More than one outlaw from the white country outside took refuge in the Taranaki bush even in those _post-bellum_ days. One of these was Hiroki, the Maori who killed McLean. Hiroki ("The Lean One") had quarrelled with a survey-party who had camped on his land away out near the coast in the year 1878; the cause of the trouble, as he said, was the killing of his pigs by McLean, who was the surveyor's cook. Hiroki remonstrated with the _pakehas_, but they jeered at him; and when his last pig had disappeared he sat down and wept, then loaded his gun, went to the survey camp, and shot McLean dead. Wherefore he was a hunted man, with a price on his head. One day, as the _pakeha_-Maori (Kimble Bent) and his Maori companions were sitting smoking in their lonely little bush-village at Rukumoana, far up the Patea River, they heard a loud hail across the river. They looked at each other in astonishment and a little alarm, for they imagined that no one knew their hiding-place. Bent went to his hut, and loading a revolver, put it in his belt, then walked over to the river-bank. On the other side of the stream there were six natives standing. They called to Bent to bring a canoe over and ferry them across. Bent, always on the _qui vive_ for danger, was dubious about the wisdom of trusting himself alone with a party of strangers, who, for all he knew, might be after his head, for he was still an outlaw. But he dropped into his canoe, and with a few strong strokes sent the dug-out across the river. He knelt in his canoe, holding her nose into the bank, and interrogated the strange Maoris. The leader was a tall young half-caste. They were all armed with revolvers, and one or two had tomahawks stuck in their belts. "Where do you come from, and what do you want here?" asked the white man. "We have come seeking a man who has committed a crime," replied the half-caste, speaking, as Bent had done, in Maori. Bent shoved the canoe a stroke off from the bank and said determinedly, with a hand on his revolver: "If you have come to capture me I will not be taken; I will spill the blood of the first man who attempts it. I will kill my enemy first and then kill myself." ("_Ka maringi i ahau te toto a te tangata tuatahi. Ka mate taku hoariri nei, maku e whakamate toku tinana._") "It's all right, friend, we don't want you," said the half-caste; "we are looking for a Maori called Hiroki, who has murdered a surveyor's cook, named McLean, out yonder on the plains. We have traced him up here, and we want to know where he is, because there is a price on his head, and we are Government Maoris." "Come along, then; I'll take you across," said Bent. The strangers stepped into the canoe, and the white man paddled them over the Patea; then took them up to the village and into Hakopa's house. To the old chief and his Maori companions the half-caste explained the mission that had brought his party to lonely Rukumoana.