All this he’d record in a little notebook, his pencil tucked behind his ear.
Some of the men he knew personally, others knew him or had heard of him, or had known his father when he was alive. Oftenhe was stopped and his hand was shaken and he was obliged to shoot the breeze in that taciturn way all cattlemen have. Mostlythey were amiable, glad to hear he was starting up again; a few commented that his father would have been proud. They askedhow the young widow was faring at Broken Ridge, whether that soft city arsehole—her father—was running the place into the ground. Billy told them Katherine was managing the station, that she was doing justfine, and they laughed until they realized it wasn’t a joke. The things they said about her—he could have hit any number ofthem, none was fit to speak her name. But enemies were made for life out here, and enemies were the last thing Billy needed,so he shook their sweaty hands and allowed the conversation to go on: some wondered whether his brother was back yet, whetherhe was part of the new run, and all Billy said was that he wasn’t expecting Tommy anytime soon. They’d clutch his shoulderor slap his back, then, put in mind of what had happened to them, of why Billy was on his own, would lean in and offer theirsympathies, before telling him how glad they were those Kurrong bastards wouldn’t be bothering him again.
“Good on ya, Billy,” they whispered. “Good on ya, mate. Well done.”
At which Billy, clench jawed and silent, would turn and move along.
On the crest of a rise Billy sat his horse and looked over the western pastures, watching his mongrel herd: the bedraggled stock from Lawton and the pedigrees from Broken Ridge, mingling warily, in a way cattle usually were not, as if neither fully recognized their counterparts as being of the same kind.
“Ah, they’ll fatten up in a week or two. Can’t but help it with all that feed.”
He’d caught himself doing this recently, talking with nobody around. Not even a dog to listen to him, and Buck wasn’t thelistening kind. Tommy should have been here, mounted on that big gray gelding he was so fond of, sitting at Billy’s side.It was all they’d ever talked about when they were boys, what they’d do when this place was theirs. Or at least they had done,before Tommy started getting ideas about himself, about a life away from Glendale.
“Yeah, well, at least I’m still here trying. I ain’t running away.”
Billy pulled the horse around and rode him south for home, two hours across a barren scrubland no amount of rain could cure,the soil dry and brittle, choked by dust and stones. His thoughts wandering out ahead of him, to another evening alone bythe fire, another meal of stale salt beef, unless . . . there was time to go hunting before sundown, he figured, rustle upsome fresh meat, maybe fill the bathtub and leave it warming, it was ages since he last washed. He could bathe while the meatwas roasting, scrub his clothes after, then eat and smoke and watch the sunset, drink a little rum, raise a toast to the newcattle, to his family’s run reborn.
Four loose horses were waiting for him, when he rode into the yard.
All were saddled and loaded with supplies: snuffling the weed-strewn gravel, drinking from the trough. Billy reined up anddismounted, drew and cocked his revolver, walked slowly into the yard. His gaze flitted between the buildings. His boots crunchedthe stones. The house door was open, as were some of the sheds, and the horses were unfamiliar: they weren’t from Broken Ridge.
The men slid from behind walls and out of doorways and were converging on Billy before he even noticed they were there: twoblacks, their carbines leveled at him, marching deliberately across the yard; and one white, smiling slyly, sauntering withan enormous rifle pinned behind his neck.
Billy lowered the hammer on the revolver, let it hang loose at his side.
On they came, these three men, Billy alternating between them and only now registering the pale trousers and blue tunics thetwo blacks wore. The white boy was dressed in tan moleskins and an ill-fitting khaki shirt, and though he was chewing tobaccolooked no older than sixteen. He resembled a workhouse urchin—pug nose, narrow eyes, filthy hair, a cleft in his chin andacne pocked on his cheeks—but from their getup Billy already had a good idea who these strangers were.
The white boy was a Native Police officer. His troopers were in uniform.
And now that he’d realized, now he saw the troopers more clearly as they closed across the yard, he wondered if they weren’tfamiliar, if he didn’t know them from before, from when he and Tommy had gone after their family’s killers and they had . . .and they had . . .
“Fellas!” Billy called, waving. “Good to see you! How you been?”
They were unimpressed by his bluster. Nothing in their faces at all. One on each side, fixing Billy with their carbines, whilethe boy rolled lazily toward him, scarecrowed by his rifle still. Desperately Billy tried to remember the troopers’ names.One was older, bald-headed, a face sunken to its bones; the other bigger, younger, stronger, his left eye knotted with scars.Priest, or Bishop maybe, something to do with God?
He looked at the boy anxiously. “What you doing here? What’s this about?”
As if by way of an answer a slow boot tread sounded on the house verandah, and all heads including Billy’s turned: he rememberedwith a shiver that there had been a fourth horse. In the shadow of the porch a very tall man uncoiled himself through theopen doorway and stepped up to the rail. He wore a peacock feather
