I know what it’s like to die instantaneously. The first time I was knocked clean out was when I slipped in a large storm-water drain in Weston, in Canberra, when it was mostly houseless infrastructure. I was utterly unaware of the event, not the worst way to go, I guess. The second time was Bigfoot.
It took some time to exasperate Simon enough so that he finally gave me a buckjumper. The first weeks at Wentworth were spent in other tasks. “We won’t be doing any horsework for another six weeks at least, I reckon.” He wasn’t the manager, but more like a sergeant-major, or stage manager: the one who makes things happen, as opposed to the one who decided what should happen. Head stockmen are highly skilled and highly respected, for the most part. It would be an unwise manager who interfered too closely in the head stockman’s responsibilities. Wentworth was in the process of handing over, and the old managers were still there. The new guy, a younger, more business-oriented, harder-headed fella, had not moved in yet, although it was his wife who had picked me up from the cattle yards at the side of the Peak Downs Highway. Dianne.
Simon decided who rode which horse, who drove the four-wheel-drive. I was sitting in the driver’s seat of the Toyota, about to head off to run a fence with Tim, when Simon strolled over and spoke across me. “You drive, eh, Tim?” “Why?” I protested. I was an uncontrollably ‘drive-hungry’ bastard, a characteristic that drew much criticism during my career on cattle stations. “Best man for the job,” Simon said simply.
This fence-running trip was a revelation regarding my sense of direction. It was a good thing Tim was there at all, or I almost certainly would have ended up hopelessly lost. We went to a junction where several paddocks joined, with a trough, and a confusing system of gates and traps. He knew which paddock we were supposed to run.
“Where’s this?” I said a couple of hours later, and he gave me a look. “It’s where we started.”
“Oh, right. So it is.”
“So you didn’t notice that we just drove around a big paddock?” Sure enough, the regular inside right turns had escaped my attention. So that was that for driving. From then on, I only ever got to do it when there was no-one else.
When it came to horses, Simon was a revolutionary. No-one had heard of horse-whisperers, and I suspect the idea would have been a source of some amusement to him, but he, Jim Cunningham and Jamie McFarlane were the best, calmest horseman I met. There was nothing mystical in it. I thought there must be. I thought the mere presence of preternatural serenity would be enough to calm the horse and bring it under the rider’s control. I can imagine him having a good chuckle about that one too, or maybe not so much. He knew about confidence. I had it, but all the wrong kinds. He kept saying I needed to learn how to try, but I didn’t understand what he meant. Not then. I thought I was trying.
He wouldn’t let us kick them. If you jerked a rein on a jawbone, he’d be up ya. He had books on a subversive, no-pain ideology for training quarter-horses for cutting, and he was a convert. He began to teach me how to tell a good horse from its composition. The shoulder has to be at a good angle, the hindquarters solid for turning. Temperament was important, too, of course. “They’ve gotta have a good eye. You don’t want ’em with wild eyes.”
“Most of the ones you give me, you can’t even make ’em canter.”
“Well y’oughta be able to. When you can do that, you can have a buckjumper. Fucked if I know why you’d want one. Anyway, we’re not doin’ it for fun, you’re s’posed to be workin’ cattle. If ya can’t ride the horse, ya can’t work the cattle.” (‘Ya’ is not right, but neither is ‘yer’, much less ‘ye’, though this last is probably closest. Maybe ‘yuh’. A neutral vowel, a schwa.)
Bigfoot had wild eyes. He was snorting and jumpy and 16 hands in the round yard, where he’d been enough times to know that if they stopped you there, you were in for a working day. Horses are smart and sensitive, and their personalities are as varied and unique as people’s. Bigfoot didn’t like working days. Hadn’t had one for a while, and may have been under the impression that it wasn’t going to happen again.
Simon said, “Ken”, and I got a lesson in brashness and hubris, in the difference between how you think you’re going to feel, and how you do feel, when confronted with actual danger, or, in this case, the slavering, monstrous steed of the Nazgûl (only he was bay, not black). Another difference: between seeing something terrifying, and running away from it, and seeing something terrifying, and having still to go towards and somehow gain control of it. It was a big moment for me, y’know? I stepped into the round yard, an octagon of high railing fence, about five paces across. Thick, round wooden posts and rails, too high for a panicked horse to jump or climb. Of course, that meant they might be too high for a panicked jackeroo to jump or climb, too.
