The Cattleman

The Cattleman
Margaret Way

A mysterious portrait, an unexpected commission, a disappearance in the OutbackShe might not know it, but these three things bring Jessica Tennant to Mokhani Station and the notice of cattleman Cyrus Bannerman. What Cy wants to know is if there's another reason for her presence. Something that has to do with his father's strange behavior…For her part, Jessica wonders if coming to Mokhani was a good idea. Working for the Bannermans might make her career, but this family - with the exception of Cy - just doesn't seem right. As for Cy, he could be more than all right if it weren't for the fact that he insists on assuming the worst about Jessica!

So this is Cyrus Bannerman

This was as good as it got. The fact that he was so striking in appearance didn’t come as a surprise. His father was an impressive-looking man. What she hadn’t been expecting was the charisma, the air of authority that appeared entirely natural. Obviously Cyrus Bannerman was ready to take over his father’s mantle, when many a son with a tycoon for a father finished up with a personality disorder. Not the case here, unless that palpable presence turned out to be a facade.

He was tall, maybe six-three, with a great physique. The loose-limbed long-legged stride was so graceful it was nearly mesmerizing. He had thick, jet-black hair, strong distinctive features, his eyes even at a distance the bluest she had ever seen. She knew instinctively she had better impress this guy with her professional demeanor. No contract had yet been signed.

“Ms. Tennant?”

Though every instinct shrieked a warning, she offered him her hand. It was taken in a firm cool grip. Jessica let out her breath slowly, disconcerted by the thrill of skin on skin. “How nice of you to meet me.”

“No problem. I had business in Darwin.” The startling blue eyes continued to study her. She had already grasped the fact that despite the smoothness of manner, he hadn’t taken to her. Was it wariness in his eyes? A trace of suspicion? More’s the pity! she thought. Anyone would think she had coerced his father into hiring her. Not that it mattered. She didn’t altogether like him. She did, however, like the look of him. A teeny distinction.

Dear Reader,

It is with much pleasure I introduce to you the first in my four-book series MEN OF THE OUTBACK. The setting moves from my usual stamping ground, my own state of Queensland, to the Northern Territory.

The Northern Territory is arguably the most colorful and exciting part of the continent. Even today it is frontier country. The Territory comprises what we call the Top End and the Red Centre. The Top End has as its capital Darwin, the gateway to Australia and a hop, step and a jump from Southeast Asia. The chief town of the Red Centre is Alice Springs, which lies in the middle of the fantastically colored MacDonnell Ranges, the setting for one of the stories. The Top End lies well above the Tropic of Capricorn. The Red Centre is the desert, the home of our most revered monuments, Uluru and Kata Tjuta. Thus we have in a vast area two extreme climatic and geographical divisions. World Heritage–listed Kakadu National Park, crocodiles and water buffalo to the Top, the Dead Heart to the Centre (though not dead at all, only lying dormant until the rains transform it into the greatest garden on earth).

The pervading theme of the series is family. It can be a difficult and provocative subject because many highly dysfunctional families are out there—fighting, loving, hating, struggling, exploiting, betraying. Family offers endless opportunities for its members to hurt and be hurt, to love and support or bitterly condemn. What sort of family we grew up in reverberates for the rest of our lives. Were we blessed with a rock-solid foundation or left with memories that plague us? One thing is certain—at the end of the day, blood binds.

I invite you, dear reader, to explore the lives of my families. Not all of it is invention. Such people as I write about do inhabit families. What sort of family is yours? Now and then.

Margaret Way

The Cattleman

Margaret Way

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

PROLOGUE

Mokhani Station

Northern Territory, Australia

1947

ALL THE WHILE THEY WERE riding, Moira felt a stab of anxiety as sharp as a knife beneath her breastbone. She tried to tell herself not to be afraid, but it did no good. A sense of foreboding weighed on her so oppressively, she slumped in the saddle, her hands trembling on the reins. If her companion noticed, Moira saw no sign. It was another hot, humid, thundery day on the verge of the Wet, or the Gunummeleng, as the station Aborigines called it. There were only two seasons in the Territory, she’d learned. The Wet and the Dry. The Wet, the time of the monsoon, extended from late November to March, the Dry lasted from April through October. It was mid-November now. She had arrived on Mokhani in early February of that year to teach the Bannerman twins, a boy and a girl aged seven. Nearly ten months of sharing her life with extraordinary people; the ten most life-changing months of her life. Ultimately, they had turned her from just out of adolescence into a woman. Her great fear was she had chosen a tragic path.

