so I don’t have to rely on guesswork so much with her. I saw that acceptance in the second or two before she ceased to be.
So, there I was, sprinting across the paddock like a maniac, in the zone if you want to call it that, chasing two armed men who were just approaching the ridge and the fence line. To my left was Lee, who did his ‘drop to the knee and take a shot’ routine again, with no better result than the first time. I thought we might have a chance as they came up to the fence, no matter how good they were, as it was going to take them quite a few seconds to get through. I planned to take a couple of shots myself at that stage. But they were too professional for me. As they approached the summit one of them turned and raised his rifle, while the other started the struggle to get through the barbed wire. I dropped fast. I could see Lee doing the same. I flattened myself in the grass, shuffling to the right to get behind a little rise. The guy fired one shot but then nothing. I waited a few seconds more then lifted my head. The second soldier was getting through the fence while the first one covered him. They were pretty quick. Lee fired again, then he was on his feet and running forwards once more. He hadn’t hit anyone. But the way Lee ran straight up the hill, he must have been pretty sure that this guy at least didn’t have any ammo. I didn’t want to be outdone, so I got up too. I did the zigzags. The man put his rifle right to his shoulder as if he was going to fire, so we both dropped again. He didn’t shoot though. Lee might have been right. Now that I had a better shot at the two of them I lined up the one on the left and squeezed the trigger. At the very last moment, before I fired, he pulled away and disappeared. I was up again straightaway. The two of us ran the slope hard.
As we approached the fence they were a hundred metres in front of us. But at the same time I could see something lumbering into view from the right. What the hell? For a moment I actually thought it was a large vehicle. The police were here already? Had someone heard the shots and called them? I felt like an idiot when I realised what it was. Colin McCann had put his bull in this paddock. I hadn’t seen the bull for a couple of months. He was a magnificent creature, one of the best in the district. A horned Hereford, and you don’t get those so often these days, dark red, the size of a delivery van, with hindquarters that shouted power, and a proud head. Col never dehorned his bulls. He was a purist, I guess, and liked the natural look. Besides, it was a bloody business, cutting horns off, and the bulls hated it.
Everyone has their own opinion about horns, but my favourite approach was Tammie Murdoch’s, who put tennis balls on her goats’ horns, held with metres of duct tape. It made the goats look pretty funny, like aliens. Goats have a perpetually bewildered expression anyway, which kind of matched the tennis balls.
These days most bulls are reasonably placid, because they’ve been bred that way. Nearly every farmer I know sends aggressive bulls to the abattoir. In fact, even a bull that’s been well behaved for years gets turned into hamburger if he makes a move in the wrong direction. Either that or castrated, if he’s young enough to grow into a good steer. Then he might end up as steaks or sausages instead of hamburgers. This is a much better outcome for the animal, and fills him with pride and joy.
Anyway, the thing is, aggressive bulls are just not worth the risk. They are such massive creatures, killing machines on land that are as efficient as sharks or hippos or crocodiles in water. They weigh tonnes, they’re fast, and although they can’t turn on a five cent piece, they can turn on a five dollar note. And the thing is, you can never trust them. It’s the same with stallions. No matter how long you’ve known them, no matter how pleasant and polite they’ve been, they can go for you. Sometimes the reason is obvious, for example if you take a cow in heat out of the mob, then you can’t expect the bull to like you very much. But sometimes you can’t figure it, although a bull that’s been raised by hand is usually more dangerous, and on the other hand a bull that hasn’t had a lot of human contact is a risk. Horned bulls are more likely to be aggressive than poll bulls. And when they’re out in the paddock, bulls have a flight zone around them, and the size of it varies from beast to beast.
Col’s bull was likely to have a big flight zone, because he was in a big paddock, because he’d been bucket reared, because he didn’t see people much any more. If you get in an animal’s flight zone, the idea is that they’ll turn and run. But it doesn’t always work that way. It does with rabbits and pigeons and usually with snakes. But if they have an aggressive personality, or you’ve caught them on a bad day, or they’ve been out drinking half the night, and you’re in their flight zone, you might be the one who needs to turn and run. And if they’re big, or they’ve got mouthfuls of venom, and what’s worse you’re coming at them in a way that has them feeling threatened, then you might think about checking your life insurance.
