Unknown by Unknown

from a tremendous distance. Katriona fought to throw off the heaviness of sleep.
    ‘Thought you wouldn’t like to arrive in the yard asleep on my shoulder. Might create the wrong impression.’
    The words stung her like an electric shock. She suddenly became aware of her position, and jerked herself upright. Down below her was a small lake, brilliantly blue, sparkling in the gold of the late March sunlight, fringed with green reeds and flax bushes ... incredibly beautiful.
    It disappeared from view as they wound their way up a steep hill, then suddenly reappeared. A jet boat sped across the surface of its almost indigo waters.
    ‘We swim there throughout the summer. Can you water-ski?’ Morgan had slowed down for her to have a closer view of the lake. ‘Horseshoe Lake. Quite a little beauty, isn’t it?’
    Katriona was enchanted by the fabulous jewel-like setting of the green-fringed lake.
    ‘That’s Evangeline over there.’
    She gasped as she gazed across the wide gully to the plateau beyond. Surely her father’s station must be the most beautiful place in the whole world. How long had she slept? She remembered, as they left that country town, the flat, sun-scorched land. Now she was gazing at Evangeline, high up in the mountain pass. Nestled in the tawny hills, set out attractively in a green oasis of pine and poplar plantations, were the brown-stained farm building and the white homestead and cottages, all green-roofed and drenched in glorious sunlight.
    She stared again at the lake, her eyes moving across the rough gully with gorse and broom up to the well set out homestead and buildings, beyond to the tawny tussock hills, and higher yet to the blue-purple-shadowed mountain peaks.
    ‘How do you like it?’ Morgan demanded. ‘Worth the trip?’
    Only then did Katriona become aware that he had stopped the truck to give her this perfect unrestricted view, and also became aware of the searching perceptive grey eyes watching alertly for her reaction.
    ‘Who could fail to be impressed? Fantastic. Have you lived here all your life?’
    ‘Not all of it... most of it.’
    ‘Then I think you’ve been very fortunate.’
    ‘You could have been here too.’ He started the truck and moved off down the sweeping curve of the hill towards the station. As they turned the corner near the foot of the hill she saw a huge river, jade green in the shadow of the towering bluffs, and a river of molten silver where the sun struck it.
    ‘Oh, how very beautiful! Does it belong to the station?’
    ‘That’s the Hope River. It’s a boundary between us and the next station ... Hope Valley station.’
    Around the next comer Morgan swung the truck off the main road and stopped by a mailbox, collected a parcel, then moved on up the road towards the homestead. He left a cloud of dust behind him as he gunned the truck across the flat stretch of gravel road, then swept up a sharp rise and round a small bluff and into a huge yard.
    Katriona thought it looked a bit like a village square with cars and farm trucks and machinery about, gas pumps and so many buildings she would never learn what they were for. Several young men were standing by a car, stripped to the waist, their well muscled bodies, deeply tanned, turned gold in the setting sun. They were drinking beer from bottles with obvious enjoyment.
    Morgan sketched them a casual salute. ‘That’s the shearers just finished a day’s crutching. They sure deserve their beer tonight.’
    He passed them and swung around in a wide curve to park in front of the homestead. ‘Come on.’ He lifted her cases out.
    Katriona slid from her seat and followed him to the gate, then stopped, half in admiration for the house and surroundings and half in sheer terror at the coming meeting. There was plenty of reason to stop and stare by the wrought iron gate. The house looked, from a commanding position, over the Hope River and station flats, down to the main Lewis Pass road. Graceful mature silver