Nearing eighteen and not long out of her excellent convent school, she’d craved adventure. Mokhani had offered it. After years of hard study and obeying strict rules, she’d been ready for a liberating experience. It was understood that at some time she had to continue her tertiary education, but if her parents hadn’t exactly encouraged her to take a gap year, they’d put up no great objection when they’d seen how much she’d wanted it. As a much-loved only child, “the wonderful surprise” of her parents’ middle years, their only wish was for her to be happy. The family solicitor, a good friend of her father’s, had come up with the answer. His legal firm handled many Outback clients’ affairs. It just so happened, the Bannerman family, pastoral pioneers with huge cattle interests in the Northern Territory and Queensland’s Gulf country, wanted a governess for their children, someone of good family and proven academic ability, a young woman preferably, to better relate to the children.

She qualified on all counts. Her father was a well-respected family doctor. Her mother, an ex-nurse, helped out several days at his surgery. Moira had been a straight-A student, winning a scholarship to university. The Bannermans, for their part, were rich, powerful, influential. The present owner and heir to the Bannerman fortune was Steven Bannerman—ex-Squadron Leader Steven Bannerman, seconded to the Royal Air Force during the war, survivor of the Battle for Britain, who’d returned home a war hero. His wife, Cecily, was a niece of the South Australian governor. In short, the Bannermans were the sort of people to whom her parents felt no qualms about sending her.

The great irony was, they might have been signing her death warrant.

Moira lifted one hand, pressing it hard against her heart to stop it from bursting through her rib cage. If her companion addressed a stray comment to her, she heard nothing of it. There were too many demons clamouring inside her head. She knew she wasn’t very far away from a breakdown. In a sense, it was another version of the Aboriginal kurdaitcha man, the tribal sorcerer, pointing the bone. Yet nothing had been said to her. Her throbbing fears were virtually without proof, but like all victims, she had the inbuilt awareness there was threat ahead.

It was deliriously hot. That alone caused profound dislocation. Temperature nearing a hundred and rising. A thunderstorm was rolling in across the table-topped escarpment that from a distance always appeared a deep amethyst. The storm revealed itself as magnificent. Majestic in cloud volume, black and silver with jagged streaks of livid green and purple that intensified the colors of the vast empty landscape and made the great cushions of spinifex glow molten gold. Even she knew it was risky taking this long ride. If it poured rain, the track could become slippery and dangerous and they would have to walk the horses. But it wouldn’t be the first time a thunderstorm had blown over, for all the fabulous pyrotechnics.

Nearly everyone on the station, even the Aborigines, the custodians of this ancient land, were feeling the peculiar tension the extremes of weather created. Heat and humidity. The humidity alone left one gutted. The monsoon couldn’t come soon enough even if it brought in a cyclone. Not that she had ever lived through the destructive cyclones of the far north. Still she understood what the Territorians meant when they talked about going “troppo,” a state of mental disturbance blamed on extreme weather conditions.

Was that it? For one blessed moment, she felt a lightening of her fears. Was she going troppo? Were her fears imaginary rather than real? No one meant her any harm. It was all in her mind. Her companion appeared almost serene, hardly the demeanour of an avenger. The heat did dreadful things to people, especially those not born and bred to the rigours of the inland.

We’re white people living in the black man’s land.

Steven Bannerman had said that to her when she’d first arrived, looking down at her with a strange intensity, his handsome mouth curved in a rare smile. Steven Bannerman was not an easygoing man. Many attributed that to his traumatic experiences during the war. Steven Bannerman was the symbol of power and authority on the station, as daunting in some moods as a blazing fire.

Steven!