught herself up as something Ian had said to her shot through her mind. ‘Uncle Danger was a whiz at ’Varsity. Cleaned up swags of sporting trophies and simply took exams in his stride. It’s awful having an uncle like that,’ Ian had complained bitterly to Maggie. ‘Bad enough him being in the first fifteen Rugby team right through but a Rhodes Scholar as well! And Mum and Dad expect me to live up to that? Luckily, Maggie consoled herself, she wasn’t expected to know anything of his scholastic career.

  ‘Tony’s sure got a champion over this way,’ he observed coldly. ‘I had no idea that you two had got to know each other so well.’

  ‘I don’t know him well,’ Maggie returned with spirit. ‘At least—’ She stopped short, remembering the nightly telephone calls from the farm over the hills. Tony would inquire how things were going with her, ask about Mark’s progress, make plans for a meeting once Maggie was free of her sickroom duties, but that was all. Nothing, surely, to cause Danger to regard her like that. For his sardonic look, the one she disliked most of all, was back on his lean dark face. Whatever had she and Tony’s harmless friendship to do with him, for goodness’ sake?

  She was glad when Philippa and Ian, rushing into the room at that moment in order to view their favourite television programme, made further conversation out of the question. Although Maggie watched the screen too, she was unaware of the import of the flickering scenes. She was reflecting that whatever she did seemed to displease him, even her choice of friends!

  CHAPTER SIX

  Maggie could scarcely wait for the ride over the hills. It must be the thought of taking Pete out again, after all this time, that was making her look forward to the outing with this keen sense of anticipation. Could it be a mere two weeks since she had arrived here?

  She was up early, slipping into a black sweater and stretch slacks. Then she went up the passage and out into the pearly grey stillness of the morning. The menfolk had already ridden out over the paddocks and wouldn’t be in for breakfast for a while yet, and no one was in sight as she went over the long grass, wet with dew and cool to the touch of her bare feet. As she had expected, the houses were already penned in the corral. Danger’s big roan stallion was pacing restlessly along the tea-tree barricade and as she came nearer a low whinny caught her ears. The next moment Pete emerged from the shelter of a towering macrocarpa and trotted towards her. All through the past week she had been too confined to the house to visit him in his paddock in the valley. Now she noticed that his bay coat had acquired a silky gloss. He’d put on weight too, but what could you expect with all that lush spring grass?

  Affectionately patting Pete’s sturdy neck, it was a few moments before she realized she wasn’t alone. She turned with a smile towards Philippa, who, wearing the neat shortie-pyjamas that Maggie insisted take the place of the torn and shabby nightgown, leaned on the slip-rails at her side.

  The small girl’s sharp features wore a puzzled expression as her gaze moved from Maggie to the ungainly-looking bay to whom she was crooning endearments. ‘Whose horse is that?’ Philippa demanded suspiciously.

  ‘Mine!’ There was a ring of pride in Maggie’s tones. ‘I brought him up here with me, or rather he arrived the next day by horse transport, and I’ve scarcely set eyes on him since. Poor Pete, to him it must seem like forever!’ Pulling a carrot from the pocket of her slacks, she offered it to the horse. ‘He’s sort of old,’ she murmured with the reluctance to which she invariably admitted to Pete’s years, ‘but you’d never guess it! Honestly, I’ve had him since he was young and he jumps just as well now as then—well, almost. He won three red ribbons at the last gymkhana I took him to, and he can take a four-foot jump, no trouble!’ Her smile faded as she took in the small resentful face, the twisted unchildlike curve of the thin lips. ‘Why, what’s wrong?’

  ‘You never told me!’ Philippa blurted out accusingly. ‘I thought you didn’t care about riding! You tried to fool me, didn’t you? But you can’t any more! You thought you could butter me up! I know!’ Her lips puckered and tears blurred the angry high tones. ‘You’re just like the others, only they didn’t pretend! I hate you!’ Philippa turned and ran towards the house, wispy hair flying around her thin shoulders. The next moment she paused, looking up at a rider who was cantering down a slope. ‘Danger! Danger!’ She rushed to meet him and Maggie was uneasily aware of the two talking together. A few moments later Phil ran towards the house and Danger left his mount to graze and came striding towards her.

