frowning. ‘Something’s wrong.’ She took off her gardening gloves and moved towards the men.
There was a dog lying across Matt’s lap; a ten-year-old kelpie christened Ferret, because of his habit of sticking his nose into everything. Anthony slid off his horse, took Ferret from Matt and both men strode up the back path.
Shelley looked at the blood dripping onto the cement path. There was a spreading stain of bloody wetness on Matt’s thigh and his face was set like cracked concrete.
‘He needs a vet,’ Shelley stated, hanging back from the rush to get the hurt animal inside.
‘Sarah, I need to set the leg. It’s busted. Plus he needs to be stitched up. He’s lost a lot of blood.’ Anthony’s face was creased in concern as he took the back steps in a single leap.
‘Righto.’
With the dog on the kitchen sink and water boiling, Sarah sterilised the needle while Anthony washed the wound with Pine O Cleen. Ferret whined softly, his eyes never leaving Matt, who, with Shelley’s help, was slicing a piece of thick plastic tubing lengthways.
‘What happened?’ Sarah asked as she mopped blood around Ferret’s wound while Anthony sewed stitches into the dog’s hind leg. The air was taut with unsaid words. Clearly Ferret’s accident hadn’t lead to any mutual bonding.
‘He jumped off my horse into some long grass,’ Matt answered. ‘Shouldn’t have had him on there what with his arthritis, but he loves it. Don’t you, old mate?’ Matt stroked Ferret between the ears.
Anthony glanced at Sarah. ‘Reckon that’s how he busted his leg. The cut came from the bore pig he was chasing. He’s got some buggered tendons here by the looks of it.’
Shelley peered over Anthony’s shoulder. ‘Are you a vet?’ She grimaced at the ooze of blood and stringy muscle.
Anthony frowned at her. ‘No, but I have a brain.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Damn pigs.’ Sarah rethreaded the needle. ‘The bloody lot of them should be culled. Sure you don’t want me to take him to the vet, Matt?’
Matt shook his head, his pale eyes glassy and tired-looking. ‘Tendons buggered in one leg, the other busted up. He’s as good as lame. The best I can do is tie the old fella up under a tree for a month or so and see how he heals.’
Anthony placed a thick smear of Rawleigh’s salve over the wound and then bandaged it up, smearing a globule of the gooey antiseptic on his jeans.
The broken leg was a far less messy affair. Matt held Ferret as Anthony gave the dog’s hind leg a rough yank. There was the click of bone and a whinny from Ferret. Then the dog was silent.
‘He’s dead,’ Shelley sniffed. The only dead thing she’d seen recently was a cockroach in her apartment. She experienced an urge to reach out her hand and poke the dog in the ribs. Instead she watched as the restraightened leg was bandaged. Matt then proceeded to slip the thick rubber tubing around the break. It was a snug contraption held in place with black electrical tape. ‘There you go, boy.’
Shelley was stunned when the dog lifted its head as if in gratitude.
With Ferret on the back porch wrapped in a blanket, the mess tidied in the kitchen and Sarah’s offer to care for Ferret accepted, Shelley was surprised when coffee was refused by both men.
‘Something I said?’ Shelley asked as she watched Matt and Anthony walk down the back path to their horses. She had to admit it she was admiring more than the cut of their jeans. ‘Cute buns.’
‘Thought you were about to be engaged.’ Sarah cut two wedges of thick cheese and plonked them on a couple of crackers.
‘Well you know what they say. It doesn’t matter where you get your appetite from as long as you eat at home.’
‘Those two have a bit of a love hate relationship going on at the moment.’ Sarah took a bite of her cracker. ‘Actually, they’re like young horses that both want to lead.’
Shelley sat down at the kitchen table and peered knowingly at Sarah over her coffee. Someone couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
Hamish escorted Claire to the picnic rug that lay beneath the spreading arms of a gum tree and deposited her next to the bank manager’s wife, Hilda, and her two daughters, Henrietta and Jane. A picnic after their fortnightly church service was a regular event during the warmer months and the one held in honour of Christmas was a mildly entertaining one. It surprised him that Claire, always complaining