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“I like your people. I get on with them. Always have. That’s a fact, isn’t it?”
    “You are intimate with some of my people.”
    “Yes. Well, I came up here to tell you something. Something about Questing.” Smith paused. The quiet of evening had impregnated the countryside. The air was clear and the smallest noises from below reached the hill-top with uncanny sharpness. Down in the native reserve a collection of small brown boys milled about, squabbling. Several elderly women with handkerchiefs tied over their heads sat round one of the cooking pools. The smell of steaming sweet potatoes was mingled with the fumes of sulphur. On the other side, the van crawled up to the main road sounding its horn. From inside the Claires’ house hollow bumping noises still continued. The sun was now behind Rangi’s Peak.
    “Questing’s got a great little game on,” said Smith. “He’s going round your younger lot talking about teams of
poi
girls and kids diving for pennies, and all the rest of it. He’s offering big money. He says he doesn’t see why the Arawas down at Rotorua should be the only tribe to profit by the tourist racket.”
    Rua got slowly to his feet. He turned away from the Springs side of the hill to the east and looked down into his own hamlet, now deep in shadow.
    “My people are well contented,” he said. “We are not Arawas. We go our own way.”
    “And another thing. He’s been talking about having curios for sale. He’s been nosing round. Asking about old times. Over at the Peak.” Smith’s voice slid into an uncertain key. He went on with an air of nervousness. “Someone’s told him about Rewi’s axe,” he said.
    Rua turned, and for the first time looked fully at his companion.
    “That’s not so good, is it?” said Smith.
    “My grandfather Rewi,” Rua said, “was a man of prestige. His axe was dedicated to the god Tane and was named after him, Toki-poutangata-o-Tane. It was sacred. Its burial place, also, is sacred and secret.”
    “Questing reckons it’s somewhere on the Peak. He reckons there’s a lot of stuff over on the Peak that might be exploited. He’s talking about half-day trips to see the places of interest, with one of your people to act as guide and tell the tale.”
    “The Peak is a native reserve.”
    “He reckons he could square that up all right.”
    “I am an old man,” said Rua affably, “but I am not yet dead. He will not find any guides among my people.”
    “Won’t he! You ask Eru Saul. He knows what Questing’s after.”
    “Eru is not a satisfactory youth. He is a bad
pakeha
Maori.”
    “Eru doesn’t like the way Questing plays up to young Huia. He reckons Questing is kidding her to find guides for him.”
    “He will not find guides,” Rua repeated.
    “Money talks, you know.”
    “So will the tapu of my grandfather’s
toki-poutangata
.”
    Smith looked curiously at the old man. “You really believe that, don’t you?” he said.
    “I am a
rangitira
. My father attended an ancient school of learning. He was a tohunga. I don’t believe, Mr. Smith,” said Rua with a chuckle. “I know.”
    “You’ll never get a white man to credit supernatural stories, Rua. Even your own younger lot don’t think much…”
    Rua interrupted him. The full magnificence of his voice sounded richly on the evening air. “Our people,” Rua said, “stand between two worlds. In a century we have had to swallow the progress of nineteen hundred years. Do you wonder that we suffer a little from evolutionary dyspepsia? We are loyal members of the great commonwealth: your enemies are our enemies. You speak of the young people. They are like voyagers whose canoes are in a great ocean between two countries. Sometimes they behave objectionably and are naughty children. Sometimes they are taught very bad tricks by their
pakeha
friends.” Rua looked full at Smith, who fidgeted. “There are
pakeha
laws to prevent my young men from making fools of themselves with whisky