“Talk to ‘im,” said Simon. This was one of his mantras. He and Tim were talking about something else by the time I got to the ground, then they went of to the saddle-shed for something. I approached Bigfoot slowly, hesitant, with arms spread, looking deep into his eyes and seeking a mystical connection through the wild and free in all of us. Murmuring reassurances.
Looking deep into their eyes is the worst thing you can do. Beginners’ mistake. Hesitation terrifies and angers them. I thought my quiet reasonableness was beginning to have some effect. If I’d known more, I probably would have got a better clue from the whites of his wild eyes. The taught neck-muscles, laid-back ears and explosive snorts might have signalled something, too.
“Just walk up and put the fuckin’ bridle on ‘im, willya.” Simon and Tim were back. We had different interpretations of confidence. His worked.
Memory is a terrible thing, and it may be that Simon had to catch him for me the first few times, and saddle him up, a tricky business with a fresh horse. Bigfoot had been spelled. He was experienced, but for all he knew, he was retired. Now here we were putting a saddle on him again, and he knew what that meant. He was well-rested, and charged up. Plenty of energy. He’d been living wild and free for the last half a year, perhaps coming up to the yard with the others now and then, but always to be let go again. Bigfoot wasn’t his real name; he had a formal one in the station horse book, but he’d had some kind of abscess on his offside fore and it bore a mushroom-coloured callus almost as big as his hoof. Didn’t slow him down at all.
Simon expected him to throw a few into me in the round yard, but he didn’t. Simon circled us around a couple of times once I was up. We even trotted a little, I think. “Wait’ll you get ‘im to canter”, he said, as he opened the gate into the cutting yard. It was about fifty metres by twenty, I suppose, and ploughed ankle-deep. (Maybe he was on another horse, or maybe on foot. Am I remembering it or imagining it? Some details are so vivid, and some have vanished forever.) We were getting ready to go mustering, not to teach me rodeo tricks, so there was an element of impatience. The new boss would be here soon. Simon was clicking Bigfoot into a canter, round in circles. “If he bucks, lean back,” he instructed. This was a contrast to his normal admonitions to sit up straight. The horse suddenly picked up pace. In my mind, this is like a Hunter S. Thompson moment, a hallucinatory experience in which suddenly the world erupts. But the soundtrack is Simon repeating “lean back, lean back, lean back!” as I hunched forward and instinctively dug my heels into Bigfoot’s ribs.
It’s a strange thing when a horse bucks. The first thing that happens is that its neck and head disappear. The next is that man and beast become airborne, then momentarily weightless, in freefall. It’s lonely up there in the moment before the four-legged seismic jolt. Then off you go up again, having completely lost any idea of which way that might be. Still no sign of the horse itself, whose nose is between its forelegs. Quite often the rest of the world is not much more than a blur. I think I lasted two of these, before I sensed that the weightless part of the ride was lasting longer than usual. This was because I was now completely detached from Bigfoot. I caught a glimpse of the saddle somewhere under my feet, before it and Bigfoot had gone. He’d thrown me vertically, high enough for my feet to clear his shoulder. I retained the mounted position, just without saddle or horse, as I enjoyed the blissful, predictable fall back to the soft soil. I believe I nearly stayed on my feet.
I’d love to tell you I conquered him that day, but I didn’t. Tim had to ride him. There were cattle to muster, and if you can’t ride a horse, you can’t muster cattle with it. Tim was not pleased with this arrangement. The horse was in my ‘camp’ now, and I was given him every third time we went mustering. After a while, Bigfoot and I came to an interim understanding. He would throw me a few times in the cutting yard, in the morning, just so we all knew he could. Then, as long as he didn’t see any hats too close, he would allow me to ride along while he did his work. He had a thing about hats, for some reason. I learned how to fall.
My confidence utterly shattered, it began slowly to be built anew, as Bigfoot and I learned, incrementally, how to get along with each other. He demanded respect. Beginning from abject terror, I began to give it to him. Later, after some tests, he grudgingly returned the sentiment.
He did knock me clean out once, but I’ve run out of room to tell about that. It’ll have to be continued.