They rode to Comet River and stole three horses from the house paddock. A black gelding, a grey mare and a chestnut gelding. The last they used as a packhorse. They left their old horses in the scrub.

They rode up a blind creek off the Dawson and met Jack Mulholland.

Mulholland had just got out of gaol for vagrancy.

‘I can’t risk it, lads. Neither can you risk it. I reckon you stay at the Boyces’.’

They rode further north and could see now the dark-blue tableland above Carnarvon Gorge.

They rode up to the Boyce house. Slab walls, iron roof and antbed floor, but even these seemed fine things after so many days in the desert and on the plains. Mrs Boyce took them in. Paddy saw fear in her face, and that she was not frightened of them but of what their presence here might bring down upon her. But she was afraid too of the flush in Jim’s cheeks.

She stared at him while she spoke.

‘You can stay inside tonight. You need bathing, the both of you. But the police come checking every other day now. Down in the myall paddock on the creek there’s the old stone shed. Near Thurlow’s place. You can stay there.’

Paddy took Jim to the fire. He went back to the table and sat with Mrs Boyce. The woman shook her head.

‘He is not well.’

‘He’s getting better,’ said Paddy.

She nodded.

‘I’d hate to have seen how bad he was before.’

‘What have you heard?’

‘Only that they are hunting you.’