“Well you ain’t ready for a real horse yet, that’s for bloody sure.”
“Don’t laugh at me.”
“I’m not laughing. Come on, let’s show this cow who’s boss.”
“No.”
Billy touched his arm. “William.”
“No, I said.” Shrugging him off.
“Falling off’s just a part of it. You have to get back on.”
“I don’t want to. I want to go home.”
“Well, you ain’t quitting, I’ll tell you that much. Go and collect your horse.”
“No.”
He folded his arms and stomped his foot like some prissy schoolgirl. Billy said, “Collect your damn horse before I make you.I ain’t asking again.”
William only stood there. Billy felt the stares of the stableboy and the men. He put a hand on William’s shoulder, attemptingto steer him, but he twisted from the grip and the two of them faced off across the corral. Billy was disgusted by him: thefoppish way he held himself, the weakness that ran to his core. They may have looked alike but there was none of Billy inhim, the boy was no kind of son. Even his own father, drunk and penniless, would not have stood for this behavior, wouldn’thave had to, Billy would have fought like hell to get another crack at it, not to run off home. Not for the first time hewondered if the child was even his—Katherine had never been clear on the timing, and William had come out small. She’d alwaysdenied anything had happened that night with Charles Sinclair, but Billy still had his doubts.
He lunged and grabbed hold of William, pinned him by the arms, bent so they were face-to-face. William writhing, trying tokick him; Billy said, “You’re making a bloody fool of yourself, and of me. Now quit acting like a baby and show me you’rea proper McBride.”
He shoved him gently toward the pony. Barely anything in it, but down the boy went, the dust puffing up around him as he landedin the dirt. Later, Billy would wonder if the fall had been deliberate, if William had seen Katherine watching from over bythe house and thrown himself to the ground. He lay there groaning, his head buried in his arms. Billy hadn’t noticed Katherineyet. “Christ,” he said, sighing, trudging closer, standing over his son. He tried to rouse him. William refused to stir. Hislegs started flailing like he was swimming and Billy straightened, shook his head, looked up at the sky.
Behind him, at the fence line, he heard the stableboy laugh.
Billy spun and strode across the corral. Briefly the stableboy tried to control himself, to swallow his laughter and bury his gaze in the dirt, but when he saw Billy advancing, a face full of fury and his hands balled into fists, he unhooked his arms from the railing and backed away a step.
Billy snatched his stockwhip off the fence post. He vaulted the rail in one leap. Now the stableboy had his hands up, jabberingaway in his own tongue—Billy could not have cared less what he said. He walked toward him folding the whip in a figure-eightmotion, tightening it into a strop. The stableboy tried to run but Billy kicked his legs out and he sprawled into the dust.Billy hit him. One quick thwack of the strop on his temple that briefly sent him limp, then he had him by the collar and was dragging him back to the corral,yelling, “Laugh at my son, will you? Laugh at my fucking son?” while the stableboy grappled his wrist hopelessly, his legs cycling the ground.
The men by the gum tree were standing. Katherine, her skirts in her hand, came running from the house.
Billy threw the stableboy chest-first against the railings, stropped him again, the stableboy cowering, holding the back ofhis head. By now William had picked himself up and was watching from the middle of the corral, his knees pressed together,clutching one arm with the other, squirming. Billy gripped the stableboy’s head, shoved it forward, snarled in his ear, “Apologizeto my boy.”
“Daddy . . .” William sniveled.
“Quiet!” He clamped the stableboy’s jaw with his hand, saliva bubbling with each breath. “Say it,” Billy told him. “Or I swearto God . . .”
The stableboy didn’t answer. Or couldn’t, maybe. Billy released him and stepped back a way and let out the whip to the ground.
“No!” Katherine shouted. “No, Billy, don’t!”
He didn’t even hear her. Lost deep inside himself now. He was sick of being disrespected—John Sullivan never had to put up with this kind of horseshit. Billy had steered the station through a crippling drought, widespread labor strikes, and a depression that had brought the colony to its knees; better than that, they had thrived. Still he met with other squatters and they sneered at him like shit on a shoe, as if marrying into it and being born into it weren’t two sides of the same coin. At the same time neither did his own men fully respect him, still saw him as one of them, not the man he’d since become. Even his own son hated him. They all did, but he would show them, like he had done his whole life, starting with this insolent fucker here.
Billy drew back the whip and unleashed it and with a sharp crack the tip tore through the stableboy’s shirt. The stableboycried out and arched to the sky; a bloodstain bloomed where he’d been cut. William was wailing. Covering his face with hishands. The cattle and horses milled restlessly around him, geed up by the sound of the whip. The stableboy looked over hisshoulder. Billy drew back the whip again.
Katherine slammed into him before he could get the second lashing away. She wrapped him in her arms and held him and he didn’ttry to fight, looking at her queerly, as if unsure who she was. They stood together, Katherine panting, the world slowly seepingback into Billy’s mind: William crying; the stableboy fleeing down the hillside; the men ambling warily from the blue gum;the cattle and horses in the corral. Katherine called to William, told him it was over now, he was safe; “Get him out of there!”she yelled at
