by Sarah Lark
“Do you want to marry me now?” Fleurette finally asked drowsily. “I mean…I can’t really live here with the two of you unless we’re married.”
Ruben nodded seriously. “True, that wouldn’t work. But the money…Fleur, I have to be honest. Up until now, I haven’t saved anything. The little that I earned in the Queenstown goldfields went toward our 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 really their 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
It 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, but…”
Fleur shook her head. The night before, she had not only experienced entirely new pleasures in the realm of love, but had also considered the situation from the ground up. There was no way she was going to put her father’s money into the hopeless enterprise of a mine. First, however, she had to make that clear to Ruben—as diplomatically as possible.
“Listen up, boys, there’s no point in going through with the mine,” she began carefully. “You said it yourselves: the material conditions are insufficient. Do you think that’s going to change now that there’s a little more money?”
Stuart sniffed. “Not a chance. That Ethan fellow is going to keep selling us that useless junk.”
Fleur nodded. “So let’s strike while the iron is hot. You’re a smith. Can you tell good tools from bad tools? Not just when you’re working with them, but when you’re buying them?”
Stuart nodded. “That’s what I mean to say! If I had my choice—”
“Good,” Fleur interrupted. “So in Queenstown we’ll rent a wagon or just buy one outright. We can hitch up the cobs; together they’ll be able to pull a lot. And then we’ll head to…what is the next big town? Dunedin? Then we’ll go to Dunedin. And there we’ll buy tools and other things the prospectors need here.”
Ruben nodded in amazement. “Great idea. The mine won’t be going anywhere. But we won’t need a wagon straightaway, Fleur. We can load up the mule.”
Fleurette shook her head. “We’re going to buy the biggest wagon the cobs can pull and load it down with as much stuff as we possibly can. We’ll haul the whole lot back to Queenstown and sell it to the miners. If it’s true that they’re all unhappy with Ethan’s store, we should be able to make a tidy profit.”
That afternoon, Queenstown’s justice of the peace married Fleurette McKenzie and Ruben O’Keefe, formerly Kays, who reverted to using his real name. Fleurette wore her cream-colored dress, which was not crumpled even after her journey. Mary and Laurie had insisted on ironing it before the wedding. The two of them also eagerly decorated Fleur’s hair with flowers and hung wreaths on Niniane’s and Minette’s bridles for the ride to the pub, where the wedding took place due to the lack of a church or other gathering place. Stuart was Ruben’s witness while Daphne answered for Fleurette. Mary and Laurie were so emotional they could not stop weeping.
Ethan handed Ruben all his letters from the past year as a wedding present. Ron walked around, his chest swollen with pride, because Fleurette had told everyone the happy reunion with her husband only took place thanks to his outstanding memory for horses. Finally, Fleurette opened up her purse and invited all of Queenstown to celebrate her wedding—not entirely without ulterior motives, as it offered not only an opportunity to get to know the locals but also to sound them out. No, no one had ever found gold in the area around Ruben’s claim, confirmed the barber, who had lived there since the founding of the town and who had also originally come as a prospector.
“But there’s not much to be earned here anyway, Mrs. O’Keefe,” he explained. “Too many people, too little gold. Sure, every once in a while someone finds a giant nugget. But then he wastes most of the money straightaway. And how much is it even worth? Two, three hundred dollars maybe, for the really lucky devils. That’s not even enough for a farm and a few animals. Not to mention that the fellows all go crazy then and put all the money into more claims, more sluice boxes, a
nd more Maori helpers. It’s all gone soon enough, but there’s no new money coming in. As a barber and surgeon, however…there are thousands of men in the area, and all of them need their hair cut. And everyone hits his leg with a pickax or gets in a fight or gets hurt somehow.”
Fleurette took a similar view. The questions she asked the prospectors, a dozen of whom had found their way to Daphne’s Hotel and were helping themselves to copious amounts of free whiskey, almost started a riot. The very mention of Ethan’s tool deliveries brought their tempers to a boil. By the end, Fleur was convinced she could not only become rich by founding the hardware store she had in mind but would also be saving a life: if someone didn’t do something soon, the men would end up lynching Ethan.
