Cumner's Son and Other South Sea Folk — Volume 02

by Gilbert Parker
We were camped on the edge of a billabong. Barlas was kneading a damper, Drysdale was tenderly packing coals about the billy to make the water boil, and I was cooking the chops. The hobbled horses were picking the grass and the old-man salt-bush near, and Bimbi, the black boy, was gathering twigs and bark for the fire. That is the order of merit— Barlas, Drysdale, myself, the horses and Bimbi. Then comes the Cadi all by himself. He is given an isolated and indolent position, because he was our guest and also because, in a way, he represented the Government. And though bushmen do not believe much in a far-off Government—even though they say when protesting against a bad Land Law, And your Petitioners will ever Pray, and all that kind of yabber-yabber—they give its representative the lazy side of the fire and a fig of the best tobacco when he bails up a camp as the Cadi did ours. Stewart Ruttan, the Cadi, was the new magistrate at Windowie and Gilgan, which stand for a huge section of the Carpentaria country. He was now on his way to Gilgan to try some cases there. He was a new chum, though he had lived in Australia for years. As Barlas said, he'd been kept in a cultivation- paddock in Sydney and Brisbane; and he was now going to take the business of justice out of the hands of Heaven and its trusted agents the bushmen, and reduce the land to the peace of the Beatitudes by the imposing reign of law and summary judgments. Barlas had just said as much, though in different language.
I think, said the Cadi, that individual and private revenge should not take the place of the Courts of Law. If the blacks commit depredations—
Depredations! interjected Drysdale with sharp scorn.
If they commit depredations and crimes, the Cadi continued, they should be captured as criminals are captured elsewhere and be brought in and tried. In that way respect would be shown to British law and— here he hesitated slightly, for Barlas's face was not pleasant to see— and the statutes.