The Moa Cave (2 page)

Tyler woke several times during the night. At first his sleeping bag wasn’t warm enough and he had to put on some clothes. Then Hans’ snoring woke him a couple of times around midnight.

Later, he woke to another sound, this time from outside. He leaned over and peeked through the window at a scene bright with moonlight. A vehicle was moving slowly along the road without lights. He could see enough to identify a ute with a roll bar and high mounted lamps. Tyler sensed it was the one that had driven them off the road. He pressed the light to his watch—3 a.m. Whatever they’d been up to, it wouldn’t be anything good: normal people didn’t drive along country roads with their lights off in the middle of the night. It could be worth having a look in the morning. He set his alarm for 6.30 thinking it would be light by then.

It wasn’t. A look out the window showed less light than during the night. The moon had set and there was no sign of the sun rising. ‘I suppose it’s a lot later down here,’ he mumbled climbing down from the bunk. It didn’t matter; he had a torch that he’d bought at the airport. The label said it had super-bright LEDs that made batteries last for ever. This was a good chance to try it out.

The community room was empty and dark. He tried a
switch without success. A few coals glowed red through the ashes in the hearth. He poked about until there was enough to warm his hands. After a while he put a couple of logs on top and went to the door.

The cold air hit like a blizzard. He pulled back inside and returned to the dorm for more clothes. When he next stepped out he was covered in multiple layers from top to toe, with holes only for his nose and eyes. Already he was thanking his mum for the new clothes.

He headed for the road thinking it would be the quickest way to the beach. The gravel road felt like rock and he could feel his feet sliding with each step. At one place there was a small pond. Its surface looked solid enough to walk on, though he wasn’t prepared to try.

Further along cattle were on the road. In the torchlight they looked like monsters with their steaming nostrils and shining eyes. Ice crystals along their backs added to the ghostly effect. He crept past them on the other side of the road.

Later, there were loose wires where the fence had been cut and some vehicle tracks in the frosty grass. This would be where the ute had been. He’d explore it later in daylight.

The road ended in a bumpy track that led onto the beach. The tide was well out, yet there were signs that the roaring sea had recently swept up into the flax and marram. In places roots of plants were exposed at small cliffs cut into the sand. A couple of flax bushes had been undermined and carried towards the sea.

The wide expanse of brown sand had been swept clean by the tide. Tyler looked at the footprints he left behind and thought of Robinson Crusoe marooned on his desert island. While this was no tropical paradise, it was easy to think he was the first to walk upon it.

To his right the beach curved to a low hill that could even
be an island at high tide. Closer, to his left, the beach ended in towering vertical cliffs of rock. This was the direction he chose, attracted by the thought of finding fossils.

Along the shore was a series of notices. There was a life-sized picture of a yellow-eyed penguin standing about three-quarters of a metre tall. Alongside was printed: ‘WOOLSHED BAY PENGUIN RESERVE, KEEP OUT, NO DOGS’. Next to it was a map of the protected area. Tyler saw webbed footprints leading to the sea. The birds had already left for their day’s fishing. No doubt others were still in the flax bushes, sitting on eggs.

A stream flowed to the sea at the end of the beach. Though there was not much water now, there were signs that it had once been a raging torrent carving deep channels into the sand. He crossed it close to the sea where it was wide and shallow. The rocks on the other side were layered, hinting at their origins in the sea many millions of years before. Since then the layers had been bent and lifted until now they were almost vertical. In some places the sea had cut into softer layers, leaving cave-like gaps and overhangs. Unfortunately the sea had also coated everything with black and it was difficult to see if there were fossils or not. He moved into a tiny cove with a small beach and stunted flax bushes. A layer of rock close to the ground looked hopeful. He picked up a small stone and lay down on the dry flax. After chipping at the surface for a while a dull-grey, smooth shape fell out. Excitedly he picked it up and examined it with his magnifier.

‘Yessss,’ he hissed. ‘A perfect brachiopod.’ He thumped the ground with joy. He had never found one quite so perfect. This made the whole trip worthwhile. It was the find of his life, and maybe there were more. However, even though he chipped at many different spots, there were no others.

