‘And four dozen eggs.’ Mrs McKenzie grinned at Clancy. ‘Might make that soufflé for you. Prove what I can do.’

Clancy held up a hand. ‘I believe you!’

He had not said, ‘I’m looking forward to it’, thought Rose desperately. Perhaps he was planning to sail south, if they got a good price for the cattle. Or stay on one of the big properties up north for a while, ones that had big verandas and proper beds and servants to bring drinks . . .

She busied herself mending the bridle again as McKenzie, Tiger and Clancy rounded up the mob next morning. McKenzie kissed his wife. The men waved, then they were gone, Tiger and McKenzie on each side of the herd, Clancy on Big Red plodding behind.

Would she ever see him again? If he found a wife, went back to Overflow, one day he’d be master there. Ezekiel must have been an old man at his son’s birth. One day he would be gone, and Clancy the master, a strange custom, a son inheriting responsibility as well as property, instead of someone who had proved their worth, by actions and by learning.

Clancy would allow black faces on Overflow again. He might even, maybe, be able to bring back some of the people from the reservation if he said he would give them jobs. He would welcome her back to her own country too, for he knew he owed her that, and more.

But she didn’t think she could bear to see Clancy with a white wife, one who would be kind, as Miss Maria had been kind — she was sure he would choose a kind wife. But that wife would be a ‘mistress’, for surely that was the only role such a woman could have in the lives of natives.

She could not bear for Clancy to see her like that again. She could not bear to think of herself subservient either. She had found herself at last, with the McKenzies and the great cattle beasts she had once found so strange. She would not return to the scared child she had been.

She found Mrs McKenzie watching her. ‘Reckon a few emus drink here, when there aren’t cattle about. Could do with some new feathers for the quilts. Get out the net?’

A quilt wasn’t just to keep you warm, but soft to sleep on too. And there was good eating on an emu. Its oil was better for leather than mutton fat, and for lotions. Best of all, emu was stroppy. Netting it would be a challenge for two women. Exactly what she needed. Rose grinned.

The emus came the second night, the moon hovering halfway up the sky, sending purple shadows shivering from the trees, only the slightest breeze as the air cooled.