I mentioned in the last chapter that our paucity of men allowed the Hau Haus the opportunity of making things warm for us, and they lost no time in taking advantage of it; for one day they had the cheek to ambuscade, within half-a-mile of the fort, a dray loaded with rations. Now there was a standing order that a ration dray should be escorted by twelve troopers, but as the unfortunate O.C. of the post from whence the dray started had only twelve men for all duties he could only send three, and the Hau Haus thought this far too good a chance to be lost. The dray was drawn by two horses driven tandem fashion, and when it had reached within half-a-mile of Waihi, and within view of the camp, a party of natives lurking in the scrub fired a volley at the escort and charged with their tomahawks. One trooper, named Haggarty, went down, horse and man, but the driver managed to unhook his lead horse, jumped on its back and with the remaining two troopers won through to the fort, from whence a party of Rangers had already sallied. These soon reached the spot, where they found the empty dray and the remains of the poor chap chopped to pieces, but the rations and the shaft-horse taken away. Now this vexed the Colonel, and more than irritated the rest of us, as rations were very scarce indeed, and we were quite pleased when the O.C. determined to return them a Roland for their Oliver; so next day another dray, apparently heavily loaded, with an absurdly small escort, was despatched from the fort. Some hours, however, previous to its departure, a party of Rangers and friendly natives had been despatched to do a bit of ambuscading on our behalf, and proved themselves worthy of the trust placed in them; for when the Hau Haus, having spotted the sham escort, came down from the bush to gobble it up they fell into the trap so skilfully planted by the Rangers, who knocked the immortal stuffin’ out of them, sending them back to the bush hungry and howling, having on this occasion received toko instead of tucker. This lesson, though a severe one, the O.C. did not think quite adequate, so he determined to strike another blow to teach them better manners for the future, and to leave his men’s rations alone. He therefore with the greatest secrecy called in men from the other posts, which was a very dangerous thing to do, as it left them for the time quite defenceless, but he had no other course to pursue, and Fortune favours the bold player. Still, after scraping every man together, he could muster only one hundred and thirteen men of all ranks, and it was a very, very risky game he intended to play, and one he would never have attempted had he not had the greatest confidence in his officers and men.