After six days’ ride Joe Rhine stood his horse on a wooded hill and looked down on the cattle track he had ridden that day and saw dust rising out of the trees. He thought, It is not Paddy or Jim as they would take note of that dust. He thought about sitting up here and levelling his rifle at whoever it was when they got a little higher and the scrub thinned. Then there would be a clean shot. But then he thought there might be more than one rider. And it might be a patrol. He got back on his horse and rode hard through the night.

He arrived on dusk the next day. Horse and man exhausted. He took off the saddle and put the horse into the back timber.

A man came out of the dark to meet him.

‘There’s someone following me,’ said Joe to Tom Thurlow. ‘They mean to kill me, I know it.’