THIS book extract from The Cattleman's Daughter sees Emily Flanaghan at a critical point.

When Emily Flanaghan hit the tree and her heart slammed out of rhythm, she didn't hear the rush of hooves as the other bushrace riders belted past her.

Nor did she hear her silver-grey mare, Snowgum, roar in agony, screaming out a hideous guttural sound.

As the mare's hooves, like dark river-stones, flailed the air, Emily was lost to the smell of blood of both horse and human.

Instead, she felt herself drifting up through the filter of gumleaves, her panic subsiding.

She marvelled at the imperviousness of gum-tree trunks, how solid they were, in all their silvery beauty.

Gone was the surge of fear she had felt when she and Snowgum had taken the full force of the big chestnut galloping beside them, hitting them broadside.

Silver stirrup irons clanked, the horses grunted punch-drunk, and Snowgum was shunted off course.

As the tree loomed directly in front of her, Emily had for an instant wished she'd never fought with bloody Clancy.

She wished she'd never entered the race just to claim some ground back from him out of pride.

Images of her two girls, Meg and Tilly, flashed in her mind.

They had been down at the marquee with their mob of little friends, running amok.

Both girls were lean country kids, with messy, sun-kissed ponytails and grubby faces, now waiting nervously to see their mum race her horse across the line.

Her youngest, Meg, had clung to her whispering, "Mummy, don't go in that horsey race. Please," her freckled nose scrunching up.

She'd felt Meg's tears on her neck, prompting the sting of her own.

Then, in the seconds before she hit the tree, she thought of her dad, Rod, and the pain it would cause him to lose her at just twenty-six.

She felt the weight of guilt in leaving him alone, now of all times, when a stroke of a pen in a faraway parliament could soon take their family mountain cattle runs away from him.

Then she had a flash of her brother, Sam, on the other side of the world in a Nashville recording studio.

Or, more likely, in a bar with a bourbon in his hand, wearing irresponsibility on his face along with his too-cute grin.
Finally, she saw Clancy.

In the last split-second of life as she had known it, Emily felt the horror of Clancy's rage towards her.

As she hit the tree, she felt an overwhelming sense of regret that she'd mucked up her life so badly.

She had allowed herself to be stolen away - from herself, from her family and from her mountains.

Then came the pain of impact.

As Snowgum gave way beneath her, Emily heard the sound of running water, and wondered why that water was slowing to a trickle.

She didn't realise it was the sound of the blood in her veins moving slower and slower.

She listened to an axe falling somewhere in the distance, quickly at first, then slowing to a few lazy haphazard strikes.
She didn't know it was her heart, beating slower.

Then slower.

Then almost still.

Just one ... lazy ... hack ... at ... a ... time.

Emily's body lay crumpled and still on a dry rocky creek bank while a frenzy erupted around her.

Race officials in fluoro orange vests clambered over tussocks and scrambled through shallow rocky waters.

One of them punched words into a twoway radio as he ran. "We got a rider down! We need an ambulance! It looks bad, real bad."

On the golden river flat, where the makeshift tent city of the mountain cattlemen's get-together sprawled out for the two-day celebrations, people were still watching the race.

The commentator, oblivious to the fall on the other side of the rise, continued to call the Mountain Cattlemen's Cup as the field of horses half slid down the jagged slope towards the finishing straight.

Horses were sheened with sweat, riders gripped tight with denim-clad thighs and, with gritted teeth, hissed their horses on.

Adrenaline surged through the veins of horses and riders alike.

The two leaders hugged the curve of the track tight.

One rider's boot struck the fluttering triangular blue-and-yellow flags strung between star-pickets as his horse was bunted and shunted home.

They flew past in a blur, belting for the line.

Only three people in the crowd were ignoring the neck-and-neck finish.

Rod and his grandchildren, Meg and Tilly, searched desperately for Emily on her grey mare.

As the rest of the field raced home with Emily nowhere in sight, Rod felt panic rising within him.

