Chapter 1
The setting sun painted the surrounding hilltops a washed-out orange as the echo of three sudden gunshots penetrated the gloom to the valley floor.
Standing outside of the farmhouse, freckle-faced and buxom Flossie (Florence) MacFie, conspicuous with masses of fading red-hair, made four unsuccessful sweeps through binoculars of the rugged foothills of the Atlas Ranges without seeing any sign of the shooter, her youngest and virtually uncontrollable daughter Rhona.
Later, Flossie would learn that the 26-year-old, bearing unruly hair the colour of sun-dried thrashed wheat stalks, had shot at a pack of five marauding wild dogs, killing two and mortally wounding another.
The dogs were sheep killers.
They'd ripped open the throats of twenty-two of the MacFie's 37,753 sheep (at the last count completed three days earlier).
Discovering the slaughter next morning, with most of the victims killed as a blood sport rather than for food, Rhona had driven back to the farmhouse amid a collection of sheds, reporting the slaughter to her parents.
She'd frowned at her father's reaction, "Bloody stray dogs lost by deer and pig hunters."
Flossie guessed what was on her daughter's mind and went to the kitchen and prepared food and drink to last a sole hunter for up to three days.
"Don't go out there," said the craggy-face and solidly-built Cameron, when Rhona returned to the family room/kitchen, dressed in high country hunting clothing.
"Drop it dad. Fetch your Land Rover to the front door and set Mac loose as I'll need him to track those bastard killers for me. Deliver me to Higgin's Crossing."
"You're be wasting your time love. Those bastards will be loping and licking their chops thirty miles away by now,"
"Dad, those dogs would have gorged themselves and tired themselves out chasing terrified sheep. They would have retreated uphill to mountainous seclusion and assumed safety until they crap out their excesses."
"Rhoda, speak delicately!" chided her mother, valiantly pursuing her relentless attempt to convert her wild daughter into modifying her behaviour and adopt some of the airs of a lady.
Flossie's reprimand was ignored by daughter and husband.
"Yeah, that retreat strategy sounds reasonable," Cameron said grudgingly, having accrued a near lifetime experience with dogs. He retained fond memories of his first pup given to him when he was not quite three years of age. Bess died just after Cameron's 10th birthday when attacked by pig hunters' dogs. At the time, Cameron and Bess were out hunting for rabbits on the river flats.
Cameron smiled in pride when Rhoda returned to the family room dressed in thick clothing, a cap pulled low on her head, carrying a backpack in one hand and her Remington Model 700 Mountain Rifle with a scope in her other hand. She looked every inch a serious hunter.
Rhoda handed the backpack, already loaded with minimal camping gear, to her pale-faced mother who appeared ready to weep as she packed the food and drink provisions.
"Do you have sun block cream, skin moisturiser, lip cream..."
"Mum, yes in part. This is serious work connected to our farming income, not an outing for your dream prim Sunday School teacher."
Flossie sighed and asked, "How long will you be away?"
"Mother, how long is a piece of string? I figure no more than two nights."
Late afternoon two days later, Flossie was relieved to hear the shots ring out. The dogs would scatter, running into tomorrow and Rhona could be home next day by mid-morning.
Rhona with Mac, her favourite dog, a black and tan huntaway, were picked up at Higgin's Crossing by Cameron at 10.15, on schedule.
She'd radioed after the shooting to give her ETA, reporting that she and Mac were well and she'd stalked the pack of five dogs until they were on fairly flat and open terrain. She shot the lead dog through the back of the head with her first shot, sent the second dog off yelping and limping with its left front shoulder burst open with large wound. She killed the third dog with a long distant shot with a bullet through the spine when it slowed preparing to leap up on to a ledge with the obvious intent to disappear into scrub.
By then the other two dogs had vanished.
"So, you got two of the bastards," Cameron said, with satisfaction.
"Three I would think dad. With its shoulder ripped open, that wounded dog is unlikely to survive for long in this unforgiving terrain up here. The two survivors will be miles away by nightfall and are unlikely to ever return."
The brief call ended and Flossie said, "Omigod Cameron, that girl has turned out to be even tougher than her two older brothers."
"Yeah, funny that and despite all the soft talk you've plied her with over the years and those pink dresses you used to truss her up in. I reckon that over-mothering half-terrorised the poor little darling. She probably secretly thought you were preparing her for burial."
"Cameron MacFie, you do talk a load of shit at times. I think you both need your heads read by a frigging psychiatrist and then spend six months in a reform institution."
