Page 96 of Stockman's Stowaway

‘Gawd, I hope not.’ Charlie ripped off his hat, screwing it up. ‘That’s a proper mongrel act that, poisoning dogs.’

‘At least we know what it is, so I can treat the dogs properly. Otherwise, it would be a week for lab results.’ Ryan opened one set of cupboards, then another.

Cap stroked Atlas’s coarse fur. ‘It’s okay, mate. It’s gonna be okay.’ This was a nightmare crashing down on them.

What sort of soulless sociopath did that to dogs?

But to poison them in such a public place was a deliberate attempt to shut him down for what he was trying to achieve. Not only to hurt the station’s reputation, but his goal of showing the benefits of using muster dogs at the campdraft was nothing but dust left lying on a deserted track after being trampled by a herd of cattle.

But none of that mattered now. Not when he desperately wanted his mate to survive.

Cap patted his dog that lay deathly still on the examination table.

‘Now that I know it’s lead, I can use the correct chelating agent to remove it from Atlas’s blood. Bree did the right thing with the turmeric, it should give us a head start.’ Again, Ryan rummaged through his many glass cabinets. ‘I’ll need to do it intravenously to get the agent straight into his bloodstream.’

‘Will it work?’

‘We’ll have to wait and see.’

‘Do we need to treat Fern, too, doc?’ Charlie squatted to pat Fern, who’d been abnormally quiet, with her eyes on her mate.

‘Fern hasn’t shown any symptoms, but I’ll check her over, once I’ve started the treatment for Atlas. Get her to drink, Charlie.’ Ryan pushed the water bowl closer. ‘Then we’ll need her to pee and we’ll monitor her for the next few hours.’

‘How did they poison your dogs?’ Cap asked Charlie, as they sat in the large examination room at the vet’s, while he slowly stroked his dog Atlas, on the IV. ‘We found no traces of lead in the water on the station. Thanks to Mia, she has us testing our water regularly.’

‘It was in our own water tank, the one behind the cottage. We all started feeling funny, I got headaches and stomach cramps. That’s when Bree twigged that something was wrong. Next thing I know, Bree bundles me into the Kombi, dumps me at the hospital doors with a bottled water sample from our tanks, telling them our water’s been poisoned. Only problem was, she’d left me there, to bolt back home to…’ Charlie heaved slow breaths, his bottom lip quivering. ‘Bree won’t let us drink nothin’ now unless it’s filtered. She got us one of them fancy towers for drinking water, like you’d see in some city office. It sits next to the hat rack in the kitchen. She’s also put filters on allthe tanks and taps around the homestead. I know she tests ‘em and cleans ‘em regularly with this smancy testing kit she keeps in the smithy’s shed, and she keeps a note on the calendar as a reminder to swap them filters out every few months, but she’ll spot check the water at random times.’

‘Where?’ Cap stared wide-eyed at Charlie, astounded that the cheeky redhead was doing all this in plain sight.

‘Farmhouse, the sheds, yours and even Dex’s place. I know she put one in the kennels too, when she made you them special dog-watering troughs.’

‘I didn’t know that.’ Bree surprised him all the time when it came to the dogs, like with the dogs’ obstacle course.

But there were lots of little things being fixed at the kennels, too. There was the day he’d come home to find the kennel’s frames all reinforced, and new hinges on the doors. The next day they had new roofs. While out digging his new wildlife corridor with Mia, they’d come back to find shade cloth stretched over the kennels to protect them from the outback’s harsh elements. And just last week, a row of shiny steel, custom-made water troughs were welded to each kennel, to never have to fill a bucket again.

He’d asked his brothers if they’d done it, all of them shaking their head. Only now realising how watchful Bree had been over his dogs. And also his family, and all she’d done for Mia, too.

Mia adored Bree, who’d helped Mia settle in. Especially when Mia would attend Bree’s cooking lessons up at the cottage with Harper—which everyone knew was code for long liquid lunches where you could hear the ladies laughing, singing and dancing late into the night. Lucky ladies, he’d never had a lunch last that long.

That’s when it twigged. Ryder was right, Bree did know more about the station than she let on. Cap could see it now.

Not only through the women, but he’d have quick ten-minute conversations with Bree at least once a day, whenever shebreezed by going to or from somewhere. Dex and Ash did, too. The three of them had individually sought out Bree’s brutally blunt, but honest, opinion when planning something new at the station.

Not only that, but he also now realised Bree had been dropping subtle hints to him, too.

It was Bree who’d suggested that he pick the paddock beside Ash’s as the best place to start his wildlife corridors, to start containing the sandstorms through the Stoneys.

It was Bree who’d suggested using one of the kennels for a nursery, before he’d even met Mia.

It was Bree who had shown Mia the best places to forage for seeds and told her how easy it would be to build a native nursery. On what had seemed like a simple drive to check the eastern border with Cowboy Craig, they’d filled up the Razorback full of seeds, using the sacks and shovels Bree just happened to have with her. At that stage Mia hadn’t even thought about it, until Bree showed her how easy it could be.

Everything Bree did was for a reason.

That sneaky, big-hearted, sassy-mouthed redhead was like the fairy godmother of Elsie Creek Station. She’d done so much for all of them, and he’d be willing to bet none of his brothers had realised it either. Especially Ryder who argued with Bree the most.

What else had Bree done for them behind the scenes that they didn’t know about?

‘Why didn’t you say anything to us, Charlie? About your dogs, and the water?’ Acid burned in Cap’s chest, was his family in danger too?

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