I had learnt how to nose-peg an animal from both Kurt and Sallay — each had different methods. Sallay skewered the flesh straight through from the inside with a sharpened mulga stick, then inserted the wooden peg into the hole and dressed it with kerosene and oil. Kurt’s method was more sophisticated if not better. He would mark the spot on the nose with a marker pen, punch a small hole in the flesh with a leather punch, widen that hole with a butcher’s skewer driven through from the inside up to the hilt, and follow this with the insertion of the peg, which, by the way, looks more than anything else like a small wooden penis. He would then dress it carefully every day, for anything up to two months, with dilute antiseptic and antibiotic powder. I had performed this brutal operation on one of Kurt’s young bulls but I hated it. It made me feel sick. However, Zelly’s nose was now so infected, despite the constant cleaning, that I thought perhaps there were wood splinters inside it preventing it from healing. So, to our mutual horror, I tied her down, cut the peg with bolt cutters and inspected the wound thoroughly. I discovered that the peg had indeed splintered along the shaft, and was opening the wound as it turned. I had to make another peg and insert it through that tortured flesh. How animals ever forgive us for what we do to them, I will never understand.
Sallay came out to visit me one day to see how I was doing. I took him down to Zelly and he looked her over, commenting on how well she looked and how quiet she was. He then stood back for a minute, rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and shot me a sideways glance.
‘You know what I think, girl?’
‘What do you think, Sallay?’
He rubbed those expert hands over her belly again. ‘I think you’ve got yourself a pregnant camel.’
‘What? Pregnant?’ I yelled. ‘But that’s fantastic. No wait, that’s not fantastic. What if she has it on the trip?’
Sallay laughed and patted me on the shoulder. ‘Believe me, having a baby camel on your trip would be the least of your worries. When it’s born, you just tie it up in a sack, hoist it on its mother’s back, and within a few days it will trot along behind with the best of them. In fact, it would be a good thing for you, because you can tie the baby up at night and be sure that the mother won’t go too far. Could solve one of your main problems, eh? Well, I hope she is, for your sake. Should be a nice little calf too, if that wild black bull I saw her running with was the father.’
By now I knew I had to make a decision about Kate. She had blood poisoning which had carried the infection to her knee, she had lost half her weight, and her roars now were the protests of a fragile and pitiful old lady. I was attending to her three or four times a day, putting a hose in one side of that knee and watching an arc of pink muck coming out of a hole in the other side. I procrastinated over destroying her for two reasons — I just could not believe a simple cut could kill a camel, and, with Kate gone there would be no hope of starting the trip and I would be very nearly back at square one. I eventually decided that I must put the old girl out of her misery. I felt terribly guilty. She had really been too old to go through the rigours of vets and saddles and the separation from her mate on Alcoota. I believe she actually pined away — lost her will to live. I had often thought of sending her back but now it was too late. However, I was determined not to get soppy about it. It was something that had to be done, and I was even practical enough to sharpen up my knives so that I could take her beautiful coat and tan it. I had never used the gun and was more terrified of botching the whole thing than of actually killing her — I had successfully steeled myself to that. Jenny, who was spending more and more time with me at Basso’s, and who was becoming an indispensable friend, offered to be with me that day. ‘It’s all right really, Jen. I’ve got it under control, but if you want to come out that’s fine.’
She came. I was in a cold sweat of trepidation. The day had an unreal washed-out feeling as we walked together over the hills. It wasn’t until we got to Kate that I realized how hard I had been holding Jenny’s hand. I sat Kate down in a washaway, pointed the rifle at her head, wondering if divine retribution would have the bullet ricochet back at my own, and pulled the trigger. I remember the noise of her hitting the dust with a thud but I must have shut my eyes. I was not expecting the momentary wave of hysteria that swept over me then. Jen practically shouldered me home, made me tea, and then had to leave for work. I was badly shaken. I had never done anything like that before. Never destroyed something that had a personality. I felt like a murderer. The idea of stripping Kate’s hide was unthinkable. It was all I could do not to go back to the carcass and stare, wondering at what I had done. So that was that. No Katie, no trip. Fate again. And all that time and all that money and all that energy, devotion and care, for nothing. Eighteen months had passed down the plug-hole, for nothing.
