“Tell Sanders that I have arranged credit for him at Quilpie, Cunnamulla and Bourke,” he directed. “Ask him to let me know by wire when he has trucked these beasts because there may be enough fats in Bottom Bend for him to lift in January to take to Cockburn for Adelaide. We’re due for a dry time after this run of good seasons, and I don’t want to be caught overstocked.”

“All right! There’ll be fats enough in Bottom Bend, I’ll bet.”

“There should be, provided we don’t get an overdose of windstorms to blow away all the feed. Well, we’ll get on. Want to get back home to-night. So long!”

“So long, Mr Nettlefold! Aurevoir, Miss Eliz’beth.”

Having given the manager a quick salute, the boss stockman was less hasty with the daughter. She eyed him coolly, but her look only made his smile broaden. She laughed at him when the car began to move, and returned his salute with a white-gloved hand.

Twenty minutes later they were across the plain and among the stunted bloodwoods and the mulgas. Here in this imitation forest grew no ground feed of bush and grass, but it provided good top feed in dry times.

A few miles of scrub, and then their way lay across a wide area of broken sand country criss-crossed by water gutters that appeared to follow no uniform direction. It was barren save for far-spaced, thirst-tortured coolibah trees, and here and there patches of tussock-grass. An amazing place, this. It was the studio of the Wind King who had chiselled the sand hummocks into fantastic shapes, a veritable hell when the hot westerlies blew in November and March.

Sixty miles from home they boiled the billy for lunch, the car halted in the shadow cast blackly on the glaring ground by three healthy bloodwoods.