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behind her at the rock pool, James McQuillan already lay dead.
    She tried to recognise landmarks she might have passed on the ride out from the homestead. Was that red, rocky outcrop familiar? That clump of mulga over there? That ghostly white gum to the right? But there were so many rocky outcrops, so much mulga, so many white gums dotted about in the endless sea of spinifex and grasses – everything looked the same.
    Then they were into slightly different terrain. The bush was becoming a little denser, more acacias, more casuarinas, more mulgas. A spindly dead tree lay on its side up ahead. The little chestnut sailed over it with ease. We must surely have travelled two miles by now, Emily thought. Once again, panic started to set in.
    The horse had occasionally tried to veer to the right, but Emily forced it to stay on the course she had chosen, directly ahead. The animal now slowed its pace just a little, uncertain, indecisive, but Emily urged it on with her hands and her heels and her voice. In her panic she had forgotten her father’s one instruction, ‘Head east, keep the sun behind you.’ The sun, which was now setting, was no longer behind them. She was heading not east, but north, and had been for some time.
    The mare, well trained, would have continued to obey instructions, but sensing her rider’s panic she took the bit between her teeth and veered sharply off course. Emily kept her seat, but in fighting to regain control she jagged at the reins, dislodging the bit, which tore into the sensitive corner of the animal’s mouth.
    The mare too was in a state of panic. Ignoring the pain and the harsh metal bit, she wheeled sharply about, prepared to bolt in the direction that she sensed was home.
    Emily was thrown from the saddle. She had been thrown from horses before and instinctively let go of the reins as she’d been taught, protecting herself with her hands and rolling with the fall to land bruised but unhurt among the desert grasses.
    She sat up, winded and nursing a painful elbow, and, as she watched the horse gallop off she knew she’d taken the wrong action. She should have kept hold of the reins, even if in doing so she’d checked the animal’s stride and risked an injury from its hooves.
    Rising to her feet, she stood motionless, staring after the horse until she could barely see it in the surrounding scrublands, and as she stared there was strangely just one thought in her mind. Nell would never gallop off like that. Nell would never abandon me.
    Then the horse was gone. Even the distant dust of its flight had settled, and she was alone. Alone in the gathering dusk, and soon darkness would fall.
    The hours that followed were terrifying beyond Emily’s wildest imaginings. Night crept around her, sinister and threatening, and in its black cloak she could hear sounds. Sounds from all directions – strange animal sounds, encircling her, closing in, bent on attack.
    She ran, crashing, stumbling, falling in the darkness, scrambling to her feet and running desperately on, but she could not outdistance the sounds. They were not following her: they were everywhere. There was no escape.
    Finally, exhausted and unable to run any further, she curled herself into a ball among the undergrowth and dried branches of dead trees and waited. Shivering with terror and on the border of madness, she waited for whatever fearful animal was about to devour her.
    But as time passed no animal came, and in her fatigued state she drifted into a fitful sleep.
    She awoke she didn’t know how much later, perhaps minutes, perhaps hours, but still in darkness, still in the awful nightmare of her existence. Only there were no sounds, no noise at all, just a deathly silence. Had the sounds earlier been of her own making? Not able to tell, she stayed, curled up in a ball, not daring to move – the slightest rustle of the grasses could alert whatever might lie in wait out there in the