4
MY DEPRESSION OVER THE shooting of Kate was compounded by my escalating terror of Kurt. He seemed so out of control, so close to the edge, that I believed he had the capacity to kill, if not me and Gladdy, then at least my animals. So I had to play his game. Had to let him believe I was no threat — not worth bothering about. He thought Gladdy and I were plotting something, but he didn’t ever say as much; his mind turning over like a mill, machinating ways and means of thwarting whatever plans we were concocting.
This debilitating fear, this recognition of the full potential of Kurt’s hatred of me, and the knowledge that Kurt could and would hurt me very badly if I displeased him enough, was the catalyst which transformed my vague misery and sense of defeat into an overwhelming reality. The Kurts of this world would always win — there was no standing up to them — no protection from them. With this realization came a collapse. Everything I had been doing or thinking was meaningless, trivial, in the face of the existence of Kurt.
The fear was like a fungus that slowly grew over me and defeated me in the weeks that followed. I went down down down to that state that I had long since forgotten existed. I would stare for hours out of my kitchen window, unable to act. I would pick up objects, stare at them, turn them over in my hand, then put them down and wander back to the window. I slept too much, I ate too much. Tiredness overwhelmed me. I waited for the sound of a car, a voice — anything. And I tried to shake myself, slap myself, but the energy and strength that I had so taken for granted had leaked out through my fear.
Yet the strange thing was I snapped out of this melancholy the moment a friend arrived. I tried to tell them about it, but the language to describe such a thing belonged to that feeling, so I joked about it instead. Yet I desperately wanted them to understand. They were evidence that reason and sanity still existed and I clung to them as if I were drowning.
Kurt went away on holiday and Gladdy decided to leave while the going was good. I was happy for her; she looked better already. But I knew how much I was going to miss her, and I was frightened of being left on my own with her husband. One night I was up staying with her, as often happened these days when Kurt was away, and Katie’s ghost was still inhabiting my room at Basso’s. We had both gone to bed hours before but I could not sleep. I was again overcome by a sense of failure. Not just of the trip but a kind of personal failure — the absolute impossibility of ever winning against brute force and domination. I was worrying it over and over, trying to seek a solution, impossible in that state of mind because of its very nature. And then I thought: of course, the perfect way out — suicide. Now, this was not the ordinary chest-beating, why-are-we-born-to-suffer-and-die syndrome, this was something new. It was rational, unemotional. And I wonder now if that’s how people usually come to it. Coldly. It was so simple really. I would walk way out bush, sit myself down somewhere, and calmly put a bullet in my brain. No mess, no fuss. Just nice clean simple exit. Because no life was better than half-life. I was planning it out, the best place, the best time, when suddenly Gladdy sat bolt upright in the bed opposite me and said, ‘Rob, are you all right? Do you want a cup of coffee?’ It was the equivalent of a bucket of iced water thrown over someone in hyster
ia, waking me to the horror of what I was thinking, the enormity of it. I had never been to that point before, and don’t think I shall ever have to again. I worked something out that night in my shaky way.
She left a few days later. I inherited her old dog Blue, a cattle dog whom she had saved from a pound a few weeks before. As we hugged goodbye, she said, ‘You know, the moment I saw you, I knew you were going to play some important part in my life. Odd, isn’t it?’
