‘He’s dead,’ said Tauwhare.
‘I’m exceedingly sorry to hear that,’ Staines mumbled. ‘What a terrible blow. And you were his friend—his very good friend! And Anna … You’ll accept my condolences, I hope … But I’ve forgotten your name already.’
‘It’s Te Rau,’ said Tauwhare.
‘So it is,’ said Staines. ‘So it is.’ He paused a moment, wretched with exhaustion, and then said, ‘You wouldn’t mind taking me there, would you, old fellow? You wouldn’t mind it?’
‘Where?’
‘To the Maori land,’ said Staines, closing his eyes again. ‘You see, I’ve buried a great deal of gold on Maori land, and if you help me, I wouldn’t be averse to giving you a pinch of it. I’ll stand you whatever you like. Whatever you like. I remember the place exactly: there’s a tree. The gold’s underneath the tree.’ He opened his eyes again and gave Tauwhare a beseeching, blurry look.
Tauwhare tried again. ‘Where have you been, Mr. Staines?’
‘I’ve been looking for my bonanza,’ said Staines. ‘I know it’s on Maori land … but there’s nothing to mark Maori land, is there? No kind of fence to mark it. They always said a man could never get lost on the West Coast, because there’s always mountains on one side, and ocean on the other … but I seem to have got myself a little muddled, Te Rau. It’s Te Rau, isn’t it? Yes. Yes. I’ve been lost.’
Tauwhare came forward and knelt. Up close the man’s wound looked even worse. In the centre of the blackness was a thick crust, showing through it the glint of yellow. He reached out his hand and touched the skin of Staines’s cheek, feeling his temperature. ‘You are sick with fever,’ he said. ‘This wound is very bad.’
‘Never saw it coming,’ said Staines, staring at him. ‘Fresh off the boat, I was, and green with it. Nothing shows like greenness, on a man. Never saw it coming. Heavens, you are a sight for sore eyes! I’m terribly sorry about this muddle. I’m terribly sorry about your mate Crosbie. I really am. What kind of medicine did you say you had about you?’
‘I shall bring it to you,’ said Tauwhare. ‘You wait here.’ He did not feel hopeful. The boy was not speaking sense, and he was much too sick to walk to Hokitika on his own; he would need to be carried there on a litter or a cart, and Tauwhare had seen enough of the Hokitika hospital to know that men went there to die, not to be cured. The place was canvas-roofed, and walled only with the simplest clapboard; the bitter Tasman wind blew through the cracks in the planking, giving rise to a new cacophony of coughing and wheezing with each gust. It stank of filth and disease. There was no fresh water, and no clean linen, and only one ward. The patients were forced to sleep in close quarters with one another, and sometimes even to share a bed.
‘Half-shares,’ the boy was saying. ‘Seemed fair enough to me. Half for you, half for me. What about it, he says. Going mates.’
Tauwhare was calculating the distance in his mind. He could make for Hokitika at a pace, alert Dr. Gillies, hire a cart or a trap of some kind, and be back, at the very earliest, within three hours … but would three hours be soon enough? Would the boy survive? Tauwhare’s sister had died of fever, and in her final days she had been very like the way that Staines was now—bright-eyed, both sharp and limp at once, full of nonsense and tumbling words. If he left, he risked the boy’s death. But what could he do, if he stayed? Suddenly decisive, he bowed his head to say a karakia for the boy’s recovery.
‘Tutakina i te iwi,’ he said, ‘tutakina i te toto. Tutakina i te iko. Tutakina i te uaua. Tutakina kia u. Tutakina kia mau. Tenei te rangi ka tutaki. Tenei te rangi ka ruruku. Tenei te papa ka wheuka. E rangi e, awhitia. E papa e, awhitia. Nau ka awhi, ka awhi.’
He raised his head.
‘Was that a poem?’ said Staines, staring. ‘What does it mean?’
‘I asked for your wound to heal,’ Tauwhare said. ‘Now I shall bring medicine.’ He took off his satchel, pulled out his flask, and pressed it into the boy’s hands.
‘Is it the smoke?’ the boy said, shivering slightly. ‘I’ve never touched the stuff, myself, but how it claws at one … like a thorn in every one of your fingers, and a string around your heart … and one feels it always. Nagging. Nagging. You’d stand me a mouthful of smoke. I believe you would. You’re a decent fellow.’
Tauwhare shucked his woollen coat, and draped it across the boy’s legs.
‘Just until I find this tree on Maori land,’ the boy went on. ‘You can have as many ounces as you please. Only it’s the good stuff I’m after. Are you going to the druggist? Pritchard’s got my account. Pritchard’s all right. Ask him. I’ve never touched a pipe before.’
‘This is water,’ said Tauwhare, pointing at the flask. ‘Drink it.’
‘How extraordinarily kind,’ said the boy, closing his eyes again.
‘You stay here,’ Tauwhare said firmly. He stood. ‘I go to Hokitika and tell others where you are. I shall come back very soon.’
‘Just a bit of the good stuff,’ said Staines, as Tauwhare left the cottage. His eyes were still closed. ‘And after you come back we’ll go and have a nose around for all that gold. Or we’ll start with the smoke—yes. Do it properly. What an unrequited love it is, this thirst! But is it love, when it is unrequited? Good Lord. Medicine, he says. And him a Maori fellow!’
MARS IN AQUARIUS
In which Sook Yongsheng pays a call upon a very old acquaintance, and Francis Carver dispenses some advice.
Sook Yongsheng, after making his five-pound purchase at Brunton, Solomon & Barnes that morning, had immediately gone into hiding. The shopkeeper who loaded the pistol had been very plainly suspicious of his intentions, though he had accepted Ah Sook’s paper note without complaint: he had followed Ah Sook to the door of his establishment, to see him off, and Ah Sook twice looked over his shoulder to see him standing, arms folded, scowling after him. A Chinaman purchasing a revolver with cash money, laying down that cash money all at once, refusing to pay more than five pounds even for the item, and requesting that the piece be loaded in the store? This was not the kind of suspicion that one kept to oneself. Ah Sook knew very well that by the time he reached the corner of Weld- and Tancred-streets the rumour mill would have begun to turn, and swiftly. He needed to find a place to hide until sundown, whereupon he would venture, under the cover of darkness, to the rearmost bedroom on the ground floor of the Crown Hotel.
There was no one in Hokitika Ah Sook trusted enough to ask for aid. Certainly not Anna: not any more. Nor Mannering. Nor Pritchard. He was not on speaking terms with any of the other men from the council at the Crown, except Ah Quee, who, of course, would be in Kaniere, digging the ground. For a moment he considered taking a room at one of the more disreputable hotels on the eastern side of town, perhaps even paying for the week in advance, to disguise his motivation … but even there he could not guarantee anonymity; he could not guarantee that the proprietors would not talk. His presence in Hokitika on a Monday morning was conspicuous enough, even without wagging tongues. Better not to trust in the discretion of other men, he thought. He resolved instead to take his pistol into the alley that ran in parallel between Revell-street and Tancred-street. The alley formed a rutted thoroughfare between the rear allotments of the Revell-street warehouses and hotels, which faced west, and the rear allotments of the Tancred-street cabins, which faced east. There was ample opportunity for camouflage, and the alley was central enough to allow points of entry and exit from all sides. Best of all, the space was frequented only intermittently, by the tradesmen and penny-postmen who serviced the hotels.