Horses Too Are Gone, The

by Keenan, Michael

  In the tent I stacked the wood to the windward side and tied the fly to the tent pole in three places. The sound made me think of an oncoming train about to burst from a tunnel.

  Somewhere up on the range I heard a crack and a second later another, as though a great forest tree had been split to matchwood. It was a frightening portent of the fury of the gale and when it struck I thought the tent would lift despite the weight of myself and the wood. It blew out like a balloon, every tent peg let go and it seemed a miracle the seams held. I had a vision of being sucked into the tunnel of the tornado for the greatest ride of my life; albeit the last. Everywhere around me timber cracked and snapped. The volume of the wind went beyond a roar. It was more like the passing of a jet overhead. If there was lightning I never noticed and after the tornado the hail came but no relief from danger. The hail stones hit with wind-driven fury and with the tent pegs blown out I only had the canvas for protection. A drift of ice formed and ironically anchored the tent. If it had not been for driving rain coming on top of the hail I think the tablelands, which normally bake in a hundred degree heat on the old scale in January, would have been white under a mantle of ice.

  The longest part of the storm was the rain. After the rain, shafts of sunlight flooded the gorge and I emerged from the crumpled tent to a strange stillness. Water ran down the gorge and miniature waterfalls sparkled in the sunlight. The birds had started their chatter again and as I walked around more and more voices joined in. A lot of trees had snapped at the trunk and those that stood as before shed cold drips of water. Compared to tropical heat the air was bracing and it reminded me of sunlight after a snow storm. I had a spare shirt, still dry in the backpack and I put it on over the one I was wearing.

  From the edge of the rock fall I looked down into the lower gorge. Most of the vegetation had been blown down. Then I saw the tree, the huge ironbark. Two metres above ground it had snapped and the piece of ground where I had briefly planned to erect the tent lay under five tonnes of timber. Had I erected the tent there and sought protection in it, I would have been killed.

  I didn’t dwell on it. Back in the tent I remembered the dry wood and the cold stew. But it was warmth I wanted. I wanted a blazing fire to cheer myself up as well. Most of us, at some stage in our lives, cheat death. Usually it’s a narrow miss on the highway. We try to imagine not seeing, hearing or feeling and it’s totally incomprehensible. We are simply left feeling cold and empty. In a matter of minutes I might have recovered from the brief shock and thought no more of it. It was the billy that sent a cold shiver down my spine. Meaning to collect some water from a fresh rock pool, I picked it up, took off the lid, and there inside was the bottle top from a XXXX stubbie. Frankie had left his calling card. He only drank XXXX.

  Too late I remembered I had been told that the Wild Bunch tracked everything. Every vehicle that passed through was noted. They knew the tyre prints of the police vehicles. If it wasn’t a summons the police wished to serve (and rarely ever did), they would be there to ask questions about some robbery. The most recent incident had involved a shire bulldozer and a load of fuel on a trailer. Someone had taken the lot, even drained the dozer.

  I had become so obsessed with the wanton mutilation of my calves I failed to recall what I’d been told. The big wheel tracks of the lorry would have been a breeze to the Wild Bunch. They had found it hidden and knew exactly what I was up to. Finding my camp was not a fluke either. Every spring and puddle hole was known to them. In my anger I had underestimated them. These men were specialists in outlaw survival. They were free of the pimps and informers that plague the rogues of urban society and therefore kept one step ahead of everybody.

