‘Here.’ Rose offered him her shoulder, as well as a broad branch of driftwood for a stick. He made it to a campfire that was already burning, the billy of tea already steaming — of course Mrs McKenzie would have a cuppa waiting for them, and fresh johnny cakes on green branches she must have picked earlier. But there was no sign of her, despite her horse grazing only a few yards away.

‘The wife’s gone to get us some dinner,’ said McKenzie. ‘How you feeling?’

‘Like I’m lucky not to have been trampled by a mob of cattle. Nothing’s broken, I think, maybe just bruised and torn a bit.’

‘We’ll stay here for a week or two, till the feed has gone. Let the mob wander up and down the river. You should be all right to ride again after that, if we give you a hand up,’ said McKenzie. ‘Let the wife have a look at it, to be sure. Here she is now.’

Clancy stared at the plaited basket of fish in her hand, at least three fish, each a yard or so long. ‘How’d she get those so quickly?’

‘Fish traps further down. Local people — not hers, but she could speak a few words with ’em — built them. But they’d been taken to the reservation last time we were here.’ Another reason for Mrs McKenzie to wear men’s clothes, thought Clancy. Native stockmen were spared the round-ups, if a white employer vouched for them, but rarely native women.

The cattle dozed even as the thud of wallabies heralded dusk, and drinking time for them too, though the wild animals avoided the mob and its hooves and smells. Mrs McKenzie stuffed the fish with watercress and other greens, then grilled them on spits held high above the flame, while she set Rose to grinding seeds she’d gathered further down the river for more of the flat oily cakes.

Later, after they’d eaten, she hauled a small pot of something that smelled green and pungent out of her saddlebags. She unwrapped the leather from his knee, smeared the green paste on, wet the leather straps again and bound it firmly. Somehow he managed not to scream . . .

‘You going to be able to sleep, or want something for the pain?’ she asked.

Clancy shook his head. ‘I don’t like laudanum.’

‘Don’t have any.’ Mrs McKenzie reached into her saddlebag again and came out with a piece of what looked like dried mushroom, about the size and shape of a walnut. She used two sticks to hold it over the coals till it began to glow, charring and smoking rather than giving a flame, then handed it and the sticks to Clancy.

‘Breathe it all,’ she instructed him.