Friday in Summer

The road was not as well traveled as Burke’s Pass. It was hardly even a public road anymore. They had had to ask for directions to it from the Information Centre as they left Lake Tekapo. The road was unsealed and hardly wide enough for two cars to pass each other from the moment they left the main road to Fairlie. Janice in the front passenger seat looked eagerly ahead.

‘There it is.’

‘I see it.’ replied the driver, concentrating on controlling the unfamiliar car on an unfamiliar gravel road. It was hard to miss the monument at the side of the road. He pulled the car onto the grass in front of the stone monument. The three travelers climbed out of the car and stood looking at the lichen-covered plinth. Silently, they walked around it, stopping at each of the three sides to look at the words carved into the stone.

Hamish tried to read the Maori words: ‘I mau a James McKenzie Te Tangata Tahae …’

The Dodger at the next face squinted against the setting sun. ‘This must be Gaelic.’ he said. ‘I can’t read a word of it, but it’s got a familiar look. This’ll be his name: Seumas MacCoinneach. Who’s Iain Taobhmais? John Tubmouse? Why did he get top-billing?’
‘I think that’ll be John Sidebottom. He was the one who captured him. It says here in English ‘On this site, James McKenzie, Freebooter was captured by John Sidebottom with Maoris Taiko and Seventeen.’ Seventeen isn’t a very Maori name.’ said Janice, looking at the third side of the cairn.

Hamish commented absentmindedly, ‘That’d translate Tekau ma Whitu. Maybe he was somebody’s seventeenth child.’
Janice traced the letters with her fingers. She felt the roughness of the weathered stone against her finger tips. ‘At the bottom it says he was captured and then escaped on 4th March, 1855.’ Lifting her eyes she could see framing the cairn, a long flat valley opening out from brown hills either side. In the far distance, snow-tipped mountains rose above a plateau. The distances were different from the place she had been, but it felt the same. ‘It’d be the end of Summer then. How do Mossman and Rhodes come into the story?’

Hamish flinched, but answered, ‘Mossman was the accomplice, according to the legend. You can’t get away from Rhodeses around this area.’ He pointed towards the hiils they had yet to travel through. ‘George Rhodes owned the a farm out that way, towards Timaru. The sheep that MacKenzie stole were his. Sidebottom was his shepherd, head shepherd I suppose.’

Janice’s hand went to her neck where the necklace she had been given by a later Australian George Rhodes had lain. ‘How’d he get the stone then?’ Both boys were silent. Janice herself fell silent.

Without a word, one after another, they turned to look at the land named after a sheep stealer. After moments of silence, Janice spoke, ‘Do you think they’ve missed us back home.’

The boys laughed, then the three adventurers turned towards the car that would take them back to their changed lives.