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We were camped on the edge of a billabong. Barlas was kneading a damper, Drysdale was tenderly packing coals about the billy to make the water boil, and I was cooking the chops. The hobbled horses were picking the grass and the old-man salt-bush near, and Bimbi, the black boy, was gathering twigs and bark for the fire. That is the order of merit–Barlas, Drysdale, myself, the horses and Bimbi. Then comes the Cadi all by himself. He is given an isolated and indolent position, because he was our guest and also because, in a way, he represented the Government. And though bushmen do not believe much in a far-off Government–even though they say when protesting against a bad Land Law, “And your Petitioners will ever Pray,” and all that kind of yabber-yabber–they give its representative the lazy side of the fire and a fig of the best tobacco when he bails up a camp as the Cadi did ours. Stewart Ruttan, the Cadi, was the new magistrate at Windowie and Gilgan, which stand for a huge section of the Carpentaria country. He was now on his way to Gilgan to try some cases there. He was a new chum, though he had lived in Australia for years. As Barlas said, he’d been kept in a cultivation-paddock in Sydney and Brisbane; and he was now going to take the business of justice out of the hands of Heaven and its trusted agents the bushmen, and reduce the land to the peace of the Beatitudes by the imposing reign of law and summary judgments. Barlas had just said as much, though in different language.

I knew by the way that Barlas dropped the damper on the hot ashes and swung round on his heel that he was in a bad temper. “And so you think, Cadi,” said he, “that we squatters and bushmen are a strong, murderous lot; that we hunt down the Myalls–[Aborigines]–like kangaroos or dingoes, and unrighteously take justice in our own hands instead of handing it over to you?”

“I think,” said the Cadi, “that individual and private revenge should not take the place of the Courts of Law. If the blacks commit depredations–“

“Depredations!” interjected Drysdale with sharp scorn.

“If they commit depredations and crimes,” the Cadi continued, “they should be captured as criminals are captured elsewhere and be brought in and tried. In that way respect would be shown to British law and–” here he hesitated slightly, for Barlas’s face was not pleasant to see–“and the statutes.”

But Barlas’s voice was almost compassionate as he said: “Cadi, every man to his trade, and you’ve got yours. But you haven’t learned yet that this isn’t Brisbane or Melbourne. You haven’t stopped to consider how many police would be necessary for this immense area of country if you are really to be of any use. And see here,”–his face grew grim and dark, “you don’t know what it is to wait for the law to set things right in this Never Never Land. There isn’t a man in the Carpentaria and Port Darwin country but has lost a friend by the cowardly crack of a waddy in the dead of night or a spear from behind a tree. Never any fair fighting, but red slaughter and murder–curse their black hearts!” Barlas gulped down what seemed very like a sob.

Drysdale and I knew how strongly Barlas felt. He had been engaged to be married to a girl on the Daly River, and a week before the wedding she and her mother and her two brothers were butchered by blacks whom they had often befriended and fed. We knew what had turned Barlas’s hair grey and spoiled his life.

Drysdale took up the strain: “Yes, Cadi, you’ve got the true missionary gospel, the kind of yabber they fire at each other over tea and buns at Darling Point and Toorak–all about the poor native and the bad, bad men who don’t put peas in their guns, and do sometimes get an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth…. Come here, Bimbi.” Bimbi came.