Some of My Friends Have Tails

by Sara Henderson

  Into this silent vacuum wandered Hottentot, with the carefree expression of ‘Hi, guys; what’s new?’, supreme in the knowledge that he had full run of the house.

  Gus didn’t miss the opportunity, picked it up in a split fraction of a second. ‘Charlie, your dog is in the house.’

  Charlie, equally quick and not wanting to lose the position of power by letting the dog have the chance to ignore him, merely said, ‘Sara.’

  Hottentot had immediately sensed the tension in the air as the first words were uttered, and was now following every movement carefully.

  When hearing my name uttered by Charlie in that special ‘this is extremely important’ tone, he turned his head and looked at me. My eyes moved to the door and back to his, and just for good measure and a safety margin, I casually pointed to the door by just moving my index finger in my lap. Hottentot came through with flying colours. He quietly turned and walked out of the room with a ‘didn’t want to stay anyway’ swagger.

  Charlie roared with laughter at his victory, and couldn’t resist a final triumphant remark along the lines of, our dog wasn’t smart enough to follow verbal commands, so we had to do it all with signals! Hottentot was elevated to top position in Charlie’s estimation, right next to Prince. And Charles dined out on that story for many months to come, and with especial satisfaction if poor Gus was present.

  The other truly heroic act by Hottentot was when he saved Charlie’s life. Charles was in bed with pneumonia, running a raging temperature and quite delirious.

  The stock-camp cook came racing up the flat in the middle of the night to say the stockmen had bashed him up, taken the key and taken all the beer out of the store room. And all the men were blind drunk, and the bully of the mob was even at that moment staggering his way up the flat, shouting in his drunken state that he was going to kill Charlie.

  I rushed in to tell Charlie, fully expecting him to rise from his sick bed, strap on his revolver, and stride out to defend his family and home.

  To my amazement, he mumbled something incoherent, rolled over and went on sleeping. Blind panic hit me with physical force. I had three young children, a sick and delirious husband, I was in the middle of nowhere, nearest help over one hundred and fifty kilometres away, and apparently the entire stock camp, all drunk, were approaching the house to carry out … whatever, or settle some of their grievances against Charlie. The cook then conveniently disappeared.

  Suddenly I was protector of life and home! I was shaking so violently with fright that my teeth were chattering. There was no way I could lock the children and Charles in a room for safety as most of the outside walls of our bedroom were flyscreen and our windows were glass louvres; you could simply pull out the panes of glass and step in, or just break them.

  Thousands of thoughts raced through my mind. If I could just hide the children, was foremost. How much time did I have? I raced to the back of the living room, a wide expanse of flyscreen, and looked down at the flat.

  My panic subsided slightly as I could only make out one figure swaggering and weaving up the flat, but then alarm surged through me as I could see more shapes just emerging from the trees on the far side of the flat.

  ‘A weapon, I need a weapon!’ I said out loud. I had reached the stage of talking to, and answering, myself. ‘But what?’

  I raced through the house grabbing and rejecting objects: frying pans, hammers, pieces of wood, brooms. In the store room, my eyes locked onto the de-horners, an enormous oversize pair of bolt cutters used to cut the horns off cattle. They were so heavy I could just lift them, but the wooden handles, the length and size of a baseball bat, screwed out of the steel blades and one of these made a more manageable weapon.

  I raced to the flyscreen again; I could hear the man now, shouting Charlie’s name and a lot of unintelligible and unrepeatable words regularly mixed around the repetitive ‘Charlie’. I didn’t like the tone or the implication.

  I was still talking to myself, still shaking, and by the time I was in position and waiting, I was sick to the stomach and fighting to keep vomit down in my throat.

  I had retreated to behind the door in the office, our bedroom door behind me, on the far wall. This was the only wall there was to hide behind, the rest were flyscreens. I had decided surprise was my best plan of attack. I had left more beer and rum on the kitchen table, and left on the light, hoping the fellow would go to the kitchen, take the grog and wander off. All the other lights I had turned off, and I was watching through the crack of the open door … waiting, sweat making it difficult to hold the weapon and making my vision blurred. I couldn’t stop my teeth chattering. Charles lay in the next room, delirious and ill, and the three children were sleeping in the adjoining rooms. It was the early hours of the morning, and I was crouched behind a door in the middle of the Outback, waiting to crack a drunk over the head with a handle of a de-horner! The inevitable ‘why me?’ went through my mind. He was opening the back gate. I heard the clang of the bolt echo through the night; he left it open.

  ‘Why must I face this alone?’ I blubbered to myself and the darkness. Then, in this quietness of waiting, for the first time I realised I was not alone. All through my blind panic of rushing around the house, Hottentot had been at my side. Indeed, a few times I had nearly fallen over him when I had changed direction suddenly in one of my wild dashes to somewhere.

  He was still at my side, sensing my out-of-control blind panic, and was really very alert and concerned as he had never seen me like this before. He kept putting his nose in my hand, waiting for a reassuring pat. I kept pushing him away with a mumbled ‘Not now’, which only increased his agitation.