  I got the rifle out of the tent and checked the magazine. It hadn’t been touched. Sometimes a sense of security is something in the mind. The Wild Bunch had rifles that could strike a man down at five hundred metres. My little Magnum would be viewed as a toy, except at close range. For my purpose it was ideal, The rifle is light to carry and the speed of the bullet is greater than that of the big guns. Under seventy-five metres the Magnum rifle is deadly. Yet the grim reality was the reverse of any perception of safety. With a gun in my hand I made it easy. If I was killed or harmed, a good barrister would seek a ruling of self-defence and win. It made good sense in one respect to hide the gun, but the unknown was their tracking ability. The ground was soft from the rain and if one of them was exceptional the gun would be found. If they knew I was unarmed, they could track me down without fear of an ambush or at the truck set up an ambush themselves and have no need to watch their backs. Such tracking skill in the modern world was unlikely and I had only ever seen it twice—in the Aboriginal who taught me as a child and in an American Indian from Montana. This poor young man had got Coolangatta and Coonabarabran mixed up at Sydney airport. When he arrived at Coonabarabran, nearly five hundred kilometres into the interior, he asked where the girls and the surf were to be found. The year was 1968 and American servicemen on R and R didn’t have long. He should have been sent straight back to Sydney in retrospect, but Sally and I had him for the holiday and he could track any animal through sandstone. We think he was killed on his return to Vietnam.

  I had got myself into a bit of a mess. In daylight it was four hours to the truck and the moon was into the dark cycle. To attempt to reach the truck at night without knowing the gang’s whereabouts would be a panic reaction. On the other hand I couldn’t stay where I was. For the moment I felt safe. The storms would have forced them to take cover, and nightfall was only an hour away. I decided to light a fire with the dry wood from the tent, cook a big feed and drink a billy of tea. I never went far from the Magnum.

  In Ernestine Hill’s The Territory, I have read many accounts of stockmen leaving their camp fires at night and sleeping at least a hundred metres away. They usually packed an old blanket, already full of holes, with anything they could lay their hands on and left it on the ground as a dummy. If hostile blacks were about a dawn raid was always on the cards and sometimes the dummy would be anchored to the ground with several spears.

  The practice became unwritten law for stockmen in the Territory and as late as the early 1960s, stockmen in the Limmen Bight region, between the Roper and the McArthur rivers, still felt it prudent to set up the camouflage camps. The Territory spears caused gruesome and usually fatal injuries, due to the shovel-blade shape of the point.

  Getting a decent sleep must have been near impossible and as I moved out into the dark and stepped carefully over the rocks I wondered how I could get comfortable enough to sleep. I had re-erected the tent in the same spot to give the appearance of a continuing camp.

  I found a soft grassy spot up on the edge of the tableland. The cattle had eaten the old grass to ground level and the fresh green shoots were like a mattress. To stop the ticks burrowing into my skin I pulled my socks over my trousers. My shirt sleeves I buttoned at the cuffs. The only access was via my neck and that depended on how heavily I slept. My rest was fitful and light. The storms had done more than drench the ground. The invisible current of electricity had breathed life into the trees, the arid shrubs and the wilting grasses, and in the animals it triggered a zest for life. All night the possums made their strange blowing sounds and the native cats let forth their high-pitched shrieks, and if you didn’t know what they were you would dream of large yellow eyes of the night. The wallaroos barked a warning and their telltale hopping thumps drifted through the clear night air from every direction. Only the dingoes bothered me. A chorus of answering calls began far away and at first I thought no more of them than other night sounds. Then close by there were two long howls. I drew my knees up into my chest and I screwed my head into the backpack which was my pillow. For the first time in months I wished for a blanket. The dog had smelt me. I had a vision of it searching for the scent; nose stretched out. It would soon leave, but that howl, that most lonesome sound of all living creatures, a sound that had echoed through these mountains for four thousand years, would hang o
n somewhere under my eyelids until the sleepy hour of dawn.

  Faces floated by and then there was Sal. She was looking at me across a crowded room. Her hair seemed darker and her long evening frock captured the light. It wasn’t a bright white, more a dull white and made of some high-quality material. She looked serene and stunningly beautiful. I walked towards her and she evaporated. I looked everywhere in that crowded room.

  I woke with a start and the ground felt cold and damp underneath me. Only the stars were visible and away to the north, where the black canyon carved a trench in the earth’s crust, the dingoes were wailing again.

  Maybe I slept again for an hour or two, for the faint yellow of dawn seemed to arrive too quickly. I was stiff and cold and my mouth was dry, almost parched. I remembered I had left the water container near the tent.

