Horses Too Are Gone, The

by Keenan, Michael

  The walk to the bore didn’t take long. I lit a fire and pushed the billies into the flame. The water was out of the trough. Provided the brew was strong no one cared. Smokie always drank coffee. He took the change of plans soberly. Slipping through the big mobs would have us on our toes, day and night. There would be more dry camps. For the boys it was music to their ears. The previous day two girls, sisters, had walked from a homestead near the stock route to meet the boys. Someone had seen these strapping young men from a car. In western Queensland there are countless young boozers—pig and roo shooters by the dozen—but company that may interest a young lady is lacking. The girls told the boys Roma was an exciting place. The prospect of packed bars and live bands just five days’ ride away was enough to prompt wide smiles.

  The tea-leaves had not long settled in the tea billy when I heard a car. I turned around and a four-wheel-drive police wagon drew up beside us. An older man emerged this time. I had never met him, but he knew me. He had the summons in his hand and gave it to me with a solemn ‘good morning’. He made no comment. I thought he seemed more interested in the cattle. Some of them hung around the trough, tossing the water in little splashes with their noses and half curious at the morning tea proceedings. He commented on their quality. Members of the Queensland stock squad are respected for their stockmanship. It was a comment I took warmly.

  After the policeman had left Nick confronted me.

  ‘What was that all about?’

  I hadn’t told him. I hadn’t told anyone. I briefly explained the situation to him and he looked very worried. Nick had studied law for a short time, passed a couple of subjects and then decided to change courses. He was now thinking like a lawyer.

  ‘You can’t plead guilty!’ he said, aghast.

  ‘Be hard to convince a magistrate I wasn’t.’

  ‘You’ll end up with a criminal record. No passport for one thing.’

  I had reached the half century and never been past Darwin. However, in principle he was right and I agreed to consult a solicitor when we reached Roma. There was going to be a lot doing when we got to Roma.

  The questions went on and on. Did Mum know? Mum will freak out. When will you tell her? By lunchtime he had my whole defence worked out.

  I left the food and the billies with the boys and set off for the new camp. Circus gave a whinny when he saw me. He didn’t like being left on his own much. On our way back to the bore we saved a precious life. A plains turkey had himself caught in a fence. The bottom two strands of wire were twisted on his leg. He had been there a day or two. Another day may have been too late. Literally thousands of kangaroos, wallabies and emus die every year on fences. The fatal twist of wire is always the same. A leg goes between the wires, the head goes through the fence first and when the leg follows the bottom wire kicks upwards locking the leg in a perfect trap. It’s not that they die, these poor animals. It is the way they die. The dreadful constraints of our civilisation are a sad defiance against the law of nature and in the passage of time will fail.

  About mid-afternoon we gathered the cattle in a tight mob and drove them towards the railway bridge. We had to go under the bridge and the clearance was barely enough for a horseman. The cattle were spooked and to make it more difficult the highway ran parallel with the railway. Nick and Rupert held up the traffic and Smokie and I pushed hard against the reluctant mob. We spun on hind feet and galloped after the breakaway beasts. It may have only taken ten minutes, but when the leaders finally went under the bridge our horses were a lather of sweat.

  For the night camp Smokie suggested we tape right across the stock route, fence to fence, on the eastern side. The cattle would be free to feed over a large area and he thought they were so spooked by the railway bridge none would go back. There was a vehicle track along the stock route and it did cross my mind the boss drover east of us might want to bring his men in for a few beers after dark. I mentioned it to Smokie and he said they would use a nearby lane to gain access to the highway. What both of us forgot was the highway patrol. Drovers don’t have just one or two beers—they drink a skinful and no matter how rough the bush track is they will take it every time rather than risk meeting the highway patrol.

