Horses Too Are Gone, The

by Keenan, Michael

  The paddock price per head was too high. I made an offer to the agent and we set off across the paddock to the little cottage. I waited in the car while he talked privately to the woman. I think he knew she would accept. The agent had probably set the price and a much lower offer than mine may have been accepted. It’s the sort of buying I hate as the human aspect has to be considered. They were doing it tough. How far should you cut the price and feel okay inside when you leave?

  As it turned out they got a wonderful price and probably remember my arrival as one of the few good days in 1995.

  The cattle were loaded about two days later and I had to find someone to help me mark the young bulls. I wanted to get someone from Roma. It was two hundred kilometres from Mitchell to Echo Hills and if I took a man with me I had to get back the same day.

  Mick Bourke had already done some mustering for me. He was an Aboriginal stockman in his late fifties. From far southwest Queensland he had at one time or another faced every conceivable nightmare relating to cattle, from stampedes to wild scrub bulls. With Mick alongside me I knew we’d get these mickeys done.

  Mick belonged to a generation of Aborigines who by the turn of the century will have disappeared. He was trained on an outback station and probably knew more than most white men when it came to horses and cattle. Mick and others like him had the edge on us white blokes in the real outback, because he could melt back into the bush with the same ease as a scrub wallaby. If tucker ran out a goanna was thrown on the fire and he never seemed to be physically uncomfortable, whether there was a heatwave, a gale blowing or torrential rain. The first time I took Mick on board I had to turn around about ninety kilometres out of town in the face of heavy rain. There were no stations for miles and I had no food in the truck. The thought of getting stuck had me deeply troubled, but when I glanced at Mick with a cigarette protruding from the side of his mouth I knew he couldn’t care less.

  ‘I’ll get a lift to the pub,’ he said now, as I turned to get back into the truck. I had found him on the edge of town in a rented house. We had agreed to leave at five o’clock next morning for Echo Hills. A lift to the pub was the last thing I wanted to give him, but I couldn’t refuse.

  Mick was a nuggety man, no taller than me and in the modern world of centimetres neither of us knew what height we were. He had that craggy, full of character Aboriginal face and when he laughed it was a burst of spontaneous mirth. He had a bit of white in him, of course. Away from Cape York and the Torres Strait Islands there would be few fullbloods left in Queensland. In his sombre moments I caught glimpses of a harsh existence in the early days, somewhere west of the Warrego. He had gone a flecked grey which was normal enough, but for all his joviality I didn’t see him as a man who was in good health.

  When Mick also drew on his wages I knew he was heading for a big night and worse still the Commonwealth Hotel on a Thursday was the brightest place in town. If I wanted a man for the morning I had to stick with him, which wasn’t hard. I have never seen a man of his age throw so much zest onto the dance floor. Women didn’t have much say about whether they danced with him or not and none of the blokes looking on got upset as they got too much fun from watching him. I kept saying or probably shouting that I couldn’t dance but towards the end of the evening I know I did attempt some sort of comical stomp.

  It was about one o’clock in the morning when I pushed Mick into a taxi. I wasn’t game to drive him home. I went upstairs to my room and felt I had only been on the bed for five minutes when one of the kitchen girls knocked on my door. I had arranged for an early morning call and I felt lousy. Mick I thought wouldn’t even make it.

  The hotel had a tea and coffee room. I boiled up the jug and before I made the tea in walked Mick. He looked a bit pale, but otherwise no different.

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Me nephew drove me. You said five.’

  ‘Like a cuppa?’

  ‘Let’s boil up out there. Might feel like somethin’ then.’

  After that wet return to Roma I’d had with Mick, I’d made a policy of carrying a box with a billy, mugs and biscuits.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I don’t feel like it either.’

  Ken Slaughter had agreed to muster the cattle the evening before. When marking calves in the heat the one thing you don’t want is rapidly running pulses fresh from a morning muster.

