I was sitting on the top rail of a fence watching the bar doorway of the pub across the road. The shouts and exclamations of angry men fled through the doorway like a flock of escaping bats.
It was hot with a north wind blowing and each horse in the gigs and buggies in front of the hotel rested on three legs in the shafts. Their heads drooped in the heat.
Above the whip-cracks of curses and abuse I could hear the bull-bellow of Peter McLeod sending out his challenge. The surge of accompanying sound erupted in a sudden explosive burst and a man came staggering backwards through the doorway, arms outstretched seeking balance, a smear of blood on his upper lip, his face still awry from a blow.
In front of him, following his backward plunge with ferocious purpose, came Peter. Arresting hands gripped his shoulders, arms like ropes encircled his waist. As this knot of men spilt across the roadway, Peter began shedding them like pieces of box-thorn hedge hooked on to him in his passage through a pig-yard fence.
‘Let go of me, blast ya!’
‘Hold your horses, Peter!’
Excited men with flushed faces poured out of the bar.
‘Make a ring.’
‘Hold on! Peter’s been boozing all the morning.’
‘He’s on his feet, isn’t he!’
‘The bastard asked for it.’
‘Is Sam having a go?’
Then I heard Peter’s voice:
‘Where’s that lyin’ cow?’
‘I’m . . .’
‘Ugh!’
‘Ah!’
There was a sudden flurry of blows. I heard gasps and grunts. The crowd reeled back.
‘Give them room!’
‘Stand back, bugger you!’
I hurriedly clambered from the rail and grabbed my crutches from the ground. I bounded across the roadway to the circular wall of men, flung my crutches to one side and dropped to my hands and knees. I lowered my head and thrust it between the spread legs of a tall outside man, pushed through and kept going. I went through legs, by the side of legs, around legs all anxious to avoid me. Some sidestepped when I touched them or swung away from me as if bitten by a dog. Above me in the world of heads I could hear curses and exclamations of concern.
‘It’s that bloody Marshall kid!’
‘Look out or you’ll step on him.’
‘God Almighty, can’t a man look at a fight without him tangling with your legs!’
I shot underneath the last barrier of men and squatted cross-legged like a Buddha in front of the two fighters.
This was the moment for which I had waited—to see Peter McLeod punish a bullying man. He would flatten him like a tack, of that I was sure. A hundred tales, a hundred victorious fights had been my preparation for this proof of Peter’s courage.
I waited for the killing straight left, the merciless right hook, the magnificent uppercut which his yarns supplied in plenty. But this staggering man struggling to lift himself out of a stupefying fog—this wasn’t Peter McLeod. This wasn’t the man of a hundred tales. He wasn’t even defending himself properly. He swayed and lurched into the pathway of blows that a bobbing head could have avoided. He was always off balance. No swift, tigerish leaps here, only a will that held a body upright against blows that made it recoil with sudden jerks.
Charlie Robbins was stone cold sober. He watched Peter with the eyes of a hawk, watching for openings through which his fists shot like the kick of a horse.
I had never regarded Charlie Robbins as a fighter. He was a heavy, thick-set farmer who rested his hands on the backs of cows while walking them into bails. He milked Friesians and in some way resembled them. Dad always said he was a good cheese man, then added as an afterthought—‘Immature cheese.’
When he knocked Peter off his feet Peter would get up again. This was good. I liked Peter for getting up. But in the end he had blood on his face and his eyes were closed and he couldn’t get up. Some men lifted him and carried him behind the pub where they put his head under a pump.
A man got my crutches for me and I went home. I didn’t want to tell father about it. I felt I had taken a hiding too, so I shut up-but he found out somehow. All he said was, ‘Well, he took a fall. Go down and see him in the morning and take it with him like a man.’
I walked down to his farm next morning. He was sitting on a box outside the stable door, looking at a white horse tied with a halter to a ring on the wall. That’s all you could say about this horse.
