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    The Billabong
    The Billabong
    The Billabong
    Ebook69 pages52 minutes

    The Billabong

    By Jack Byrne

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Bushrangers: Book One
    A novella from the Dragon-ghosts of Viscaya Universe

    Having long ago lost his wife and children, cattleman Jim Kelly works the family farm in the harsh 1800s Australian outback, most days wondering why he bothers. That question is foremost in his mind when a venomous snake takes him by surprise. Another surprise comes when a skilled doctor is in the vicinity to save his life. But the third, and biggest, surprise for Jim is falling hard and fast for that man.

    Life on the lam is tough, and bushranger Mark Turner simply wants to maintain his freedom as long as he's able. Unfortunately, being a doctor, his conscience won't let him leave a snakebite victim to die. Before he thinks about the consequences of his humanitarian actions, he's both saved Jim and become smitten with him. But considering how Mark's past could negatively impact any possibility of a future, maybe falling in love wasn't such a great idea after all.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamspinner Press
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    ISBN9781627982054
    The Billabong
    Author

    Jack Byrne

    Jack Byrne was born and raised in Speke, Liverpool to an Irish immigrant father and grandparents. Under the Bridge is his debut novel and follows reporter Anne and student Vinny around Merseyside, as they become involved in a story of unions, crime, and police corruption after human remains are discovered at a construction site.

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    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      This series has been in my TBR file for much too long, and now that I started reading the first book, I know the others won’t remain there for much longer. What a treat! Australia! Dangerous snakes (of course, this is Australia, after all!). A gorgeous doctor with a questionable past saving a hardworking, lonely cattleman’s life. The fact that it’s a historical (set in 1875) almost didn’t matter other than the care Jim and Mark have to take when they are among people. Not that this happens very often – the bush is vast and life, if you know how to survive, can be very good. All these ingredients ensure that this is a great novella – with wonderful characters, a setting that is fascinating, and a budding romance that surprises no one more than the two men involved.

      Jim is trying to make a living by raising cattle. In the Australian bush. He has already lost his wife and two children, but he is not one to give up easily – or at all. He is lonely, so when he gets bitten by a deadly snake and a stranger comes along to save him, his gratitude is to be expected. But when the gorgeous stranger called Mark stays on to help until Jim has completely recovered, Jim soon figures out there may be more going on between them than sharing body heat during the freezing nights. Except – there can’t be, can there? What Jim is beginning to feel for Mark is something he’s been told all his life is wrong.

      Mark is a doctor, and a pretty skilled one. He doesn’t tell Jim the whole truth about his past, because he has a dark secret. Mark has known all his life that he is attracted to men, but never expected there to be more than physical pleasure. For him, discovering that he has feelings for Jim is an eye-opener and more than a little scary. It’s a good thing that Mark is not a coward!

      If you like stories set in almost untamable nature, if two men who expect anything except love developing between them sound interesting, and if you’re looking for a read that is exciting, surprising, and full of risks taken by both main characters, then you will probably like this novella.


      NOTE: This book was provided by Dreamspinner Press for the purpose of a review.

    Book preview

    The Billabong - Jack Byrne

    incoherence.

    Chapter One

    March, 1875

    New South Wales, Australia

    THE DRY Australian bush was vast and baking at one hundred and eight degrees. Cicadas sang, and kangaroos lay in groups under the shadiest trees. Some of the animals panted and occasionally rolled over in the dust they had created by camping in the same place for years on end. A big gray kangaroo’s ears twitched every few seconds to the sound of a distant axe ringing against ironbark timber.

    IN A clearing many miles away, Jim Kelly worked alone amid fresh sawdust and bright, newly stripped timber, constructing a set of cattle yards. Jim stopped, lowered his axe, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his forearm. He had discarded his hat, and his blond hair was dark with perspiration. He gazed with some satisfaction at the yards. Although they had taken him weeks to build, the tough ironbark timber, however difficult to work with, would withstand weather and termites and last a hundred years. Longer than me, he thought, and smiled.

    Jim glanced longingly at his water can, but he knew if he had another drink of water so soon after his last one, nausea would overwhelm him before he finished erecting the last strainer post. If the cold water hit his stomach, hot blood would be drawn to his core and he might faint. That could be fatal in this heat. Ignoring the sweat that ran down from his hairline in clean, wet lines down the dust coating his cheeks until it gathered in muddy droplets and dripped off his chin, he heaved at the last ironbark post. It did not budge from the ground, and he grunted in disgust and decided to take a rest. He pulled off his sweat-drenched shirt and used it to mop his face as he sat on the large, raw stump under the shade of the branches of the remaining trees. He rubbed the muscles of his forearms, stiff and jarred from striking the axe against the hard timber.

    He glanced up at the deep-blue sky and guessed it must be an hour after midday. The smell of eucalyptus leaves filled his nostrils, as did another, sharper tang that made him wrinkle his nose. His sharp blue eyes scanned the trees above, and he spotted the source of the scent… a koala, sitting about thirty feet above, wedged characteristically into a secure fork. It had stopped eating and its liquid black-bead eyes surveyed him warily. He grinned when he spotted the tiny baby koala peeking over its mother’s shoulder—a cuter, white-eared version of her.

    Around him, the hidden cicadas sang a chorus that assaulted his ears, a pulsing tide of noise that had ebbed and flowed around him all day and seemed almost to hold him up when he grew tired. He had seen one or two of the insects, but more often he had found their chitinous outer skeletons discarded and still clinging to the bark of a tree where they had shed them as they emerged from their larval stage. The skins amazed him. They were an exact replica of the insects’ outer shapes, complete with finely detailed molds of their tiny eyes and legs, made of a translucent gold matter that easily crushed to powder in his fingertips.

    At his feet, tiny round black balls like aniseed balls—the dried droppings of wallabies—lay scattered around on the sawdust he had created yesterday when he had chipped out the boards to make the rails for the yards. He had not seen the wallabies, but he knew from the droppings he found every morning that they were around.

    Jim sighed, reached for a chunk of his damper, and chewed on it stubbornly, then finally stood up to reach for his water can.

    The explosive sound of a high-powered rifle fired at close range made him drop the water and freeze. Through an adrenaline-charged haze, he registered something had hit his ankle. He heard a rustle at his feet and jumped again as he looked down and saw a lithe tan snake writhing in loops, curling over and over on itself in its death throes, red blood from an ugly wound behind its head mingling with the bright-yellow sawdust. Movement came back to his limbs, and he leapt behind the stump and peered in the direction from which the shot had come. He couldn’t see anything. The front of his ankle began to throb and felt hard and wrong. His ears were ringing from the noise of the shot, so he didn’t notice the cicadas had stopped their midday chorus until the stillness had gone on for so long they hesitantly started to shrill again. His eyesight began to blur. He heard another rustle from close behind him and heard, too late, the click of a weapon being cocked.

    A deep voice behind him said, Did he get you?

    Jim turned to see a tall, large-framed man in dark jeans, leather boots, kangaroo-hide hat, and dark shirt. The man stared at him across the barrel of a gun and opened his mouth to say something. Jim had time to register the frown that creased the space above the man’s eyebrows

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