  ‘That’s torn it,’ he observed with his tantalizing grin. ‘Poor old Phil thinks you’ve put one over on her! Catching you and Pete out in that big love scene just now was just too much for her—’

  ‘I know.’ Maggie’s voice was low. ‘I suppose I should have told her about Pete before, but I ... kept off the subject of horses. I thought,’ she finished a trifle incoherently, ‘that if she got to like me enough it wouldn’t matter when she did find out.’ She hesitated, wondering how best to frame her inquiry. ‘She—seems to have this thing about the horse her mother left her to ride. I’d say that she was scared stiff of mounting him, or even going near to groom him. Tell me,’ she raised clear brown eyes, ‘is he really so dangerous?’

  ‘Oh, that—’ He grinned down at her. ‘Don’t give it another thought! The kid’s got some bee in her bonnet about the Saint—can’t say that I blame her altogether. Chris must have been out of her mind to expect a nervous rider like Phil to handle a highly-strung mount like that. Guess now it’s a deadlock between the kid and her mother. Joyce just can’t seem to get it into her head that a daughter of hers isn’t all wrapped up in the idea of being a top rider.’

  ‘Maybe Phil wasn’t nervous before. Evidently she didn’t feel that way about her little pony that she was so fond of.’

  Danger nodded. For once, it seemed, they were in agreement. ‘It didn’t help any, getting rid of the pony. Then Mrs. B. made things a thousand times worse, pushing the idea and forcing Phil to groom the Saint, who promptly nipped her on the leg for her trouble! Anyway, what does it matter?’ His glance rested on Maggie, small and slim, a long piece of grass in her hand, that smooth, white, office-work hand. ‘If Mrs. B. spent the entire time she was here fighting to hold her end up and lost out, what the hell could you do?’

  These were fighting words and Maggie’s blood rose to the challenge. She’d show him. Old Barry, as Phil termed her unfortunate predecessor, had lost the child’s trust, by trying to force a timid and terrified small girl into liking a mount in which she hadn’t the slightest confidence. With her it would be different. She’d take things quietly, gently, gain Philippa’s confidence first, and then...

  Something in the set line of her lips must have betrayed her thoughts, for she realized he was watching her with that maddening, amused, condescending glint in his eyes. ‘A sheer impossibility, wouldn’t you say?’ His voice was careless.

  All at once she felt she had to prove to him that he couldn’t answer for her, state what she could and couldn’t achieve, in that infuriating autocratic manner of his. ‘
Not really,’ her voice matched his for coolness and for once, she realized with satisfaction, she had gained his attention.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ make it sound nonchalant, Maggie, ‘I wouldn’t mind betting you that I could get round Phil. I mean,’ her pixie smile flashed out, ‘given time and a free hand.’

  ‘It’s all yours, Miss Sullivan! If you can get Phil friendly with the Saint, you’re not just a much-needed housekeeper, you’re a real miracle-worker!’ The flicker of amusement in his blue eyes set alight the fuse of her indignation.

  ‘Well, why not?’ she demanded. ‘She likes me. At least,’ she amended, ‘she did, and she might again! And if I could just give her some confidence in herself, maybe get her started on Pete—’ But she knew by his quizzical look, the lift of his lips, that he didn’t believe her. He never did believe in anything she could do, she thought hotly. That was the trouble, he had no faith in her—ever. But he’d have to change his opinion about her, one of these days.

  ‘I could,’ she repeated stubbornly. His amused grin drove her on and she added recklessly, ‘You’ll see!’

  ‘Will I?’ Oh, he was infuriating, looking at her with the indulgent glance of one listening patiently to a prattling child. But she’d show him ... just let him wait. She flung around to stare up at him, dark eyes enormous and sparkling with anger, ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

  Still he continued to regard her with his lazy smile. ‘Let’s just say that I believe you could give it a go!’

