Horses Too Are Gone, The

by Keenan, Michael

  ‘They won’t shift,’ I said.

  ‘The bastards.’

  ‘He said they’d leave in the morning.’

  Smokie took a long draw on his cigarette. He was a wild-looking man when he was cranky.

  ‘They’ll go for a dry camp tomorrow. That means a dinner time pull out.’

  ‘We can’t wait that long,’ I said, alarmed. It was already mid-afternoon. ‘We better go back.’

  ‘Be two hours into the dark. No hope of gettin’ them tapes up.’

  The tapes were the electric fence. One man would hold the cattle together in a confined space while two ran out the electric tapes which were supported by plastic posts. The posts have a spike and are simply pushed into the ground with a man’s boot.

  The cattle were in no danger. They’d had a lengthy drink about mid-morning from a lagoon. A dry camp was within reason, but on this stage of the walk I wanted the cattle to gain weight. On one drink a day they would lose weight. If we had to wait until lunchtime tomorrow they might suffer a setback that would negate the whole exercise.

  The cattle were feeding across the southern road. It was a gravel surface used by no more than ten cars a day. The drivers were invariably farmers and only for the restless rogues we need not have taped off for the night.

  Smokie started turning the leaders down the lane and I rode down to the tail where Nick and Rupert were waiting. The cattle were scattered over four hundred metres. Nick was on Malameen—a tall young man on a big tall bay horse. It made me think of an old Texas song.

  ‘We’ll hold up here tonight,’ I said to the boys. ‘About half a mile down, the lane opens up into a reserve. Good camp for the cattle. We can camp this side in case the rogues want to walk back towards the highway.’

  ‘We going in for a drink?’ Nick asked, worried.

  ‘They won’t let us in. Got to wait till the morning.’

  ‘What about the herdsman?’

  ‘We’re out of his territory now,’ I said. ‘I don’t know the Roma bloke. He might instruct me to go back.’

  ‘I think you should ring him just the same,’ Nick went on. ‘He might get the drover to leave early in the morning.’

  I thought it was an excellent idea. We allowed the cattle to feed for another hour before walking them into the reserve area and taping off the northern end. The road had to be left open, so we set the camp up near the gap. Sometimes the horses were a nuisance in these situations. Unlike the cattle, they had no fear of the camp and would walk out of the break if not sent back with the crack of a stockwhip. Once this camp was set and the horses had been given a drink from the truck’s water tank, I left for the Muckadilla pub. Smokie stayed to mind the camp. I promised him a couple of stubbies when I returned.

  The village of Muckadilla has several houses, a service station and the grain silos. If it were not for the hotel, with its motel-style accommodation, the village would have been a speck on the wide open plains where no one ever stopped. The pub, however, had defied the modern trend of village disintegration near major towns, for few locals could resist its temptation. The bar had an atmosphere I have never seen anywhere else. All the patrons drink and talk as one group, irrespective of whether they’ve ever met before.

  We walked into the bar and the woman serving caught my eye immediately. It was a friendly come and have a drink look and nothing more. She stood so straight and her eyes, which were green, never moved from your own. Her red hair was everywhere and some of it fell on bare shoulders. I quietly made a decision to drink only beer—the ale that quenches your thirst and leaves the fantasies of the mind buried.

  The sun had gone down and the regulars were on to their third or fourth beer. I looked across the angle of the bar and saw a bloke with a reddish tinge in his hair and beside him a woman with grey hair. She had gone grey before her time and her skin was dry. I looked away too slowly and the bloke gave me a wave. I had never met him, but that’s the way it was in this bar.

  Between the boys and me and the couple, two farmers were in earnest conversation. One was already under the influence and talking loudly. Someone hadn’t drafted his cattle correctly for sale. In other words, he had copped a bad sale. As the drink flowed, I felt the sale might get worse as the evening progressed. To our right were two young blokes. One was taller than Nicholas and had a friendly open face, but a shifty eye. The other boy just sat on his stool with a bemused expression. Nick and Rupert struck up a conversation with them almost immediately. That left me with the bar lady. Her name was Donna. She told me it was a good business. The motel wing was full on weekends and in the summertime people stayed every night and took advantage of the swimming pool. The down side was the exhausting hours. On weekends farmers drank nearly all night and most of them had dinner. While she was talking she dropped a beer herself.