  By late afternoon the cattle were spread over fifty hectares, heads down in thick dry Mitchell grass. The previous mob had made little or no mark on this part of the stock route. They had already walked several kilometres since the last water and they would have been thirsty. The tracks indicated they simply walked through the grass. On the other hand our cattle had been on water for half a day and were keen to tuck in. They had a healthy full look about them and I may be biased, but a line of five hundred poll Herefords grazing on an open plain should inspire any bush poet.

  I cooked an early dinner. I had a sneaking suspicion Smokie was eyeing the pub off and I knew the boys were. They’d had a lot of fun on the pool table the night before. Smokie decided to ride his mare to the hotel. Old stockmen never walk, he told us. Also I think he wanted to give her some more education. He had only broken her in the week before we left Amby Creek. She was more of a pet than anything and one evening caused Smokie acute embarrassment.

  Smokie was a great one for washing and cleanliness. What the boy’s mothers failed to do over the years, Smokie achieved in just one week. The mare was always hanging around the truck. A dipper of grain, an apple, a piece of bread—almost anything would please her. On this occasion, as though to demonstrate her dissatisfaction, she lifted her tail and urinated over the table. No laugh from Smokie, but it was the boys’ turn to offer hints on hygiene.

  ‘You want to tell her we got our own dishwashing fluid,’ I heard Nicholas say.

  The boys and I walked briskly along the dirt track with Smokie riding ahead of us. It was already quite dark and the mare’s dark form and the sound of her hoofs on the track allowed us to talk among ourselves and not have to concentrate on the road. We were all relieved the cattle were full and contented and if it had not been for the worries down south I might have been in a buoyant mood myself.

  Directly opposite the hotel and across the railway was a set of stockyards. Smokie shut his mare in one of the yards and walked over with us. The bar was deserted. I glanced through a window at the far end and there appeared to be no guests at the motel wing. It was one of those quiet nights and Donna said she was delighted. It gave her a rest before the weekend. We had beers all round and Smokie settled into the right-hand corner. On the L-shape we were at the lower end and behind us was the pool table, which the boys immediately put to use.

  Donna had a smouldering look about her. She was one of those women who always looked attractive, even if she was cranky or tired, and no matter what she was wearing. With plenty of fresh air and heaps of good bush tucker a man could find his principles had a shallow base out here. Worse still, there were not many places to duck. With the second beer gone and a harsh word to the devil down under, I didn’t even hear them. Suddenly the long bar was full of the hardest and meanest looking blokes I had ever seen. The one nearest me on the right-angle turn of the bar would have blunted barb wire if he ran it down his cheek. His weather-beaten face suggested an age beyond sixty and I got the impression violence would be the only occasion for a mirthful response. His stained hat was full of holes around the top crease. On his left stood the boss drover, a big man. His face was flushed and there was a belligerent glow in his eye. Only for a bushy moustache, speckled with grey, he would have reminded me of Clint Eastwood in the film Pale Rider. The brim of his hat on either side almost touched the crown. He was in his forties and I observed almost instantly he had the absolute respect of his men.

  To his left were four stockmen. There was one that caught my eye. Tall, dark and angry. Black hairs bristled out of the vee of his shirt. His arms had sinewy muscles that might have made a gorilla baulk. He wore a black western hat and a black jumper. If there had been a bookmaker at my side I might have taken fifty dollars at 2/1 on that his belt was black too. The others ma
y have been less forbidding. The fat one had the steady, no-one-at-home eyes of a cane toad. The type that would make even a prostitute jump through a window.

  The boss drover drank his first beer as though it were a glass of water offered in a heatwave. Then he fixed me with his eyes.

  ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’

  I just looked at him. I could feel the blood draining from my face.

  ‘No one tapes a route off. Unheard of.’

  I tried to explain. I thought he would come via the highway. I told him I was sorry and that I hope no one got an electric shock.

  ‘Three shocks,’ the old bloke growled. ‘Balls ’n’ all.’

  From the corner of my eye I saw Nick put his hand over his mouth. I thought if he laughed openly we wouldn’t make the door.

  ‘Did you leave it up?’ Smokie asked, a little too casually I thought.

