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‘Listen,’ Homer said. ‘I’ll tell you what I noticed. That paddock right on the highway, Mr Roxburgh’s got a lot of cattle in there, all in good nick too. It’s heavily stocked, but it’s a good paddock and it can take it. Now suppose you’re a young soldier in a foreign country and you’re guarding a long narrow bridge and it’s late at night and you’re struggling to stay awake and alert. And suddenly you hear a noise and you turn around and there’s a hundred or so prime head of Hereford charging towards you, flat chat. About fifty to
‘You run,’ said Lee promptly.
‘No you don’t,’ Homer said.
‘No you don’t,’ I agreed, thoughtfully. ‘There’s too many of them, and they’re coming too fast for that.’
‘So what do you do?’ Homer asked again.
‘You run to the sides. And then you probably climb up the sides. Which happens to be pretty easy on that old wooden thing.’
‘And which way do you look?’ Homer asked.
‘At the cattle,’ I said, more slowly still.
‘Exactly,’ Homer said. ‘I rest my case.’ He sat back and folded his arms.
We gazed at him, three people thinking three different collections of thoughts.
‘How do you make the cattle do what you want?’ Fi asked.
‘How do you get away afterwards?’ Lee asked. ‘I can’t run far on this.’ He gestured at his bandaged leg.
I didn’t have any questions. I knew the details could be worked out. It was a high risk plan, but it was a brilliant one.
Homer answered Lee’s question first though ‘Motorbikes,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking for some time that if we wanted to be effective guerillas we’d get ourselves ag bikes and use cross-country travel instead of roads. We could become very mobile and very slippery. Now, I’ll get the cattle going by using my superior mustering skills to get them into the road. I’ve mustered before at night. It works well – in fact it’s better in some ways. They’re not so suspicious then. If it’s a bright enough night, which it should be, you don’t even use lights, cos it stirs them up too much. So I’ll get them out and then Lee and I’ll fire them up, if Lee’s fit enough. We can use an electric prod, for example, and maybe an aerosol can and a box of matches. I got into so much trouble for making a flamethrower from them at school, but I knew it would come in handy one day. A blast of that on their backsides and they’ll keep ru
He turned to Fi and me. ‘I always seem to get out of things with the least dangerous jobs,’ he apologised. ‘But it has to be this way, I think. Ellie’s our best driver, so we need her for the tanker. And Lee’s too lame to run, which is hopeless for the passenger, because they’ll both have to be quick on their feet. And I’m the one who’s had the most experience with cattle.’
Homer was being modest. He was a natural with stock. But he was still talking, ‘So, that’s how it seems to work out. What I thought was, if you steal a tanker and bring it down to the bridge by slow degrees, with Fi walking to each corner, checking the coast is clear, then signalling you on. You hide it round that corner near the bowling greens, nice and close to the bridge. We’ll wait for a convoy to go through, which seems to get the soldiers up to the right end of the bridge, and also gives us a good chance of a clear interval before the next convoy. Then we’ll move the cattle out into the road and stampede them. As the cattle hit the bridge at one end you bring the tanker down under it at the other – you might even be able to coast down with the engine off. There’s a good slope there. Jump out, run a trail of petrol away to a safe distance – one of you do it, so if she gets any on her clothes she can get clear before the other one lights it. Then light it and go like stink to a couple of motorbikes that we’ll hide around the next corner. And you’re out of there. How’s that? Simple, eh? Just call me Genius.’
We talked and talked for hours, trying to find the flaws, trying to improve the arrangements. There were endless ways it could go wrong of course. The cattle mightn’t move, another vehicle might come along the road at the wrong moment, the tankers might be guarded or empty – they mightn’t even be there. I thought the most dangerous part might be when Fi and I were getting from the tanker to the motorbikes. We’d be quite exposed then, for thirty seconds or so. If the sentries saw us we’d be in real trouble. But Homer was confident that they’d be occupied by the cattle.
Yes, it was a good plan. It was very clever. And maybe the thing I liked most about it was the effect it had on Lee. He was determined to do it. He lifted his head more and more as we talked; he became outspoken, he started smiling and laughing. He’d been depressed a lot of the time since he copped the bullet, but now he actually said to me, ‘If we do this, if we succeed, I’ll be able to feel pride again’.
I hadn’t realised how ashamed he’d been of not being able to help his family.
We made a list of all the things we needed, just a little list: four motorbikes, two walkie-talkies, two pairs of wirecutters, bolt cutters, torches, aerosol cans, matches, cattle-prods, rope, and a petrol tanker. Just a few odds and ends like that. We started our search on the Fleets’ place, and then moved onto the neighbouring farm, collecting as we went. The motorbikes were the biggest problem. Most rurals don’t take much care of their bikes. Half the ones we found were held together with fencing wire and masking tape. We had to have fast, reliable bikes, that would start first time. Then they had to be fuelled up, have their oil and headlights and brakes checked, and brought together in a central spot, which happened to be Fleets’ garage. We worked pretty hard that afternoon.
Chapter Twenty
Curr’s Blue Star Fuel and Oil Distributors was in Back Street, about six blocks from the bridge. Fi and I found it with no trouble but with much relief. We’d agreed between the two of us that we could have a rest when we got there, and we sure needed one. We’d wheeled those bloody great bikes about four k’s, stopping and hiding a dozen times when one or both of us imagined we’d heard a noise or seen a movement. We were pretty twitchy just doing that; I hated to think what we’d be like when the real action started.
I was a bit nervous being paired with Fi, I must admit. There was no way I was ever going to be a hero, but at least I was used to doing outdoors, practical things, and I suppose that gives you a bit of confidence. I mean just the little things at home that I took for granted, chopping wood, using a chain saw, driving, riding the horses (Dad still liked using horses for stockwork), being a rouseabout, marking lambs and drenching sheep – these were the commonplace routines of my life, that I’d never valued a lot. But without my noticing it they’d given me the habit of doing things without looking over my shoulder every sixty seconds to see if an adult was nodding or shaking his head. Fi had improved heaps in that respect, but she was still kind of hesitant. I admired her courage in taking on the job Homer had given her, because I guess true courage is when you’re really scared but you still do it. I was really scared, but Fi was really really scared. I did just hope that when the chips were down she wouldn’t stand there frozen with fear. We didn’t want frozen chips. Ha ha.
Once we’d hidden the bikes we set off for Curr’s. I tried to put into practice the lessons I’d learned from computer games. My favourite game was Catacomb and I’d found the only way I could get to level ten was to keep my head. When I got angry or overconfident or adventurous I got wiped out, even by the most simple and obvious little monsters. To get the best scores I had to stay smart, think, be alert and go cautiously. So we crept along, block by block, checking round every corner as we came to it. The only time we spoke was when I said to Fi, ‘This is the way we’ll have to do it on the way back with the tanker’. She just nodded. The only time my concentration wavered was when I caught myself wondering if I’d ever get to play computer games again.