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.