While Fleurette made her inquiries, Ruben spoke with the justice of the peace. The man was no lawyer, working instead as a coffin maker and undertaker.
“Someone has to do the job,” he replied, shrugging at Ruben’s question about his career choice. “And the boys thought I’d be interested in keeping them from killing each other. Since it saves me trouble in the end.”
Fleur observed the conversation with enthusiasm. If Ruben found an excuse to study law here, then he would not push to return to the claim when they returned from Dunedin.
Fleurette and Ruben spent their second wedding night in the comfortable double bed in room one at Daphne’s.
“We’ll call it the honeymoon suite in the future,” Daphne remarked.
“Doesn’t happen often that a woman loses her virginity here!” Ron chuckled.
Stuart, who had already helped himself to plenty of the whiskey, grinned at him conspiratorially.
“That already happened,” he revealed.
The friends set out for Dunedin around noon the next day. Ruben had acquired a wagon from his new friend—“Go ahead and take it, boy! I can take a few coffins to the cemetery with the pushcart!”—while Fleurette held a few more informative conversations—this time with the area’s few respectable women: the wives of the justice of the peace and the barber. By the time she left, she had a second shopping list for Dunedin.
When they returned two weeks later with a fully laden wagon, all that was missing was a place to open their business. Fleurette had not planned ahead with regard to that, having counted on continued good weather. Autumn in Queenstown, however, was rainy, and in the winter a great deal of snow fell. However, few had died in Queenstown recent months, so the justice of the peace let them use his coffin warehouse for their shop. He was the only one who did not ask for new tools, though he did have Ruben explain his legal texts to him, to which a few dollars in McKenzie’s fortune had gone.
The shop’s brisk sales brought the money back in quickly. The prospectors stormed Ruben and Stuart’s business; by the second day, all the tools were already sold out. The ladies required a little longer to make their selections—in part because the justice of the peace’s wife was initially hesitant to offer her salon as a changing room for every woman in the region.
“You could, of course, use the warehouse’s side room,” she said with a deprecatory look at Daphne and her girls, who were burning with anticipation to try on the clothes and lingerie that Fleur had bought in Dunedin. “Where Frank usually keeps the corpses.”
Daphne shrugged. “If it’s not being used, it doesn’t bother me. Well, and if it is—what do you bet none of these fellows ever had such a nice send-off?”
It was easy to convince Stuart and Ruben to make another trip to Dunedin, and by their second round of sales, Stuart was head over heels in love with the barber’s daughter and did not want to go back to the mountains at any price. Ruben took over the little shop’s bookkeeping and realized with amazement what Fleurette had known all along: every trip filled their coffers with considerably more money than a year in the goldfields would have done. It was also clear that he was much more suited to being a merchant than a prospector. By the time the last blisters and cuts on his hands had healed, after he had been wielding a pen instead of a shovel for six weeks, he was completely convinced of the merits of the business.
“We should build a shop,” he said finally. “A sort of warehouse. Then we could also expand our stock.”
Fleurette nodded. “Household items. The women desperately need proper pots and pans and nice dishes…now don’t wave it off, Ruben. The demand for those kinds of goods will grow over time since there will be more women. Queenstown is becoming a real town!”
Six months later, the O’Keefes celebrated the grand opening of the O’Kay Warehouse in Queenstown, Otago. The name had been Fleurette’s idea, and she was very proud of it. In addition to the new salesrooms, the budding enterprise had come into possession of two more wagons and six heavy cart horses. Fleurette could once more ride her cobs, and the community’s dead could once more be drawn to the cemetery respectably instead of being dropped off in the handcart. Stuart Peters had cemented trade deals with Dunedin, and with that retired from his position as chief purchaser. He wanted to get married and was tiring of the constant trips to the coast. Instead, with his portion of the profits he opened a blacksmith’s workshop, which proved to be a considerably more lucrative “gold mine” than any in the area. Fleurette and Ruben hired an old prospector to take his place as head of the haulage division. Leonard McDunn was easygoing, knew his way around horses, and knew how to treat people. Fleurette worried only about the deliveries for the ladies.
