From above, from a distance, the marks in the dust formed a tight circle. The circle was far from perfect, with a distorted edge that grew thick, then thin, and broke completely in places. It also wasn’t empty.
In the center was a headstone, blasted smooth by a hundred-year assault from sand, wind, and sun. The headstone stood a meter tall and was still perfectly straight. It faced west, toward the desert, which was unusual out there. West was rarely anyone’s first choice.
The name of the man buried beneath had long since vanished, and the landmark was known to locals—all sixty-five of them, plus one hundred thousand head of cattle—simply as the stockman’s grave. That piece of land had never been a cemetery; the stockman had been put into the ground where he had died, and in more than a century, no one had joined him.
If a visitor were to run their hands over the worn stone, a partial date could be detected in the indentations. A “one” and an “eight” and a “nine,” maybe—1890-something. Only three words were still visible. They had been carved lower down, where they had better shelter from the elements.
Or perhaps they had been chiseled more deeply to start with, the message deemed more important than the man. They read:
who went astray
Months, up to a year, even, could slip away without a single visitor passing by, let alone stopping to read the faded inscription or squint west into the afternoon sun. Even the cattle didn’t linger. The ground was typically sandy and sparse for eleven months of the year and hidden under murky floodwater for the rest. The cows preferred to wander north, where the pickings were better and the trees offered shade.
So the grave stood mostly alone, next to a thin, three-wire cattle fence. The fence stretched a dozen kilometers east to a road and a few hundred west to the desert, where the horizon was so flat it seemed possible to detect the curvature of the earth. It was a land of mirages, where the few tiny trees in the far distance shimmered and floated on non-existent lakes.
There was a single homestead somewhere to the north of the fence, and another to the south. Next-door neighbors, three hours apart. The road to the east was invisible from the grave itself. And “road” was a generous description. The wide dirt track could sit silent for days without being troubled by a vehicle.
The track eventually led to the town of Balamara—a single street, really—which catered loosely for a scattered population that could almost fit into one large room when gathered together. Fifteen hundred kilometers further east lay Brisbane and the coast.
At scheduled times during the year, the sky above the stockman’s grave would vibrate with the roar of a helicopter. The pilots worked the land from the air, using noise and movement to herd cattle over distances the size of small European countries. For now, though, the sky loomed empty and large.
Later—too late—a helicopter would fly over, deliberately low and slow. The pilot would spot the car first, with its hot metal winking. The grave, some distance away, would draw his attention only by chance as he circled around and back in search of a suitable landing site.