Cameron leant over and tugged the hem of her dress.
She frowned and mocked, "Oh no, you randy sod. You've got your mind on that again."
* * *
Rhona, tall with an athlete's body had, over more than 20 years, developed a tendency to sometimes act headstrongly and exhibit a toughness that had earned her the title of Wild Rhona.
Early in life she'd displayed the occasional tantrum - not unusual in any frustrated child - but a serious incident occurred when she was eight.
Two hours after her older brother Donald (then 12) beat her up, Rhona waylaid him and struck him viciously with a short metal pry bar, breaking the humerus bone of his right arm that he'd used to slap her repeatedly.
At primary school, Rhona gained a reputation - and made friends as a result of her action - for being a courageous battler, taking on male and female bullies who terrorized fellow students, and sometimes being beaten up herself in the process.
Before long, the word was out 'Tangle with that tough MacFie bitch and you'll regret it.'
Then at high school, Rhona was battered by three boys her but luckily for her, two older youths passing the scene jumped in and pulled her free.
Rhona was suspended from school for four weeks for biting one of her attacker's mouth, ripping it open. The three boys who claimed they were just having fun with Wild Rhona each received a week's suspension for fighting.
One of those boys suffered the consequences of tangling with Rhoda, facing a series of cosmetic operations on his mouth scarring.
Six weeks later, when that incident was virtually forgotten, one of the other boys was knocked unconscious on the lawn of his home when returning at nightfall from basketball practice.
He was found with his hands tied behind his back with barbwire and was otherwise unhurt but badly shaken. The Police failed to track down the offender or establish a motive for the random attack.
Two weeks later, Rhona's third attacker suffered.
He been walking on the riverbank with an older female when he was attacked by someone in a mask and belted with a length of reinforced hose. the Police arrived, acting on 'information from a near hysterical female who said she was the victim's aunt'. The constables began questioning aunt and nephew but they could add nothing to identify the attacker apart from saying he was wearing black and they had no idea of motif.
"It's probably just some fiend attacking the innocent," said the woman. "Just look at my nephew, those welts across his face will be unsightly for months and he believes he has at least two broken fingers. Just listen to the howling."
Rhona, was left apprehensive of possible further group attacks in reprisal because some fellow students were suspicious that she may have taken revenge on her recent attackers. Being in her final term in the lower 6th form at the age of seventeen, she won her parent's approval to leave school to work on the farm.
One of the regular farmhands eagerly accepted a $5000 offer to quit his job to make way for the boss's daughter.
* * *
At 6.00 on the morning after Rhona returned after her revenge dog-killing spree, her father entered the bedroom without knocking or calling out for permission to enter. She'd long thought it was Cameron's tactic to catch her masturbating, he obviously unaware she would have attended to that pleasure perhaps an hour earlier.
"Stay in bed, I'll call the boys over to help me with the rams."
"Leave the boys sleeping at Muddy Creek Hotel (the nickname of the near-derelict cabin 11 miles east of the farmhouse)," Rhona yawned.
She countered, "Dad, you know they'll be zonked working eight or nine hours a day in this summer heat on replacement fencing. Anyway, I returned to bed half an hour ago after bringing in those 24 young rams to give them time to empty themselves out in the holding pen before transportation later this morning to the sale yards."
"Christ, I don't know what I'd do without you girl."
He grinned when Rhoda said he'd be crapping himself, faced with looming bankruptcy.
Cameron was well aware she did the work of two farmhands and was probably the best stockman, err stockperson, within 50 miles for handling and caring for livestock and bringing them to prime condition at the appropriate time.
"I'll bring in your breakfast thirty minutes before we need to start loading," he said, rubbing her hair affectionately, knowing that to date he was the only person permitted to take such a liberty.
He left the room that was bereft of feminine decoration probably wondering when a Mr Lucky would find his 'fantastic daughter', an endearment he sometimes expressed to her privately but that accolade might be disputed by many people including his wife.
No one was aware that a guy of possible interest to Rhoda, had recently arrived in the Pembroke district.
* * *
Nico (Nicholas) Burton, wiry with short-cropped black hair, was the only child of widower Barry Burton, a retired property manager and property investor, who'd died a month ago, leaving his property holdings and a pile of debts to Nico.
Dressed in a suit like a city businessman, Nico created quite a stir when he arrived at the Pembroke District's 78th Annual Fair for young bulls and 2-tooth rams.
The handsome bachelor appeared rather drunk.
