Softcocks, in Billy’s view. Should have stayed and ridden it out.
In his hut on the workers’ compound, he stripped off his clothes and lay on the bed and slept off last night’s excess, thenwoke feeling fresher but slicked in a thin film of sweat. Early afternoon now, the hut burning up: Billy washed himself withsoap and dressed in a clean shirt and slacks. He shaved in the little mirror, careful around his beard, and combed his darkhair, though only barely, the two had never really got along. His father’s sad eyes staring back at him. The lump where hisbrother Tommy had once broken his nose. Handsome, they generally called him, though he looked a long way older than his twenty-oneyears.
The broad track led straight up the hillside through a moat of barren scrub and linked the compound with the main Broken Ridgehomestead. A grand white colonial mansion house with a wraparound verandah propped on wooden stilts, perching on the hillsidebeneath the towering sandstone escarpment that gave the station its name, overlooking its landholding, or as much as couldbe seen from here. The Broken Ridge empire stretched for thousands of square miles: excepting Bewley itself and those fewruined smallholdings still gamely hanging on, in one way or another almost the entire district was Sullivan land.
At the bottom of the steps Billy dismounted and stood waiting for the native stableboy to fetch his horse. The stables were up behind the house, across a clearing; the boy was slumped on a stool outside the door. Billy whistled for him. The boy glanced up and swiped away flies, then rose and slouched into the barn. Billy stood raging. Insolent little fuck. When it became clear the boy wasn’t going to return he tied Buck tight to the balustrades and left him there, in the hope he would shit on the steps.
There were voices on the verandah. Billy reached the top of the stairs and found two men sitting at an outside table, voilecurtains billowing behind them through the open French doors. One Billy already knew: Wilson Drummond, Katherine’s father,the man who’d first traded her to John Sullivan when she was only eighteen, then shot out here like a rat into a grain storewhen he’d heard the squatter had died, heirless, giving his daughter first claim on all he owned. The other man he didn’trecognize. Younger, with floppy fair hair and a smooth city face; Billy could guess exactly what he was about. This wouldbe the third such show-pony Drummond had dragged out here and tried to stud, wooed with the promise of riches and land. Butthen they saw what that fortune would require of them, the work, the heat, the dust, the flies, not to mention the woman they’dbe marrying, who could be just as ungovernable as her land when she put her mind to it, and none had stuck it yet.
Their conversation stalled when they noticed him. Wilson Drummond set down his wineglass and stood, saying, “Billy, my boy,good to see you. Though it’s not the best time, I’m afraid.”
He’d never spoken so warmly to Billy before. “It’s Katherine I’m here for,” he replied. “She inside?”
Drummond glanced anxiously at the city boy, who was watching Billy while he drank. “Charles,” Drummond said, “this is BillyMcBride, the young man I was telling you about—his family had that little run to the south there. Tragic circumstances, obviously,but we’re glad to still have him on board. I’m sure you’ll find him very useful, being a local lad and all. Billy, this isCharles Sinclair, Katherine’s fiancé.”
He took his time about standing. Dabbed his lips with a napkin, folded it, set it aside, making Billy wait. Finally he ambledover with his hand outstretched, and Billy couldn’t think of a way to not: he shook the hand forcefully, found it soft anddamp and feminine, an urge to wipe off his own once they were done.
“A pleasure,” Sinclair said. “Wilson speaks very highly of you.”
“Is that right?”
Sinclair laughed, turned to the view of the hillside and the pastures far beyond. “Quite the country you have out here. Ihad no idea what to expect.”
“It’s not for everyone,” Billy said.
“Well, I’m very much looking forward to becoming acquainted with it. Wilson tells me we owe you quite the debt. All this landand not a native to trouble us—almost sounds too good to be true!”
Billy glanced to the west, to the distant shadow of the ranges, to all that lay beyond, as Wilson Drummond said, “I was tellinghim about how you saw off those myalls after what happened with your family.”
“That ain’t none of his business. None of yours, neither.”
A silence hung between them. Drummond said, “No, I suppose not.”
“Anyway,” Billy said, “we still do have it. Glendale, it’s still ours.”
“Sorry?”
“You said we used to have a run south of here. We still do. It’s my land.”
Drummond hummed doubtfully. “It’s not quite that simple, Billy.”
“How’s that now?”
“Well, your father’s lease ended when he was killed, sadly, meaning the land reverts to the agent, who holds it on my behalf.I’ve been through it all with the lawyers. Getting the estate ready for Charles.”
Billy looked between them. His jaw creased. “On your behalf now, is it?”
“On behalf of the station, then.”
“Which last I checked belongs to a Sullivan, which you ain’t.”
“It amounts to the same thing.”
“It amounts to illegal dummying, did your lawyers tell you that? Only reason that agent’s there in the first place is to getaround the Land Acts. John told me how things work round here—I know exactly where I bloody well stand.”
He marched away along the verandah, heard Charles