  We were both behind the door, waiting, wound tight as coiled springs. Like Hottentot, I had no idea what was ahead.

  The dark outline of a man appeared at the screen door at the back of the large living area. He had not gone to the lighted kitchen and the grog on the table. He opened the screen door into the living room and started across the room towards my door. He was forty feet away; my panic increased. He was quite out of his mind, ranting and raving and shouting Charlie’s name. Thirty feet … the children’s door opened and sleepy heads poked out. I screeched at them in a whisper to close the door and lock it. Such was the urgency in my voice, the door slammed shut in a flash.

  Twenty feet … the shape loomed larger! I had no idea what I was going to do. I was weak with fright. I was sure my arms would fail, I was convinced I would just collapse in a heap when he staggered into the room. I knew I was not capable of what I was trying to achieve. Hottentot jumped up on me, worried by the state of frenzy he could clearly sense I was in.

  The dark shape had paused in the middle of the living room, still mumbling incoherently, and drinking from a bottle. I could hear the children crying my name. I was crouched behind the door and also crying, knowing I couldn’t, yet had to, face this drunk. Hottentot was licking my tears as they streamed down my face.

  A crashing bottle brought me to my feet and without realising what I was doing, I rushed out the door, Hottentot at my side, and shouted as loud as I could, ‘Get him, Hottentot!’ I stood amazed and shaking as my very spoilt, gentle giant of a dog transformed before my eyes into a raging, ferocious, snarling, charging beast. He charged in the direction of my shaking pointed finger.

  Even in the dark, I saw the whites of the man’s eyes, as realisation penetrated the drink-fogged brain, that a large, savage beast was bearing down on him at an alarming rate. He turned, and without bothering to open the door, dived straight through the panel of flyscreen next to it, out the open gate and down the flat, screaming, with a snarling Hottentot right on his heels.

  He made it to a large tree and clambered up to safety. Hottentot, carried away with his new-found character, chased away all the other dark shapes staggering around the flat. When they all disappeared back to the camp, he took up position at the foot of the tree to guard his captive, who spent the rest of the night up there. Every time he attempted to climb
down, he brought on a new wave of snarling and snapping, so loud it could be heard clearly in the homestead. So the man decided to stay put.

  I finally calmed down and assured the crying children Hottentot had saved the day. I found more weapons, just in case, and had time to find Charlie’s revolver and load it. I told the girls to run to the pantry in the kitchen and lock themselves in if I called them to do so, or if anything else happened.

  And I spent the rest of the night sitting facing the door with a revolver in my hand. My nerves stayed at high pitch until daybreak.

  The cook came up the flat, making a wide detour around Hottentot and approaching the house from the opposite direction. The offending stockman, he said, was now sober, was suffering from a horrendous hangover, and was very stiff from sitting in a tree all night. He would like to come down and apologise. And could I please call Hottentot off.

  Apologise! I was so mad, sick, nervous and angry that I was capable of shooting him on sight! I told the cook he could stay up the tree for a while longer.

  Charlie was awake and, although still very ill, his fever was down and he could now carry on a normal conversation; but he was too weak to get out of bed. He had to admit Hottentot was the hero of the day. But then he went on to give me instructions and a plan of action.

  My first thought was to feed and water Hottentot. So with the gun in a holster strapped to my side, I walked down the flat and took him a big bowl of meat and some water. Told him he was a brave dog and to stay for a while longer. Ignoring the pathetic pleas from up the tree, I went back to the house.

  The stockman was eventually let down out of the tree and Hottentot, the conquering hero, came back to the house to bask in the glory. The stock camp did not see one drop of alcohol for the rest of the muster, and had to be content with tea. I kept the gun handy and Hottentot constantly at my side, and periodically gave him the attack command if any of the men were close to the garden. He would launch himself into a ferocious display of fangs and growls, to send everyone scurrying away at top speed.

  When the muster was over and Charles had recovered sufficiently to take the men to town, he said they made it in record time into the nearest pub for that long-awaited drink. They didn’t have one ounce of my sympathy. If I had had my way they would not have seen any alcohol for the rest of their lives. That would have been fitting justice for the terror their drinking had put the little girls and me through. After days of endless, senseless drinking in town, the story of the savage lion-dog of Bullo River, called Hottentot, grew out of all recognition.

  Back at the station poor Charlie had to listen to the true story again, and again, and again, while Hottentot sat there looking sagely at him. I blackmailed Charlie into many situations just with the threat that I would tell Gus how Hottentot had saved his life …

  Charlie, good-heartedly, put up with the girls and me constantly singing Hottentot’s praises. The girls would also tease their father whenever the opportunity presented itself. Once they dressed Hottentot in Charlie’s red velvet smoking jacket, sat him in Charlie’s bed, leaning back surrounded by pillows, with Charlie’s glasses perched on his nose, and a Newsweek magazine on a pillow between his paws.

  Charlie walked into the room, saw all the girls crouched at the foot of the bed giggling, and me sitting in bed beside Hottentot, also reading. Hottentot never moved a hair, only his eyes looked at Charlie over the glasses. Charlie played the game and thundered and roared protests, the girls squealed with delight, and Hottentot, as usual, enjoyed being the centre of attention.