  ‘Only because we would have had a box-up come mornin,’,’ the boss drover said angrily.

  After that I thought it might settle down. We’d just mind our business and they mind theirs. Donna put a tape on and turned the volume up—‘Heaven is my Woman’s Love’. There wasn’t much love around that night. The drovers had nothing to say to each other. They had been together all day. The only other people in the bar were us. It was inevitable someone would become the source of entertainment. Donna hung back. She served the beers promptly and found jobs for herself.

  ‘If I see that fence come mornin’ I’ll hang you with it,’ the boss drover said harshly. He had. dropped three or four beers in ten minutes and his eyes already had a glaze.

  ‘I’m sorry it happened,’ I said, ignoring the threat. ‘I’ll turn the power off when you go out.’

  ‘You may not be on your feet.’

  The music was loud and the boys were preoccupied with the pool table. Smokie sat quietly, pretending to hear nothing. He was a veteran of bar trouble and knew that stillness and a sealed mouth were our only chance.

  ‘Ever seen a human torpedo?’ the boss drover said to his men, an evil smile lingering on his mouth.

  ‘Sure like to,’ the old bloke replied.

  ‘You got to get out of here,’ Donna whispered. ‘He’s thrashed men from Moree to Winton. He loves it and he’s merciless.’

  ‘If there’s any sweet nothin’s to be muttered about here,’ the boss drover had stood up, ‘it’s to be our side of the bar.’

  ‘Go,’ she said urgently. ‘You haven’t a chance in hell. The boys will be okay.’

  I quickly told Nick I was going to turn in early. If the boss started to pick on them they were to leave immediately.

  The sky was ablaze with stars and I had no difficulty following the track back to the camp. The boys stayed on for about an hour. No one bothered them. I asked Nick from my bed-roll how Smokie was getting on. Nick said he was very busy when he last looked at him. He had a cigarette in his mouth, his hands were rolling another, and in between puffs he got a glass to his mouth. God help anyone who interrupted him, even the big fighting boss drover.

  With the boys home and safe I fell asleep. About 4.00 a.m. I woke to the smell of leather and something on my face. It was darker than before, but I could just see the outline of a horse’s head. Smokie’s mare was standing over me and the leather I smelt was the reins. I got up, took the mare in charge and said Smokie’s name several times. I didn’t want to wake the boys as we had a big day ahead. When there was no reply I unsaddled the mare and let her go, which in her case was freedom to smell around the truck for food.

  A saddled horse returning without the rider is cause for alarm. I tossed some sticks onto the camp fire coals and began searching the truck cabin for a powerful torch I kept as an emergency. I searched the whole camp area and was about to wake the boys for help when Smokie limped in.

  The police from Roma had finally put the boss drover and his men out of the pub. Smokie said there had been no trouble. He had no idea why they were called, except they were all drunk. The officer said they had to be driven back to camp. They waited until the patrol car left and drove out onto the stock route. Smokie didn’t know who drove, because in the meantime he rode his mare out to the electric fence to let them through. He said he was half drunk himself and had great difficulty finding the battery. He had dropped the reins somewhere and the mare left him. After the swaying Toyota truck lurched through, with three drunks hanging on desperately in the back, he tried to find his way back to camp. He lost all sense of direction and finally tripped and fell. He said the grass was soft and he had a warm coat on. It was bed time.

  It was times like this I wondered where the hell Smokie had been trained. He rode to the fence in near pitch darkness to make it easy for them. The fence was his suggestion and he paid for the mistake. He never admitted it, but he would have been frozen with the temperature still plummeting to zero every night. A pocket of very dry air had drifted east from Sturts Stony Desert and in the slight uplift of Queensland’s central highlands the night temperatures have been known to drop to minus ten degrees Celsius. In the spring both extremes apply. We began that day huddled over the fire, as though the plains were smothered under snow and at 2.00 p.m. the radio station in Roma recorded the old hundred (38 degrees Celsius). The extremes sapped our energy and in the morning the oncoming heat affected the cattle. They were thirsty—more so than normal, and to make it worse we had to drive them ten kilometres to a holding lane in order to let the big mob through.

