Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  The utility, leading, had just passed the turn-off to the Painted Caves, when there suddenly appeared round a bend of the road ahead a running blackman, naked save for a naga of red calico and a pipe-clayed head-band, his body ochred in red and white but with most of the paint washed off with sweat. He stopped at sight of the truck, to stand in the middle of the road, pumping for breath. Jeremy driving, Prindy at his side, slowed down. The man stepped to the right as the vehicle drew up to him. Jeremy said, ‘Goodday . . . Narrama, ain’t it?’ The man, just greying, nodded. ‘What’s matter you run like o’ dat . . . you trainin’ for sports next Races?’

  Narrama grinned slightly, then struggling to control his panting turning with lips pointing back along his track, he said, ‘Man dere . . . got him gun . . .’ Man meant whiteman, and not necessarily one.

  Jeremy asked how many. Narrama made a movement with his fingers to indicate that there could be as many as a dozen. He went on to say that the party was mounted and had not long ago arrived at the eastern end of the long chain of billabongs and stopped there. They were too far off for him and his mob, who were camped near the mine, to distinguish them; but they had caught the glint of silver buttons, and there had been one shot — in the air. He had come gallopin’ to give warning.

  ‘Hmm!’ commented Jeremy. ‘Tchinekin, eh? They must’ve heard I was away. Wonder who they can be, though. Buttons like police. Might-be something wrong out Catfish and Stunke come tchinekin after young goose. Not like him, though . . . and you say mob, eh?’

  ‘Yu-ai Mullaka.’

  ‘Well, we’ll soon fix ’em. Stop here and tell Darcy wait till he hear Poom.’ As he drove on, Jeremy said to Prindy, ‘We haven’t had anyone sneakin’ in for a long while. Must be three or four years now . . . some road surveyors. But the buttons? Might be it’s our old mate Coon-Coon trying to get even. He was away somewhere while we were in Town. Must take it easy so we don’t raise any dust. We’re downwind . . . they won’t hear us. Want to get round the back of the hill and up to the mine and take a look at ’em through the glasses . . . then let ’em have it, if necessary.’

  ‘What you going to do, Mullaka?’

  ‘You’ll see, son. We have an unfailing way of dealing with poaching on the billabongs.’

  Prindy said in surprise, ‘Poaching is cooking eggs!’

  Jeremy chuckled, ‘That old English language giving trouble again.’

  A small mob of blacks were waiting by the open cut in the hill. Jeremy waved them to get clear of the region, then swung onto a track to the left that led round behind the hill, going only a couple of hundred yards, then pulling up at a stone building that was evidently an explosives shed. Slipping out of the car with the ring of keys from the ignition switch, he said to Prindy, ‘Get the glasses and slip up to the top and take a peep. I’ll be with you in a minute.’ He waved to the blacks who were passengers to scatter.

  Prindy took binoculars from the panel compartment, alighted, went running up the almost barren hill. Jeremy opened the heavily padlocked door of the shed and entered, soon to come out with a loaded box he carried by means of a shoulder-strap. As he went up after Prindy two dull sounds were heard from afar: Thud! Thud!

  Prindy, behind a rock on top, handed the glasses over as Jeremy came crouching to join him. ‘What d’you make of ’em?’ Jeremy asked, adjusting the lenses.

  ‘I don’ know. Little bit far. But all got khaki clothes . . . look like p’liceman.’

  Jeremy, viewing the group, now walking beside the farthest billabong, a good mile and a half away, remarked: ‘They can’t all be police. There’s not that many in the force. There’s . . . ten, I make it . . . and some back where they’ve left the horses.’

  Thud! Thud! Then patches of white smoke in the blue air. A few birds rose in the distance.

  Jeremy said, ‘They’re a hunting expedition all right . . . and after a big bag. They’re driving the scattered birds down to the big mob in the middle. The birds are very tame. They’ll just keep shifting. Then when they’ve got a mob and got’em a bit nervous, they’ll scare ’em up. The birds’ll come flying over in mass to see what’s wrong . . . then Bang, Bang, Bang! That’s the sportsman’s way of doing it. You don’t have to fish ’em out of the water . . . you’ve just got a great pile of dead birds to take back to your friends and brag about.’ While he talked Jeremy gave the glasses back to Prindy, and busied himself with fixing explosive charges.

  Thud! Thud!

