A Mad Bull
The Sidcotinga stock-yards presented a very lively scene next morning.
Sax and Vaughan were there with the rest, heartily glad to have
something to do. Mick Darby had introduced his young friends to the
manager the night before, and to their earnest request that he would
"take them on at the station" he had replied: "We'll talk about that
to-morrow night. There's a long day in the yards between now and then.
We'll see how you shape." Dan Collins looked at them very sternly when
he was speaking. He had been on cattle-stations all his life, and was
used to judging men by what they could do and not by what they could
say. He liked both the appearance of the boys and the report which
Mick had given of how they had "shaped" on the way out, but his
weather-beaten face did not relax at all, and the boys thought he was a
hard man. They were wrong, however. Dan Collins was a strong man, and
through dealing for many years with blacks, he had come to hide his
thoughts behind an unyielding expression of face, though many a man
knew how kind a heart beat in his big rough body.
So the boys were on their mettle. There were no other white men in the
yard except Mick and the manager; the rest were blacks.
An hour or two before dawn, as soon as it was light enough to
distinguish one beast from another, all hands went down to the yards
for drafting. Sax and Vaughan were each given a gate to open and shut
when their particular call came, and they found that it needed every
bit of their attention to do even this simple job well. By the time
breakfast was announced by the cook, who summoned all hands to the meal
by beating the back of a frying-pan with a wooden spoon, the thousand
cattle had been divided into three lots: about a hundred and twenty
cleanskins (unbranded cattle), over a hundred three-year-old bullocks
which would soon be ready to send to town, and the rest, which were to
be allowed to go bush again.
Breakfast and "Smoke-o" were got over quickly, and everybody was again
at the yards as soon as possible. A fire was lit outside the rails,
and a half-dozen T.D.3 brands, and as many number brands, were put in
the blaze to get hot. Green-hide ropes were coiled ready and knives
sharpened. The cleanskins were attended to first. Most of them were
about a year old and could be scruffed, which means that one or another
of the black-fellows would watch his opportunity, catch the calf, and
throw it on the ground with a dexterous twist. As soon as it was down,
he would hook one of its front legs behind its horns and hold it there
till the brand was applied. Sometimes four calves were being scruffed
at the same time, and the work went on very quickly. Blacks always
work well in a yard. Not only is there the personal and sometimes
risky struggle with the animals, which appeals strongly to their savage
minds, but the emulation amongst themselves, each being very anxious to
do better than his fellows. There is usually a good deal of laughter
and joking talk in a stock-yard, and a good deal of hard, strenuous,
skilful work as well.
The two white boys kept out of the way while scruffing was going on.
They would only have been a hindrance, so they sat together on the
stock-yard fence and looked on, never missing a twist or a turn, and
learning, learning, learning all the time.
At last all young calves had been branded and had rejoined their
mothers. There still remained about thirty unbranded steers which were
too big to scruff. One or two of them were nearly four years old, wild
creatures which had refused to be mustered year after year until now.
The ropes were brought into use for these cattle. The big cleanskins
were driven out of the branding yard into an adjoining one, and
admitted back again one by one. As soon as a beast rushed through the
gate a green-hide lasso was thrown. The loop fell over its horns or
neck. Four or five strong niggers were holding the end of the lasso
outside the yard, and they pulled the captured animal up to the rails.
Front and back leg ropes were flung on and hitched round posts, and the
beast fell helplessly in the sand. After a couple had been done in
this way, Dan Collins signalled to the white boys to lend a hand.
Their job sounded simple, but it needed all their strength and
watchfulness to do it properly. If they failed at any point, the
prostrate animal would be free, and the work would have to be done all
over again.
The cleanskin was lassoed and pulled to the rails, the leg ropes were
fixed and hitched, and then the front rope was handed to Sax and the
back one to Vaughan. They had to hang on and keep the ropes tight;
that was all, but only those who have worked in stock-yards, hour after
hour, know how difficult such an apparently simple task really is.
The work went on. The hard green-hide ropes blistered the unaccustomed
hands of the new-chum white boys, but they set their teeth and held on.
Beast after beast fell with a bellowing roar, the red-hot T.D.3 was
pressed on its near-side shoulder till the mark was seared right into
the skin, so that it could never wear out. Then the ropes were pulled
off and the dazed animal scrambled to its feet and was hustled out of
the yard, while another one was being caught and thrown.
A big roan-coloured steer was being saved till last. He was a fully
matured animal, very powerful and wild. His bellow had been heard all
night, and he had been more difficult to draft than any other animal in
the yards. Everybody was looking forward to dealing with this fellow;
it would be a good finish to a good run of work.
He came through the gate with a rush. Mick Darby had the lasso this
time, and flung it faultlessly over the animal's horns. There was a
shout of excitement and the blacks outside the rails pulled for all
they were worth. But no power of man could make such a creature stir
unless it wanted to. It braced its fore legs and stood immovable, then
shook its mighty head till the lasso twanged like a fiddle-string, but
did not give an inch. Finally the steer caught sight of its tormentors
outside the yard, and rushed. At once the rope became slack and the
watchful men pulled it tight again, and soon the great beast was jammed
up against the fence, using all its strength to try and break the
green-hide rope. But the lasso was made out of the hide of a bull and
could have held any steer that was ever calved. Leg ropes were thrown,
hitched, and drawn tight, and the steer fell, roaring and plunging for
a moment, and then lying still, but never relaxing the tremendous
strain for a moment.
