Barlow's Night Ride.

A little story about Otorohanga, on the North Island Main Trunk line, the tale of the most daring piece of work in the history of tracking down criminals in New Zealand. There was a Maori named Winiata who in the late 'seventies tomahawked a fell-worker named Packer, on a farm at Epsom, near Auckland, over a dispute about money which the pakeha owed him. Winiata fled to the King Country, skilfully evading the Waikato police, and for several years he lived a free life in the Maori territory, where no policeman was allowed in those days. The Queen's writ did not run there till after 1883. The police, however, did not forget the wanted man; there was a standing Government reward of £500 for his arrest. He did not venture into their frontier townships.

A big half-caste named Robert Barlow, a powerful, fearless fellow, went to Police Inspector McGovern, of Hamilton, one day, and offered to try his hand at bringing in Winiata from the Ngata-Maniapoto country. McGovern and Sergeant Gillies, of Te Awamutu (afterwards Inspector in Christchurch) fixed up a scheme with Barlow, and off the big frontiersman rode to carry it out. His plan was bold and exceedingly risky. Winiata was known to carry a loaded revolver always, and he was surrounded by friends and sympathisers. Barlow did not hurry matters. He rode leisurely from one settlement to another, with his wife; the pair led a spare horse. The man-hunter professed to be a pig-buyer, having heard that Winiata trafficked in the poaka. They met in a house at page 43 Otorohanga, and discussed pigs and politics.

As the night went on Barlow produced a bottle of rum—which had been well “doped” by a chemist in a frontier town. Winiata, at first suspicious, fell into the waipiro trap, and presently was oblivious to pigs and everything else. The other people in the house were asleep, and Barlow and his wife contrived to get their man outside, after removing a revolver which he wore under his shirt. (Barlow, too, had a revolver in his clothes.) They dumped him on the led horse, and tied him fast; then they rode off through the midnight hours—always expecting to be chased—along through the fern and swamps, forded the Puniu River, and reached Kihikihi, the first township across the border, a little before daylight, after a ride of about sixteen miles.

Winiata by this time was wide awake to his plight, and there was a desperate struggle on the road in front of Corboy's publichouse. The Armed Constabulary, in the redoubt nearby, were aroused, Winiata was overpowered and chained to an iron bedstead in the barrack-room. A few weeks later he was hanged in Mt. Eden gaol, and Barlow collected his £500 reward, with which he bought a farm at Mangere, near Auckland.