Mud and Gold (68 page)

‘Pups?’ David echoed, his eyes lighting
up.

‘That’s right. She’s got eight of the little
beggars. I’m bringing a few of them with me when I go out, trying
to talk people into taking them off my hands! Come on, up you
come.’

He leaned down and hoisted David into the
back of the cart, where Amy now noticed a wooden crate lined with
sacking. She looked in and saw four puppies snuggled together in a
tangled mass.

David dropped to the floor of the cart
beside the crate and stared at the puppies.

‘Aren’t they
pretty
,’ he breathed in
wonder.

Matt laughed. ‘I thought they were pretty
ugly, myself. You’re more than welcome to one of them, Amy, I don’t
know how I’m going to get rid of them all.’

As Amy watched, one puppy separated itself
from its fellows and clambered over to stand with its paws pressed
against the side of the crate. It nosed against David’s hand and
whined in its little voice. David stroked it, and the whines grew
more excited. He lifted the puppy carefully into his lap, laughing
in delight as the pup’s long tongue snaked out to lick his
face.

‘He likes me, Mama,’ David said, so excited
that his voice came out as a squeak.

‘Yes, he does,’ Amy agreed, her heart
sinking. She knew what must come next.

‘Can I have him? Please, Mama? Can I take
him home?’

‘I’m sorry, Davie, I don’t think Papa would
be very pleased. He thinks he’s got enough mouths to feed without a
puppy around the place.’

‘Please, Mama. I’ll look after him. Papa
might like him.’

‘I don’t think so, darling. I’m sorry, I
think you’ll have to leave the puppy here.’

‘A dog around the house isn’t a bad idea,
Amy,’ Matt put in. ‘I got Peg after Te Kooti’s lot came through a
while back. The soldiers sent them packing before they caused any
trouble that time, but you never know when something like that
might happen again. I can’t always be home with Rachel, I like the
idea of a dog barking its head off if anyone came poking around who
had no business to.’

‘Charlie was a bit worried about Te Kooti,’
Amy mused. She remembered the time well. Te Kooti had arrived in
the town with a band of followers a little over two years before,
causing consternation among the settlers. He had left the area
peacefully after talking to the troops that had been hastily
despatched from Gisborne, but the incident had been a talking point
around Ruatane for months afterwards. ‘I wonder…’ She looked at
David, who was still stroking the puppy. He raised his gaze to her,
the barest hint of tears making his eyes even brighter.

‘Please, Mama? He could play with me.
Please?’

It was too hard to resist. ‘I tell you what,
Davie, I’ll see what Papa thinks about us getting a dog.’ She had
to extricate herself from David’s rapturous embrace, complete with
puppy tucked into the crook of one arm, before she could speak
again. ‘Now, don’t get too excited, he might say no, but I’ll ask
him.’

‘It costs nothing to feed them,’ Matt said.
‘Just chuck them the bits of offal you don’t want.’

‘I’ll see what Charlie says,’ was all Amy
would commit herself to.

She rummaged in her drawstring bag until she
found a leftover skein of wool she had meant to give Lizzie. She
snapped off a short length and tied it around the pup’s neck.

‘
Just so you can tell him
apart from the others if you need to,’ she said to Matt. ‘But if
Charlie does say he’d like a dog, there’s no need to tell him I put
that wool on.’

‘Trying to pull the wool over his eyes, eh?’
Matt said, and she laughed with him. ‘When do I send the pup over,
then?’ he teased. ‘He’s ready to leave Peg now.’

‘We’ll have to see,’ Amy said, careful not
to promise anything to David. But she was becoming more and more
determined that he would get his pet.

‘Now, Davie, don’t say anything about the
puppy, not even to Mal,’ she warned as they drew near home. ‘If
Papa says we can have one it’ll be our secret that you’ve already
picked him.’

David agreed to secrecy readily enough, but
she could see that he could hardly contain his excitement. She was
relieved that Charlie paid as little attention as usual to David
that day.

Amy waited until the children were safely in
bed and Charlie was settled in the parlour before she remarked in a
carefully casual tone, ‘I heard some people are getting dogs in
case there’s Maori trouble again.’

‘Trouble?’ Charlie said, taking more notice
of her remark than he usually did. ‘What sort of trouble?’

