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Page 348

| Ashton grabbed the piece of meat and slung it out the door, where it would bake on the ground as though it were cooking in an oven. "Damn it all to hell," he growled. He leaned against the frame of the door and crossed his arms angrily, staring out at the sheep that stood like painted beasts on the parched earth. In this dry spell, the sheep had been forced to resort to digging the bare earth with their. hooves for roots. |

| "I knew the danger of drought in the outback, but never had I thought it could be this devastating," Ashton solemnly added. "Our land can't tolerate much more blowing away in the wind. The pulverized soil is disappearing into thin air." |

| Sasha went to Ashton and stood beside him. She followed his gaze and felt sick inside when she looked at the sheep. Fretting in the sun, some were shoving their heads under one another's bellies for a spot of shade, while others were staring into infinity with their hungry, vacant eyes, their flanks sunken in. The young and weak were gone, burned and buried in mass graves. |

| She looked skyward. As the sun slid upward, the heat rose with it, and the swirling dust glowed golden in the back light. "Will it ever end?" she asked. |

| "You might ask how will it end?" Ashton said, slowly shaking his head back and forth. "The out-back is baked tawny by the summer heat. Its ground is mantled in a crackling skin of dry gum leaves, grasses, and fallen strips of eucalyptus bark. One spark of fire and" |

| Sasha grabbed his arm, her eyes wide with fear. "Don't even think it," she said, swallowing hard. |

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