  Fearful of what daylight might bring I shouldered the backpack, picked up the rifle and crept back into the gorge. The policeman’s words were reverberating in my mind and I wanted to get the water and get the hell out of the place.

  I was letting my instincts guide me now and not giving much attention to any set plan. The truck and the bore were the least safe options. I could make a break for a homestead, but that meant leaving the protection of the range. If they saw me they could follow on horseback and shoot me way beyond the range of my rifle. The only safe place was the sandstone escarpments. If I trod carefully and kept changing direction they would never track me. In the thick clumps of wattle they would be hard pressed to see me.

  Most people live their entire lives without ever once having to thwart a deadly form of pursuit. Those who have experienced it will know the most unnerving aspect is straining to hear. Every few minutes I stopped and listened. The clatter of a stone; a disturbed bronze-wing and the whirr of its wings; the nose-clearing snort from a horse—to hear anything out of the ordinary might have been expecting too much, for the bird life responded instantaneously to the increasing light. In the half light of dawn came the shrill call of the curlew, then as the sun reached the tree tops on the high points the magpies sang their dawn songs. Slowly the sun’s rays crept into the valleys, the black cockatoos let forth their guttural squawks and the first to fly were the galahs.

  Amongst the heaviest timber I could find I descended the basalt escarpments and headed towards the road. To reach the sandstone I had to cross the road. Vehicle sound is very tricky. If there is a slight head-on breeze it will smother sound downwind. When I reached the road I took a quick look either direction and crossed. The dash across might have taken less than eight seconds, but it was an awful moment of exposure. I kept moving quickly and two hours after sunrise I was well into the sandstone country. I began to feel the hollow pinch of no breakfast and opened the last of the casserole tins. It seemed to disappear in a few mouthfuls and I didn’t care to think about the next meal. The rice I had left behind. It had to be cooked. The pasta I could soak in water and eat. The only quick and easy tucker from the scrub was the large white grubs. Under bark in shade areas enough of them can always be found for a meal, but they have a lingering taste which makes me spit for half an hour. It is little wonder the Aborigines of the interior quickly discarded their tucker for the white man’s sugar and flour.

  From a sandstone bluff I could see far across the valley to the south and the bore. The tank itself was out of sight, but I could spot little groups of cattle coming in for water. Everything was normal. For a while I felt safe.

  The loneliness had gone. Maybe I had not been lonely to begin with, merely used to the normal mixing from day to day. In most land areas of the planet it is hard to imagine a world devoid of people. Here it was different. Everything went on as it should and to melt into such tranquillity posed a temptation, although it would be unthinkable for all but the insane. There’s a frequently uttered phrase, ‘Too much time to think’. The reality is, we modern people have too little time to think. If to dwell upon the world causes pain, then you are running.

  I felt dirty and a bit ridiculous. I was grateful I couldn’t see myself. In fact I think the sound of gunfire came as a relief. There must have been thirty or forty shots in rapid succession. They came from the tablelands. I waited. I watched the eagles circling, high up. When they see something foreign on the landscape they glide in for a peep. There was no sign of that. Clouds began to gather again and I began to sweat from the humidity. I knew there would be no second twister. In Australia it’s a freak event—maybe once every three years. An afternoon storm would wipe any tracks and I could replenish the water container without going to the bore.

  The storms contracted to the north. The sun re-emerged and the heat rose. In the wattle not a breath stirred and the kangaroo ticks could smell my sweat, for they moved in every time I shifted position. Brown and orange in colour they were easy to spot by their haste to get to me, a mammal.

  By late afternoon I knew I had to go in for water. I wouldn’t go in at night. A spotlight will show a man up, whereas the very shadows cast by the sun offer protection to the wary. Once in a spotlight there’s no escape. Blinded totally, the victim is at the mercy of the marksman.

