With the smile still playing about her lips she watched them ride towards the cattle: her father stiffly, his head stockman with the swinging grace of one who spends the daylight hours on the back of a horse. Sharp pointed out something relative to the cattle, and the horses began to canter in a wide arc.

Ted Sharp had arrived from nowhere in particular eleven years before, and even now he was not much more than thirty. When he came to Coolibah Elizabeth had been a tomboy of fourteen, and her mother had been dead four years. From early childhood she could ride, but with the coming of Ted Sharp her horses and her riding improved beyond measure. He was a born horse-breaker, beside being a first-rate cattleman, and it was not long before he was promoted boss stockman. He appeared to be a born boss stockman, too, for he never had the slightest trouble with the men.

Presently her father and he came riding slowly back to the car. They were in earnest conversation, and she guessed without hesitation the subject of discussion. She could not possibly be wrong, because when two men meet anywhere in cattle country they talk cattle.

“We’re all going to Golden Dawn to-morrow, Miss Eliz’beth,” the boss stockman called out while distance still separated them. “Mr Nettlefold says we can go. Hope to see you there, too. You must command your father to take you.”

“I never command my father to do anything,” she corrected him, her serious expression belied by laughing eyes.

The big, bluff manager of Coolibah regarded her with obvious pride. Everything about her-the grey tailor-made costume, the modish hat which did not conceal the golden sheen of her hair-combined to place his daughter on an equal footing with the smartest city women.

“No, you never command, Elizabeth,” he said slowly. “But somehow I always obey.”

Giving Sharp the reins of the horse, he walked to the car and climbed in behind the wheel. There, having settled his big, strong body, he proceeded to cut chips from a large plug of black tobacco, the kind which has long gone out of fashion amongbushmen.