  I contacted the herdsman in Roma and he promised to come out and see what was doing. He thought the drover would move at daylight and make for the Amby reserve some twenty-five kilometres to the west. We had come from that reserve in two stages; midway a farmer had let us into a dam for a drink.

  There were few opportunities to use a telephone. Sal sounded flat this time. When the night nurse wasn’t available she was sleeping at the cottage. She said the nights were the worst for Dad. Angina came on suddenly and she frequently had him on oxygen. When would I be home?

  Back in the bar the boys were playing pool. There was laughing and ribbing and I could see a move to the camp would be unpopular. I bought another drink and when I turned the bloke with the red tinge in his hair was behind me.

  ‘Mick is it?’ he said with an outstretched hand. The locals all knew me by now. The eccentric on the road from New South Wales. I was being kind to myself, for in western Queensland the word ‘eccentric’ is not in the vocabulary.

  We shook hands and he introduced himself. ‘I’m a dingo shooter and got a fair bit of country too,’ he said. I later found out that he was a crack shot, taking bags of dingo scalps to the local shire council to claim the bounty—a modern-day bounty hunter. So I gave him the nickname of ‘Scalp’, which he seemed quite pleased about.

  Scalp took me over to his grey-haired lady and introduced her as his woman. I shook hands with her in the manner my mother had taught me forty years before.

  ‘I haven’t got a redback spider in me palm.’

  We shook hands again. This time I took her hand as though it belonged to a rugged stockman.

  ‘How yer gettin’ on with yer cattle, Mick?’

  ‘Water’s the problem. They reckon there’s more mobs on the stock route than watering points.’

  ‘We heard they held yer out,’ she said.

  ‘How?’ The speed of local gossip in small communities never ceases to amaze me.

  ‘The cook was in for a beer. He was goin’ off about the pain in the arse. Bloody Mexicans, he said.’

  She laughed and there was a glint in her eye. Jenny was her name and there was a time when the grey hair might have been black and the dry skin soft and moist.

  ‘Mexicans! What do you mean?’

  Scalp giggled. ‘Up here youse blokes are called Mexicans.’

  It was not with any affection either, but I didn’t say it. In Texas and New Mexico they are not popular either.

  ‘What are you goin’ to do about the water?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Wait till they go.’

  ‘You could hang the washing out.’ When she smiled it was wicked.

  Scalp laughed and shook his head. ‘Oh Jesus, don’t tell him to do that.’

  I looked at her, really puzzled this time.

  ‘You got a couple of boys with you,’ she said, poker-faced. ‘Cut a couple of saplings about ten foot long and tie on your sheets.’

  ‘We don’t have sheets,’ I said. I knew something shocking was coming.

  ‘Anything, just as long as it flaps when you wave the stick.’

  ‘The good old rush,’ Scalp piped in. ‘Jesus, the bastards go. I reckon this mo
b would pull up at the Maranoa.’ He started to shake his head and look elsewhere, even behind him. ‘Sneak in behind ’em and wait till the boss drover comes out for a piss, which is often after they’ve been here. Then up ’em.’

  ‘Take him too,’ I said aghast.

  ‘Oh shit no,’ he giggled and drained his glass. I looked to the bar lady as I was going to get another into him. It was better than stage entertainment. ‘Make sure he sees all his cattle piss off.’

  With that he doubled up and was not composed until the next beer had been poured. The bar lady didn’t speak much. She didn’t have to. Most women mirror their thoughts in their eyes, but this one spoke with them.

  His woman didn’t laugh. Jenny just smiled.

  ‘Would you do that?’ I asked.

  ‘He would,’ she said softly. ‘Mischief to him is like ice-cream to a kid.’

  ‘You ever hear of stampedes?’ I asked the question seriously. It was part of droving folklore, but I had never heard of one.

