Anyway the Chinaman's name was "mud" from that time on.
Frank could not talk much native and Lani's English education had been sadly neglected, but it would not be the first instance where love was made with the eyes and not the tongue.
The work in the woods, felling those mammoth koas and hauling them with cattle to the mill, was looked on more as play than work, but we were very tired at night just the same. The ieie, an almost impenetrable climbing vine, seemed to take delight in wrapping its rootlets around those koas, to the vexation of the woodsman, and it would sometimes take hours to get at the trunk of a tree. In chopping this ieie the axe would sometimes fly back to the peril of the chopper. Once Frank had the bad or good luck to get cut in the head with his axe and as he bled very freely we were much alarmed and took him down to the camp. Kamaka put a bandage of some native herbs about his head and he remained at home for two or three days. How far his courtship progressed during his convalescence we were never able to learn. Joe said he wished he himself could get his foot cut off or something that he might be invalided.
Sometime after this the boss told us we could all go down to Wailuku for a holiday and spend the Fourth of July, which was going to be grandly celebrated that year on account of some favorable news from home, provided we would take a load of koa lumber down. Horses were not very plentiful with us and we were to ride on the load. As Nui and Shenandoah were to drive the six yoke of oxen and Lani and her mother were to ride we jumped at the opportunity.
The cattle were brought in from the woods, after a tedious search for them, for a bullock can hide himself easier under the parasitic vines and convolvulus which hang from those mammoth koas than anywhere under the sun. The wagon being loaded and the load bound on with chains we eight took our places for an eighteen-mile ride. Lani had provided leis for each of us and she and her mother had collected an immensity of ferns and ki leaves for a cushion to make the soft side of the boards softer, and we had a large hamper of lunch and a merrier party never started for an ox-cart ride.
We got away about 5 a. m., Nui and Shenandoah walking on either side of the team and there never was more fun in a basket of monkeys than on that wagon. He had our old standbys, Nigger and Puakea on the tongue and the young cattle ahead and the trouble these cattle caused, "I couldn't be telling." They would dash ahead and fetch up, then they would turn on their tracks and get tangled in the chains, then after a lot of bad language they would get straightened out and make another break, and this was repeated ad nauseam.
When we got them up out of the valley and the weight of the load was relieved they made a break to run and almost pulled the heads off the tongue cattle, who, I believe, would sooner have lost those extremities than have been so undignified as to go faster than a walk. Down we went through Kawaiki, and through Huluhulunui, Puaahookui, and Kaluanui gulches, the young cattle on the tear and the old ones on their haunches, notwithstanding the chain lock which we had on the wheels. The only thing to hold on to was the binding chain and after getting our hands nipped a few times we preferred to maintain our positions by leaning up against each other. We could not refrain from remarking on the solicitude which both Frank and Joe exhibited for Lani's welfare, doing everything they could devise for her comfort. We have helped tip over a pair of bobs in the snow at home to hear the girls squeal, but we never had an experience of riding on a bullock cart with a trio of lovesick people when every instant produced a bump which would drive a sane person into insanity.
The sun came up right glorious and gave us the benefit of its full actinic rays for the whole day. However, had we been in a palace car we could not have had more fun.
All across that sunburnt plain from East Maui plantation to the beach at Kahului we bumped over rocks and into gullies, for who ever knew of a bullock team fool enough to miss any of those opportunities of getting even on man for his inhumanity to them. Towards 1 P. M. we reached Kahului, the cattle with their tongues hanging out this three hours for lack of water. Here was plenty of it and the whole team rushed into the sea only to find that this fluid which so much resembled water was not the kind they were accustomed to.