  It was still quite cool when Mick and I arrived after about an hour and a half on the road. We both agreed to get stuck into it and boil the billy afterwards. There were thirty-three mickeys to mark and with a headstall and adjustable crush we reckoned we’d do fifteen to the hour. The marking was enough at this age and size, so I left the brand in the truck and used the ear punch for identification.

  The drafting took about fifteen minutes and we ran about ten calves up the race leading to the crush. The operating gear I placed on the top of a forty-four gallon drum. It consisted of a scalpel, spare blades, Dettol, ear pliers, hypodermic needle and penicillin, which had been stored in the hotel kitchen fridge.

  The first calf into the crush was one of the biggest. Mick locked the headstall and I pushed the gate-like side of the crush firmly against the bull to restrict movement. I took hold of the purse with my right hand and was looking for the correct spot to make the first incision when the kick came. The bull couldn’t see and from his point of view it was a kick of extraordinary luck. His hoof caught the tip of the scalpel handle and drove the blade just about through my right hand. It didn’t hurt very much and the cut wasn’t very wide. The problem was the blood. The blade must have severed a principal vein in the hand. It bubbled like a fountain and I couldn’t stop it.

  ‘I’ll see if there’s some cat gut at the homestead,’ I said to Mick, frustrated and unable to accept the obvious consequences.

  When I got out of the truck at the homestead the blood was running down my arm, my side and even my leg. I still had the silly notion of sewing it up with cat gut and going back to the job. Ken was working in a shed near the house and I walked over to him.

  The sight of blood affects everyone differently. Bleeding doesn’t bother me, but blood drawn by a syringe nearly causes me to faint. Ken’s reaction was total inability to speak or act, so I went over to the house to try my luck with his wife, Rosie. I opened my mouth about cat gut.

  ‘It’s off to hospital,’ she said aghast.

  Rosie wrapped my hand in a towel and we left immediately for Surat. She telephoned ahead on the car phone.

  It’s moments like these you realise that hospital closures in remote rural centres are life-threatening. A good nurse is quicker on the uptake than most doctors and when we arrived the sister had everything ready. One nurse fainted, but the sister had me sewn up and dressed within minutes. One of the most ridiculous aspects of modern medicine is the legal restrictions placed on nurses to act in the interests of a patient’s welfare if there’s no doctor available. At the time of writing this chapter, for example, the Coonabarabran District Hospital had no doctor and under law no nurse is permitted to administer anti-venom. I have been bitten by the eastern brown snake which has the second most deadly venom in the world, and the time lapse from bite to coma can be less than two hours. Luckily for me, the hospital had been staffed by a doctor at that time.

  I may have been kept at the hospital for a while. I don’t recall anything more but when I finally returned to the yards Mick had put the cattle into the paddock.

  ‘We’ll come back another day,’ I said to Mick.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Do the bulls.’

  ‘I’ve done ’em.’

  I couldn’t believe it. This aged Aborigine, whom I knew was taking pills for God knows what ailments, had single-handedly marked all the bulls.

  Any stockman in Australia would recognise what Mick did as an extraordinary example of animal husbandry. Even more impressive was his willingness. Mick had every excuse in the world to simply turn the cattle out for another day, but he
appreciated the urgency of the job.

  ‘I finally boiled that billy, Mike,’ he said with a grin, a cigarette stuck between his lips once again.

  ‘Next drink better be a beer.’

  He nodded vigorously.

  Mick drove the truck back to Roma and by about four-thirty we were back in the bar of the Commonwealth. It didn’t take us long to drop a few beers. Mick had dried out from sweat and I needed to top up my blood. There was no chance of making it back to Mitchell so I telephoned Joan Hamilton at Rowallan to tell her where I was. She nearly dropped the phone when I told her my crutch arm was now bandaged up. I was about to hang up when she said a Fiona had asked to speak to me from Sydney. She was flying up to visit a friend at Injune and planned to do a feature article on the drought. Joan gave me her telephone number.

  I went back to the bar and some of Mick’s family had turned up. He introduced me to his two daughters and a son-in-law. One daughter said very firmly that Mick wasn’t going to drink until midnight again. I very much doubted whether he would last until sunset.

