‘I’m going to roll up one of the oilskins and fasten it to the back of your saddle. It will be in that. Out of sight.’
‘I couldn’t use it. Never, and cutting it down is a jailable offence.’
I moved across and looked at her directly. She was staring into the fire, which threw out warmth we both needed so badly. I wished I could have picked her up and whisked her away from this place. It was alien to everything she had ever known.
‘We’re on our own,’ I said as gently as possible. ‘There’s no police. No law. Through his telescope Frankie can see a fly crawling on my face. He can just about put a bullet through the fly.’ The next part was the hardest. ‘Older women in good shape are the sexiest women on earth. The ugly thing in the oilskin would be the only friend you have.’
When I had taken the barrel off the shotgun the weapon looked like a medieval pistol. I loaded it with no 6 shot. It was for ducks, but close enough would blow a hole in an elephant. Rolled up in the oilskin it was a perfect length. I put the oilskin by the saddles and went back to the fire. Sal was still sitting there. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve when I put my arm around her. There was a plate of toast and jam, all cold.
‘You used to use it on the starlings,’ I said. ‘Just push the hammer down.’
I took a piece of toast from the plate and poured another mug from the billy. The girls were smelling around the boulders. I saw Ellie look up.
‘You must eat. There’s twelve to fifteen miles to ride.’
Sal turned her head. There was a faint smile; a trace of that old humour.
‘You’re one of them. You love it. The freedom, the wilderness, the knowledge you’re beyond reproach from authority and society in general.’
‘Sympathetic maybe. An unbridled culture of horses, gunsmoke and innuendo, born of the Civil War, died in the US and rekindled in Queensland.’ I paused and squeezed her shoulders. ‘How’s that for a load of nonsense?’
Sal smiled fully this time. ‘Most men are conformists. The more conformist, the more successful and women everywhere fall in head first.’
‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ I replied thoughtfully. ‘But I’ll take it as a compliment to a wild man. Although given my time again I would conform a little more.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Sal asked gently.
‘I love music. When I was a little boy, a nun—Sister Sebastian—wanted me to learn to play the piano. She was in charge of a little group, including me, and she taught most of them. Not me though, I wouldn’t conform and now I’d give anything to be able to play. But she taught so much more than the piano. It’s moments like this I sometimes think of her, which is not difficult because she had such a pretty unblemished face. Come to think of it, her face and hands were all I ever saw. I loved her. She was the only woman who cared at the time. But if she were here now and we talked about Frankie she would probably say no one is all good and no one is all bad.’
I scanned the summit skyline once again. A pair of eagles had arrived to survey the scene. Silhouetted against the sky, they were perched in a dead tree. Ellie had come to sit beside me, but Millie carried on with the sniffing. Possums had been around overnight and she was very excited by their smell.
I threw the tea-leaves into the fire and got up. ‘I’ll saddle the horses. You better wear the thickest jeans you’ve got.’
Attaching the sawn-off shotgun to the saddle dees at the back took more than a few minutes. I had a box of spare leather and cut an old stirrup leather to size. On the barrel end of the oilskin I used a thin leather strap, simply by applying a tight knot. The butt end I pulled tight with the stirrup piece, careful to leave the buckle on top for quick undoing. The problem was the thick leather didn’t fit through the dee, so I had to secure it with a cord.
I filled a couple of water bottles and placed them and the hastily made sandwiches in my backpack. On the rear of my saddle I fastened the other oilskin, taking care to make the shape of it look the same as the other. I think it was about eight-thirty when we rode through the gorge. The horses shied and veered away from the boulders. They were very nervous until we got through.
‘What about the track out?’ Sal said. ‘If we run out of time at least we can meet Richie on the road. Send him back to Roma.’
‘And we ride back in here in the dark,’ I replied, unimpressed. It was a typical mother’s outlook in the face of danger. ‘Anyway, if there’s any mischief afoot the track’s the last thing we follow.’