  Jeremy worked quickly, made up two charges, went with one, attached to wire, hurrying towards the head of the open cut, lowered it, came scuttling back, fixed the wire to the terminals of the firing box, snatched the glasses from Prindy and took another look. He said, ‘They look like a detachment of troops . . . but they surely can’t be.’ He gave the glasses back. ‘Well, here goes. Cover your ears, and keep down behind the rock. A bit of stuff might come flying up. Right?’

  Jeremy raised the plunger, pushed it down: BANG!

  It seemed as if the very blue sky wobbled to the blast. Grey dust boiled up from the cut. A scattering of pebbles. For a moment vision was lost; while away over at the Plateau the echoes rumbled like late thunder. Jeremy smiled at the wide-eyed boy, remarking, ‘More Old Tchamala stuff. You don’t know how much of that stuff the whiteman has . . . and doesn’t he love to hear it going off, God help us!’ He took up the glasses.

  The dust had thinned quickly in the wind. The birds were up off the water, circling, but too far from the shooters, who were halted now. Jeremy chuckled, gave the glasses back to Prindy, cocked an eye at the birds, said after a moment, ‘Have to do it again. They’re not scared properly. They look like settling. Yes . . . they’re going down. We should scare ’em occasionally. They get too tame. This’ll be a bigger bang.’ He went off again to the cut and dropped a charge, came back. Half the birds were down by now.

  Prindy said, ‘That lot coming again.’

  Jeremy took a peep. ‘Right . . . here she goes again.’

  BURRRANG! The hill trembled to it. Rocks flew this time. The dust rose like a willy-willy. Through it the pair watched the packed mass of birds, honking, quacking, whistling, screaming, heading away North. Jeremy called to them, ‘Sorry, old friends . . . but it was the only way. Come back soon.’

  He stood up then, glanced at the distant khaki group, halted again, it seemed. Then turning the other way, he cupped his mouth, and hollered downwind, ‘All right all about . . . finish now. Tell Darcy come. Then better go plant yourself. Might be p’liceman there.’

  He took another look at the group through the glasses. ‘They’re coming . . . so they must be police. No one else would have the cheek. Better come on down into the cut and pretend we’re doing a bit of mining.’

  Prindy asked, ‘What will police do?’

  ‘They can’t do anything. I’ve the legal right to blast whenever I want to.’ Seeing Darcy pull up with the truck down at the open end of the cut, Jeremy shouted to him to bring tools for sampling. Then he and Prindy went down by a declivity. Down below he gave the glasses to Darcy, and told him to keep a look out, while he and Prindy and others proceeded to gather and screen detritus broken by the explosions.

  After a while Darcy slipped in to say, ‘Two p’liceman, Mullaka . . . Mist Stunke and Superintendent Bullco . . . tracker . . . other lot I dunno . . . but I think soldier.’

  ‘Hmm . . . Bullco, eh? Must be some big brass around. Conducted tour. How far are they?’

  ‘Getting close-up. Tracker and other man bring horse along. They all riding now.’

  ‘Right. Come and give me a hand. Prindy boy . . . play with the kids. I don’t want it to look like I work kids.’

  The approaching party were to be seen from the wide mouth of the workings while still on the track beside the nearest billabong a couple of hundred yards away. Jeremy, geologist’s hammer in hand, straightened up to stare at them. The party were riding in pairs, the width of the road, Bullco, in full uniform, leading, alongside a tall lean m
an, also in khaki of official-looking cut, but wearing a khaki flat-topped topee, of the kind called in jest a Lion-hunter’s Hat. There were a couple of similar topee’d riders behind them, then men in Australian soldier’s slouch hats with sides let down; and Stunke, and his new tracker, Tipperary. They came riding into the cut by the track used by the trucks. Swinging his hammer, Jeremy went to meet them, saying as he came up to them, ‘What’s this . . . an expedition into the unexplored wilderness, a military exercise . . . or just the usual periodic bit of police bullying of the unhappy people the land was stolen from?’ He was red, and rather breathless, as though he had rehearsed it and given a lot of emotional effort to it. Still, he was smiling, and looking at the tall thin man in the topee beside the Superintendent, he nodded a bushman’s acknowledgement of a stranger. The man was definitely a military type, straight and lean and brown-faced, wearing a clipped little moustache, his age about that of Jeremy. The man nodded in reply.