  ‘When do you reckon we can muster the cattle at Mt Kennedy, Mick?’ I asked him.

  ‘Any day you like boss. Tomorra even.’

  ‘Better make it Sunday,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to line up the Hamilton boys. They’ll be chasing a rodeo somewhere tomorrow.’

  ‘What about horses?’

  ‘Bring your own. We’ll leave daylight Sunday morning and pick up the horses at Rowallan on the way out.’

  Provided at least one of the Hamilton boys was available we were set. All I had to do was provide the food and help a bit with the mustering. What was really bothering me was the phonecall. I hadn’t seen Fiona, a freelance journalist, for twenty years. All I could recall was her voice, which had a melancholy cadence that made you listen whether you wanted to or not. If she wanted to do a story on the drought and take photographs I guessed there was no harm in it. Mustering camps can be dour affairs and I thought she might brighten it up a bit. I telephoned her and agreed to meet the evening flight from Brisbane on Saturday.

  I couldn’t use the crutch with my hand bandaged up and I soon found I had become too dependent on it anyway. Provided I had my leg tightly strapped I could walk on it without too much discomfort. I enjoyed shopping for the mustering camp and put a lot of thought into it. Including myself I expected to be cooking for five. Joan Hamilton said one of the boys would be available with a horse, provided their legs or their arms were not broken at the rodeo. The third man might be Mick’s nephew, but he had to find out if he had a horse. If Fiona came she was going to be the camera lady. The thought of a sophisticated woman from Melbourne’s exclusive South Yarra on a rough mustering camp in the Blank Space amused me a little. I was down to one useful leg and arm, so I felt like a bit of amusement.

  ‘How did you find me?’ I asked, when I met Fiona at the airport.

  ‘The post office. The man there said everyone in town knew who you were.’

  ‘But Queensland?’

  ‘Close friend.’

  I knew by the look in her eye she didn’t want me to ask. She had aged quite a lot. Once a beautiful young woman, it distracted me for a few moments. I had aged too and she may have been thinking the same.

  Neither of us said much to begin with. I really couldn’t believe she was actually here, under my care. At first it seemed like a bit of fun. I knew from old that Fiona loved the company of men and would keep the camp on its toes. Mustering camps can be dull—long hours in the saddle and no grog at the end of the day. To take grog into a mustering camp can undo the whole job.

  I don’t know what she thought of the transition from an air-conditioned aeroplane to a dirty old truck, but we went straight to the Commonwealth and after I had showed her the room I had booked for her we went to the hotel dining room.

  ‘I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces in the morning.’ I shook my head, laughing softly. ‘Lady photographer in the Blank Space.’

  ‘Blank Space!’

  ‘The Carnarvon territory is a semi-wilderness. No towns, not even a village. An area almost as large as Tasmania. There’s pockets of good country, but most of the cattle stations hack out a hard, lean living.’

  ‘It sounds exciting to me,’ she said brightly. Under direct light I could see every line in her face. She was always a determined woman. Too much so. It was her eyes that had stayed the same—always clear and lively, but I expected they could be blistering if it suited her.

  ‘It’s rough,’ I said flatly. ‘You’ll have your own little tent. When you want to wash it’s the stock trough.’

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ she said smiling, ‘I’ve roughed it. On overseas trips I’ve lived on a shoestring.’

  I bought a bottle of wine and we ordered.

  ‘Alright if I bring some wine?’ she asked. ‘It’s the only luxury I want.’

  ‘Keep it in your tea mug. Mick’s okay if he thinks there’s no grog about.’

  ‘Who’s Mick?’

  ‘He’s one of the most dinkum old stockmen you’ll ever run into.’

  ‘Sounds like a photographer’s dream,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘You just want photographs, or a story as well?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Everyone knows the drought story. You really think it’s got a market?’

  ‘Depends on the person. Everyone in the business has the same options. You chose an option different to most.’ She paused and drank a little wine. ‘That’s what makes the story.’

