Lucy, her vision blurred, backed quickly away to stand beside Ted as the ambulance set off, raising another cloud of dust. Feeling the tears spill over again, she looked down at her wrist where the bluishred impression of Mel’s fingers still stood out clearly. Then a strong arm was around her shoulders and she looked up into the flecky depths of Ted’s amber eyes.
‘Dunno about you, but I could do with a cuppa,’ was all he said.
Struck by the warmth in those eyes, Lucy smiled and rested her head against the skin of his shoulder as they walked back towards the ute.
Chapter 29
‘I just knew it’d be a boy or a girl,’ concluded Wade sagely, when Lucy finished telling the children and Dennis the story of Henry’s birth. Lucy was grateful for Wade’s comment as it made the older children laugh and deflected their attention from Dennis, who was close to tears. After a quick shower he left for Townsville in the dual cab, looking much more subdued than usual.
He later rang them to say that Mel would be gone for more than two weeks. She’d suffered a small haemorrhage and was found to be seriously anaemic. Henry, on the other hand, was fighting fit; Dennis told Lucy he was the finest baby in Townsville hospital. The proud father had decided to stay with his wife until Mel’s mother arrived on the scene from their property near Mackay.
In spite of the extra responsibility this meant for Lucy, she was pleased to hear that Dennis was staying in Townsville, and hoped that the couple would benefit from the time spent together. The week passed smoothly, with no large accidents or incidents of any kind and the added bonus of three days of heavy rain. Lucy was well pleased with her pupils’ progress as she wrapped up the term.
Then, in the chilly early hours of Saturday morning, the first day of the holidays, and exactly a week after Henry’s birth, Alpha whelped. Lucy made the discovery at dawn, finding the pups in a squeaking, squirming, rodent-like bundle in the corner of Alpha’s cage. But Alpha was clearly not overjoyed with her babies. On the contrary, she was cowering at the opposite end of the kennel, and as soon as the cage door was opened a fraction she pushed past Lucy to escape. The puppies, their eyes glued shut, were still sticky, complete with their tiny placentas attached, when Lucy crawled in to examine them. Alpha had apparently failed to lick them clean. Lucy stared at them helplessly, wishing Ted was about, but he’d gone to Little Leichhardt.
The kids were not particularly impressed by Lucy’s urgently delivered news that morning. After breakfast they wandered over to look at the pups; then, after much persuasion and bribery from Lucy, they went hunting for Alpha. While they were occupied, Lucy rang Townsville hospital in despair and spoke to Mel.
Sounding much more relaxed than usual, Mel laughed knowingly. ‘Happens sometimes,’ she explained. ‘I’m not the only one, then. Animals can be bad mums too. Alpha’s never been allowed to keep a litter before, so she might be a bit mental over the whole caper. I say dong them and be done with it.’
But Lucy was determined to make it work. Once the children had located Alpha, huddled under Gwen’s house, they dragged her back to the puppies, who were beginning to whimper more loudly, the slime on their fur now covered with grey dirt. Lucy held the traumatised mother dog close to the cage and, stroking her gently, made her look at her young. Then she hauled the dog in through the cage door, asking the kids to close it behind her; she sat with Alpha, holding her in a headlock while she placed the pups one by one onto her belly. With a sad exclamation, Lucy found that the fourth pup was limp and lifeless. It was rust-coloured, and so like Shep; Lucy lamented over it for a moment before passing the small bundle to Cooper, who eagerly volunteered to hoick it over the fence.
At first Alpha struggled and growled at the sensation of the little bodies on her skin. Although Lucy would usually have been intimidated, she stubbornly maintained her grip while lecturing the reluctant mother about her maternal responsibilities. The pups nuzzled blindly, and at last one of them opened its tiny jaws and locked on to a teat. Alpha snarled and writhed anew but Lucy hung on tight. An hour later, all the pups had sucked, and were curled up asleep in the warm curve of their mother’s body. Lucy, stiff and cramped, still had a precautionary hold on Alpha’s head. Finally, she gently let go, and watched with a lump in her throat while the dog tentatively sniffed one of her babies. With a deep sense of satisfaction, Lucy quietly withdrew. Leaving the new family alone together, she went over to the house to see what mischief the kids had got up to in her absence.
