ONE
Almost every weekday morning, Harry Childers rides his chestnut hack into town to pick up the bread, milk and newspaper.
Originally he was the butt of jokes, expected to answer to greetings like 'Cowboy Childers',' Tom Mix' and 'Harry the Hack Rider'. But townspeople gradually got used to this touch of eccentricity and if he didn't appear about the time the town clock chimed eight o'clock, the question sweeping through the awakening small business community is, "Where's Harry?"
Sam Groves, Mayor of Huntington, runs the store he calls a superette – meaning pint-sized supermarket – where Harry ties Rusty to a veranda post and then emerges carrying bread, milk and the newspaper to put in the saddle bags. He'd then goes back in to buy extras such as cheese, eggs and pasta if provisions are low.
Harry's wife Sue, a lawyer, stays and works in the city, Monday to Thursday, so does the bulk shopping at Sam's Superette, as the place is called, on Thursday night on her way home for a three-day weekend.
Harry has a 4XD wagon and a very fast German-made saloon in the sheds on the farm and a 4XD farm truck as well, but as a kid he'd been a fan of Westerns, so grew up wishing he could ride into town. So when he retired early, selling his mortgaging broking business for a fortune, he bought a farm and added six horses to the mixed livestock it grazes.
As it happens, Mayor Groves' hobby is carving.
In a fit of generosity he carved and erected a very ornate hitching rail for Harry – placing it right against his store. That caused disquiet because it meant that Rusty stood on the footpath when tethered, but no-one was willing to challenge the decision of the notoriously pugnacious mayor.
The dedication of the hitching rail was performed by the Mayor's brother-in-law, a clergyman, who hails from a small town in Wyoming. That quaint event was captured by a professional photographer and pictures were distributed to the news media.
In the way of quirkly news reporting, a copy of that photograph was published in a newspaper in Wyoming where it attracted the attention of a young woman, Lorelei Drinkwater. Lorelei cut out the picture and stuck it on her fridge; she was faintly interested because firstly, she rode horses and secondly, she was going to the South Island of New Zealand in five month's time with the intention of crossing the Southern Alps, on horseback if she could.
Harry came out of the superette twenty two weeks later and this cycle of events was complete because there, standing stroking Rusty's nose was a very tall woman with long blonde hair and a bit of a horsy face.
"Hullo, Harry," she smiled. "I'm Lorelei."
Harry looked at her blankly. He didn't know anyone with an American accent with a crap name like Lorelei. This had to be a set-up – there would be a hidden camera and after he made a fool of himself out would jump some little runt and cry, "Gottya Harry – You're on TV's 'Concealed Camera!"
Copying Harry, Lorelei looked about nervously asking, "You expecting trouble?"
"Huh?"
"Horse thieves or something?"
"No, a concealed camera."
"Oh, sorry Harry. I don't mean to get you into trouble. Is you wife trying to get the dirty on you so she can get a divorce?"
"Huh?"
"Your wife's got a detective tailing you with a camera, gathering evidence."
Harry looked puzzled.
"Steady down, Lauren. It's all right, but I think you'd better leave, you're making me nervous."
"I'm Lorelei, not Lauren!"
"Oh flip, sorry Lorelei – look, come across the road and I'll buy you a cup of coffee. We seem to have got our wires crossed."
"What wires? I don't have any wires."
"Lorelei – just come for coffee, huh?"
Two weeks later Lorelei returned to stay the night with the Childers and on the next morning she on Ranger and Harry on Rusty set off, Harry followed by Big Bum acting as pack horse.
This arrangement had occurred because Lorelei had found the commercial horse trek firms flatly refused to escort her through the alps at any price, so she pulled out the newspaper cutting of Harry with his cheerful face and decided to proposition him, saying, "Like to go on a horse riding adventure with me, Harry, a girl who comes from the Old West?"
It was later summer so the weather was expected to be good and they would be out of the mountainous country before the snows came.
Their plant was to ride up to Methven then cross the Rakaia River in the vicinity of Windwhistle and turn inland following a route that would take them through the Porters Pass area to the Cragieburn Range and then, if the weather was unsettled they might just take the main road through the Southern Alps via Arthur's Pass instead of through the Cragieburn Forest Park.
Their destination was the seaside town of Greymouth, on the West Coast where Lorelei had arranged for them and the horses to be returned to Harry's farm in a horse float.
Sue's last words to Harry were memorable. She was still shocked that her husband was going 'on this mad-cap boy's own adventure' with a woman half his age.
"Harry, if you return with any sexually transmitted diseases I'm divorcing you."
"My intention is to journey in total abstinence – my purpose in going is to enjoy the scenery and the adventure," Harry replied stiffly.
"I can get a STD any night I wish down at the club, but you don't seem worried about that."
"For goodness sake, Harry, grow up. Just look at Laurel's figure – it's gorgeous."
"She's America, it will be all tweaks and tucks and inserted reshaping materials that cause cancer. And her name is Lorelei."
"No STD's, Harry. That's an ultimatium."
Harry thought Sue has a cheek going on like that. A friendly security man had anonymously posted him a tape that had been recorded during a day time test of the after hours security system of the law firm where she worked. It showed Abe, one of the partners, fucking a woman face down on his desk, and each time he lunged forward the woman's tongue would pop from her mouth; the camera showed clearly the face of that woman was Sue, revealing to Harry the previously unknown promiscuous ways of his wife.