Once clear of the gorge, I swung south, keeping the range to our right. Until we left the track I kept my eyes on the wheel tracks, but even if I thought the vehicle had stopped last night it was guesswork. My tracking was too rusty to be reliable, so I wasted no time on it.
Sal rode beside me, kicking Yarramin up whenever he lagged. She didn’t look any better, with her hair still across her face. I hadn’t washed either.
‘Do you really think we’re in danger of a psycho taking a sniper shot?’ she asked timidly.
‘God, no. We’re not dealing with a psycho. We’re dealing with professional cattle duffers. They want us out. But they don’t want us dead and the place swarming with cops.’
Sal looked at me enquiringly. ‘The sawn-off?’
‘Frankie’s an alcoholic and Ike’s just no good. If they’re drunk it’s a little different and a pea rifle that they can see is useless.’
We rode on in silence for a while. The horses walked along well and I had already taken my jumper off and tied it around my waist. The girls trotted ahead to begin with, but there were so many stinkers to chase they knocked themselves out and settled back behind the horses, tongues lolling.
The strip of red country bordering the ranges was mainly under stunted box with no regrowth. Away to our left the brigalow began, thick and impenetrable in parts. Ahead I could see a low range coming in from the east. It was the one we had to cross to enter the Claravale watershed.
‘Knowing your man’s a big start,’ I said, as we rode on. ‘Childhood abuse and violence. Hatred of his father. Some religious exposure. It all falls into the pot and creates a man destined for eternal conflict. People shun them. There’s no compassion whatever.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘That they’re not so bad, but lost—outcasts.’
I kept thinking about the rock fall. It was out of character. It wasn’t Frankie’s way and he would be too damn lazy to climb a mountainside in the dark. It kept bothering me and slowly another prospect emerged, one that sapped the moisture from my mouth immediately. The bloke released from jail six months ago. No one had ever mentioned him again. Surely he had gone?
We arrived at a point where two ranges met, joined by a rugged gap. The basalt-capped range we had been following terminated. The range ahead, to the south, was rimmed with a low sandstone cliff, perhaps only two and a half metres high in places. There was no way through.
‘We’ll ride east for an hour,’ I said. ‘If there’s no gap a horse can manage we’ll have to go back.’
‘I’ll be terrified if we have to stay another night.’
‘We’ll sleep in the four-wheel drive. The three of us. It’ll be okay.’
Yarramin began to sweat and it became obvious we would have to ride as far as the fence and undo it. The fence ran east from the final spur of this range and crossed the road at the cattle grid. Distance was going to beat us. I reined in.
‘Another night I am afraid.’
Sal looked down at Yarramin’s sweaty neck.
‘If you and Richie can lever the boulders we can leave anyway.’
‘One I can pull with the chain. The big one’s the problem. It’s going to be inch by inch with the crowbar. I really think we’ve reacted out of shock. Richie’s in no danger.’
All parents are the same. We tend to see our own lives as more than half spent and our greatest fear is one of our own being cut down early. That morning I think we did over react in regard to trying to stop Richard. I had pan
icked and that’s the reaction whoever had loosened the boulders may have sought. I should have quietly set about making the horse yard.
‘We’ll stay,’ I said, after we had been riding for a bit. ‘I’ve been slow to think through it. They’re not going to hurt anyone. Maybe they’ll try something else, but it will only be to scare us. Try and get us to leave for good.’
Sal didn’t reply. She didn’t like the prospect much, but she was adjusting to the Blank Space just as I had a year ago. My mind drifted back to that ex-prisoner I had never seen, but his presence defied logic. Frankie and Ike had climbed up the gorge, I decided, because if their scare tactics worked they stood to profit from them.
The only camp intruders had been the emus again. The dogs growled and the hair on their backs rose. The emus had decided to camp near our tents, among the gums. The big daddy must have stood more than two metres tall and he was used to confronting dingoes. The girls turned tail and we reined in. He wasn’t going to stand for any nonsense. It was all bluff though. Once the dogs ran he stopped and the family retreated into the bush. They had been better fed this time. In our haste we had left the bread out.