When Lucy returned to check on her at lunchtime, Alpha, not so wild-eyed now, had licked the pups clean, but was as far away from them as possible, standing alert at the far end of her cage. So for the rest of the day, Lucy had the two-hourly task of coaxing the nervous mother over to her pups, and holding her head while they suckled, helping her to resist her impulse to snarl and snap at the tiny black, white and russet coloured bundles.
Then, in the evening, apparently under instruction from the Grey Lady, Molly discovered the ‘dead’ pup well and truly alive in the spot in the Hospital paddock where it had been flung. Lucy hurried over to find that the tiny creature had indeed come to life. It had somehow managed to tie itself securely to a clump of grass with its umbilical cord by scrabbling round and round it, and a pair of sharp scissors was required to cut it free. How it had survived the heat of the sun and escaped the notice of hawks and other predators all day, Lucy could only wonder. As she carried it back to join its siblings, Lucy gazed around her, marvelling over Lotte and her constant presence at Charlotte’s Creek. Unfortunately, with the introduction of the newcomer to the litter, Alpha reverted back to her former neurotic condition. So an exhausted Lucy was back to square one, and she had a busy night, checking the little family at intervals until dawn.
By mid-morning on Sunday, however, Alpha was feeding her pups independently, if still somewhat reluctantly. Lucy allowed her to leave the draughty cage, and relocated the pups to a sheltered corner of the milking shed. It was here that Ted found Lucy and the kids fondling the pups, when he returned to Charlotte’s Creek late in the afternoon.
‘Aren’t they exquisite?’ Lucy said with motherly pride. ‘I never imagined they’d be so small.’
‘Lucy’s been bunked in with Alpha all weekend,’ Cooper explained to Ted. ‘Dimwit was scared of her own pups.’
‘You did a sterling job then, eh.’ Ted smiled at Lucy, his eyes shining. He crouched down, his stilt-like legs collapsing at the knees. Beside the tiny, whimpering bodies his scuffed boots looked enormous. He picked up the pups in his big gentle hands and looked them over, one by one. ‘Five males, three bitches,’ he murmured. The little red resurrected pup he held onto for a moment longer, lifting him up and looking into his tiny face.
‘Will they open their eyes soon?’ Lucy asked.
‘Jeez, Lucy,’ Billie exclaimed, ‘don’t you know anything?’
‘Stay shut for more than a week,’ Ted said, ignoring Billie. ‘Once they open them, then you’ll know about it—they’ll be into everything.’
‘I’ve already found homes for all the females and three of the males,’ Lucy revealed.
‘Yeah?’ Ted raised his eyebrows. ‘How’d you do that?’
‘I got some of your friends on the job,’ Lucy explained. ‘Mollie said Little John wanted two of the females when he found out their dad was Shep.’
‘Did he now?’ Ted chuckled. ‘The old bugger. Always reckons his dogs are the best and no one else’s compare. Wouldn’t have even thought to ask him.’
‘I wish I could keep one,’ Lucy said quietly. ‘But I don’t want to leave someone with a problem when I go. And I couldn’t exactly take one back to Sydney.’
‘I might take one, I suppose,’ Ted muttered. ‘You can train him up for me, if you like.’ His eyes twinkled at Lucy. ‘Do all the hard yards.’
‘Really? Oh, Ted!’
‘This fella here, eh.’ Ted picked up the red one again. ‘No one else’s gonna want him.’
‘Why not?’ asked L
ucy in amazement. ‘He’s beautiful!’
‘Overshot jaw, eh.’ Ted held up the pup before Lucy. She looked closely and noticed that his muzzle protruded past his lower jaw. His top teeth and a little section of the pink, ridged roof of his mouth could be seen extending beyond his bottom lip. ‘You might wanna watch this bloke. Make sure he’s getting a proper suck.’ He plopped the warm wriggling little form into Lucy’s lap. ‘There you go, Snoz.’ He nodded to Lucy. ‘He’s all yours. Till you don’t need him no more.’
Lucy gently picked up the puppy. ‘Hello, Snoz.’ She looked up at Ted, who was standing to leave. ‘Thank you so much, Ted.’
‘You can thank Shep. All his doing. Old cradle-snatcher that he is.’ Ted’s dimple appeared. ‘Just don’t spoil him rotten, eh? Bugger’s gotta work for a living.’