‘Good morning, Mr McLeod’, I said.
‘Goodday.’
I sat on the ground beside him.
‘I didn’t mind you getting a belting, Mr McLeod.’
‘Shut up.’
After a while he straightened up and said, ‘I’m sore as a boil this morning. I can’t move my bloody neck to the left. What’s wrong with the bloody thing? I can move it to the right, but when I move it to the left it catches me here’, and he pointed to a sinew like a piece of fencing wire that braced his neck to his shoulder. He screwed up his face and went on, ‘Do you know I was sober as a judge at three o’clock. That bastard O’Connor put my head under the pump. Well! I didn’t mind that. He’s a good chap. But he needn’t have held me under it for ten minutes. Sometimes he’s as stupid as a green colt. Anyway, I came round all right. I felt good, so I walked down to Charlie Robbins’s. He’d belted me when I was drunk; I wanted to see if he could belt me when I was sober. I came across the paddock but he saw me coming and took shelter amongst his cows. He’d yarded them for milking. He was standing in the middle of them like a bull.
‘“Listen, you bloody fat bastard”, I yelled at him, “I’m sober now. Come out here on the grass and let me cut you down to size.”
‘“Not me, not me, Peter. I’m not that bloody stupid. You’d paste hell out of me when you’re sober. I’d never fight you when you’re sober.”
‘“Look here”, I said. “You fought me down at the pub when I could hardly stand on my feet. Come out here now, you mongrel.”
‘“Look, Peter. I fought you because you were drunk. I’m not bloody well mad. If I came out there you’d give me a hiding. What sort of bloody fool do you think I am? No! I’d only fight you when you’re drunk. I’ve got a chance then. But anyone who takes you on sober—well—he’s asking for trouble. Let’s forget it.”
‘“Well, I’ll go to buggery!”
‘“You can go there too, but by hell you’re not taking me with you. I’m stopping here.”
‘“You haven’t got the guts of a louse”, I said to him. “You’re a cowardly bastard.”
‘“Yes, that’s right. I’m a cowardly bastard when it comes to fighting you sober.”
‘Well, what could I do. There he was amongst his cows; I’d have to wade through a foot of cow shit to get at him.’
‘“Where did you pick up that white horse down the paddock?” I asked him.
‘“I bought him at the sale last week. I gave a fiver for him.”
‘“What’s he like as a hack?”
‘“Never had better. I tell you, I’ve never had better. You never move in the saddle. He’s like a rocking horse.”
‘“I’m looking for a hack like that. Is he quiet?”
‘“Like a lamb, that’s what he is. Like a lamb.”
‘“What’ll you take for him?” I asked.
‘“Look, Peter, seein’ as how I should never have hopped into you while you were drunk, you can have him for what I gave for him—a fiver—an’ that’s dirt cheap.”
‘So he came out and caught him, and threw in a halter, and I paid him and led him home. I haven’t had a proper look at him yet. I’ve just run him in.’
We sat in silence looking at the white horse tethered to the fence.
‘Did you look at his mouth?’ I asked.
‘Yes. He’s rising five.’
‘He’ll never see five again, Mr McLeod’, I said, then I added, ‘I don’t think he’s much of a horse.’
‘Why, what’s wrong with him?’ asked Peter aggressively.
‘Well, he’s down in the hocks, he’s hollow backed and he’s got a ewe neck.’
‘That’s enough’, roared Peter with sudden anger. ‘Shut up, will ya.’
I shut up.
After a while Peter got up and walked round the horse. He spat on the ground, then leant on its rump while he scratched his beard.
‘Of course’, he said. ‘I hadn’t sobered up properly when I left the pub. I wasn’t quite right in the head. That bastard, Charlie, belted me when I was drunk and then ends up by robbing me when I’m sober. I tell you this. That bastard is a proper bastard.’
He paused a moment. ‘Now get to hell out of here.’