Dan Collins was branding, and called out: "Brand-o!" The red-hot iron
was handed through the rails and pressed on the quivering shoulder.
Now came the great test. Pain added the final ounce to the steer's
strength. He struggled. The front leg rope broke. Through being
constantly hitched round a rough post it had become a little bit
frayed, and this final strain was too much for it. It snapped and
sprang apart like a collapsed spring. The chest of the steer was now
free, but the head rope still held it down. The knowledge that it had
broken one of its bonds gave the animal heart, and it lifted its
curl-crowned head. The lasso quivered and stretched, quivered and
stretched. There was a crack! Had that bull-hide rope broken? No.
Another crack. One of the steer's horns broke off at the skull. With
an agonized bellow it slipped the stump of a horn through the loop and
rose to its fore feet, free except for the back leg rope which Vaughan
was holding. All the animal's strength, raised to its highest pitch by
the pain of the broken horn, was centred in its captive hind leg.
Vaughan held on manfully, but the rope was gradually pulled through his
hands, tearing the skin till he could not possibly hold it any longer.
With a roar, the steer rose from the ground; but just as it struggled
to its feet, Vaughan seized the rope again and twisted it round his
wrist.
A yard is no place for a man when an infuriated bull is raging around
it. Everybody leapt for the rails except Sax. Was there not some way
of helping his friend? The steer saw him and charged. Round the yard
once, twice, it rushed, Vaughan dragging along at the back, and
hindering it so that he undoubtedly saved his friend from a very nasty
accident. Round the yard the third time. Sax was too dazed to leap
for the rails, and the animal was too close for him to climb them.
Everybody had been so intent on the sudden turn which events had taken
that they had not noticed an almost naked black-fellow who had left the
lasso and had climbed quickly along the top of the rails. He was a
stranger, and had come in that morning and had taken a hand at the
yards like any other black would do, hoping for a feed and a stick of
tobacco. But now he seemed to be full of energy and courage. When
everybody else was gasping with astonishment, he lay on the top rail as
flat as a lizard.
Sax came round the third time, and the shaggy head of the steer was
lowering for a toss, when the native's black arm reached down suddenly
and grabbed the white boy by the belt and swung him clear off his feet.
He was not a second too soon. The steer charged by, and Sax was safe.
The stranger native had put out so much of his strength that he could
not recover himself, and he overbalanced, still keeping hold of the
white boy, and rescuer and rescued toppled over backwards into the
other yard. Sax was winded and the black-fellow was the first to get
up. He scrambled to his feet and walked away, not only from the yards,
but away from the station altogether, as if he did not want to be
recognized. But as he was getting between two rails, he put his left
hand on one of them, and Sax saw that the two middle fingers were
missing. It was the same black who had brought the sprig of
needle-bush.
Excitement was by no means over in the branding-yard. The infuriated
bull, cheated of one victim, now turned its attention to Vaughan. It
wheeled quickly, and in so doing twisted the rope, which Vaughan was
still holding, round the boy's body. He could not escape. He was at
the mercy of a wild steer.
The sudden and unexpected rescue of Saxon Stobart had roused the white
men, so that when the bull turned on its helpless victim, they were
ready. But what could they do? What could a mere man possibly do
against a full-grown steer? It would take too long to set the boy
free, for the hard unyielding rope was hitched tight round him. There
was only one thing to do, and Dan Collins did it.
He waited till the bull had gathered itself for a final rush, and, when
it had actually started to charge, he dropped to the ground like a
flash. In a fraction of a second his powerful right arm went out, and
he gripped the nostrils of the bull, pressing his thumb and forefinger
home as far as he could. Then he twisted, suddenly and unexpectedly.
It was not a matter of strength, but of knack. The power of the
onrushing bull actually supplied all the strength which was necessary.
Dan Collins twisted. The animal's wrinkled neck turned. It could not
help turning, for the pain at its nostrils was unbearable. The
near-side leg gave under it. Something had to give under the strain.
The fingers still kept their grip, and the great beast crashed down
with such a thud that the ground seemed to shake.[1]
Every man jumped from the rails and was on the prostrate animal at
once, holding it down till the white boy, who had been in such terrible
danger, was set free.
That night the manager gave his verdict about the two boys. "You'll
do," he said. "I'll take you on. Mick, you'd better take them out on
the run with you. I want you to go north in a couple of days. And for
goodness sake teach them that there are some things which even _they_
cannot do." He did not mean this unkindly, for he had taken a fancy to
the boys, but he saw that they would need to be restrained a great deal
before they could become really first-class stock-men.
[1] The author has seen quite a small man throw a full-sized bull in
this way on a Central Australian cattle-station.