  Another time, when the Army were carrying out exercises on Bullo River, they dressed Hot up in the gear of one of the Army helicopter pilots, and sat him in the helicopter. The pilot opened the door and was shocked to find a dog in his seat, wearing headphones and flying cap.

  Hottentot just calmly looked at him with a ‘why not?’ expression and finally had to be persuaded to vacate the seat.

  When I moved to Adelaide for a few months, so the girls could finish the last term of at least one uninterrupted school year, Hottentot came along as protector. Charles stayed on the station. Along with allowing the children to finish the school year, it was also one of Charles’s and my many, many trial separations, to decide if we would stay apart or try again.

  So Hottentot was the ‘man’ of the house in Adelaide. He stepped into the position without a moment’s hesitation, and enjoyed not having to compete with Charlie for the number one position.

  Having been used to roaming free in the wild, wide Outback, a small suburban yard was way too small. He had no trouble with the fences and could get out at will. He was lost so many times in the first weeks, I finally typed a long story on a large luggage tag and put it on the big ‘Brutus’ type collar, complete with studs, I had bought him.

  The story was along the lines of ‘Please excuse me, but I am from a cattle station in the Northern Territory; if I look lost, have done anything wrong or damaged anything, please call my owner and she will fix everything.’ It finished with large letters: ‘P.S. I’m friendly!’

  Hottentot became a celebrity overnight. I found out he had a large territory, stretching from swimming in a private swimming pool about half a block away, to the shopping centre miles away. Each morning he would jump the fence, and swim a few laps of the pool, lie in the sun for a while on their porch, then disappear. He continued on down to the small shopping centre where he would swing by the butcher’s for a small snack, and finish up a few shops further down, where he somehow cadged an icecream out of the owner—or anyone close by who happened to have an icecream.

  The story on the luggage tag got everyone in; Hottentot would stand still as they read the story and the reader would always finish by saying, ‘Oh, he’s friendly’. You would see people leaning close enough to read the tag, but still trying to stay far enough away not to get bitten; then when they reached the friendly bit they would relax and immediately start patting him. One day he stopped all the traffic when he decided to sun himself in the middle of the main road through the shopping centre. The only way they got him off the road was with a meaty bone, and an icecream.

  I finally went back to Charlie, yet again, at the end of the school year. But during the time we were away, the airlines changed their regulations on carrying pets. When we went from Darwin to Adelaide, Hottentot only cost five dollars, a flat rate for any pet travelling with people. When I called to arrange a cage for transport back to Darwin, they told me it was now calculated by weight, so many dollars per kilo. Hottentot weighed one hundred and thirty pounds, almost sixty kilograms; it was going to cost more than my ticket to get him home.

  I spoke to the manager and said they should have told me when we booked down to Adelaide, and I would not have brought him. But now I had to take him home and couldn’t afford the new charges, so I would bring my children down to his office and he could break the news to them that we had to leave their dog in Adelaide. He quickly agreed that if Hottentot travelled down for five dollars, he should indeed return home for the same amount. I thanked him.

  The funny part of the story was when we took Hottentot to the freight office to check him in for the flight. There was a woman checking in a miniature poodle, and as we walked in with Hottentot, the clerk was telling her it would cost her thirty-five dollars for her dog. After paying the money, she turned and saw Hottentot lumbering in, and a massive cage waiting for him. She didn’t leave, but stood and watched us put him in the cage, and all say our goodbyes, and was waiting to see the monstrous cage lifted onto a scale to assess the horrendous amount of money.

  She froze in amazement as I handed over five dollars to the clerk, and he wrote me a receipt. The children and I departed, leaving her holding up her thirty-five-dollar receipt for a dog that didn’t weigh as much as one of Hottentot’s paws. And spluttering, ‘But, but, I don’t …!’

  Hottentot was part of our family for twelve years, which is a long time for a dog in the Outback. The heat is one of the first things that
affects their longevity, along with snakes and crocodiles. Of course, Hottentot lived the life of Riley; the two Labs did all the hunting, while Hottentot reclined somewhere quiet and cool. And if he wanted anything extra to eat, he wasn’t past nicking something off the chopping block in the kitchen. This was a great temptation, seeing his nose was level with any tasty morsel. Like the whole gigantic rump roast that was all seasoned, sitting in the baking dish, ready to go in the oven, when Tot happened to wander by and decided he would not put me to the trouble of cooking it.

  I just caught a glimpse of him tip-toeing out of the kitchen with a rather large and strange addition to his jawline and I was after him. That was the last time Hottentot stole meat off the chopping block; in fact he only had to look at the chopping block and the memory of his slip from grace was enough.

  His life with the two Labs, Honey and Shad, and Pye-wacket, and growing up with the children, was sheer enjoyment. His passing was normal; I walked across the living room one morning on my way to the kitchen to start breakfast, and saw him still curled up on his favourite rug, sleeping peacefully. I told him he was late for playtime in the sandpit, the other dogs were already there. When he didn’t respond to my voice, I walked over and touched him, and knew he had left us.

  12

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