  ‘The big bullocks are dangerous,’ Scalp said soberly. ‘I never seen it happen. They reckon when the buggers go real quiet, you can’t hear a pin drop and it’s very dark—watch out then. That’s what they reckon.’

  I enjoyed Scalp’s company. He was well dressed for a bushman and wore a wide western hat. The dingo shooting kept him in good physical shape. He told me he had a twenty thousand hectare property a hundred and sixty kilometres from Roma and if rain fell he could give me agistment.

  The boys would have liked to stay, but we had to get back and put the camp oven on. I was the cook. I made a camp casserole most nights and occasionally grilled some steak. Lots of spices went into the casserole and the boys ate a tin plate full and never forgot to tell me what a good cook I was. I might have made it with the casserole, but in general I am a terrible cook, limited to the making of tea and coffee and once in six months an omelette.

  Smokie ate very little of anything. I often wondered where his energy came from. He was sitting by the camp fire when we got back that evening. Cigarette butts lay on the ground near his feet and the one in his mouth was nearly spent. His eyes lit up with the stubbies and while I mixed the casserole ingredients I asked him about stampedes.

  In the 1890s there had been a tragic one only a few kilometres west of Mitchell. He said he could show me the exact spot where the wagons and drays had been smashed. There were eight hundred bullocks from the Channel Country. No one knew what started it because there were no survivors. He said it was usually the dingoes. In the old days a pack might follow a droving unit for two or three days. When the night camp was vacated they searched for scraps. Still nights with a wind blowing up after midnight would put drovers on alert. A leafy branch from a gum tree—that’s all it took. It seemed on this fatal night the night riders had come in for coffee. The boss drover and stockmen were all found dead within thirty metres of the camp fire. One body had been skewered by a bullock’s horn and possibly carried for twenty metres. Even the dogs were killed.

  By the camp fire every night each of us would sit on our private log. There was always something that could be picked up and used as a seat. Sometimes it might only be the remains of a stump. Smokie often lay his oilskin on the ground. I think he was always more exhausted than he ever cared to admit. With the coffee mug in one hand we would discuss plans starting from sunrise.

  The two young blokes from the pub destroyed any privacy that night. We saw the lights and instantly noticed the sway of the vehicle. The nearest guide post to the camp was taken out and the vehicle stopped. The tall boy emerged from the driver’s side and I have never seen anybody so drunk.

  By this time I had formed the conclusion that a frontier culture exists in some parts of Australia. It has both refreshing and depressing elements, as I believe all past frontier cultures had. The usual constraints of western society today are still not properly enforced in these places, and on rare occasions it can be like breathing in fresh air after leaving a stuffy room. Weighing against this is the entrenched rawness and insensitivity. East and south of Roma is no different from the southern farming communities and many of the old family holdings west of Roma have never changed—quiet, law-abiding and conservative. But beyond the invisible boundaries are communities that live under a different, new code of ethics. It is an expression of deep frustration, as though the modern world has passed them by and underneath lies an anger that doesn’t rise and fall, but burns like a smouldering log that defies even rain.

  Our camp in the lane was about three kilometres from the bore. I saddled Circus at daylight and rode along the lane until I reached the reserve and then took a short cut through the timber. The belt of timber in the reserve was the only one for miles. Before white settlement the Aborigines systematically burnt the dry grass in winter to stimulate fresh growth following the first rain. The green grass attracted kangaroos and when they wanted meat the Aborigines drove them towards barricades made from brush, which they carried in. It was the Aborigines who created the vast open downs of Queensland.

  The boss drover had given the word. I hung back in a patch of sandalwood and watched the men ride away towards the southern boundary of the reserve. There were cattle all around me, feeding. They were principally shorthorn and Santa Gertrudis-cross cows. The calves were half the size of their mothers. A late summer calving and under normal management conditions the calves would have been weaned weeks ago. They were pulling their mothers down now and some of the cows were weak. The hide clung to their ribs and their hips revealed the exact nature of the skeleton underneath.

