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She took some of the bits of laundry from the bushes and turned them so the stained parts would bleach in the sunlight.
    â€œHe’s a doctor, you see, in Victoria. He’s worked with Indian people a lot—a lot of them live near Victoria, in fact the whole inner harbour was until recently a village site—and it’s made him bitter at our interference in their lives, not to mention the diseases we’ve brought, the foods we insist they eat.”
    â€œA doctor!” exclaimed Flora. She wondered how the son of a doctor had ended up living in the cluster of tents where the rest of the workers stayed, close to the fields.
    â€œYes, a surgeon in fact. You look so surprised!”
    Flora realized it was rude to stare at him with disbelief writ large upon her face. She pretended to be very interested in two ducks idling in the shallows of the river.
    Gus touched her arm. “Please don’t tell others that I’ve told you this. The others in Walhachin, I mean. I’m a bit of a black sheep, you see. I left home at seventeen, much to the sorrow of my mother, and have made my own way since then. If people know about my father, they want more—the story of our unhappiness, our falling out.”
    â€œOut of kindness, surely?”
    Gus guffawed. “That is a charitable way to look at it. There is nothing new in our story, however; it’s the same as any other in which the father and the son can’t see eye to eye on how the son will live his life. I am quite happy for now being treated as a labourer. It gives me a kind of pleasure to pull my forelock the way the toffs expect, them not knowing where I come from, that I was educated at a good school, know Latin, and all that. I decided it wasn’t important to me so I don’t want other people bringing it up.”
    He reached into his rucksack and took out a small silver flask. “If you don’t mind drinking from the flask, I think you should have a drink. You look pale. The heat, of course, and the shock of what you’ve learned of Mary’s child . . .”
    Flora tilted the flask and drank a mouthful, gasping as the liquid burned its way down her throat. Almost immediately she felt its effect, a warmth in her limbs, the anxiety she had over Grace dissolving. She examined the flask, running her finger over the elegant monogram on its dull silver surface.
    â€œMy brother has never allowed me to drink whisky. I’ve just broken his rule,” she told Gus, handing him back the flask.
    He laughed, and took a long swallow himself. “This is a fine malt from Islay, Miss Oakden. I suspect it’s the one thing upon which my father and I might agree. Anyway, you seem of an age to be making your own rules. And breaking the ones that don’t fit.”
    In the quiet that followed their shared drink of whisky, Flora could hear only the river and the far-off murmur of children’s voices. She began to forget why she was there, on the banks of the Deadman River, a few thin horses grazing among the cottonwood trees, the bark fraying away like rags. And then the wail from Mary’s cabin, so piercing that both Flora and Gus immediately ran in its direction.
    The door of the cabin was open and the wailing, not human, was coming from inside. It was Mary, but not Mary, it was a lamentation that could have come from an animal in pain. Flora stood in the doorway for a moment and then crossed the room to where Mary sat by Grace’s basket. The flush was gone from the baby’s face and when Flora reached down to touch her, the body felt cooler now. And she looked like she was no longer breathing. The baby’s mother was wailing, then stopping to touch the small face, wailing again as the child remained as still as a stone. Another woman pushed by Flora and took up the child, putting her face very near to feel breath or a heart beating in the tiny chest, then gently replaced Grace in the basket. She