During the second week of the holidays, Noel and Gwen returned from their jaunt overseas, bright-eyed and refreshed. Unexpectedly, the day after they arrived, Noel announced that they would take the kids to Townsville in the family wagon for the last few days of the school holidays. That way they could meet little Henry, partake in a few holiday diversions and travel home on the Sunday with Mel and Dennis. Surprised but pleased by this unexpected decision, Lucy surmised that Noel must have spent some time on holidays contemplating his family situation from afar, and returned in a more conciliatory frame of mind.
Gwen was clearly less pleased with the plan. ‘We’ve only just arrived home after weeks away, and I’m dying to get things in order,’ she complained to Lucy.
‘He must have caught the travel bug,’ Lucy offered diplomatically.
With all the gear they’d be taking, there was no room in the station wagon for Lucy, who was more than happy to stay at Charlotte’s Creek and feed the animals. She even insisted that Ted go home as usual on the weekend, and made herself a list of jobs that would need doing while she was holding the fort.
The Wests left early on the Thursday, and Lucy got stuck into a thorough spring clean of the family house, which took her the best part of two days. On Friday afternoon, Ted came and found her in the milking shed with Alpha and the pups.
‘You be right this weekend?’ he asked.
Lucy glanced up and smiled. ‘I’m looking forward to the challenge.’ She suddenly thought of Mrs Bolton, and wished the principal knew that she, little Miss Francis, had been left in charge of a hundred-and-sixty-thousand-acre cattle station for the weekend. But just as she was basking in self-congratulation, Ted burst her bubble by mentioning a cow in Two Moon Lagoon who was crippled with three-day sickness. The unfortunate creature would need some water and hay taken to her sometime over the weekend.
‘She’s dead easy to find,’ Ted assured Lucy. ‘You can’t miss her. Just take the bottom gate into Two Moon, follow the road north, then when it forks go east along the ridge. The track gets a bit faint there where the cotton weed’s tall, but just stay on the ridge till you see a spur down to the dam. Righto?’
‘Um, Ted, how do I—’
‘Just go past the dam and head south-west. Poke along steady so you don’t hit a log in the grass.’
Lucy was dismayed. ‘Ted, I’m not sure I can remember all those directions.’
‘’Course you can. If you look about a bit you’ll see my wheel tracks in the grass.’ Ted crouched down beside her and started to draw a map in the dirt with his finger. ‘Once you find the couch flat south-west of the dam you’re a stone’s throw from the cow. She’s at the head of the gully running back past you towards the dam. She’s pretty well hidden, but you’d have to be blind to miss the gully.’
‘Oh. Right.’ Lucy stared at the meaningless scratches in the dirt. ‘I think maybe I could manage to miss it.’
‘Another thing,’ Ted went on. ‘The mob in Eastern Weaner will need yarding in the afternoons. They’re still too feral to be left out at night, and too close to their home paddock. They’re likely to bust out if they get spooked in the night.’
‘You want me to yard them?’ Lucy asked fearfully. ‘By myself?’
‘Nothing you haven’t done before,’ Ted said.
‘Yes, but you were always somewhere nearby,’ Lucy said pathetically. ‘And I haven’t got to know this lot of weaners yet.’
‘Well, I could leave them locked in the yard with a round bale if you’re not up to it,’ Ted suggested.
‘Oh no!’ Lucy said, stung. ‘Of course I’ll have a try.’
‘Shep’ll help you, and I’ll leave Pagan in the grassy yard. Those two will probably do the job between them, whether you go along for the ride or not.’ Ted chuckled.
Lucy suddenly relaxed. With such capable assistants she had no cause for concern. She smiled into Ted’s face. ‘I’ll do my best.’
Ted’s expression was tender as he looked into her eyes. ‘Struth,’ he said after a moment, standing suddenly. He shook his head and turned to go.
‘Have a good weekend,’ Lucy called after him.
He tipped his hat to her from the doorway of the shed, his face impassive again. ‘Ta ta, then. Best of luck. If you need to contact me, you won’t be able to. No phone at Little Leichhardt.’
Lucy laughed. Ducking his head under the lintel, Ted departed, leaving Lucy with a smile on her face.