  Circus began to strain on the bit. He was thirsty and I let him have his head. The equipment on the bore was powered by an engine. The water itself was pumped into a giant earthen tank known as a turkey’s nest. From the turkey’s nest the water was reticulated to a trough. To safeguard the water supply the turkey’s nests were fenced off. So huge were the mobs coming through, the supply to the trough was inadequate. The fence around the turkey’s nest had been cut to let the cattle in. The boss drover would not have wanted to do this. In a small area cattle can be drowned and the carcass must be removed from the water. I rode round the banks of the turkey’s nest and found two beasts hauled from the water. They were bloated, legs hard stretched and in a couple of days they would stink. The general mood of the men was understandable. There was no joy in overlanding weak cattle. Without even waiting to watch I knew what their long day would entail. The weakest of the cows would have to be driven, mile upon mile. Every time a rider left to push another obstinate one, the cow would stop. The worn-out cows would just stand, holding a baleful eye on the nearest horseman. For the stockmen it is exasperating and they become more and more irritable as the day drags on. Some crack their whips until their arms ache.

  It was the crack of the whips I was waiting for. The sound heralded the start of the mustering from the southern boundary and a company of forktailed kites heard it too. The caravans were parked near a dry creek, some three hundred metres from the bore. The cook had thrown his kitchen scraps into a gully and the big brown birds had wasted no time. When they heard the whips crack they flew up and slowly wheeled above the camp. The kites are harmless scavengers, but in trigger-happy communities they learn quickly to identify sounds that resemble a rifle shot.

  The boys were relieved when I got back to camp. The sun was an hour up, but the cattle were not feeding. They hung on the electric fence and their mooing was so persistent anyone from a distance would have thought it was a mob held in a yard.

  To be safe I suggested we wait another half-hour. I wanted to be sure the boss drover and his mob were well clear. Smokie and the boys would steady the lead, but they would not be able to hold them. Smokie had already nicknamed some of the rogue leaders. They were all steers and the names he gave them were unprintable.

  When we did release the mob I remained at the camp. As well as being camp cook, I was camp cleaner and camp mover. It was a one-man job and I didn’t mind as it broke the monoton
y of the stock route. In one of Mary Durack’s books (her most famous is Kings in Grass Castles) she quotes her father as saying the great overland drives through the Northern Territory conjured up only one memory—monotony. That was through hostile Aboriginal territory! God spare us. Our walk to Roma was going to be like delivering the papers.

  I was about fifteen minutes into the job when the Roma herdsman arrived. He was a stocky man in his late fifties and had a kindly manner for the sort of job he had.

  We shook hands and talked about the drought for a few minutes. Then he said, ‘There’s about four thousand in the next mob. They’ll camp tonight in the big box reserve about ten miles from here. One stage after them is Terry Hall. He’s got two thousand now and there are more roadtrains coming from New South Wales. South of Roma three thousand have been dropped on the southern stock route. They’re headed this way.’

  ‘The route’s going to be eaten out,’ I said, and he would have sensed the alarm in my voice.

  ‘I suggest you get through to Roma as quickly as you can. I’ll put you on an untouched reserve about ten miles east. I can give you a week or ten days. We make special allowances for sale cattle.’

  I thanked him and asked him what the feed was like on the reserve. He said it was the best dry feed in the district and if we fed the cattle along the highway in the daytime they would find green spots in the hollows and along creeks.

  We yarned for a while and he left. I found out later very few mobs ever get onto the country where I was now headed. Someone had helped me and to this day I am grateful.

  Spurred on by the prospect of fresh country and no boss drovers, I tossed all the gear into the back of the stock float, took down the electric fence and drove the truck to a clump of myalls about three kilometres east of Muckadilla—the site of the next camp. I left Circus tied up to a fence in the shade.

  It was nearly smoko time. I don’t know what it is about horses, but when you are riding them up goes the appetite. The boys would be looking out for me. I packed two billies into my haversack, the pannikins, a loaf of bread, some cheese and fruit cake. In separate jars I had coffee and tea.