  ‘Oh!’ She turned away in exasperation and they went in silence towards the house.

  Mrs. Wahonga was strolling in at the gate. ‘Hello!’ she greeted them with her broad smile. ‘You out bright and early, Miss Sullivan?’

  ‘Maggie,’ she corrected smilingly.

  The brown eyes beamed towards her. ‘That’s better, ehoa. Maggie.’

  ‘I’ll carry that for you.’ Danger took from the Maori woman’s plump arms a long newspaper parcel, ‘Is this the breakfast menu for today?’

  ‘You guessed it, Danger! My boy Hone, he go out at the bay yesterday with a kon-tiki. Come in with a big haul. Lots of schnapper and kahawai!’

  Strolling up the verandah steps beside the Maori woman, Maggie glanced towards her curiously. ‘Kon-tiki? What ever sort of a line is that?’

  Mrs. Wahonga gave her rich chuckle. ‘The best, in the breakers. You get Danger to show you how it works one of these days.’

  ‘That’s a promise,’ he said, and left them to go to the small washroom at the back of the house, while Maggie went with Mrs. Wahonga towards the kitchen.

  But later as she went with Danger towards the corral, she forgot everything else, even the feeling of antagonism that Danger’s careless words had sparked in her mind, and Philippa’s changed attitude. She slipped the bit into Pete’s mouth and throwing over his back the fluffy white sheepskin and saddle, bent to tighten the girth.

  At her side, Danger was saddling his big roan stallion, throwing the reins over his arm as he loosened the slip-rails. Then they were out in the open, through a gate, and cantering up the narrow tracks that threaded the steep cleared hillsides. They flashed past the short mowed grass of the air-strip and took another slope. Maggie’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright. Pete of course was no match for the powerful stallion, but he kept up well. Presently they drew rein as the horses entered a gully filled with native bush, where the air was heavy with the fresh, pungent smell of damp ferns and moss. Dried leaves crunched beneath the horses’ hooves as they moved on through the green gloom, lightened at intervals by the sunlight that filtered down through the leafy branches high above of giant totara, kauri, rimu. Then they were out in the sunlight once again. Maggie thought she could go on for ever like this, with the fresh breeze tossing her hair around her shoulders and in her ears the roar of distant surf.

  At the summit of the hill they pulled in their mounts and paused to gaze down at the turbulent sea far below. Beyond a line of sandhills was an expanse of shimmering molten silver and the horizon was veiled in haze. ‘There’s a track down through the bush,’ Danger told Maggie as he urged his horse forward. ‘I bulldozed a road through last summer, but the bush has grown a heck of a lot since then. Time I had another go at it. I’ll go ahead and clear away the creepers. Take it easy with Pete. It’s fairly steep.’

  The overgrown track was certainly precipitous, Maggie thought a little later as her mount picked his way carefully down the twisting slope. At times great fern-encrusted ponga logs lay across the path, blocking the way, but the horses were sure-footed and always Danger rode ahead, pausing to, pull aside a hanging rope of black supplejack trailing from a tree high overhead, or to lift a curtain of thorny creeper, as Maggie made her way beneath. Then at last they were out in the sunshine once more, surrounded by massive sandhills. As the horses’ hooves sank into the dry white sand, Danger called back: ‘Better make for the hard, down by the water.’

  She leaned forward in the saddle as Pete scrambled up a sandhill and made his way down the opposite side, then they were moving over shimmering wet shoreline still littered with fragments of foam left by the last great breaker. As they rode along the shore, Maggie’s spirits rose on a wave of enjoyment. She felt one with this wild untamed world where seagulls dipped and soared above the waves and there was nothing in sight but an immense sweep of lonely beach. Slackening their pace, they let the horses splash along the water’s edge. Maggie laughed as an unexpectedly large wave crashed around her, drenching her with sea-water and causing her sweater to cling wetly around her slim figure.

