THE ROLLING STONE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 23, 28 January 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE ROLLING STONE.

AN ALPINE ROADMAN.

lube of goi<d.

(By MONA TRACY.)

I never heard his full name, for every one called him Dick. He was a hefty individual, with an "Old Bill" moustache and great, hairy fists, that looked as though they would be exceedingly useful in a brawl. Beetling brows and a skin roughened by exposure made adequate setting for a pair of grey eyes—the keen eyes of a man who habitually gazes acrosi far distances. They twinkled as they surveyed my • efforts to split, with a tiny tomahawk, a piece of driftwood I had dragged campward from the river bed, in the Southern Alps. They twinkled, too,, as they travelled past me to rest on a couple of young women who approached us, booted and breeched, with alpenstocks in their hands and haversacks slung over their shoulders. This second twinkle, I surmised, was the amusement of the dweller in open spaces for the city folk, who play • ''j., at mountaineering. "That's a tough bit o' wood, Missis!" was his remark, as, the breeches having • passed, he returned to his survey of my despairing efforts with the tomahawk. ' "And the worst of it is that even when $v,you do get it cut, it won't burn." | ' Nursing a skinned finger, I inquired V fuchsia wood," he explained.! He eyed me pityingly. , / ' "Tell you what," he said Confidentially. I got'a. lot o' pine up at my hut. You send the Boss along, and he can have a ' barrow-load. There's chips there, too, if your fetch a sugar bag." The wood question being altogether a burning problem at three .thousand feet "" above sea-level, I thanked him much for < that. Which was how, the .acquaintance Laving progressed in the meantime, the Bob# and. I. found-ourselves invited to - • spend an hour or so; in Pick's hiit. We discovered him to be,the local roadman. Over an open fireplace hung a camp oven, in which was being gently braised a whol<t fore-quarter of lamb, i, from the .opposite pide of .the room a penetrating 'smell of cabbage appraised us of a tiny tange, On-which stood several pots./ -The chef d'oeuvre, however was' an apple' pie, its crust crisped to a delicious brownnesQ. Camp Catering. / ' t , \ \ * /*A fellow learns to look after himself," was Pick's response to my spouse's wistful; compliments. (The word wistful is /here appropriate, my own ideas of camp catering inclining to a preponder- / '•' ance of sausages and bacon). "Over on . the West Coast, now, Td be having ' venison or wild pig or maybe a pigeon pie. Ever eaten pigeon pie, Missis?" There was the popular wife of a popular Governor, we learned, who had; once descended from her touring ear to share a pigeon pie with Dick. "Stayed in the hot . two hours talking to me. She was a lady, all right—no frills about her," Dick, it seemed, was an old; West Coaster. "Born on the Ooast and bred oo ife Those* were'the days, Missis! Me and.; my brother? had a sluicing claim at .... JSumara. We did mighty yell out of it. too—hut the money went. Kumaira was a Kvely place in those days, I can tell you, what with the hotels and the dance ' ball girls, aU trifcked out in tinsel and Iriily skirts.' p i According to Dick, a day's work on the West < Coast goldfields was something more than a day's work. On the; big altucing claims the diggers toiled lilrg Roadmen. In working the big raccis there was always the danger of sudden and disagreeable death. Many a comW e ,of .Dick's was washed down by the ternflti force of the waiter, to end his life in the snarling Teremiakau Biver. 7 j 1 j own father wag once washed down •thousand yards-*ut. he was.one of the lucky _ ones. His head was bashed abont, though, where he'd hit the rocks on toe way down." . . own confession, Dick left xne coast for pastures new because of an "Tesfetible nrge to wandering. There J!?? j ew Ft rtß of New Zealand to which . > h»d not heen. He knew the ways of thf bndi and the birds; could tell of mounteinT lakes with yet untrodden abores, of rivers to whose 'sources few ' W- W ever penetrated; of lost val- _ y®,forgotten canyons. Once he w 'l/f we eka in a snow-bound aut, lugh on one of the Alpine passes, 1* to>®rade whoa 6 leg was broken, for l® e , ■ J too," remarked "For when I got funnel I'd been driving lower J UI M found it buried under a Hundred or so tons of snow." ' t "Oft to the Coast Again." : • - Je the lack of gold where he Zha't' u . the rain here, neither, SK3®f- f 1 ™ m y time - and that's a k£«,r,i hedecUred. "Seeing to-morrow's a hohday I think Til ,go over into Westlaw and back a couple of horses." ' ' returned to the Pass a week/later, 1 mpre, cheerful than ever. Got plenty of wood, Missis i'r he bel«2r aa rps e 8t m y camp doorway. load T J i OVer a- barrow«t»' * 89t plenty." . thi » job/' he continued. ® to do in his S t ™ e ; T off to the Coast again, fo' a / And. you better send them youngsters with a sugar bair for *iw •«*r* Ss - There '" >' W 1m) V 0 h ' S ""PPkater 11c MflnrtUkf wicker* m luly introduced. a™°t that me fnendU like this plact 1 ft JS&2* " H ***>+ Hulrd n an! " Ba 'd Dick fervently. "Wail ; .until you see it rain! Tell voi. dreams of I 2mL* Beein g fulfilled hii ureamsj>f a mighty reef of eold. the TT Godß P e ed I wishw ii&hT C f tho !J ght that t ll6 Governor' »we who atepped down from her tonrin Pigwn pteTS 1