It was hot and humid, like every other day in the south west of the colony of Queensland, and the air shimmered and danced on the horizon as five men rode into view. Their features and faces were blurred by the heat, obscured by the distance, but it was clear to anyone looking they were well-armed.

A drover whistled loudly as they came into view, getting the attention of the Jimboomba Station owners, Arnold and Jocko. Arnold was an old man, but he had arms like ironbark stumps, thick and rock hard, with hands gnarled from years of brutal hard yakka in the Australian sun. Even as age stooped his posture, he remained one of the biggest men anyone would ever see, barrel-chested and broad shouldered, like a viking made from old horse leather.

Jocko was fit but not muscular like his father, a clean-cut man with a square jaw and city-boy good looks. He stood taller than Arnold but only because of posture: stature-wise, the son was dwarfed by the father. They stood together in the muster area out the front of their wide-set Queenslander-style homestead and watched as the quintet made their way onto the property.

As the posse pierced the haze of heat, their details became clear. Two white men rode ahead of three blacks.

"Black fellas on horses, bit like dogs riding pigs, hey, Dad?" asked Jocko, as he looked expectantly at his father for a reaction.

Arnold, wrinkled his nose in a sneer and spat in the direction of the horsemen. "Doesn't seem like enough men to me," said Arnold in a thick continental European accent. "Supposed to be an entire unit, I thought."

"Yeah, I thought we called for an ANP unit," Jocko said, echoing his father.

Arnold looked at the boy and said nothing, but disdain hung thick in the air as they waited in silence.

The ANP unit, such that it was, rode into Jimboomba Station's muster area as if they owned the joint, with the confidence usually only found in military men and constables.

Arnold took a step forward and greeted them. "You got here quick," he said, his English stained with the clipped vowels and overemphasised consonants of a man who had grown up speaking something else.

"Yes, well, we were just down near the Logan River when the call-out came over the wire," said the man at the lead, without getting off his horse. His accent didn't match his appearance: the proper English sounded odd coming from a man who looked like he wouldn't get service at a knock shack. His beard was thick and bedraggled, his face stained with dirt, grime and maybe blood, his clothes intact but far beyond their years.

"You don't look like a constable," said Jocko from Arnold's side. Jocko glanced at his father, looking again for approval, and he was rewarded with a gruff, nearly imperceptible nod.

"We're not constables," replied the man behind him in a much broader, less formal accent. "We're Australian Native Police. Your wire said youse wanted trackers."

Jocko snorted. "Yeah well he seems to be putting the 'Native'," he said, pausing and nodding derisively towards the dishevelled leader of the pack, "in-"

"Ignore my son," interrupted Arnold, not even deigning to glare at Jocko. "He thinks he knows everything. We're grateful that you came."

"Like I said," replied the bearded white man, "we were only a day's ride away. I'm Terrence Gifford, and this here is Frederick Harney. And our trackers are-"

"Arnold Van Den Houter," interrupted the station owner. "And this is my know-it-all son Joachim."

"Call me Jocko," added the younger Van Den Houter as soon as his father was clearly finished speaking. "Sorry about that before, was just having a go."

"I've killed men for less," replied Terrence, his nostrils flaring as his hand rested on his thigh just below the shooter on his hip, his eyes locked on Jocko's.

The younger man looked away to his father, who stared blankly in reply. When Jocko looked back at the old swagman, he saw a giant smile beneath the unkempt beard, and he could see the other men in his posse were grinning, too. But there was something unnerving about the way the smile never reached the old British man's eyes.

"So what are we here for then?" asked Frederick. He had the bearing of a military man, his face clean shaven, his jaw square, his shoulders wider than a steer, his posture perfect. Frederick dismounted his horse—a giant, muscular beast—like it was second nature, and he patted the horse's neck as he spoke. "'Cause it can't be the witty back and forth."

"It is not,” said Arnold. “You are here to retrieve my blackbirds. A whole group of them. We might have retrieved them ourselves, but…" he said as he looked at Jocko. "Unfortunately my son here thought it was more important to learn about numbers than the bush he lives in."

Jocko winced at the comment but kept his mouth shut.

Terrence spoke instead. "You lost the trail?"

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Never found it to begin with," Arnold replied. "The only reason we have any idea where they're headed is because one of them stayed behind."

Arnold gestured to an area out the front of one of the station's huge corrugated-iron barns, where a pillory stood. An old South Sea Islander man hung within the stocks. Beneath him was a pool of blood big enough to be visible from 80 or so metres away. He was obviously dead.

"He's not a blak fella," said one of the trackers from the back of the posse, but Terrence held a hand out to quiet the man.

"Looks fuckin' black to me," said Jocko with a forced laugh. "What kind of-"

"He's right," interrupted Frederick after peering closer at the corpse across the yard. "I don't know what manner of… he's not from here."

"Good eyes," said Arnold, directing his comment specifically to Frederick. "He's a Kanaka. From one of the islands out east. Can't remember where this one came from. Guinea maybe?"

