Battle Cry - Leon Uris [104]
She smiled. “It sounds nice, Andy.”
“Would you? I mean, really?”
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I’ve felt awfully homesick lately. Haven’t been home in over a year. My folks have a farm outside Masterton.”
“Honest? You a farm girl?”
“I suppose so, at heart. I left when Don died…just couldn’t seem to get adjusted. Wanted to be off by myself, you know. And when we heard about my brother Timmy…well, I just didn’t feel like ever returning…. Trouble is, Andy, there isn’t much of any place to run to in New Zealand.”
“There ain’t much place in the world to run to from something like that, Pat.”
“I’d like to. Yes, it would be nice, Andy. I do want to see them and maybe it would help to have a little support from you. I wonder if Tony and Ariki are still fit?”
“Who are they?”
“The horses—Timmy’s and mine. Ariki—that’s a Maori name, you know. Papa used to take us to the flickers in Masterton twice a month when we were kiddies. Tom Mix, the American cowboy, was my brother’s hero. He named his horse Tony. But goodness, Andy, that won’t be much of a leave for you, with my folks and the whole Rogers clan. They’re all over the hills down there.”
He lifted her gently to the ground.
“No, honest, Pat, it sounds wonderful…almost like…”
“Like what?”
“Nothing.”
“Penny for your thoughts?”
“I was going to say—almost like going home.”
Andy fidgeted as the train pulled into Masterton. For the fiftieth time he squared himself and ground out a cigarette on the deck, where a pack had already met its end. He stepped from the car and looked nervously down the long shed over the depot’s concrete platform. He broke into a grin as Pat raced toward him. She was dressed in heavy denim slacks, riding boots and a coarse, sloppy man’s sweater, probably her father’s. Her hair was up in pigtails. She looked fresh and wonderful.
“I look a fright,” she said. “Didn’t have time to change. Come on, I’ve been holding up the mail coach. Mr. Adams is in a lather.” She grabbed his hand and rushed through the narrow station to an oversized station wagon parked against the curb. The lettering across the top, along the luggage rack, read: ROYAL MAIL. Mr. Adams, the aged purveyor of the King’s mails, looked at his saucer-sized pocket watch in disgust. He turned his head and pointed to the official badge on his cap.
“We’re exactly fourteen minutes and twenty-two seconds late, Miss Rogers. The bloomin’ valley will be up in arms.”
“Pay no attention to him, Andy. Mister Adams has been pulling out that watch and grumbling since I was four years old.”
Andy flung his haversack on the luggage rack and lashed it down between two large cases.
“Let’s be off. My name’s Adams, head of the postal service…”
“Hookans, Andy Hookans.” They shook hands.
“Humpf.”
Pat and Andy climbed over the quantity of crates and grocery sacks stacked all over the car. Mr. Adams quickly checked his lists to make sure he had completed his shopping for the farmers’ wives of the valley. His two passengers found an empty space in the rear, near two chicken coops.
“I thought this was a mail wagon?”
“Well, what the deuce does it look like?” she ribbed.
Mr. Adams seated himself behind the wheel and made much to-do over the instruments on the dashboard, checking as though he were about to pilot a Constellation through a perilous sky.
“You should have seen him when he still had the old crank-up Ford.”
With a final check of the watch and a sigh of dismay, the Royal Mail coach moved through the streets of Masterton. The town resembled, in many ways, an old Western main street. Shops along either side had built-out upper storeys held up by stout wooden poles, providing a sidewalk underneath. There were few motor vehicles in the streets. Shoppers paced in the quick straight New Zealand stride. There were bicycles all about, the most popular mode of transportation.
Once through the town, they sped along a well-constructed concrete highway into the countryside. There were ever-flowing, soft green hills and gentle knolls with clumps of picturesque trees, sunning themselves lazily in the warm