“I can’t seriously expect him to pick out my underwear,” she complained to Daphne, whom Fleurette had befriended, much to the horror of the now three respectable women in town. “He blushes when he just brings me the catalog. I’ll have to ride along at least every second or third trip.”
Daphne shrugged. “Just send the twins. They may not be the brightest—you can’t trust them to handle negotiating and the like—but they have good taste. I’ve always valued that. They know how to dress like a lady and what we need in the ‘hotel,’ naturally. Besides, it’ll give them a chance to get out a bit and earn their own money.”
Fleurette was skeptical at first but was quickly convinced. Mary and Laurie brought back an ideal combination of modest articles of clothing and wonderfully wicked little articles that sold like hotcakes, to Fleur’s surprise—and not only to the whores. Stuart’s blushing bride purchased a black corset, and a few miners thought they were sure to please their wives with some colorful lingerie. Although Fleur was not sure that it was her sort of thing, business was business. And discreet changing rooms—supplied with large mirrors instead of a depressing dais for coffins—were installed.
The work in the store still left Ruben plenty of time for studying law, which he still found enjoyable, even if he had given up his dream of becoming a lawyer for good. To his delighted surprise, he soon put his studies into practice: the justice of the peace came to him for counsel with increasing regularity and began to bring him along to trials as well. Ruben proved himself authoritative and just at these proceedings, and when the next election time came, the incumbent justice created a stir. Instead of putting himself up for reelection, he proposed Ruben as his successor.
“Look at it this way, people!” the old coffin maker explained in his speech. “There was always a conflict of interest with me: if I kept the people from killing each other, no one needed a coffin. When you look at it that way, my office ruined my business. It’s different for young O’Keefe, since whoever gets his head bashed in can’t buy any more tools. It’s in his own best interest to keep law and order. So vote for him and let me have a break!”
The citizens of Queenstown took his advice and elected Ruben as the new justice of the peace by an overwhelming majority.
Fleurette was happy for him, though she did not quite follow the former justice’s line of reasoning. “You could also bash someone’s head in with our tools,” she whispered to Daphne. “And I very much hope Ruben doesn’t prevent his customers too often from that laudable deed.”
The only drop of bitterness in
Fleurette and Ruben’s well of happiness in the growing gold-rush town was the lack of contact with their families. Both would have liked to write to their mothers but didn’t dare.
“I don’t want my father to know where I am,” Ruben made clear when Fleurette was getting ready to write her mother. “And it’s better that you keep it hidden from your grandfather as well. Who knows what will get into their heads otherwise? You were underage when we married. They could decide to make trouble for us. Besides, I’m afraid my father would take out his anger on my mother. It wouldn’t be the first time. I still try not to think about what happened after I left.”
“But we have to get word to them somehow,” Fleurette said. “You know what? I’ll write to Dorothy. Dorothy Candler. She can tell my mother.”
Ruben gripped his own head. “Are you crazy? If you write to Dorothy, Mrs. Candler will hear about it too. And then you might as well scream out the news in the marketplace in Haldon. If you have to write, write to Elizabeth Greenwood. I trust her to be more discreet.”
“But Uncle George and Elizabeth are in England,” Fleur objected.
Ruben shrugged. “And? They have to return home sometime. Our mothers will just have to be patient until then. And who knows, maybe your mother will have learned something from James McKenzie. I understand he’s in prison somewhere in Canterbury. It’s possible she’s gotten in contact with him.”
9
James McKenzie’s trial was held in Lyttelton. Initially, there was a fuss because John Sideblossom favored having the trial in Dunedin. If the trial were held there, he argued, they would have a better chance of catching those who had accepted the stolen goods as well, thus eradicating the whole criminal enterprise.
Lord Barrington, however, spoke up vehemently against that idea. In his opinion, John Sideblossom just wanted to drag his victim to Dunedin because he knew the judge there better and saw more hope of hanging the thief in the end.
