Finally, it was decided that the Quiet Stockman and his “boys” were to patrol the country north from the river while we were to keep to the south banks and follow the river down to the boundaries in all its windings, each party appointed to camp at the Red Lily lagoons second night out, each, of course, on its own side of the river. It being necessary for Jack to cross the river beyond the Springs, he left the homestead half a day before us—public gossip reporting that he was “going beyond the Waterhouse horse mustering,” and Dan finding dust-throwing highly diverting, shouted after him that he “might as well bring some fresh relays to the Yellow Hole in a day or two,” and then giving his attention to the packing of swags and pack-bags, “reckoned things were just about fixed up for a surprise party.”
Chapter 20
At our appointed time we left the homestead, taking the north-west track for over a mile to continue the dust-throwing; and for the whole length of that mile Dan reiterated the “advantages of surprise parties,” and his opinion that “things were just about properly fixed up for one”; and when we left the track abruptly and set off across country at right angles to it, Sambo’s quick questioning, suspicious glance made it very evident that he, for one, had gleaned no inkling of the patrol, which naturally filled Dan with delight.
“River to-night, Sambo,” he said airily, but after that one swift glance Sambo rode after us as stolid as ever—Sambo was always difficult to fathom—while Dan spent the afternoon congratulating himself on the success of his dust-throwing, proving with many illustrations that “it’s the hardest thing to spring a surprise on niggers. Something seems to tell ’em you’re coming,” he explained. “Some chaps put it down to second-sight or thought-reading.”
When we turned in Dan was still chuckling over his cute handling of the trip. “Bluffed ’em this time all right,” he assured us, little guessing that the blacks at the “Red Lilies,” thirty miles away, and other little groups of blacks travelling down the river towards the lagoons were conjecturing on the object of the Măluka’s visit—“something having told them we were coming.”
The “something” however, was neither second-sight nor thought-reading, but a very simple, tangible “something.” Sambo had gone for a stroll from our camp about sundown, and one of Jack’s boys had gone for a stroll from Jack’s camp, and soon afterwards two tell-tale telegraphic columns of smoke, worked on some blackfellow dot-dash-system, had risen above the timber, and their messages had also been duly noted down at the Red Lilies and elsewhere, and acted upon. The Măluka was on the river, and when the Măluka was about, it was considered wisdom to be off forbidden ground; not that the blacks feared the Măluka, but no one cares about vexing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
On stations in the Never-Never the blacks are supposed to camp either in the homesteads, where no man need go hungry, or right outside the boundaries on waters beyond the cattle, travelling in or out as desired, on condition that they keep to the main travellers’ tracks—blacks among the cattle having a scattering effect on the herd, apart from the fact that “niggers in” generally means cattle-killing.
Of course no man ever hopes to keep his blacks absolutely obedient to this rule; but the judicious giving of an odd bullock at not too rare intervals, and always at corroborree times, the more judicious winking at cattle killing on the boundaries, where cattle scaring is not all disadvantage, and the even more judicious giving of a hint, when a hint is necessary, will do much to keep them fairly well in hand, anyway from openly harrying and defiant killing, which in humanity is surely all any man should ask.
The white man has taken the country from the black fellow, and with it his right to travel where he will for pleasure or food, and until he is willing to make recompense by granting fair liberty of travel, and a fair percentage of cattle or their equivalent in fair payment—openly and fairly giving them, and seeing that no man is unjustly treated or hungry within his borders—cattle killing, and at times even man killing by blacks, will not be an offence against the white folk.
A black fellow kills cattle because he is hungry and must be fed with food, having been trained in a school that for generations has acknowledged “catch who catch can” among its commandments; and until the long arm of the law interfered, white men killed the black fellow because they were hungry with a hunger that must be fed with gold, having been trained in a school that for generations has acknowledged “Thou shalt not kill” among its commandments; and yet men speak of the “superiority” of the white race, and, speaking, forget to ask who of us would go hungry if the situation were reversed, but condemn the black fellow as a vile thief, piously quoting—now it suits them—from those same commandments, that men “must not steal,” in the same breath referring to the white man’s crime (when it finds them out) as “getting into trouble over some shooting affair with blacks.” Truly we British-born have reason to brag of our “inborn sense of justice.”