My friend and the villainous bar-tender, the latter with a broad grin on his ugly mug, had at once bailed up, and as there was no chance of help from my troopers, who by that time must have off-saddled and be attending to the horses at the stock-yard, some way off, I knew we were cornered and beaten.
"Captain," said the bounder, "I guess I've got you. Bail up."
"I've got you," he retorted, "and I'm on the shoot. Sling your money on the counter, and"--this to my friend--"sling that bag down too."
The squatter was standing with his hands above his head, so evidently could not do so, and the bushranger said to me: "Captain, sling that bag over here."
"Rot!" was my discourteous reply; so he turned to the blackguard behind the bar, who was probably in league with him, and said, "Joe, you do it." And the bag was promptly thrown to him.
Then he said to me, and I noticed he changed his voice, dropping the Yankee slang and idiom he had previously used, and speaking with a well-modulated and refined accent: "Captain, I don't want anything from you." (This was just as well, as I had nothing.) "But," he continued, "how long start will you give me?"
"So long." And with that he backed out, and in a moment I heard the beat of a horse's hoofs starting at a gallop. My friend was raving mad, and wanted me at once to alarm my troopers, but I said: "No; you'd got your gun with you just now, why did you not use it?" When five minutes had passed I gave the order to saddle up; but of course the man had got clear away. I never knew who he was, but a man shot shortly afterwards by one of my troopers was believed to be he, and most probably was.
It was in June 1869 that Te Kooti, chief of the rebel Hau Haus, caught a party of mounted volunteers on the hop, at a place called Opepe, on the high plateau near Lake Taupo. The men, worn out by a long march, and soaked through by the cold winter rain and sleet, had taken shelter on some old whares (huts) and were trying to dry themselves when a few Maoris came up, and, declaring themselves to be friendlies, joined them at their fires.
More and more of them gradually arrived, until the volunteers were outnumbered, and then, on a signal being given, the natives sprang on their unsuspecting victims, and the tomahawk did the rest. The victors did not stay long at the blood-stained spot. They knew that Colonel McDonnell, Colonel St John and, worse than anyone, Major Ropata Te Wahawaha, with his friendly Ngatiporou, were not far away, and that it behoved them to hump themselves and travel before the avengers could reach them. Some of the volunteers had escaped, and two of them joined up with Colonel St John's column, with which I was serving, the same evening as the massacre took place.
