Code of Honor (Australian Destiny Book #1) Read Online Free Page A

Sloan were pulling at a thick roof beam.
    Linnet snuffled. “Is Meg all right?”
    “Mr. Sloan says she’s working down at the mill. Linnet, that was so stupid!”
    “Stupid? Nae. Gypsy was half out of her mind until I got there. She would’ve destroyed herself.”
    Wet leaves and branches slapped Samantha’s face. Without Mr. Sloan to follow, Samantha had trouble keeping to the path. Then suddenly white light flared to life up ahead. Doobie had jury-rigged his line to the house.
    Samantha pushed the kitchen door open and half dragged her sister through it. She pulled a chair up beside the stove. Linnet collapsed onto it with a plop.
    Samantha started stripping wet clothes off the girl. “Is this blood yer own or Gypsy’s?”
    “Gypsy’s, I think. Except for that piece of wood that was pinning me arm down, I was under her. She protected me.”
    Kathleen Corcoran stood herself squarely in front of Linnet, with arms akimbo. “I’ve seen mice in better shape after they’ve been carried in by the cat. Ye can go back up, Sam; I’ll take care of this frail little bird.”
    Samantha stood erect. “Yerself has duties, too.”
    “Got a pile of sandwiches made, the coffee’s on and the soup will be ready soon. I’ve time enough for this.”
    “Very well.” Samantha watched Linnet a moment. The girl did not seem to be in pain or difficulty, and a bit of color was starting to return to her cheeks. Samantha looked at bold, hulking Kathleen. “Weren’t ye frightened during the worst of it?”
    “Eh, nae.” The cheery face grinned, and its round red cheeks bunched up into apples. She pointed to a wet spot in the ceiling. “Lose some roof? Nae matter; didn’t even drip on me head to soil me cap. Besides, Sam, meself is young and that’s next best to immortal. Naething’s gonna kill me for a long time yet.”
    Samantha laughed suddenly, and her laughter surprised her, for laughter had been the thing farthest from her mind. Instantly it blunted the horror of this terrible night. “We’re all young yet; how could I have fretted?”
    Mr. Sloan had paid good money to bring her here, and in so doing he was offering her a brand new start in life. She owed him for that as well as passage. She would not cower again; she would not hide. Mr. Sloan from now on would get his money’s worth.
    She cast one last look at Linnet and hurried back out into the drumming rain. Darkness and a world of wet leaves encompassed her, pressing in tightly on all sides. Three years at the very minimum she would spend in this stifling, closed-in country. Three years. She put the thought aside. The matter at hand was to make it through the night.
    ———
    A gaunt and bony gray kangaroo sprawled on its side under an acacia tree, propped on one foreleg elbow like a Roman at a banquet. It licked its wrists constantly, mindlessly, and paid no attention as one of the state’s most successful pastoralists rode by not two rods away.
    Martin Frobel, owner of one of the finest—and driest—cattle stations in Queensland, lifted his hat a moment to let the breeze dry off his sweaty brow. He drew his mare to a halt atop a low, gentle rise that, in this country, was as close as one got to a hill. He shifted in the saddle. Some said the Abos could see two looks away; from the back of his horse, Frobel could gaze nigh onto forever.
    The vista pleased him, as it always did. This had to be God’s favorite country, for the Almighty had bestowed it with open space on a scale as grand as heaven itself. The horizon sketched a thin, flat pencil line between gray and blue, between brigalow and sky. There was no land’s end in this country. “Forever” here was not a theological time frame; it was a geographical description.
    Martin Frobel loved this land; in a real way, he was the land, and he prided himself on that. No soft, foo-foo land, this, or delicate—it was tough, dry, uncompromising. It took a strong man to wrest a living from it, and Martin