‘You know, like when Te Kooti came through.
Some men are a bit worried about leaving their farms when they have
to go out, in case someone interferes with their stock. Men who
only have women and children around. They think a dog barking might
scare the Maoris off.’

‘Hmm.’ Charlie pondered the problem. ‘There
might be sense in that.’ He frowned. ‘A dog might worry stock.’

‘You’d want the sort of dog that was used to
animals,’ Amy suggested. ‘One born on a farm would be best.’

‘It’d need feeding,’ Charlie said, and Amy
knew she was almost there. ‘There’s already enough mouths around
here.’

‘I’ve heard they don’t take much feeding,’
she said as if it were of only slight interest to her. ‘They just
eat the rubbishy bits of meat that you don’t like anyway. All those
bits you have to bury when you kill a sheep.’

Charlie creased his brow in thought. ‘I
might ask around about a dog.’

‘I think Aitkens might have some they don’t
want,’ Amy said. ‘Someone said their bitch had a litter, and they
were trying to give the pups away.’

‘Give?’ Charlie echoed. ‘They’re not wanting
anything for them?’

‘I don’t think so. They’ve got more pups
than they know what to do with.’

‘Hmm.’ He went back to reading his
newspaper, but before he rose to put out the lamp that evening he
said, ‘I might pop over to Aitkens tomorrow, see about a dog.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ Amy said, hiding her
elation.

In the privacy of her own room she hugged
herself in anticipation of the joy she would see on David’s face
when Charlie came home with the puppy. She lay in bed and savoured
the knowledge that for the first time she had managed to manipulate
Charlie into doing what she wanted while thinking it was his own
idea. It was a pleasant reflection.

*

The beginning of a bumper crop of babies for
the Leith families that year was marked by the arrival of Jane’s in
June. Yet another baby in the valley appeared a small enough event
to those outside it, but to Harry Leith the birth of his son seemed
the most momentous event of his life.

‘You know what Robert did the other day?’
Harry asked Frank one Sunday after church when the baby was a
little over a week old. ‘He looked at me! Looked me right in the
face. You could see he knew who I was.’

‘Boy, that’s pretty good, Harry,’ Frank said
obligingly. He saw John grinning at him over Harry’s shoulder.

‘He’s bright, that son of mine,’ Harry went
on. ‘You know, I just about expected him to open his mouth and say
something, he was looking at me that knowing.’

‘I bet he wishes he could talk, Harry,’ John
put in. ‘He’ll probably start talking pretty young.’

‘Sure to,’ Harry agreed.

‘Yep, one day he’ll look you right in the
eye and say, “Shut up, Pa.” Then the rest of us will know he’s
bright, all right.’

Frank tried to smother a chuckle and failed
badly. Harry glared at them both, then joined in the laughter even
though it was at his own expense.

Frank was pleased for Harry, but he had
other things on his mind. Calving would start in a month or so, and
right in the middle of it Lizzie was due to have the new baby. She
assured him it got easier with each birth, and this one being her
fourth would be no trouble at all, but he knew that when the time
came he would worry as he always did. Lizzie was too precious ever
to be taken for granted.

*

When June turned into July and the heavy
rain started, at first the farmers were relieved that the run of
dry years that had made raising crops difficult in recent times was
over. But as July wore on and the rains grew heavier, it became
obvious that this was far more than normal winter weather.

For years afterwards they would talk about
the Bay of Plenty floods of 1892, but in those middle weeks of July
everyone was too busy coping with the deluge to give any thought to
their historical significance. It was much later that the people of
Ruatane had time to exclaim over the almost forty inches of rain
had fallen in twelve days. As the flood waters rose, the farmers in
the Waituhi Valley moved their stock to higher ground and prayed
that the creek would stop rising before it reached their
houses.

*

Frank shrugged off his coat and hung it in
the porch, water streaming from it onto the wooden floor and down
the back steps. A yell from Lizzie met him as he opened the door,
but it was not directed at him; the load of mud his boots carried
after trudging around the sodden paddocks was far too heavy for him
to forget to pull them off as soon as he reached the shelter of the
porch.

‘You go out that door and I’ll give you a
good hiding, Joey,’ she warned. ‘Then your pa’ll give you a better
one.’