Leaving the cove, he moved back around the cliff face
looking for another suitable spot. Then a movement in the stream caught his eye. He turned to see a penguin waddling towards the sea. It was much smaller than the one pictured on the sign, reaching no higher than his knee—it was a little blue penguin. He watched it cross the sand into the sea and disappear in the foam. It was scary imagining such a small creature swimming in that boiling surf. Yet he realised the penguin had probably done it without problems thousands of times before.

He walked along the edge of the stream to the spot where he’d first seen the bird. There were penguin prints heading from the rocks. He followed them around a rocky outcrop into a place sheltered from the sea and wind. Then they disappeared.

It took a while to work out that the penguin had jumped down from a rock. He clambered up. ‘Oh yuk!’ he yelled looking at a white mess all over his hand. He’d found the place where the bird emptied its bowels each morning.

Behind the rock was a small space with prints leading from a black opening in the bottom of the cliff. The hole was scarcely big enough to take his body but he was determined to look inside. He had to slither forward on his belly with the torch in his mouth. About a metre from the opening the passage widened and he could crawl. A moment later he found himself inside a large, black cave.

There was now enough room to stand. His feet were in soft sand that looked quite different to the sand on the beach. He touched the roof, finding it cold and dry. The air seemed reasonably fresh, though there was a strange smell—one of oil and fish. Then realising what it was, he swung his torch around looking for the source.

He found it tucked away in a rocky corner: the mate of the penguin that had gone fishing. She was lying belly down
on a nest formed out of bits of plants. There was no fear in the eyes that looked back at him in the torchlight. She had a contented look, as if there was nothing better in life than sitting in a pitch-black cave incubating eggs while your partner went fishing.

Tyler was enchanted by his discovery. He felt like cuddling her. Straight away he decided she would be his secret. He would not tell the others. She was to be his and his alone.

It was nearly eight o’clock when he left the cave. The hill at the other end of the beach was now orange with sunlight. He walked upstream looking for more caves. There were signs of flooding with rubbish dumped in piles against trees. In one place the roots of a tree had been washed out of the bank causing the tree to fall over the stream. He used it to cross to the other side.

He headed cross-country through the flax knowing that sooner or later he would meet the road. The morning seemed to be colder than before, if that was possible. He wondered if it just felt that way because the cave had been warmer. It would probably be a constant temperature because of all the rock…

His thoughts were broken by a sickly smell of warm blood drifting on the cold air. There was something either dead or injured nearby.

It did not take long to find. He rounded a flax bush to stumble into the carcass of a bullock. Its throat had been cut leaving the head lying in a large pool of congealed blood. There was no mistaking why it had been killed. Large parts of the hindquarters had been hacked off with a knife—the steaks along the backbone had also gone. Wisps of vapour
rose from the middle of the largest cut. It was a grisly scene that matched the images of beasts he had formed earlier in the dark.

Looking around he found the tracks of a vehicle in the sand. These would be from the ute in the middle of the night. He’d been right to think it had been up to no good.

Bill Withers was the only one about when Tyler got back to the woolshed. He was busy stacking wood beside the fire.

‘Hello, Tyler. I thought you’d be the one that was out and about. Thanks for stoking the fire. It was nice and warm when I came in.’

‘Is anybody else up?’

‘Molly’s over home getting organised for the day. But this time of year our guests can be real late risers. I was surprised to find you up.’

‘I went walking down to the beach. Somebody’s killed one of the beasts and chopped it up.’

‘Aaah! Not again. Where’s this? Tell me about it.’

Tyler told of the ute during the night, the cattle on the track and the discovery of the carcass.

‘Okay, I’d better do something about it. You can help if you want.’

Bill’s idea of doing something about it was to get the tractor with a front-end loader and head down the road with Tyler standing beside the seat. ‘Will you tell the police?’ he yelled above the noise of the exhaust.

‘Yeah, I’ll mention it to Jonno. But I don’t expect him to come out here. We only have two policemen and Snow’s on leave at the moment. The idea is to keep our eyes open for that ute and see if we can catch the number plate.’

