CHAPTER II

No. 99,109, R/M Carr

"You can't," said Dick. "For one thing, you are tied to your job; for another, you are not old enough."

"I'll have a jolly good shot at it anyhow," declared Malcolm resolutely. "Plenty of chaps have gone to the front at sixteen or seventeen. Ted Mostyn, for example; he's only eighteen, and he's back with two buckshees (wounds) already."

"_Kia ora_, then, old chap," exclaimed Selwyn. "I hope you'll pull it off."

Both lads set to work to fit the new inner tube and replace juggernaut's front off-side wheel. This task completed, Malcolm washed the dirt and grease from his hands, saddled his horse, and set off for the office of Mr. Hughes, the Head of the Wairakato Survey.

"Morning, Malcolm!" was that worthy's genial greeting. "Where's Selwyn? Coming along, is he? That's good. I wanted to see you about that section of pipe-line that has been giving trouble. Did you bring your rough book?"

Not until the matter of the survey had been gone thoroughly into did young Carr tackle his principal.

"I want to know," he began, straight to the point, "I if you could release me at noon."

"Certainly!" was the ready response. "The work is well in hand, and I believe you haven't had leave for some months."

"For the duration of the war, I mean," continued Malcolm.

"For the duration of the what?" exclaimed the astonished Hughes. "Dash it all, what's the war to do with you? They haven't put you in the ballot by mistake?"

"No," replied the lad. "It's like this. But perhaps I'd better show you the governor's letter."

Mr. Hughes read the proffered document.

"I see," he said gravely. "And you wish to avenge your brother?"

"Not avenge--it's duty," corrected Malcolm. "I can't exactly explain---- Now Peter's gone----"

"You have no positive information on that point, Malcolm."

"Wounded and missing--that means that there is no longer a member of our family in the firing-line. I'm seventeen, I'm a sergeant in the cadet corps, physically fit, and all that sort of thing. And I don't suppose they'll be too particular as to my age if I forget to say that I was born somewhere about the year 1900."

The Boss considered for some moments.

"I won't stand in your way, my boy," he said kindly. "After all, the actual work here won't start until after the war. The preliminary surveys can still go on. All right, Malcolm! jolly good luck and all that sort of thing, you know. Come and lunch with me before you start."

The morning passed ever so slowly. Contrary to his usual manner, Malcolm found his thoughts wandering from his work. The desire to be up and doing, to push on with his share in the great adventure, gripped his mind to the exclusion of all other topics. In the ranks of the Dominion lads there was one of many gaps waiting specially for him to fill, and he meant to fill it worthily.

On his way back to the hut, after having lunched with Mr. Hughes, Malcolm encountered a sturdy Maori.

"Hallo, Te Paheka!" he exclaimed. "You're just the man I want to see. You want another motor-car? All right, come with me to Christchurch, and you can have my blessed car. That's a bargain."

Te Paheka was a typical specimen of a twentieth-century Maori. He was a tall, heavily-built, muscular man of about forty-five years of age, and lived at a _whare_ about three miles from the camp. In his youth he had been given a thoroughly sound college education, and had gone to England in order to graduate. As a scholar he shone; as a business man he was a failure, owing to the fatal and all too common trait amongst Maoris of the educated class of pleasure in the spending of money, and, oddly enough, to an inherent tendency to relapse, if only temporarily, to an aboriginal existence.

Te Paheka owned a considerable amount of land. Frequently he sold tracts of ground to settlers, displaying much shrewdness in the various transactions. He never went back on his word. To those who dealt fairly and squarely with him he was a stanch friend, but it was his boast that no white man would have the opportunity of letting him down a second time.

With the proceeds of the sales Te Paheka would come into the nearest large town, and have a right royal time while funds lasted. Usually his weakness in that direction was a motor-car. He had been known to go to the largest dealers in Christ-church and purchase the swiftest car procurable, drive it at breakneck speed until he collided with something, and then sell the remains and retire to his _pah_ until he found an opportunity for another exuberance of pecuniary extravagance. But of late Te Paheka had fallen on hard times. The war had hit him badly. With the heavy drain upon New Zealand's man power and the sudden and marked diminution in the stream of immigrants, the opportunities to sell land vanished, and with them the prospects of buying another motor-car.

Malcolm knew this. He also had found the Maori ready to do him a good turn. On one occasion Te Paheka had extricated the lad from a dangerous position during a landslide on the Wairakato Ridge; and now the chance had arrived to repay the courteous native by making him a present of the ancient but still active Juggernaut.

"Would I not?" was Te Paheka's reply to the lad's offer. "Yes, I'll take great care of her for your sake, Mr. Malcolm. What can I knock out of her--a good fifty?"

"Hardly," replied Malcolm, laughing. The idea of juggernaut ambling along at nearly a modest mile a minute was too funny. "Come along. I am starting for home at three o'clock."

"I suppose you'll let me drive?" enquired Te Paheka.

Mental visions of seeing juggernaut toppling over the edge of Horseshoe Bend, and crashing upon the rock four or five hundred feet below, prompted Malcolm to a discreet reply.

"It's my last chance of driving a car for a very long time, Te Paheka," he said diplomatically. "You'll be able to do what you like with her after I get home."

"You lucky bounder!" was Dick Selwyn's greeting when the chums met at the hut. "The Boss is a decent sort. He might very well have put the tin hat on your suggestion. Shall I lend a hand with your gear?"

"Packed already," announced Malcolm. "All except my .303 rifle and the greenheart rod. Thought they might come in useful for you, and I don't suppose I'll need them in a hurry."

With hardly anyone to see him off, excepting a couple of Maori lads who were employed as messengers, Malcolm, accompanied by Te Paheka, set off on the momentous journey that was to end--where? Perhaps in France, perhaps on the high seas. He found himself counting the chances of getting back to New Zealand. Would it be as a wounded, perhaps crippled man, or as a hale and hearty veteran after that still remote day when peace is to be declared, and German militarism crushed once and for all time?

Without incident the lad brought the car to a standstill in the market-place of Christchurch. Te Paheka, torn between the desire to run away with his new gift and to wish his white friend farewell and _kia ora_ in a manner worthy of a dignified and old-standing Maori gentleman, looked like prolonging the leave-taking ceremony indefinitely, until he leave-taking happened to see the tail-end of a Napier racing car disappearing round the corner.

"There's Tom Kaiwarawara with his new motor, Malcolm!" he exclaimed, making a dash for juggernaut's steering-wheel. "Golly, I'll catch him up or bust. _Kia ora_, Malcolm."

And the last the lad saw of juggernaut was the car cutting round a sharp corner at a good twenty-five miles an hour, whilst pedestrians scattered right and left to avoid being run down.

"I'll see Te Paheka's name in the papers before a week's up," mused juggernaut's late owner. "Either in the police-court intelligence or in the inquest reports."

"I am not at all surprised at your decision, Malcolm," said his father, when the lad had reported the progress of his quick yet carefully considered project. "I can see that you are resolved, and on that account I won't stand in your way. After all's said and done, you are likely to make a far more efficient soldier than some men I know who have had to go. And the old adage 'a volunteer is worth two pressed men' still holds good. Unless a man has his heart in his work he's not likely to shine at his job."

Two hours later Malcolm Carr duly enlisted, and for many a day his official designation was to be No. 99,109, Rifleman Carr, N.Z. Rifle Brigade.