More. There were no words for this moment. For this miracle. She was suddenly holding a little person in her arms. A baby boy. A child who’d one day grow to be a man, because CJ had found him and her lifesaving techniques had blessedly worked.

How could missing a coach possibly compare to this? How could being stuck in this outlandish place possibly matter?

He was so tiny. Four, maybe five pounds? Premature? He had to be. His fingernails had scarcely started to form and he was so small.

His lips were still tinged with blue. Cyanosis? The tips of his fingers were still blue as well, and she started to worry all over again. As he’d started to breathe, his little body had suffused with colour, but now…

She checked his fingers and toes with care, trying not to expose him any more than she had to. It was a hot day, so the wind was warm against the baby’s skin. How long had he been exposed?

Maybe the warm wind had helped save his life.

But there were still those worrying traces of cyanosis. His heart wasn’t working at a hundred per cent.

It wasn’t his breathing, she thought. He was gazing up, wide-eyed, as if wondering where on earth he was, and his breathing seemed to be settling.

So why the skin blueness?

She wanted medical back-up. She wanted it now.

‘How will we get home?’ CJ asked, and she held the baby close and tried to make herself think.

‘We need to find someone to help us.’

‘Everyone’s gone,’ CJ said.

‘Surely not everyone.’

But maybe everyone had. Gina’s heart sank. The rodeo itself had finished almost an hour ago. A group of country and western musicians from down on the coast had booked the coach to transport their gear. They’d played at the closing ceremony, then organised the coach to stay longer, giving them time to pack up.

The timing meant that the crowd had dispersed. The rodeo had taken place miles from the nearest settlement-which itself wasn’t much of a settlement. There’d been mobile food vans and a mobile pub, but they’d gone almost before the last event.