Chapter 692: Dollar in Pain

A few minutes later, Dollar was groaning in pain on the ground. Jacqueline Spann kicked its stomach and said coldly, "Weren’t you so high and mighty? Come on, bite me now. I’m letting you. Do you dare?"

She placed her hand near Dollar’s mouth. The dog whimpered a few times and bared its teeth, but it was too weak to bite. Tears of frustration welled up in Dollar’s eyes. Jacqueline Spann kicked him a few more times before finding a piece of cured meat, which she also smeared with the juice of the heart-rupturing grass. She tossed the remaining half of the egg into the chicken coop, then finally crawled out through the hole under the fence.

Nearing the village entrance, Jacqueline Spann turned to look back at the silent village, her expression cold, her fists clenched.

’Sooner or later, I’ll be back!’

Bernice was getting impatient. Seeing her, she said unhappily, "What took you so long?"

The north wind howled in the night, and without a scarf, the cold air slipped down her collar, making her shiver uncontrollably. Her hands and feet were ice-cold.

"I boiled an egg. It’s still warm."

Jacqueline Spann took out a damp, warm egg from inside her clothes, shyly handing it over. She glanced up nervously, her hands wringing anxiously.

Bernice’s anger vanished instantly, and her heart softened. She pulled Jacqueline Spann over to sit properly and said kindly, "Let’s go. From now on, you’ll have more than just eggs. You’ll be able to eat milk and bread every day."

Jacqueline Spann breathed a sigh of relief, the corners of her mouth turning up slightly. ’My life is about to set sail.’

’Adrian Hawthorne, Clayton Xavier, Tang Xiaonan... None of them will be a match for me.’

"Auntie, are we going back to Tristone?"

"We’ll stay in Vessaria for a few days first. I have some things to take care of."

"Oh..."

The tractor slowly disappeared into the night. The night became silent once more. Besides the two dogs groaning in pain on the ground, no one knew what had happened that evening.

The next day, however, the village was no longer peaceful. Linden Golding’s dog had been poisoned to death. When he got up in the morning, he saw the dog lying stiff in the yard, having vomited a small pool of black blood.

What was worse, something had also happened to the Thorne family’s dog. Although it wasn’t dead yet, it was hanging on by a thread. A few of their laying hens were dead too. Phoebe Huxley had gotten up early to find four chickens toppled over in the coop, their bodies frozen stiff. When she saw that Dollar was also on the brink of death, Phoebe Huxley cursed for a solid half hour.

The villagers all thought it must have been those damn thieves. The closer it got to the New Year, the more rampant the thieves became, stealing chickens and dogs, and even cured meat. The villagers hated these thieves to the bone.

But they couldn’t figure out this particular thief. They had poisoned the dogs, so why didn’t they take them?

Since it was just a few chickens and a dog that had died, the incident didn’t occupy the villagers’ discussions for long. However, they did become more vigilant. They planned to bring their chickens and ducks inside at night and also to properly store the cured meat they had hanging outside to dry, lest their year of hard work end with nothing to eat.

Tang Xiaonan didn’t care about any of that. She only worried about Dollar. Byron Thorne force-fed Dollar an antidote soup, but Dollar couldn’t even swallow the liquid; most of it dribbled out. It couldn’t even sit up, just looked weakly at its owner, as if it wanted to say something but couldn’t.

"Dollar, you have to drink the medicine. You’ll get better if you drink it, be a good boy... I’ll hold you while you drink. It won’t hurt anymore after you drink it..."

Tang Xiaonan held Dollar and fed it the medicine, using a small spoon to pour it in bit by bit. It managed to drink about half a small bowl. Tears streamed from Dollar’s eyes as it gently licked its owner’s hand, a thousand words left unsaid.

Byron Thorne was quite skilled at treating livestock, even better than he was at treating people. After half a bowl of the antidote was forced down, Dollar had a reaction. It looked to be in great pain, whimpering and crying out. Tang Xiaonan and Amanda Chapman massaged its belly, and soon Dollar pooped out a pile of black stuff.