“Now, Ole Fren Yorky, stay still,” she scolded. “Your moustache is getting disgraceful. That’ll be Mr Wootton out there shooting the crows. You know very well how naughty they are, and have to be shot sometimes.”

Ole Fren Yorky wouldn’t be still, and Linda had to concentrate on gaining compliance with her efforts. Minutes later, she remembered that Mr Wootton had left an hour before for Loaders Springs. A tiny frown puckered her dark brows. She pushed Ole Fren Yorky to one side, and had put her hands to the table to push her chair away from it, when there appeared in the doorway the original Ole Fren Yorky.

Terror leaped upon her. The man’s weak blue eyes were now hot and blazing. He ran forward, a light swag at his back, a rifle in his left hand. Linda sprang out of the chair, and then found herself unable to move. A bare arm gripped her about the waist and she was lifted. She opened her mouth to scream, and her face was pressed hard into a sweaty chest, and no longer was it just another day.

Chapter Two

Murder in Eden

UNTILFOURo’clock it was just another day for Arnold Bray.

Like many big men, Bray was deliberate in thought as well as action, and this led people to believe him to be slow in both. Under thirty, he received the respect of men of his class much older than himself, and from men much younger who noted his powerful physique.

He was that asset to all pastoral properties-the man of all trades, and it was quite unnecessary for Wootton to advise him how to remove iron sheets from a roof. The building to which he drove this day was situated some twelve miles from the Mount Eden homestead, and had been used as a shearing shed in a period when sheep were reared, only to be severely attacked by wild dogs. In this land where rust is reduced to a minimum by the dry atmosphere, the roof iron was worth salvaging.