"Where's Mummy and Snowgum?" Meg said, squinting up at her grandfather.

Rod gripped both girls on their shoulders.

"I'll go find her. I promise. You stay here."

He tried to sound confident as he saw Meg's eyes fill with tears.

A friend in the crowd stepped forward and guided Meg and Tilly away.

Rod nodded his thanks to the woman and then he was gone, sprinting towards his ute.

In the creekbed, Rod knelt beside a course official, who had gingerly loosened Emily's protective vest.

Rod cried out in anguish when he saw his daughter's twisted broken body.

The translucent white glow of her normally tanned skin, the blood trickling from the corner of her mouth and the deathly stillness of her limbs injected fear through him.

The official bent over Emily's face, listening desperately at her pale lips for breath.

Next to them, others were hauling on Snowgun's reins, pleading with the mare to stand so they could move her away from Emily's body.

Snowgum's cries were so excruciating Rod wished the mare would just lie down and die.

He couldn't bear to see Snowgum's white flanks coursing with blood and the way she twisted in pain.

He heard someone scream out, "Does anyone have a gun?" Rod's world spun.

This couldn't really be happening.

He looked at the lifeless body of his daughter, whispering, "Please, God, no."

She simply could not die. Not his Emily.

Before Clancy had stolen her away, Emily had been the lifeblood of their family and of their whole mountain community.

This beautiful girl somehow represented their future. For years Rod and his sister, Flo, had battled to keep the mountain cattleman traditions alive in the face of sustained attacks by politicians, bureaucrats and environmental idealists, mostly with the hope that Emily would one day come home to them.

Each time Rod had trudged to another meeting to negotiate his grazing rights with the everchanging guard of government men, he had held Emily there in his heart as a reason not to give up.

Emily's presence revived him and kept the weary older generation of cattlemen laughing and hoping.

But then she had moved away with Clancy.

Rod had watched, heartsick, mute, as Emily's marriage ground down her soul and eroded her spirit. The bright flame of her youth began to dull.

Now, here she was, all but extinguished, and Rod felt the sting of guilt. He'd been the one to encourage her to ride in the Cattlemen's Cup.

He had thought somehow it was the start of having her come home to him. He lay his hand on her cheek.

Now here she was leaving him in the worst way imaginable.

"We're gunna have to start CPR," the official said, glancing fearfully at Rod.

"She's not breathing and I can't get a pulse."

Rod squinted down the track, looking desperately for the ambulance. As the man gently eased Emily's helmet off and bent forward to breathe life-giving oxygen into her mouth, Rod was shocked to see that her long, dark hair had been chopped off, the scissor hacks still angry and against the softness of her heart-shaped face.

"Emily?" he cried.

 "Emily, stay with us. Emily!"

Emily saw herself being carried across a mountain clearing.

She turned her eyes away and drifted up into the sky, hovering over the canopy of gum tress.

A narrow stream of black clouds pulsed towards her.

The intensity of the approaching storm sent electricity through her very being.

The world around her seemed to vibrate and shimmer into a blur just as she felt the frightening rush of storm clouds on her face.

But once Emily found herself immersed in the eye of the storm, she knew not to be afraid.

She knew to be calm; that she was everything, and everywhere, and had nothing to do but feel love and peace.
For the first time ever, she had a clear understanding of the spiritual.

The truest notion of what those on earth called God.

She saw beyond the word that had confused her all her life.

She was entire and complete and it was a joy to simply drift as an energy of life.

But suddenly she felt a shock of pain, as if someone had clasped her ribcage with steely claws.

Pain ripped through the red string of her muscles and gripped her bones so hard they snapped into shards of white.

She felt herself being dragged backwards through the sharpness of the fallen branches of snowgum limbs that had speared the ground around her.

Then a pain so strong it blinded her.

Emily could hear voices shouting over a rhythmic whumping noise.

"She's gone again!"

"Clear!" someone shouted.

Emily blacked out.