Page 11 of The Vet from Snowy River
Vera, she wanted to yell. I amVera. Instead, she stretched her legs out in front of her and crossed her booted feet. ‘Shall I read you your letter?’ she said in a voice of forced calm. ‘It’s from me … I mean, it’s from your niece, Vera.’
Jill didn’t answer, just continued to stare up at the mountains darkening the late afternoon sky.
Vera pulled the folded sheets from her bag and started reading. Maybe some part of her aunt’s brain was listening, and enjoying hearing what the niece she’d given up her independence for was doing to rebuild her life.
‘Dear Aunt Jill,’she read. ‘It’s done. Our café is open…’
CHAPTER
4
The pups woke him.
Josh stared, bleary-eyed, at his watch and winced. He’d dropped onto his bed at two am after a callout to a calving, and unless he’d strapped his watch on upside down—always a possibility when you were cleaning yourself up in a paddock using the beam from your ute’s headlights to see—the hour hand was on the wrong side of seven.
Way too early to be getting up after a night on call.
The pups must have had a different agenda, because he’d barely shut his eyes again when their fretting sounds moved from mild to miserable. Who knew eight little snouts no bigger than thimbles could generate so much noise? Where were earplugs when he needed them?
‘All right,’ he muttered. ‘I’m coming.’
A brown face with tired brown eyes was peering up at him from the bottom of the stairs when he left his flat.
‘Jane Doe,’ he said, heading down to her. ‘What are you doing out here?’
The old dog thumped her tail against the newel post in reply.
She gave a groan of appreciation as he ran her ears through his fingers, then trotted off in the direction of the sleepover room, turning after a few steps to check he was following.
‘I’m coming,’ he said, his curiosity piqued. ‘Have you got something to show me?’
Jane Doe’s chocolate rump disappeared into the gloom of the room where they housed their overnight guests, and the yipping noises of her pups went up an octave.
Considering their eyes and ears were not yet open, Jane’s young hooligans were adept at knowing when their mum—and the comfort of their next feed—was close.
He peered into the whelping box, smiling at the cluster of anxiously squirming bodies. ‘What are you waiting for, Jane Doe? I’m counting eight little fluff-bundles pretty keen to latch—’
Wait. Not eight, but seven. Where was the jumbo brown one?
‘Bloody hell, Jane, well spotted.’ He went to the door and flicked on the strip of overhead lighting, ignoring the outraged hiss from the recently neutered cat in Cage Six. Where could one plump, barely mobile pup get to in a metre-square box?
Jane had climbed into the whelping box and was pointing her nose into the back corner, where the plywood rim bumped up against the mesh of the large cage. ‘Down there, is he?’ he said, and he dropped to his knees and crawled his way into the box to have a look.
Aha! One missing pup. He dug his fingers into the crevice until they’d surrounded the furry lump and levered it upwards. ‘You okay, buddy?’
A pink tongue lolled out of the pup’s mouth, and it yawned hugely.
‘Getting stuck seems to be your favourite thing to do.’
He plopped the pup down with its brothers and sisters, and Jane rewarded him with a lick to his hand.
‘You’re welcome,’ he said. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll whack a bit of timber beading down that hole so we don’t lose him again.’
He settled on to the shredded paper next to them and Jane rested her head on his ankles and looked up at him lovingly while her puppies fed.
‘You’re doing a good job, old girl,’ he said.
‘Talking to your extended family?’ said a voice from behind him.