I watered and fed the horses and after a late lunch I unloaded two used coils of ringlock and some steel posts. Sal had recovered and I saw her opening a little shower kit she had purchased in a Roma camping shop. It had to be hung in a tree. I must have put my head down for ten minutes, for when I looked across to the tents again she was standing naked under this thing, having a shower.
‘Another week of this and you’ll be ready for the Sierra Madre.’
Sal laughed. ‘I’ve come through it. I feel great. They can go to hell.’
It was great to see. I went on with building the yard, feeling better myself. We had coffee about four o’clock and laughed and joked for the first time in weeks.
‘I don’t think you’ll readjust,’ Sal said.
‘To what?’
‘The farm life.’
‘You mightn’t fancy planting petunias either.’
The last of the twilight had gone. Not even the skyline trees above the camp were visible and I was becoming quietly concerned that Richard hadn’t arrived. With the coming of the night Sal had become subdued and a little of the old fear took hold again. I told her several times it would take eleven hours from Lismore. I was about to come up with something else, like engine trouble, when we heard the vehicle.
I snatched the camp torch from the table and strode over to the pile of boulders. The rock was so black. Anyone unaware of it would brake too late.
Richard drove into the gorge very cautiously and wouldn’t have hit the boulders.
‘You’ve been rockclimbing!’ That’s how he greeted me. He had his Uncle Henry’s spontaneous sense of humour. It always had a bit of bite to it. I had been poised to relate some scarcely feasible explanation about the rock, but instead burst out laughing myself. Sal laughed too, but I think it was nervous relief. She had her arms around Richie, hugging him so hard that I hoped she would soon let go, or he would know something was wrong.
‘Been a rock fall,’ I said. ‘Unstable bloody stuff it is.’
Richard looked a bit bewildered and focused his attention on the rock pile. ‘You haven’t been able to get out.’
‘It’s my leg. Not strong enough.’
Richard was too intelligent to accept the coincidence of a rock fall crashing squarely on the track, but he seemed to restrain himself from asking direct questions. I think it was because he knew there was a timid and very feminine side to his mother’s make-up. Instead he asked indirectly searching questions and I began to think the pact Sal and I had made was a bit ridiculous. We had decided to say nothing about the attack on the camp. It was so bizarre that any thinking person would question it, even our own son, we’d thought. I believe everyone at some time in their life witnesses an incident or sees something that goes beyond the outer limits of credibility. In the monsoons of 1963 I stood out in heavy rain one day to observe little fish falling out of the cloud. It was near Winton in north-west Queensland. I spoke of it just once and received looks that shut me up for good. In February 1997, it rained fish from a monsoon that had swung as far south as Olary in South Australia. An ABC cameraman captured the scene for the national news. Thirty-four years later I felt free to talk about my experience. I hoped on this occasion it would only be a matter of days before I could relate the real source of the rockfall and not find myself looking into a highly sceptical face.
I helped Richard carry his things to one of the extra tents I had put up and then we all sat down for a drink. Richard was very disappointed when we told him the boys had to be stopped. They had all worked well together in June and more importantly, had loved it. Having driven seven hundred kilometres on his own he was tired and looked it, but as Sal and I talked and he did the listening, I saw him stare into the darkness several times, towards the rockfall. He knew: he knew the excuses were covering something ugly.
Dinner finished, the three of us retired to the tents quite early. Richard looked very tired. The suntan from the June muster had faded and I suspect he had crammed his study to give me this week. We had decided to face the boulder problem in the morning.
The temperature dropped sharply that night. Before midnight I pulled up an extra blanket. With only a little sleep the night before I should have slept like a log, but I lay on my back listening. Sal breathed easily, a slow and relaxed rise and fall of her bosom. Richie was safe and that combined with no more instances of malevolence had resulted in a heavy sleep. I envied her.
The girls nestled in around our feet. Ellie was a very alert dog and as good as any posted sentry. Sometimes she growled. Never loudly, just enough to signal a mischievous possum or the passing of kangaroos and wallabies. I only had to whisper and her tail slapped against my leg.