"Are the rest of them from there, too?" asked Terrence matter-of-factly. He waved a hand at the three trackers, and they fanned out into the edges of the yard.

"Guinea?" Arnold replied, eyeing the trackers suspiciously. "If this one is from there, then yes. They were all from the same island. It's a great deal. Robert Towns, from down the way, came up with it. They sail great ships out to the islands and they sign them onto contracts to bring them over here to come work. But they don't have a mind for work. It is the curse of their type: lazy to a fault. So they break contract and run."

Terrence nodded thoughtfully as he looked around the station. In the distance, he saw the barracks where his quarry had lived. It was a large, poorly made building, like a barn, if the builders hadn't cared to do their job well. "How many of them are we trying to catch then?"

"Two dozen," Jocko piped up, rejoining the conversation. "Fled in the night and they left the old fella behind to die."

"You couldn't track two dozen blokes yourself?" Frederick said, blinking in surprise. He didn't even seem to be sweating in the heat. The trackers were walking through to the muster yard now.

Jocko spat in the ochre dust around them. "They've got some fellas who know how to cover tracks. But I found out where they went anyway. Just needed a few extra hands to catch 'em, so Pop wired out to you lot."

"Well fetch someone to get our horses stowed and lead the way, Joachim," said Terrence as he retrieved a rifle from his horse's saddle. The other party members followed suit. "While the sun is still with us."

Arnold whistled a sharp tone and shot off a rapid-fire sequence of commands at a small boy who ran up. The boy grabbed the reins of Terrence's horse and started leading it to a stable.

Jocko waved the boy over as he led the horse away. "Fetch my shotgun while you're over there, Zeke," he said to the child.

"Fetch it yaself Jocko, you're not in Sydney anymore," the boy replied.

Jocko sneered and his hand flicked out to cuff the boy across the head, but Zeke was too quick. Jocko glared and left to fetch it himself.

"Don't remember the wire," Frederick said as he strode over to Arnold. The two of them looked like they should have been father and son, with sun-browned skin, broad square jaws and muscles stacked on top of muscles. "Was this a capture or kill job?"

"Don't care," Arnold replied, holding the other man's gaze. Despite the civil conversation, there was tension in the air out of nowhere, like two big red roos squared up on one another, waiting for the other to make a move and get taken down. "Got my money out of them already."

The corner of Frederick's mouth twitched into a smile. Anyone who hunted people knew that kill was always easier than capture, to the point that often, when on a capture mission, Frederick and his team would simply trump up an excuse to kill their target anyway. Maybe they drew down on them during the capture. Maybe they got captured and tried to hurt someone trying to escape. Maybe they actually got away, but the warrant officer couldn't tell the difference between one black fella's ears and another. "Need any souvenirs?"

"You bring my boy back and that'll be enough for me."

Something in his tone told the horseman that dead or alive was good enough in that case as well. Frederick stuck out his hand. Arnold's hand snapped out to meet Frederick’s like a python, squeezing it tight. Frederick squeezed back, refusing to flinch, wince, or break eye contact as the meaty paws of both men crushed one another.

"This way!" Jocko yelled from the south-west side of the station. Both unflinching men looked at the same time, and as soon as eye contact broke, so too did their handshake. Jocko had a double-barrelled shotgun over his shoulder and some sort of shooter on his hip, too far away for anyone else to tell what. He was pointing out into the desert, out past the rolling red dunes and spinifex, and into the outback.

"They're not that way, boss," said one of the trackers. Like the other two, he had dark black skin and curly black hair. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and a button-up shirt, like an American cowboy.

"The old man told me they were," snapped Jocko. "Right before I bled him dry."

"He lied to you, boss," said the fancy tracker.

Jocko looked around and caught his father staring at him with disgust.

"Probably hoped you'd dry out yourself. We found-," said the black man.

Jocko opened his mouth to reply but his father interrupted first. "These black cunts just don't want to catch one of their own."

Terrence scoffed. "These black cunts have probably killed more black cunts than…" he trailed off mid-sentence while looking at Arnold, whose jaw set firm. "Well, maybe not more than you, sir. But they certainly know the difference between one black cunt and another."

Arnold snorted. "All the same to me," he said as he looked at the three trackers. One of them, the only one not wearing any shoes, spat into the ground in his direction, and Arnold paid a begrudging respect to the man's gumption with a spit in reply.

"Anyway," said Frederick, "as John was saying, they found their tracks heading north-north-east."

"They didn't leave any tracks," snapped Jocko, his voice raised in anger. "And the old man said..." but he trailed off. The outback where the old man had pointed shimmered in the heat, the air rippling, wisps of dry, desiccated sand floating up off the ground from the minimal breeze. He shook his head and walked over to the posse in silence, mentally daring one of the blacks to say something. They didn't seem to pay him any mind at all.

That stung even harder.