And suddenly the world cleared and he saw her, his wife, saw his son, the clunk of McKenzie’s stick as the old man hurried to hear the news. Saw Overflow, the bend of the river and its channels.

Rose was right. She usually was, this extraordinary, miraculous wife of his. Even when he had been back at school, even now and in all his days to come, at heart he was Clancy of the Overflow.

Chapter 53

Chapter 53

The Best Campfire Butter

Let fresh cow’s milk stand near the stove on fire overnight. Skim off the cream. Place in a jar in your saddlebags. Strain off the lumps of butter after a good day’s ride and press till firm. Use the buttermilk for pancakes or a face wash. This does not work with goat’s milk or an anteater’s.

OVERFLOW, 1901

ROSE

The McKenzies would stay at Dirty Butter, as would Tiger. The property was close enough for Rose and Mrs McKenzie to visit often. Dirty Butter made enough to pay for workers to help run it, now McKenzie needed a stick to walk, despite his wife’s liniment, and grew short of breath too easily. Nor was money likely ever to be a problem. As well as even more land than before, Ezekiel had left more than five hundred pounds, a fortune, though Clancy said it was far less than the place had probably earned in a year before the drought.

The property had been well tended, by Ezekiel’s standards, which were not Rose’s: there were far more sheep than there had been when she left; more land had been ringbarked and hills of dead trees cleared, the stumps burned, allowing more grass to grow in the pitiful small showers of drought time. It was hard for her to ride through her land with most of its life removed.

The fences were so taut, with the new barbed wire that cut into flesh, making the land into tidy shapes white men could understand. Rose’s heart bled for all they had not seen, all that was lost. All that would be lost, for men like Ezekiel never realised that trees knitted the land together, that the soil would vanish in the first big storm when the seasons of rain finally came again, that country was not a few creatures but many, all needed if country was to be safe.

But, in his own way, Ezekiel had loved his farm, even if he’d left the land deeply wounded. He had not cared for the house: squalid, uncleaned for years. Rats and possums nested in the kitchen. Ezekiel seemed to have lived his final years on food brought over by Mrs Taylor. But Taylor had now left, and most other employees of Ezekiel’s too, not willing to face Ezekiel’s son or, possibly, accept a dark-skinned woman as mistress of the property. Only O’Hara had stayed.