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Page 264

| around her. She swallowed hard. "And I'm frightened." |

| Her rifle was on her lap, and she slipped a hand around it for comfort. She peered into the distance where Ashton and his men had made camp. Strangely, she saw no signs of a campfire. |

| "Then what are they eating?" Sasha further worried aloud. She licked her lips and closed her eyes, leaning her head against the trunk of the tree. She could envision herself eating her homemade yeast cakes, fried chicken, and potatoes. The mere thought made her stomach growl unmercifully, filling the silent night air with the strangest of sounds. |

| Her eyes flew wildly open. "What am I doing to myself?" she uttered. "I can't allow myself to think of food. Not tonight, anyhow. Perhaps by daylight I can find something to eat." |

| She drew the blanket more snugly around her shoulders, watching Cloud munching on grass a few yards away from her. "Cloud, what will tomorrow bring?" she asked softly. "Will Ashton find the kangarooers, or will I be forced to ride endlessly onward in this empty land?" |

| She became lost in thought, remembering how the landscape she had traveled through too often faded to brindle, stunted gray stuff in yellow grass. The outback was dangerousits emptiness, its lack of definition, the bizarre, even threatening, character of its flora and fauna. |

| Yet it could just as quickly become a place of awesome beautythe red monoliths rising out of the flat land; the rare waterholes cold, clear and deep; and the primordial splendor of the vast, |

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