Chapters (53)
- Cover
- About Alison Stuart
- Also by Alison Stuart
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Author’s Note
- Acknowledgements
- Preview of The Goldminer's Sister
‘I’m just going to the top of the ridge to see if I can make out what the fire is doing. I’ll come back, I promise, but if I think the way to Maiden’s Creek is clear, I’ll go for help.’
‘How long do we have to stay in the water?’
Caleb returned to them, squatted down and checked Danny’s pulse. It raced and despite the cold water, the skin on the boy’s wrist was hot to the touch.
‘The water’s the best place for him.’
As he stood up, Adelaide caught his hand. ‘Don’t leave us.’
He bent and kissed her ash-smudged forehead. ‘I won’t be long.’
With the urgency of the moment passed, Caleb realised how tired he was. He made his way downstream to the place where the Aberfeldy Road crossed the river and trudged up the steep track, contemplating the distance they needed to cover to reach the town.
Annoyingly, the crest of the ridge proved false and he trudged up to a second crest. It afforded no view except an expanse of burning and burned-out bushland so he walked on a bit further.
Rounding a bend, he bent over, catching his breath and with it, the smell of something else: roast meat. He’d already seen the carcasses of wallabies and wombats but this was stronger and, with an urgency to his step, he broke into a trot. Around another corner, he found the large, blackened carcass of what he assumed to be a horse blocking the track. Fighting back nausea and regret, he approached the frightful sight, hoping it was not Shadow.
But there was no way of telling whose horse it had been. If it had been wearing saddle and harness, they had gone, only the bright metal of the fittings, scoured by the blasting heat, glinted from the ash in the late afternoon sun.
Caleb put his hands on his hips and considered the beast. Too large to have been the pony or Adelaide’s mare, he concluded. It was either Shadow or Barnwell’s horse. If it were the latter it begged the question of whether Mr Barnwell himself had escaped the conflagration that engulfed his horse.
He passed the animal and walked on up the track. He didn’t have to go far.
A body lay curled on its right side, almost unidentifiable as once being human, arms over its head in a pitiful attempt to stave off the firestorm that had engulfed it. Gleaming teeth grinned from the blackened skull in a hideous rictus of a smile. It could only be Barnwell.