‘I want to go outside,’ Joey protested, torn
between the desire for freedom and the sure knowledge that his
mother’s threat should be heeded.

‘No, you don’t, Joe,’ Frank told him. ‘I
wouldn’t be going out myself if I didn’t have to. Now, you be a
good chap and don’t give your ma a hard time. She’s looking a bit
weary on it.’ He sat down at the table and poured himself a cup of
tea from the pot Lizzie had ready, two-year-old Beth clambering
onto him as soon as he had made a lap. ‘You all right?’ he asked
Lizzie.

‘I would be if that son of yours wasn’t
driving me up the wall wanting to go outside all the time,’ Lizzie
grumbled. She shifted in her chair, trying to find a more
comfortable position for her bulky body. ‘No, I’m all right. I’m as
sick of being stuck inside as the kids are, and I think I’ve
forgotten what the sun looks like, but there’s nothing wrong with
me.’

‘I’ve been helping Ma,’ Maudie said
self-importantly. ‘I made some biscuits.’ She basked in the glow of
her father’s approving smile.

‘So you did, love,’ said Lizzie. ‘I’m glad
of the help, too, it’s a good thing she can’t get to school just
now.’ Frank could see that Lizzie was trying to appear her usual
unflappable self, but there was a tightness about her mouth that
reflected the strain they were both feeling. ‘How are the animals,
Frank?’

‘Looking miserable, but they’re right
enough. They should be all right in those top paddocks—the water
will never get that high.’

‘It must stop raining soon, mustn’t it?’

‘It’d better,’ he said. Seeing the fear in
Lizzie’s eyes he added in a lighter tone, ‘It’s sure to. Probably
another day or so, that’s all. I’ve put the Jerseys in the cart
shed.’

‘Spoiled things!’ Lizzie exclaimed. ‘What
about the poor old Shorthorns?’

‘They’re all tough as old boots, and I
didn’t get a mortgage on the place to buy them. Anyway, I might put
a few of them in there, too, if they start calving before the rain
stops. I sledged a fair bit of hay over to the shed, that’ll keep
them going.’ He did not remind her that all the hay stacks in the
creek paddocks had been lost; nor did he tell her of the cow he had
seen floating down the swollen creek that day. His own stock were
all safe and sound, and that was all he could spare concern for at
the moment. Except, of course, for the concern that was in his
thoughts day and night: the heavily-pregnant Lizzie.

‘That shed’s going to get pretty full if
you’ve got to keep all the calves in there.’

‘No, it won’t. The flood’s sure to die down
before calving gets going.’

She only half believed him, he could tell,
though they were both careful to sound confident in front of the
children. Later that evening, when Frank had helped an awkward
Lizzie into her nightdress, he looked up from buttoning the bodice
and saw in her face the strain she had been hiding all day. The
thought of the baby loomed between them, as impossible to ignore as
the bulge it made in Lizzie’s nightdress.

‘I let Maudie use just about the last of the
sugar in those biscuits today,’ said Lizzie. ‘It’ll be all bottled
fruit for pudding from now on until you can get to town again.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ Frank said, trying to
sound reassuring. ‘I like your fruit. Anyway, the flood will be
over before we run out properly.’

‘Will it?’ She turned from him and clambered
into bed. Frank put out the lamp and climbed in beside her, angling
his body to fit snugly around the curve her back made. He felt her
tenseness as he pressed against her.

‘Don’t worry, Lizzie,’ he murmured. ‘It’ll
be all right.’

‘Will it?’ she repeated.

Frank held her in silence for some time,
wishing that Lizzie did not have to be so very pregnant just when
they were completely cut off from their neighbours, let alone the
town and its nurses.

‘I’m sorry, Lizzie,’ he whispered.

‘What for? You didn’t make it flood.’

‘No, but I got you in this state, didn’t I?’
Lizzie did not answer; nor did she respond when he stroked her
arm.

‘I shouldn’t have watched that bull so much
last summer, eh?’ he said, more to himself than to her. He felt
Lizzie give a start at his words, then begin making little jerking
movements. He closed his arms around her, trying to soothe her
sobs, then realised with a jolt that they were not sobs at all.
‘What are you laughing about?’ he asked, somewhat indignant at her
response to his attempts at comforting.