  Her blonde hair had been long when I’d known her. I wanted to tell her to grow her hair long again. The terrible thing about middle age is that we have to accept our older image whether we like it or not. With Sal I have always been spoilt—she never looks any older.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Fiona asked suddenly, quite serious.

  I couldn’t tell her it was her hair.

  ‘A drought story about me. I’m sure the dull and comfortable world of Australia in the 1990s wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘That’s a bit cynical isn’t it?’

  ‘Not meant to be. It’s just a fact of ordinary life. Ask me what I did in 1992 and 1993 and I would have to think about it. Ask me what I did in the last six months and I can relate every day.’

  ‘Then you’ve enjoyed all this business in Queensland?’

  ‘No, very little of it. It just hasn’t been dull.’

  I began to explain how she might get the best shots, that the cattle should be heading for the bore access late in the afternoon when the light was at its best for photography.

  ‘Oh, I’ll go on the muster and carry the camera on the horse,’ Fiona exclaimed with growing enthusiasm.

  ‘Well, that’s the way to get the best shots,’ I agreed, not wanting to say anything that might dampen her excitement. Heat, scrub and mile upon mile of riding: it won’t work I thought to myself.

  Fiona left for bed soon afterwards and I walked into the bar for a nightcap. Mick was seated on a stool and as jovial as ever. He was drinking with two blokes—one an Aborigine in his thirties and the other one of the most weathered, scrub-beaten men I had ever seen. He was on the dark side and I couldn’t tell whether his skin had been darkened by years in the sun or was simply genetic. I shook hands with him and when he smiled he had one tooth left, on the lower jaw.

  ‘His name’s Boon,’ Mick said.

  My blood ran cold and I looked at the man more closely. He knew what I was thinking. He was the tracker working for the Mt Kennedy gang. He had tracked me down.

  ‘I’ve left,’ he said soberly. ‘Been a showdown out there. Real bad one. Just a miracle no one was killed.’

  ‘Don’t tell him,’ Mick laughed and drained his glass which was nearly full to begin with. ‘He’ll call the muster off.’

  ‘This bloke turned up,’ Boon continued. ‘Ike and I were handling horses in the stockyard and we hear him yellin’ at Frankie. Frankie was over in the camp with Jenny. Next thing Frankie grabs his gun,
takes aim and nothin’ happens. This bloke grabs the gun off him and belts Frankie over the head with the butt. Then Jenny produces a shotgun. The bloke takes no notice. Just keeps laying into Frankie with the gun butt. She fires a shot in the air and the bloke jumps back. She shoves another shell up the spout and fires again. This time the bugger drops the gun and Jenny yells for us to come over. Just as we get there Frankie’s got to his feet and he’s screamin’ mad, “Who unloaded me gun? Who unloaded me gun?”’

  ‘With blood streamin’ from his face he races in and grabs his gun lying at the feet of this bloke. Jenny yells at us—grab Frankie before he gets the bullets. We grab him and Frankie puts up a helluva fight and we got his blood all over us. We hold him and this bloke pisses off into the bush.’

  ‘Who was he?’ I asked.

  ‘Jenny never said. She just said he’d been released from the slammer. Had some score to settle with Frankie.’

  ‘Jenny was pretty smart unloading that gun,’ I said.

  ‘She and Frankie had a big blue over it. Jenny reckons Frankie cleaned his gun when full of plonk and forgot to load it. Anyway Frankie’s gone lookin’ for this bloke on horseback. He wanted me to track for him and Jenny tell me to go. She tell me Frankie and Ike will die from a policeman’s bullet and if not from that, then from their enemies.’

  The next day was little more than picking up horses and getting out to Mt Kennedy. Fiona was up early and looked very smart in her tight-fitting jodhpurs. After an early breakfast at a roadhouse we collected Mick and his horse. When I introduced Mick to Fiona he was speechless. He apologised for his mate not being available and when I said Fiona would ride in his place the whites of his eyes seemed to undergo extraordinary expansion.