Slipping in and out of fragile sleep I had no idea of the hour, but I woke to low growls from Ellie. When I whispered there was no response from her and I sat up, moving slowly so as not to disturb Sal. Ellie was shivering. I patted her gently, but it made no difference and the little growls were more like whimpers. I felt for the rifle and lay back again.
Three long howls filled the gorge and sent shivers down my neck and back. It was the dingo. That same dingo from the high plateau and later the stampede. I had an image of a large pale yellow dog, long legged and graceful, standing boldly at the cliff’s edge and staring down at the camp. Although a figment of my imagination, this creature of the Dreamtime seemed to be a spirit dog, left by people who had survived for thousands of years in these ranges, and I pulled up another blanket as pondering on the unknown always invites the cold, more so than the in-coming frost.
I fell into a troubled sleep with nightmares of absurd images. I was a priest standing on a high mountain spur and a young nun stood before me, her eyes askance as they always were when she looked at me. I told her weakness invited trouble and turning the other cheek and walking away ruined all the good intentions of men and women in the world. I told her I would walk with the gun in one hand and the rosary beads she had given me in the other. She said there was no conflict in her world and she would pray for me. Her face was soft and ageless and I wanted her to touch me again on the head, as she used to, but she was gone in the mist and I overstepped, almost falling. I woke with a start and Ellie pounced into my lap. I got up and lit the fire. The dogs went on their sniff-and-smell run. Before the billy boiled I put the sawn-off shotgun in the truck, under the seat. Then I made the tea and woke Sal and Richard.
After breakfast Richard and I got to work on the boulders. We had to roll some of the smaller ones away to get at the three big ones. In the daylight the suggestion of a natural rock fall was absurd. Rock falls occur when part of a cliff or steep rocky slope breaks away. There are several causes, but prolonged and heavy rain would cause ninety percent of them. The boulders and debris from this rock fall had come from a band of rock high up, where grass, bushes and dwarfed trees pointed
to a stable composition of soil and rock.
‘Two separate falls,’ Richard commented. ‘The smaller one was aimed at the camp.’
‘I’m glad you said it,’ I responded. ‘Your mother and I felt you and everyone might begin to think we were not just visitors to the Blank Space, but victims of it.’
‘You don’t think we should shift camp?’
‘That might give them encouragement.’
Richard glanced towards the camp kitchen, where his mum was cleaning up. With her floppy outdoor hat on, she looked set for a day among the roses.
‘Mum must have been terrified,’ he said at last.
‘She had a few bad hours. We both did. Fear’s like all other emotions. Its intensity doesn’t last.’
‘Maybe a double murder out here could never be proved, but they would gain nothing, because they couldn’t possibly touch the cattle.’
‘Legal logic,’ I agreed. ‘But it doesn’t apply with men struggling against community rejection. They’re at war with the world. They always bring it on themselves of course, but they never see it that way.’
‘If you really believe that, Mum shouldn’t be here.’
‘She doesn’t think you should.’ I hesitated and ran my eyes along the skyline again. ‘The danger’s past, Richie. They tried us out and it failed. Anyway, try and tell her to go home! She’s as determined as me to save the herd. In the Capertee valley we lost and the taste still lingers.’
The weight of rock is probably more difficult to assess than any other matter. Taking a wild guess, I put the big boulder at a tonne, but it may have been double. We used a chunk of wood as a lever base for the crowbar and to begin with it seemed hopeless. We just couldn’t press enough weight on the crowbar. I got the metre length of pipe I use to extend the truck wheel spanner and it wouldn’t fit over the head of the crowbar. It took half an hour and two blades to hacksaw the head off, but the extended leverage with the pipe worked.
The next boulder had an oblong shape and I snigged it away with the four-wheel drive. The third big one had the shape of a giant marble. We couldn’t lever it and we couldn’t snig it. The only way to shift it was to excavate a depression, going underneath to the point of balance. We managed to move it about a metre and that was enough to squeeze the vehicles through. It only took ten minutes to clean up the rest of the debris.
Horses Too Are Gone, The Page 32