  There was no shade in the lane. Rupert held them at the southern end with the railway behind him. I anticipated the railway to be the safe end. Nick and I held the other end where the lane merged with the stock route. Smokie I had sent to the drovers’ camp. They had accepted him. I was confident he would get them moving so we could have our turn on the water.

  Rupert had done a long stint and I waved him in for a lunch break. When he was halfway in I rode out from the truck to take over. While Smokie and the boys were driving the cattle I had driven the truck ahead to the lane. Circus always just followed along with the other horses with the reins tied to a stirrup.

  I stopped to talk to Rupert, mainly to explain what was on the table for lunch. I remember saying Smokie had ridden ahead to try and persuade the alcohol-sick drovers to move on. Our attention must have been diverted only two. or three minutes. Rupert gave Yarramin a little dig in the ribs and when I straightened Circus I was stunned at how quickly the cattle had scattered. There were cattle trotting in both directions on the railway and some had followed the track over the line and were on the highway. Rupert and I took off together. Nick saw it all at the same time and galloped a kilometre. Trains frequently used the line—heavily loaded goods trains unable to stop suddenly.

  The older steers were tonguing from the heat and gave us hell. Some of the road traffic stopped and watched. Urban people often have a serene image of drovers, as experienced bushmen in total control. Watching these loonies with cattle all over the rail track must have been like a preview of the National Lampoon family on an outback holiday.

  It took a lot of hard riding to get them all back into the lane. I was worried I might lose them again when Rupert and Nick left, but Rupert hadn’t had a drink for three hours and Nick had to hurry back before the cattle at the other end woke up there was no horseman to hold them.

  The afternoon dragged on with no sign of Smokie. Some of the steers kept looking for the break. With the heat and the constant turning back of the rogues I became over-anxious. I thought maybe we would have to let them back on the stock route and head for water. Stock route box-ups are never very serious. Like most animals cattle have a natural instinct for bonding with their own herd and are easily sorted out on horseback. The big deterrent was the drovers. I visualised the need for an ambulance if we did that to them.

  I was debating whether I could risk a very fast pee when twenty or thirty horses appeared on the horizon. Only ten minutes behind were the cattle—a mixture of every colour and breed imaginable. It was the lar
gest herd I had ever seen and unlikely to be seen again in southern Queensland. The long column of bovine flesh proceeded past me for half an hour. With the backdrop of the vast open downs it might have been a migratory column of buffalo in another land, in a previous century.

  When the tail of the great herd had gone we let ours go. Smokie had been helping them muster and with a final nod to the boss drover he turned away and rode in behind: The leaders broke into a trot and then a canter. By instinct they knew where the water was. I suspected they could smell it all along as the railway line was only a kilometre from the dam as the crow flies.

  The reserve vacated for us was the largest reserve east of the Chesterton Ranges. In the southern corner the dam resembled a mini-lake. The cattle wallowed in the shallows and so fascinated with it all was Rupert that Yarramin caught him unprepared. The old bay thought he would have a wallow too.

  We camped there that night and during the next few days there were more mobs and more frustrations. It took a week to pilot the mob to the untouched feed the herdsman had set aside for me, east of Roma. With the cattle up to their knees in feed and fresh water from a creek, the boys made the most of the bright spots in Roma.

  My trips to town were of a more serious nature. The solicitor advised me I could have the hearing transferred to the border town of Goondiwindi and that would give me time to go home. His professional advice, however, was not to do so. In his view it was important the matter was dealt with in the local court.

  It was during this period I got the dreaded message. Dad had received a transfusion and it failed. He might survive for another three or four days. In three days’ time was the court appearance. I had to tell Sal and it was moving she had such confidence in me. My mother and sister were not told.