Ezekiel Clancy had decided to breed horseflesh as well as sheep, and had imported a stallion for the purpose: a splendid beast, Indian bred, a potential racehorse, unraced but impeccably well bred. He planned to buy two mares to join with him as soon as they got the next wool cheque, horses with good racing pedigrees, not hacks like Flora’s poor lost horse, as well as hire him for stud to Cecil Drinkwater and others.

It was only when the big black horse was finally led to Overflow — not ridden, for it seemed anyone who got too close was kicked or savaged — that Ezekiel learned that buying by lineage alone might work with rams, but not with horses, just as it had not yielded him a grandson either. Possibly the animal had been broken in once, as promised. But whatever had happened to it since had left it too wild even to lead on a rope around the breaking pen.

The beast was kept within a yard. His progeny, at least, should be saleable, assuming it could be quietened enough so that it would not scare the mares or the men that led them to him. And as Flora glanced out the parlour window, that was where she saw the native girl, naked apart from dust and that string belt, peering through the tall yard fence made of sturdy round poles at what must have been the largest, strangest animal the child had seen.

Flora dropped the teacloth she was working on. She ran to the door to call the girl to safety, just as the child slipped under the rails and walked slowly up to the stallion, her hand extended.

For a moment the great horse was still, then bent his head to sniff her outstretched hand. The child stroked his neck, once, three times. And then he was off, kicking and pig rooting. But by then the girl had leaped to safety and was back under the rails. She laughed, and for a moment the big horse seemed to laugh with her, complicit with the natives in their refusal to be ruled by Ezekiel Clancy or Cecil Drinkwater.

‘Stop her!’ cried Flora as the child began to trot back towards the river.

Dusty Flanagan (who had been sentenced to seven years for thieving five bolts of cloth and another seven for bashing the warehouse keeper senseless when he objected) ran after the child and grabbed her by her arm. ‘Hey, you. You ain’t going nowhere. What she done, missus?’ he called to Flora.

‘Nothing. Just bring her here, please.’

The girl said something angry and incomprehensible.

Clancy appeared in the stained moleskin trousers and faded shirt he wore these days until he changed for dinner — and then only into what the middle class called ‘Sunday best’, not eveningwear. ‘Flora, my love, what’s wrong?’