Kurt returned shortly afterwards, and his vengeance was matchless. He now had me so terrorized that I slept with a small hatchet under my pillow. He continued to try to sell the place, or at least appeared to. My brother-in-law heard about this and, to my complete bewilderment, rang Kurt and offered to buy the place for me. At first it seemed like the answer to all my problems, then I realized that it was a crazy idea. We might not be able to resell and I could be stuck looking after it for years. However, if I could keep Kurt on the hook until Gladdy got herself together enough to see a lawyer that would be a good thing. So there followed a game of cat and mouse with my tormentor. To convince him that I had every intention of buying, I had to spend most of my time up there, pretending to prepare for take-over. There were no holds barred now. I remember Kurt came down to my room at Basso’s one morning at about six, ripped all the clothes off my bed, yanked me out and screamed that if I slept in when I had the ranch, the whole thing would be worthless. The murderous light never left his eyes during those weeks. We were involved in a tacit war, both playing games, both desperate to win. He was forcing me to train the young white bull, Bubby, without benefit of nose-line or saddle, something he would never have done in the old days. This meant that I was thrown at least three times a day, and my nerves were shot to bits. The tension of doing this, coupled with the tension of playing a very dangerous game, was taking its toll.
Then one morning I woke to find that he had disappeared overnight, in a puff of dust, like a genie, had sold the place secretly to some station people at half price and disappeared with all the money. He told the buyers that I went along with the ranch and would teach them all they needed to know about camels. They knew precisely nothing. I went to see them. ‘Look,’ I explained, ‘I do not go along with the place, but if you are willing to give me the two camels I want, I will certainly teach you all I know.’
They were pitifully confused. They didn’t know who was ripping off whom, or whom to trust. They acquiesced grudgingly, but kept putting off signing the piece of paper. I knew exactly the two camels I wanted, Biddy and Misch-Misch — two females because bulls were such a nuisance and quite dangerous when in season during winter. Once again I was tied to the ranch and beginning to believe that this process of trying to wheedle camels out of non-cooperative people was never-ending. I foolishly taught them enough camel-managing for them to think they didn’t need me, then, predictably, they backpedalled on the deal, offered me money for the work I had done, and dismissed me. ‘OK,’ I thought, ‘just wait until something goes wrong, you bastards, then let’s see who comes crawling to whom for what.’ And when it came, my stroke of good fortune, it was a little upward spiral of fate that made up for all the downers put together. Dearest Dookie, that most gentle of beasts, took a turn and frightened the socks, shirt, shoes and trousers off the new owner.
Luckily I was there. I had been up at the ranch most of the day, arguing about pieces of paper and money and so on, and watching smugly as the man made mistakes. My heart was hardened. ‘Ha, ha,’ I sneered to myself, ‘suffer or sign.’
When the time came to hobble the camels out at night I felt I had to show him how to do it for the camels’ sakes. If he left the hobble leathers too loose, they would slip down over the hock and possibly damage the animal’s legs. First, I took out dear quiet Dookie.
‘There, you see, in that hole there, and make sure this is never so loose that it can slip over this lump here, understand?’
‘Hmmm, yes I see.’
I let the bull go, and turned to fetch the others. Then I heard a strange rumbling sound behind me and glanced over my shoulder and froze in my tracks. I caught a look at the man’s face too. The blood had drained to his boots. Dookie had transmogrified. Dookie was coming for me with a decidedly Kurtish look in his eyes which were rolling back into his head like spun marbles. Dookie was making burbling noises and white froth was blowing out the side of his mouth. Dookie was trying to rut some rocks. Dookie was completely berserk. I had come between him and his girlfriends and for the first time in his young life he was taken over by those uncontrollable urges of a bull in season. He began thrashing his head and neck around like a whip. He was trying to gallop at me in his hobbles. He was going to try to knock me down and sit on me and crush the life and blood out of my body.
‘Dookie?’ I said, backing off. ‘Hey, Dook, this is me,’ I gasped as I made a bee-line for the gate. I hopped all five feet of it like Pop-Eye after spinach. Dookie was completely oblivious to the man who was still frozen, cowering against the wall of rocks, on the wrong side of the fence. It was me Dookie wanted.
