The horse looked back at her.

Slowly, deliberately, she opened the sack and took out a rope. The horse looked at it, then her. Even more slowly she moved towards him and hobbled him, awkwardly at first, as she had watched the men do to other horses.

He let her. This had been done to him before, it seemed, even if he had not allowed it at Overflow. Possibly, probably, once he had been a quieter horse, or a happier horse and used to humans, but then chained or whipped or any of the other things the white men did to animals and to each other.

He bent to eat again.

Time to think of her own food. She untied the string she still always kept around her waist under her clothes, and set snares, hoping for a bandicoot in the dusk, and then collected small dry twigs. She could not risk a fire till night, for someone might see the smoke.

The fire set, the steel and flint she had taken from the kitchen next to it, she stripped off her maid’s dress, then took out Mr Clancy’s trousers, shirt, boots and old hat. The trousers were far too long, but could be held up above the knee with string. The shirt was almost as long as a petticoat, but its bulk would be covered by the trousers. The boots were massive, so she stuffed the toes full of grass. She had a knife too. She hacked at her hair till it was as short as most of the stockmen kept theirs.

Could she be taken for a native stockman now? Some lived at Drinkwater. She did not dare go there, for the Overflow men would be looking for her, possibly because she was of use to them, but mostly to retrieve the horse and to punish her for taking him, as an example to others who might take what the men there kept only for themselves. Property was so important in these people’s lore.

The snare caught a rabbit just as the sun vanished in red haze. She had never eaten rabbit before, though they were beginning to be common. She found it was easier to skin than a bandicoot, with more flesh and extremely good. She ate it all, except the stomach, anus and liver, for the liver of some creatures was not good to eat and she did not know rabbits. The fur was soft too. She scraped the skin automatically and left it over a tree branch to dry during the night, high up where the dingoes couldn’t reach it, in case she had time to cure it properly for the cold of winter.

She did not know where she would be in winter. She did not know where she would be tomorrow. She only knew where she would not be.