‘There are tyre tracks in the sand. We could take a cast of them.’

Bill laughed. ‘Yeah we could, but it’s hardly a murder inquiry. Stock stealing is a fact of life in the country nowadays. They come down out of the city and get enough meat to last two or three months. Some of them probably think there’s nothing wrong with it. Yet that beast’s worth more than a thousand dollars to me. It just adds to the hardship of farming around here.’

Tyler’s legs were sore by the time they had bumped their way across the paddock to the scene of the slaughter. Bill walked around the scene looking at what was left.

‘Well at least they didn’t take everything. Only the best cuts. But we’ll get something for the freezer and plenty for the dogs.’ He moved to the head and lifted it by the ears. ‘See here? They shot it before cutting its throat.’

Tyler felt slightly scared at the thought of guns being involved. ‘Are you going to take it back?’

‘Yeah, but we’ll bury the guts here first. Otherwise it’ll be too heavy to lift.’

Bill started the tractor and began scooping a hole in front of the animal. Five or six scoops later, he stopped. ‘There. That should be deep enough.’

Tyler moved forward to peer into the hole. ‘Have you buried something here before?’

‘No! Not in my time. Why?’

‘There’s some bones down there.’

The man smiled. ‘Are there now. Well hop down and bring them out.’

It was only one bone, broken in two by the digger. Tyler held the pieces together and placed them against his body. They reached from his hip to below his knee. ‘It’s a thigh bone,’ he proclaimed, climbing out of the hole.

‘Full marks so far,’ said Bill. ‘So what’s it from?’

‘Human?’

‘Nope. Something taller than that.’

Tyler looked at the bones. They were brown with age as if they had been in the ground for a long time, perhaps hundreds of years. ‘Moa?’ he suggested, not really believing he could be right.

‘Bang on! Give them here and I’ll show you something.’

Bill pointed to the broken surface. ‘See that structure like hokey pokey? That’s how I know they’re from a bird. All bird bones are like that. Their walls are full of air holes to keep the weight down, so that they can fly. Even though this bird never flew it had the bones of those that did.’

‘Do you find many around here?’

‘Yeah. You often find a scrap or two if you dig deep enough. It’s a shame that I broke this one. Otherwise it’s a good specimen.’

‘Can I keep it?’

The man shook his head. ‘I’d like to say yes but it’s against the law. The bone belongs to the Government and we have to tell them within twenty-eight days. To keep it you would have to become a registered collector and that’ll cost money.’

‘Can I look after it while I’m here?’

‘Yeah. There’s no harm in that. Just make sure you give it back to me before you leave.’

After spilling the guts into the hole, they loaded the animal onto the scoop and returned to the woolshed.

Alice and the girls were sitting at the table loaded with breakfast dishes. Tyler took off a couple of layers of clothes and joined them. He placed the moa bone on the table.

‘Is that your breakfast?’ asked Hine with a smile.

‘Ha! Ha! No, it’s not. Guess what it is.’

‘A bone?’ suggested Mandy in a dumb sort of voice.

‘I know what it is,’ said Alice. ‘It’s a moa bone.’

‘Is it?’ asked the other two together.

‘Yes,’ said Tyler, proud of his possession. ‘Bill dug it up when we were burying the guts of a bullock.’ He went on to tell them all the details of his gruesome discovery.

‘Sounds like you had an interesting morning,’ said Alice.

‘Yes!’ he replied softly. ‘I sure did.’

Then Molly arrived with his breakfast and suddenly he was hungry. Alice went to the phone in the corner and the two girls returned to the glossy magazines they were reading. Tyler moved the bone next to his plate so he could study it and eat at the same time. He couldn’t have asked for a better start to the holiday: a perfect brachiopod, the penguin cave, and the moa bone. Then he was struck by a thought. If moa had lived around this area, then maybe they had taken shelter in the cave. He would have to explore it in more detail. Some of the best moa finds had been in caves and most of them in the South Island; if not in his cave, then maybe in some other one. He would have to ask Bill. He could start exploring tonight when…

He looked up from his plate, aware that something was happening. The two girls were staring at him and giggling. ‘What’s the matter?’