‘Get out of there!’ I screamed as Dookie tried to bite off my head at the neck. ‘For Christ’s sake, man, get me the whip, get me the hobble chain, get me the cattle prodder!’ I yelled maniacally as Dookie pinned me to my side of the gate with his twisted neck and tried to squash me into a cardboard replica. He was leaning into the fence now, trying to smash it so he could get at me. I could not believe this. This was some nightmare from which I would wake screaming at any moment. My Dookie was a Jekyll and Hyde, a killer, a mad mad mad mad bull. The man was galvanized into action. He brought out all those instruments of torture. A cattle prod throws a huge number of volts, and this I pressed into Dookie’s snapping lips while I beat him as hard as I could across the back of the head with the hobble chain. I could barely hear my own whimpering through the fracas. Dookie did not feel a thing. He was like a windmill with teeth. I got away from the gate for a second and my mind crystallized. I raced for some ropes, a wood plank, and an iron bar weighing fifteen pounds. About five feet from the other side of the fence, Dookie’s side, was a gum tree. I walked up my side of the fence till I was in line with it. Dookie followed me bellowing and snorting and thrashing. I bent down to his front legs, threw the rope through the hobbles, cleared the fence, and quickly, oh so quickly, brought the rope around the tree and heaved with all my might. I had him tied to the tree by the legs now and I only hoped that all of it would hold. I then proceeded to bash that creature over the back of the neck with the wood, until it snapped, and then with the iron bar. Down he would go, half conscious, then up again to attack. I had the superhuman strength you only get when you are in a flat, adrenalin-pumping panic, and fighting for your life. Suddenly, Dookie sat down with a thump, shook his head a few times, and remained sitting, quietly grinding his teeth.
I waited a moment, bar poised in mid-air. Are you all right, Dookie?’ I whispered. I moved up to his head. No reaction. ‘Dookie, I’m going to put this nose-line on you now and if you go crazy again, I swear I’ll kill you.’ Dookie looked at me through his long graceful lashes. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. I quietly put the nose-line on him, asked him to stand up, bent down and undid the rope, took off his hobbles, and led him back into his yard. Like a little lamb he went, limping slightly.
I returned to the man. ‘Well, ha ha, that’s bulls for you,’ I said, trying to will a little colour back into my cheeks. I was drenched in sweat and shaking like a leaf in a high wind. His mouth was still open. We led each other inside and had a solid hit of brandy.
‘Do ah, do bulls often act like that?’ he said.
‘Oh hell yeeees,’ I answered, beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. ‘Christ, bulls attack like that all the time.’ I had him now, I knew what was coming. I was almost overcome with glee. I tried to slather a look of sisterly concern over my face. ‘Yeah, you want to keep your kids away from those bulls, that’s for sure.’
By nine o’clock I was
running down the creek towards home, whooping and shouting and leaping and laughing hysterically. He had sold me the two bulls for seven hundred dollars — money I didn’t have but which I could borrow. They weren’t the two I would have chosen, but I was in no position to look a gift-camel in the mouth. Dookie, king of kings, and Bub that incorrigible little joker were mine. I had my three camels.
This miraculous turn of events opened a whole new vista of trouble for me. For a start, no matter how far I hobbled Dookie out bush, he would strain his way back to the ranch and terrorize everybody witless. He was harmless when hobbled and side-lined and legally there was nothing they could do, but I knew they were having a rough time and I felt sorry for them. I tied my boy up during the day, and let him go at night with Bub and Zelly, miles out in the hills, his feet chained together closely and cruelly; at six in the morning I would try to get him before his previous owners did. The man refused to listen to reason. Twice I caught him driving his car full pelt at Dookie’s rump, scaring the animal and making him more aggressive than ever, and possibly damaging those hobbled legs beyond repair. One day the man flew at me in a temper.
‘You’re just fooling around on a bloody holiday while I have to make a living out of these bloody animals,’ he said. ‘I’m telling you now, if that bull gets anywhere near my place, I’ll kill it.’
I saw red then. I had, after all, taught him all he knew and had he been civil I was quite willing to teach him more. He certainly hadn’t done badly on the deal. ‘And if anything happens to my Dookie, friend, you will wake up one morning and find all your camels missing. Gone out bush for a holiday.’ Counter-threatening came quite easily to me now, even though I secretly and guiltily believed him to be right.
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