  There was good cover all the way in. The hardest part was trying to avoid leaving a track. There were a few galvanised burrs which I stepped on. Cattle step over them and a good tracker would know. The best I could do was slow him down.

  I must have gone in very well concealed because none of the cattle hanging around the trough saw me. I scaled the tank on the hidden side and using a stick with a hook on it I filled the container. The tank was only a quarter full. It should have been no surprise. I was near the end of the third day. The rain after the twister I thought may have provided some paddock water and given the tank storage another day. It didn’t appear Frankie was going to start the diesel.

  There was no one waiting for me at the bore and the cattle would drink the tank dry by noon the next day. I decided to start the bore. The fear, whether founded or unfounded, had begun to wane. If these blokes were as bad and as dangerous as everyone said I felt I would have seen some sign. I didn’t read too much into the burst from an automatic. Guns were their life. They carried them like a city businessman carries a briefcase.

  Nightfall closed on an uneventful day and back in the sandstone I slept better. Before bedding down I had to scrape clean a patch to sleep on and burn the little circle of leaves that made the perimeter. It was a slight risk. The smell of smoke carries on the slightest of breezes, particularly in the evening. But if I hadn’t done it the ticks would have screwed into my body. Up in the tablelands there were not so many. Here among the wallabies and the scrub they lurked underfoot. I wasn’t even sure the narrow strip of burnt ground would stop them.

  I woke more hungry than scared. A mile or more to the south I could hear the chug chug of old faithful. The tank I knew would be more than half full. The birds probably began the day with the same order, but I didn’t take it in. Through the night I had eaten the last of the tasteless pasta and thought the grubs might have been better. I know a lot about conserving energy and I knew that morning I had to get out while I still had the energy to outwit them or outrun them. At least I had to believe that. So far they were one step ahead of me.

  No ticks had come through. The ground heat from the little fire would have soon cooled. The only thing I could put it down to was the smell of burnt leaves. The smell had smothered my body odour.

  To ignore hunger all I needed was a distraction and that arrived. The first sign was a flash of red hide in the timber. Sometimes cattle trot into water. But a headlong rush means they’re fleeing from something. The eagles were not up yet. Lazy big fellows, they waited for the sun to warm the air and produce the updrafts. It might be mid-morning before I had their unwitting assistance.

  I didn’t expect to see any signs apart from the cattle. If they came it would be to run me down. One shot at five hundred metres would be enough. It’s been written you don’t even hear the shot, which spooked me all the more. I had a l
ookout and good cover. I waited. More glimpses of cattle running. They were mustering. The bore pumping—my presence confirmed—it was the last thing I expected of them. To them I was so ineffectual they were going to take a wing of cattle and let me watch. What they didn’t know was that I had been through too much to let that happen. In the past I have forsaken my dignity and self-respect to achieve a peaceful result, only to be looked upon in contempt, and I have lived with the ghosts that consume the cowardly. I made an instant decision to stop the rustlers irrespective of all consequences. Like many decisions in my life, it was one of haste.

  Before I started down into the valley I had to formulate a plan. If I came up against serious confrontation I didn’t wish to be dragged into court as some sort of Rambo on the attack. Disarming them was the objective. If I could surprise them I could get their guns and send them home. The guns would be the evidence, but whether I could hide the guns and get to the nearest homestead on foot was a prospect I didn’t care to dwell on.

  Within sight of the bore I waited and watched. Working in pairs they were bringing in little mobs at a time. I had to wait until they were all together. That meant smoko or lunch.

  I lay up in a patch of sandalwood. The heavy-leafed scrub absorbed the heat and held it. The sweat trickled down every part of my body and as the minutes went by the little tree ants got busier. The ticks I squashed with my boot. I found it nearly impossible to stay still, but so intent on the cattle were the stockmen I wondered whether they ever took a casual glance to see if I was around.

  Late in the morning one pair dismounted after poking a mob of about fifteen head through the gate into the trough access paddock. It was difficult to calculate with so many trees obscuring my view, but I thought a hundred head in all had been mustered.