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 Maluka'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 Maluka was on the river, and
when the Maluka was about, it was considered wisdom to be off forbidden
ground; not that the blacks feared the Maluka, 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.
