‘No!’ Adelaide came around the table to face the mine manager. ‘I will not permit you to send this man to Chauncey. You know what happened last time.’ She turned to Bowen. ‘That boy who got his foot caught in a trolley? He died, Cowper.’

Bowen shuffled his feet. ‘He did. Wound turned gangrenous, and I told you then that alternative arrangements should be made.’

Caleb glared at Cowper. ‘What price is a man’s life?’

Cowper met his eyes without blinking. ‘Do you really want to know? These men are skilled workers. Without a hand, he’s worth nothing. If he was foolish enough to get injured, that’s his look out.’ He turned to Adelaide. ‘I pay two pounds for the man’s care. That’s it. Not a penny more.’

‘Two pounds? We would do it for nothing,’ Adelaide replied.

Cowper’s mouth tightened. ‘Very well if you want the care of him, you can have it. Get this man out of here. I have work to do. Penrose!’

But Penrose lingered after the door slammed shut.

Caleb rounded on his friend. ‘You just take that from him, Penrose? I thought better of you than that.’

Penrose swallowed. ‘I don’t always approve of my uncle’s decisions, but he is my uncle and I am dependent on him. Let me know if there is anything else you need.’

‘Just a couple of sturdy men to take him down to the post office.’ Caleb turned to Adelaide. ‘Bowen and I will clean up here. You see him settled. Just throw anything of mine in my box and I’ll find a bed elsewhere. I have imposed on you long enough.’

‘Where will you go?’ Adelaide asked.

Caleb shrugged. ‘This town isn’t short of accommodation. That’s my concern, not yours.’

On the table, Geordie moaned and tried to sit up. Caleb hurried to the man’s side, stilling him with a hand on the shoulder. Two burly men entered the room without knocking.

‘You need him carried somewhere?’

‘Yes, the post office.’

Adelaide tucked the blanket around the injured man and the men lifted Geordie onto the stretcher without much gentleness. Caleb stood at the door, watching as they loaded him onto a handcart and trundled him down the hill in a grim procession. He turned back to the crib room where he found Bowen washing the surgical instruments in hot water.

‘It’s a fine set of instruments you have here,’ Bowen said. ‘I’ve not seen their like.’

Caleb set the saw back in the box where it nestled snuggly in its velvet-lined bed. ‘My father gave them to me when I graduated,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t have predicted how much use they’d have in the years that followed.’

He slumped onto a bench and buried his head in his hands as the noise and fury, the blood and screams of battle and its aftermath flooded his memory.