  Danger, drenched too, laughed with her. ‘We may as well take them right in now!’

  ‘Why not?’ Maggie cried, as together they urged their mounts in over the breakers. Soon she was crouching low over Pete’s neck as he swam beneath her. Maggie laughed aloud in sheer exhilaration as tide and current carried the horses in towards the shore.

  A magic day, she found herself thinking, full of life and movement. The high wind that sent the waves crashing in a shower of foam on the wet sands ruffled the marram, grass growing along the sandhills and bowled the frail wheels of spinifex over and over at the water’s edge.

  In the warm sunshine her sweater and slacks dried out as they moved along at the edge of the surf. They had travelled some distance along the shore when Danger turned his mount. ‘Here’s where we head up into the bush again,’ he told Maggie. As she urged Pete over the sand drifts .she glimpsed ahead high hills clothed in dense native bush.

  Biding in single file along a winding bush track, presently Danger drew rein at a small clearing and waited while Maggie drew alongside. He was gazing out over a gully and following his glance, she drew in her breath sharply at the sight that met her eyes. Against a sombre, dark background of native bush, kowhai trees with their delicate green foliage and blossoms of clear bright yellow, filled the gully with a shower of gold. She turned towards him wonderingly. ‘You didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Kept it for a surprise!’ he grinned, and all at once, for no reason at all, she felt her heart turn over.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything so lovely,’ Maggie said softly.

  ‘Me neither.’ Danger’s gaze rested on her flushed face and as she met his unfathomable look a feeling of excitement welled up in her. The kowhai-filled gully shimmered in a golden haze and she could scarcely see the scene, for the trembling sensation that assailed her. What had come over her? To feel like this about Danger, of all men!

  ‘Don’t look at me—like that.’ For an endless agonized second she wondered if she had spoken the words aloud. Then the deep tones jerked her back to relief and reality.

  ‘That’s Ann’s place over there—’ He was pointing with his whip. ‘See the homestead? You can just catch a glimpse of it through the trees.’

  She forced her gaze towards the sprawling timber homestead that glimmered faintly through a shelterbelt of tall blue gums. Schooling her voice to a light convers
ation note, she said: ‘How far does it extend—her land?’

  ‘Far enough.’ He made a sweeping gesture towards the surrounding hills. ‘With all this bush on the place it’s the devil’s own job to round up the cattle if they happen to get away. We’ll take a look around here for a start. See where the track starts?’

  She nodded, pulling on the reins, but somehow a little of the day’s golden lustre had dimmed. Why had he not spoken of ‘Ann and Tony’s place’, instead of just ‘Ann’s’? She was fast becoming a champion of Tony’s rights, she reflected wryly, and thought how delighted he would be if he knew.

  They had been riding for some time along a twisting track in the unfamiliar green gloom of heavy native bush when Danger, riding ahead, gave a call. ‘There’s one!’ He urged his mount down a narrow track on the steep tea-tree-crowded incline, and Maggie, following, suddenly caught a moving flash of black a short distance ahead. ‘Look out!’ Danger cautioned, ‘he’s coming up!’ The next moment a steer with Danger in swift pursuit crashed through the undergrowth and fled past Maggie on the narrow track.

  Another steer followed, and another, until soon the missing cattle were all accounted for and being driven back through the bush and out in the direction of the cleared hillside paddocks beyond.

  When they came in sight of the homestead Danger dismounted to open a wide taranaki gate, waiting while Maggie guided the steers through the opening. Then he pulled the wire loop over the post and glanced towards her with his heart-stopping smile. ‘Ann’ll sure be relieved to have that lot back in the home paddocks. Like to call in and give her the good news?’

  ‘If you like.’ She had no particular desire to meet Ann today. On the contrary she was becoming awfully tired of hearing her name on Danger’s lips. She had no doubt though that Tony would be delighted by her surprise visit, and anyway, how could she refuse?