They lay Danny on the uneven floor of the cavern and Caleb rifled through the satchel. He handed Adelaide the carefully wrapped food parcel and continued his exploration. He gave a snort of laughter. ‘A candle and tinder,’ he said. ‘The boy thought of everything.’

Adelaide unwrapped the bread and cheese and they shared some of it, leaving a few morsels for the morning.

Food has an uncanny way of making everything seem better, Adelaide thought as she raised Danny’s head to give him the last of the water in the flask, settling him into the shelter using Caleb’s once colourful waistcoat as a pillow.

Danny moaned and curled into a ball. ‘My stomach hurts.’

Caleb put his hand to the boy’s sweat-streaked forehead. ‘The poison’s working through you,’ he said.

‘Make it better,’ Danny whimpered.

‘Nothing I can do till we get you back to your own bed, Danny. I’m sorry.’

‘I’ll refill the water bottle,’ Adelaide said.

It gave her something to do. Sitting and watching her possibly dying child was more than she could bear. She filled the flask from the place where the water ran through the dam then stood watching the far bank. The gloom of the evening had been overlaid with something more sinister. Above the ridge, plumes of smoke rose up into a dark sky as the stiff southerly wind sent embers ahead of the returning fire front.

A hand rested on her shoulder and she looked up at Caleb’s grim face.

‘I didn’t want to say anything in front of the boy,’ he said. ‘Barnwell’s dead.’

It took a moment for Adelaide to comprehend what he was saying. ‘Dead?’

‘I found his body on the track about two miles from here. Looks like he got caught by the fire.’

Adelaide’s stomach clenched. ‘Oh, Caleb, what an awful way to die.’

Caleb’s silence did not refute her comment.

He folded her in his arms and she buried her face against his hard chest.

‘I didn’t want him to die, just to go and leave us alone,’ she murmured, her voice muffled by his shirt, and her grief.

Caleb’s hand cradled the back of her neck and his lips brushed her hair. ‘If it’s any consolation, the smoke probably took him before the flames,’ he said.

‘That’s no consolation.’ She twisted around. The southerly had stiffened, sending rolls of smoke over the ridge. ‘The smoke …’ Her eyes stung and tendrils of the vile vapour caught at the back of her throat making her cough.

She glanced at their rough shelter. ‘It’s going to blow in on us. We’re sitting in a death trap.’

Caleb’s silence confirmed her fears. The flames may not kill them, the smoke would—he had just said as much. The river wouldn’t save them this time.

‘Surely, if the fire is turning back on itself, it will burn out?’ Adelaide said.