He spent most of the voyage with Big Red in her stall on the ship. Big Red could face a mob of charging cattle, but the heaving ship scared her, and she’d only eat or drink if Clancy coaxed her. He left the ship at Brisbane, even though he’d paid passage down to Sydney. He took a turn shearing again, moving slowly from station to station. To his surprise Andrew Paterson was staying for a fortnight at one of the stations, on holiday from his office job. He had filled out, matured too, but still looked with longing at the limp bush beyond the paddocks.

‘How’s the office?’ asked Clancy.

‘Small and dingy and smells of soot and sadness. I’m a qualified solicitor now.’

‘Congratulations,’ said Clancy carefully.

The young man shrugged. ‘Still the same office. The drought’s killing the city too — half the factories have sacked their workers and are getting children to do the work simply for their keep. Nightmare alleys of big-eyed starving guttersnipes. Sydney’s a worse place each year.’

Paterson presumably asked the station-owner if his friend might stay up in the house after the shed was done and presumably the request was refused, for Paterson didn’t even invite him to dine with the family. Clancy easily slipped back into the accents of his youth, but he knew he moved like a drover now, squatted like one, walked like he belonged more in the saddle than on the ground, automatically chewed a grass stalk to keep his mouth moist in the dust. His shirt had darns over the darns, his trousers patches on patches. Despite the educated accent and his new boots, he was no longer someone a respectable station-owner would want in their home.

‘You don’t mind my letters?’ Andrew Paterson asked, on the last day, as Clancy rolled his swag and tied it on behind Big Red’s saddle.

Clancy laughed. ‘I look forward to them.’

‘I look forward to yours,’ said the young man fervently. ‘You can smell the bush in them — figuratively, I mean.’

‘Well, it’s good to get a letter now and then from a man who knows the word “figuratively”,’ said Clancy. He’d told the boy the tales McKenzie and Tiger had told him. He’d even told him about the day the cattle rushed.

He didn’t mention Rose. Sometimes he dreamed he might get a letter from her — she could write well. But perhaps a native girl would not presume to write to Clancy of the Overflow. Even a white girl would hesitate to be the first to write to a man. And maybe McKenzie was wrong and she didn’t love him, or did but would love the next drover who joined their team.