CONTENTS

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      EPILOGUE

      PROLOGUE

      THEY rode out at dawn. Their mission was specific. To hunt down “Psycho” the wild bull camel that was harassing the herd and attacking anybody unfortunate enough to come on it unawares. The situation had become so dangerous it was now necessary to kill the beast. Only a few days before one of the stockmen mustering clean skins on the desert fringe had encountered the raging animal and paid the price. Psycho had attacked without provocation kicking the stockman in the chest. The consequences had been serious. The man had to be airlifted to hospital and was still in a critical condition. He would have been dead only for the arrival of three of his mates who had startled the ferocious beast into slewing off.

      When the rogue came on season, for it was the male camel instead of the female that came on heat, Psycho would pose even more of a threat. He had a fearful reputation for attacking other male camels with passionate fury, his strength and wildness driving them away to leave him with a harem usually twenty or more females he jealously guarded and impregnated.

      Of recent times Psycho had taken to making open-mouthed dives at the tribal people who crisscrossed the station on walkabout. McFarlane had been informed of the attacks. His people were frightened and wanted protection.

      Camels weren’t indigenous to Australia. They and their Afghan handlers had been imported into the country in the early days of settlement to transport goods all over the dry trackless regions of the Outback; camels were ideal beasts of burden in just such conditions. Their wild descendants, some quarter of a million and they lived several decades, were a dreadful menace. They roamed the desert from one end to the other doing considerable damage to the fragile environment. McFarlane tolerated them. By now they were part of the Outback and there was a certain romance to the sight of them silhouetted on top of a sand dune at sunset. Unfortunately the time had come for Psycho to be destroyed before he turned killer.

      Six of them made up the party that morning. McFarlane, his overseer, Chas Branagan, Garry Dingo, the station’s finest tracker, two of his best stockmen and the boy, Luke. Fourteen years old but already judged by the others to be a man. The boy stood six feet, a superb athlete, with an excellent head on his shoulders. He was a fine shot, a talent he had been born with, as well as having extraordinary endurance for his age. In fact he was well on his way to becoming a consummate bushman like his father, Chas. He had the same remarkable sight, hearing and sense of smell. Skills that would be needed on the hunt.

      McFarlane realised he had become very fond of the boy. Indeed he was coming to look on him as the son he might have had. The tragedy was his wife; the one woman he had ever truly loved had died in childbirth leaving him with the precious legacy of a daughter. His beautiful Storm. While her mother slipped prematurely out of life, Storm had come into the world at the height of one of the fiercest tempests that had ever passed over his land.

      Tragedy and triumph. Sometimes the two went hand in hand. Like Storm and high drama. Storm had never been an easy child. Tempestuous and outspoken she spent her young life rebelling against his dictates when he had only put them in place to protect her. Freedom was what she wanted. Total freedom. The right to roam the station at will. “Like Luke does.” That was the catch cry “Like Luke does.”

      There were always outbursts against Luke. Big flare-ups of jealousy and resentment.

      “You treat him like a son! He’s not your son. He’s not my brother.”

      How many times had he heard that? Storm fought his affection for Luke every step of the way. She overplayed her little princess and the pauper act most times the two of them were together. Luke being Luke, was gentle and tolerant with her, unfazed by her histrionics.

      As for Storm, the light of his life, didn’t she know her father adored her? When Storm was sweet, she was very, very sweet, irresistible like her mother. If she’d had her way she’d have joined them this morning. Imagine! A girl barely twelve, even if she could ride all day. Storm couldn’t accept the confines of her femininity. She lived in a man’s world and she wasn’t about to come to terms with it. His difficult little Storm. How could it be otherwise? This was a child reared without a mother’s gentling touch.

      They skirted around the lignum that rose up like jungle walls, the party dividing up as they rode into the desert, ringed by heat waves that danced in the blinding glare. No tracks so far but then they had to contend with the rising wind that wiped them out almost as soon as they were made. Such a place of desolation this no man’s land! The great flights of budgerigar that flashed green and gold overhead and the marauding hawks were almost the only living things. The grazing cattle had stripped the perennial cover from the slopes here and the blood-red sand moved at will.

      Sand and spinifex.

      This year of drought, even the spinifex wasn’t so dense. Other years it covered the sand like a bright golden carpet.

      After two hours or more of fruitless search the party broke up, frustrated but not willing to give up. Psycho should have been spottable but he wasn’t. Wild animals had a way of disappearing into the landscape. Chas and two of the stockmen took off for the low eroded foothills, shimmering in the quicksilver light of the mirage. McFarlane, Luke and Matt, the other stockman, worked the undulating dunes, so red they were alight. It was getting hotter and hotter, the sun scorching out of a cloudless blue sky. So hot in fact McFarlane knew he was losing concentration. Not yet fifty he had lived a hard, dangerous life, and it was taking its toll. Broken ribs, a bad leg injury years back in Vietnam that still gave him a lot of pain especially if he was too long in the saddle. A tired man became careless. Matt had dropped back, skirting the mounds of dried up springs. He rode ahead with Luke a few feet from his shoulder.

      Everything was silence. Infinity. The blood-red dunes ran on forever in great parallel waves; the tall seed stems of the spinifex