William Collins
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First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2016
Copyright © Cal Flyn 2016
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Map by John Gilkes
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Source ISBN: 9780008126629
Ebook Edition © June 2016 ISBN: 9780008126612
Version: 2017-01-25
To my parents,
who make everything possible
Contents
Gippsland, Victoria. July 1843
Ronald Macalister was dead. The blacks had killed him.
Angus McMillan’s stablehand found the body at the side of the track a half-mile from Alberton, a mess of blood and gore. They had dragged the lad from his horse. Dragged him flailing and yowling to the dust, dispatched him with their wooden clubs, and later, once he was dead, they had cut him.
Though Angus knew Ronald well – had known him for years, in fact, since he’d worked for the dead man’s uncle – he had barely recognised him. The corpse had been stripped naked, the face disfigured, the insides left spewing out upon the ground. There were slashes in the gut where the Gunai attackers had cut the fat from around his kidneys.
All the settlers were in uproar; this time the blacks had gone too far. Not a sheep, nor a bullock, not even a shepherd or a stockman; this time they had killed the nephew of the big man Lachlan Macalister himself, and a crime of this magnitude could not go unpunished. There must be reprisals. Angus felt the heavy weight of responsibility settling down upon his shoulders.
For who else could lead the men of Gippsland? He was the founding father, the man who had led the way from the withered plains of the colony over the Great Dividing Range. He was the one who had hacked through the snarls of stringybark and tea tree and finally guided them down into these green and fertile pastures. He had gathered his countrymen around him in the new land and shown them the way they must now live. There was no one else.
In the end, retribution was not so difficult to organise. The men were fired up, just waiting for the touchpaper to be lit. It didn’t take much persuasion to amass a hunting party; by the next morning every Scotsman in the district with a gun and a sound horse was assembled, ready for the off, baying like the hounds. Baying for blood. They called themselves the