She nodded.
He swept his hat off with a great sigh.
"But you're all right, you and the bairn?"
"Yes."
"When the dog did not fly out as we got near the house I thought something had happened. There are tales in the Port of two men from Hobart Town, escaped convicts, having taken to the hills. Their boat was found in the Wirree. I tried to get back sooner, fearing they might come this way, but the roads were bad and then there were the cattle. I haven't had an easy minute since I've been away. But we can talk later. There's a boy come with me, drivin' the cattle. I got a mob, cheap, from a man whose stockmen had cleared out and left them on his hands. Get us something to eat ready, I'll bring the wagon up to the shed now. You can get what you want from it. There's corned meat and oatmeal and flour for a year. We'll put the cattle into the fenced paddock and then come down. You can clear out the wagon enough to put a sheepskin or two and a blanket in it for Johnson."
He turned away and went back into the night.
Mary threw more wood on the fire. As she put on her skirt and bodice, she heard the wagon labouring, forward.
She was out getting the flour and bacon she wanted from it by the light of a lantern, when, with a rattling of horns and a thunder of hoofs, the cattle beat past her along the track behind the sheds. The lantern light gave a vision of fierce, bloodshot eyes of terror in a sea of tossing backs, of moving flanks, and branching horns. She heard her husband's voice, hoarse and yelling, the voice of the strange youth, and the cracking of whips and yelping of dogs for nearly an hour afterwards as they tried to get the beasts into the fenced paddock on the hill-top.
It was nearly dawn before Donald and the slight, insignificant-looking young man he had brought with him from Port Southern had finished their meal. Then the stockman went to sleep in the wagon, and Donald Cameron turned to his wife.
"Tell me what happened," he said.