  Meaty Bullco, red and sweating, wheezed harshly, ‘Be careful what you say, Delacy.’

  ‘I’m always careful what I say in the presence of enemies, Superintendent . . . but you haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘I don’t have to answer your questions. I’m here to tell you that I’m going to lay a charge against you for a breach of the peace.’

  Jeremy’s eyes widened. ‘Breach of the peace, Superintendent . . . when I’m minding my own business on my own property . . .’

  ‘You deliberately interfered with a perfectly lawful sporting activity.’

  Jeremy laughed shortly. ‘How d’you make that out? Here I am working my mine . . .’

  ‘You let off those explosions deliberately to disturb the birds and spoil our sport.’

  ‘What were you sporting at, man . . . I’ve been working inside here . . .’

  ‘Don’t waste time with being smart. I’m going to lay this charge.’

  ‘D’you mean you’re pinching me here and now?’ Jeremy cocked an eye at the military man, whose lips had moved in a faint smile.

  ‘I’m laying a charge through the proper channels in Port Palmeston. This interference of yours with people’s activities in this locality where you’ve got no legal right whatsoever, except this mine, has got to stop . . . I’ll see to that . . . I’ll see to that . . .’ Bullco finished breathless, strangled by his own verbal effort.

  Jeremy glanced at the men behind, particularly at the two in topees, one short and thick-set, crimson-visaged, popping-blue-eyed, with a large upthrusting fuzz of gingerish moustache, the other a lanky youth whose handsome girlish face was pealing from unaccustomed exposure to Sun and harsh sou’easter, then back at the tall man just above him, saying, ‘There speaks a man whose life is so dedicated to interference in other people’s business, that having someone interfere with his, brings him to the point of apoplexy.’ The lips beneath the small grey moustache twitched slightly.

  Recovering his breath, Bullco demanded, ‘Are you working these blacks in the mine?’

  ‘If I were it would be perfectly lawful . . . there’s no underground working . . . but as it happens I’m not working them.’

  ‘What are they doing here?’

  ‘Minding their own business, I guess . . . the same as you were, when you alleged I interfered with it.’

  ‘What Aborigines do is my business.’

  ‘Yes, I know that. But for hounding them, you policemen wouldn’t have much to do, would you? Since you ask, though . . . they came here to take some ducks and geese . . . what I’d say was their lawful property’.

  ‘And you’ve scared the birds away.’

  ‘Wasn’t that your aim, too?’

  ‘We came here for a bit of sportsmanship.’

  ‘Which would have driven the birds away, anyway. But don’t be concerned about the poor buggers’ losing a feed of birds . . . I feed them quite well.’

  ‘Have you got permits to have them on your property?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘May I see them?’

  ‘I don’t carry them with me. You’ll have to come to my homestead.’

  ‘I intend to. I want to see all papers relevant to blacks, stock, leases.’

  ‘You shall . . . but I warn you, don’t take any of those horses past my boundary fence.’

  ‘What’s this . . . obstructing an officer of the law?’

  ‘No . . . lawful precautions under Stock Department regulations. There’s a horse back there coughing . . . and a couple snuffling. They’ve obviously got some infection. I’ve got very valuable horses. You’re not infecting them. I’ll be getting along, then, to get the papers ready. That’ll just make nice time for it, because, in your condition, it’s going to take you a couple of hours to make that two and a half miles from the top gate.’ Turning, Jeremy glanced at the topee’d men, saying, ‘Sorry, gentlemen, to spoil your sport . . . but I’ve been to an awful lot of trouble to preserve this bit of Eden. In fact, I transformed it from a dreadful wilderness.’

  ‘Reahlly?’ asked the tall man, evidently interested.

  ‘It was just torn to pieces by the early mining here . . . the water drained . . . just mud flats . . . not a bird or an animal about . . . You’re English, aren’t you?’ Jeremy halted.

  The man nodded. Jeremy went on: ‘Then you’d understand . . . the fierce protection English people give their countryside . . .’

  Bullco cut in: ‘In a developing country it’s ridiculous . . . country’s got to be opened up, settled . . .’

  ‘Torn apart and left to become desert?’

  ‘There’s plenty of it,’ Bullco growled. ‘It’ll survive.’

  ‘This little bit will, at any rate, so long as I can protect it.’