Chapter 30
Saturday passed without a hitch. Lucy fed all the animals first thing in the morning, and even had a go at the milking. Then she set off in a ute with lucerne hay and a drum of water to find the sick cow in Two Moon Lagoon. She located the crippled animal without much trouble, thanks to the invaluable Shep, who jumped out to lope ahead of the ute and lead the way each time Lucy halted in uncertainty. She was so grateful to him that she even forgave him when he rubbed himself on her lucky jeans after rolling in a dead thing he’d discovered while she was ministering to the cow.
In the afternoon, as Ted had predicted, Pagan and Shep yarded the weaners between them, while Lucy tagged along more or less as a passenger. The whole procedure took less time than it had taken Lucy to saddle Pagan. Shep had stretched out for a sleep in the shade and the big old horse stood dozing good-naturedly while Lucy had fumbled and muddled with the blanket, heavy saddle, straps and buckles.
Late that afternoon, Lucy took Lotte’s last bundle of letters over to the veranda of the big house and sat in the evening glow to read through them a second time. She’d hit a wall in her research into Lotte’s life, but somehow, living in Lotte’s cottage and often picturing the solitary, grieving woman there, she couldn’t accept that the mystery of little Henry should remain unsolved.
She went to bed with her head full of musings and questions, and dreamed vividly that she was searching for someone, crying, begging and sobbing for help, and woke up with tears on her cheeks. She felt sure that Lotte had been present throughout, but somehow couldn’t remember her face. Eating breakfast the next day, Lucy retained the sad essence of the dreams, and as she wandered despondently towards the chicken coop, found that she was keenly looking forward to the return of Mel, Dennis and the kids later that day.
She busied herself in her vegetable garden, then cooked a large lasagne and two cakes in preparation for that evening. But her sense of melancholy still lingered, and she decided to pass the time until the family’s return by going for a long walk, hoping to pound out her gloominess with the refreshing exertion.
When she emerged from her cottage after putting on her boots, she was surprised to see Bear waiting with Rambo at the gate. The old blue dog rarely ventured away from the house these days. As usual, with his coarse grey fur and stumpy legs he reminded her of a wombat. Shep, who was lying on the veranda, looked up at her and thumped his tail, but stayed where he was as she started down the steps.
‘Not coming today, Shep?’ Lucy paused at the bottom and looked up at him. He gave her a panting smile and crossed his paws with an air of permanency. Lucy set off without him.
‘Are you feeling a bit lonely without your family?’ Lucy asked Bear as she came through the gate. Ignori
ng her, he waddled off with unusual speed towards the stockyards, head up and ears pricked. It appeared that he would be choosing their route today. Lucy decided to humour him, considering how seldom he ever walked out; she supposed he was leading her to the yards for old times’ sake, as the scene of his younger working days. But instead he skirted around the sprawling timber structure and headed purposefully down into the dry gully that Lucy had followed the day she’d discovered Dennis’s tomato plants. She trailed along behind the dog, with Rambo at her heels, and started down the rocky descent, but soon Rambo was breathing heavily and Lucy was having difficulty hurrying over the uneven ground concealed by the thick growth of grass and woody weeds that had sprung up since the rain.
Lucy slapped at the mosquitoes that had been flushed out of the grass by Bear’s passing, and tried not to think of snakes. The old dog was now quite a distance ahead, making remarkably nimble progress over the rocks. At last he disappeared from sight around a bend. Lucy stopped and called to him to come back. She waited for a minute or two, but there was no sign of him. The mozzies began to close in relentlessly and Lucy looked down at the panting sheep beside her.
‘What should we do, Rambo?’
Rambo looked up at her out of long black pupils in his blank yellow eyes.
‘If we go back without him, he might get lost,’ Lucy reflected. ‘The kids would be heartbroken.’
She was still deliberating when an insistent barking started up further along the creek bed. Lucy called again, but the barking continued. Sighing, she pushed on through the tall grass, ducking under the clinging vines and tripping along on the rocks, until she recognised the clearer section of creek below the house where she’d found the tomatoes.
Bear’s barking was coming from somewhere high above her on the opposite bank. She peered up towards the sound, but the thicket of dense parkinsonia lining the creek obscured the dog from view. What on earth was he so excited about? She called again for him to come down, but he only continued his yapping.
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