The two soldiers probably didn’t know much of that stuff, but they had an extra problem, which was that they hadn’t seen the bull. They were too busy looking back at us. The bull was on their right. I’d guess his flight zone would be around a hundred metres. The soldiers were within thirty metres. This was bad news for them. Even worse news was that the bull showed every sign of being majorly pissed off. He had the head down, was shaking it, was scratching the ground: his whole body was agitated. This was a bull contemplating doing some serious damage. As we approached the fence Lee looked like he was ready to take another shot, but I called to him, fairly softly, ‘Don’t fire, don’t fire.’
He looked perplexed. Amazingly, it seemed like he hadn’t seen the bull either. This two tonne monster had become invisible. I pointed and his eyes widened. We were just reaching the top of the ridge, and looking for a place to cross, but we both stopped. To make matters even worse for himself, one of the soldiers, still looking back at us and trying to get away from the most open part of the paddock, was veering further to the right. The way he was going, the bull would only have to open his mouth and this guy would pop himself in.
At that moment the man on the left saw the problem. He shouted to his friend, who propped and turned around. I couldn’t see his expression, but I’m guessing flabbergasted and panic-stricken would have been among the adjectives jockeying for selection.
What happened next played itself out like a terrible drama with two spectators. Lee and I stayed on our side of the fence, like an audience. Of course if the bull had wanted to smash through the fence he could have done so any time, but luckily nearly all cattle live and die without learning that. It’s like school, most students go from kindergarten to Year 12 without noticing that they could do a fair amount of damage if they wanted to. They stay inside the fence.
Occasionally you get a bull who can’t be contained by fences, and he’ll often get a one-way ticket to the killing floor as his reward. When I was a toddler we had a bull who even learned to get his head under the bottom wire of the fence and rip a string of droppers out of the ground, then lie the fence flat and walk across it, tiptoeing delicately so he didn’t get his hoofs hurt by the nasty barbed wire. I don’t know exactly what happened to him, but I can guess.
The man on the right started running. This was the worst thing he could do. Never turn your back on a bull. His best hope, his only hope, would have been to use his rifle in the same way that I use a cricket bat when I’m dealing with some bulls, to wave around and make myself look bigger and more threatening. Instead of which, this guy dropped his rifle. It seemed like they were both out of ammunition, because his friend didn’t try to shoot, which was good news for the bull.
Lee and I both still had our rifles, and we both still had ammunition. We looked at each other, and without speaking a word we came to the same decision. We turned back to look at the stage, to watch the tragedy.
We did even worse than that. The guy was running almost straight towards us. There was no other fence line near, and no cover, so I suppose he had forgotten about us, or thought we were less of a risk than the bull. Maybe he thought we were nicer than we actually are. They say nice guys finish last. I’d learned during the war that nice guys get killed. So I raised my rifle and pointed it at him, so that even in his terror he would know he was about to be shot.
I wasn’t going to shoot at him, but that’s not because I’m a nice girl. It’s because I was worried that a shot would scare off the bull. That’s how nice I am.
He raised his arms, as if in surrender, or perhaps to plead for his life, and he veered away, to the left, as if circling to get back to his friend. His friend was rooted to the spot. While they were performing their dance, the bull had not stayed still. Almost as soon as the guy started running, the big beast had come after him. Even with a twenty metre start, and even though his semicircle gained him a bit of ground, the man had no chance. This was rage on four legs. This was a huge red tank with the eyes of a pig and a tail sticking out like a rudder. This was murder on the most primitive level. The bull ran him down from behind. Just at the end the man put on a sprint, and again threw up his arms as the animal reached him. There was a flurry of dust and the guy went down. Either I was still pretty deaf, or else he made no sound, because I didn’t hear anything, only a few whoofs from the bull as he made that big body move like a runaway cattle train.
A couple of tonnes of beef thundered over the man’s legs and back and head, and he lay there unmoving with the dust settling around him again. But the bull hadn’t finished yet. Not just one human had invaded his territory. A