  ‘You’ve got no right to protect it. It’s a police officer’s job.’

  Jeremy addressed the Englishman: ‘It took ten years of hard work to restore it . . . and ever since they’ve been trying to sneak in to destroy it again . . . small mobs of shooters, not really wanting the game . . . only wanting to beat me . . . and never once has any report I’ve made to the police been followed up . . .’

  Bullco snapped: ‘Police officers’ve got more to do . . . ‘

  Jeremy went on: ‘I applied for an honorary rangership. It was refused . . .’

  Bullco cut in again, speaking to the Englishman: ‘It’s a police officer’s job, General. This man’s got a feud with the police. Don’t be taken in with his talk. Everything he does is just to cause trouble.’

  Jeremy asked the Englishman, ‘General?’

  Bullco snapped, ‘General Sir Mark Esk, Inspector-General and Acting Commander-in-Chief Australian Commonwealth Military Forces.’ Seeing the way Jeremy almost gaped at the General, Bullco added: ‘That’s whose sport you interfered with this time, Delacy. You’ve made a bad blue. You won’t get away with it this time.’

  Jeremy looked quickly at Bullco, stared at him hard, then back at the General, with lips writhing in a suppressed smile: ‘Does this mean I’ll be shot at dawn, General?’

  The General chuckled, ‘Have no fears, Mr Delacy . . I’m not the huntin’, fishin’, shootin’ kind.’

  ‘Not shootin’?’ asked Jeremy, and when the General, misunderstanding, shook his head, added: ‘A soldier not a shooting man?’

  ‘Hmm, hmm . . . see what you mean. But not reahlly, old man . . . Inspector-General . . . Ordnance, you know . . . but I don’t have to tell you that . . . you were a military man yourself, I understand.’ Jeremy looked at Bullco, who blinked. Evidently the visitors had been apprised of the Scrub Bull, even if the apprisers had supposed he was not likely to be met up with.

  The General added, ‘Understand you spent some time up on the Euphrates and thereabout?’

  ‘Where’d you get that information?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, from your son Mr Martin Delacy. I’ve been staying there a few days. Thought I’d like to meet you and swap a campaign yarn or two. There myself, don’t you know. But they told me you were away. May I
have the pleasure?’ He bent, extending his hand.

  Jeremy stepped back to take it, but with another glance at Bullco, who blinked harder. Shaking hands with the General, Jeremy spoke to Bullco: ‘What the blacks call tchinekin, eh, Lex?’ Bullco went purple.

  ‘Eh, what?’ murmured the General.

  ‘Only a joke, General . . . a rather dirty one.’

  The General glanced at Bullco, for a certainty noting his discomfort.

  ‘Well, I’ll be getting along,’ said Jeremy, ‘I’ll be seeing you in several hours, eh, Superintendent . . . if you survive that long long walk? No water on the track . . . only salt-licks . . . Goodbye, General . . . I presume you won’t be wanting to make that quite unnecessary journey with the Superintendent . . . He knows quite well all my affairs are done with strict regard to the law . . . because he’s been trying to get me out on the slightest omission for years . . . sure he keeps a dossier of my dues, hoping and praying that I might someday miss paying ’em . . . So long!’ Jeremy set off to return up the cut.

  The General coughed: ‘Ahhum . . . er, Major . . .’

  Jeremy turned quickly. The pale blue eyes were fixed on him. ‘I understand that was your rank, old man?’

  Jeremy grimaced: ‘A long time since anyone called me that.’

  ‘Field rank is permanent.’

  ‘I tossed it in long ago, General.’

  ‘Pity . . . but what I wanted to say was, I’d like to have that yarn with you . . .’

  ‘You mightn’t like my ideas about military campaigning, General.’

  ‘I’ll risk it, old man.’

  ‘Well . . . if you like to come out . . . without police escort.’

  ‘I’d like to come along with you now, if I may.’

  ‘I’m not on horseback . . . I’ve got a utility truck over the hill there.’

  ‘Matter of fact, I’m a bit saddle-sore . . . the old seat a bit out of action these days, don’t you know. Would you mind much?’

  Jeremy glanced at Bullco, saw the look of hurt astonishment, then back to the General, and replied, ‘I’d be delighted.’ Then he turned to Darcy: ‘Darcy, son . . . what about hopping over and saving our old legs by running the ute around?’