A Virgin River Christmas (Virgin River #4)(72)

If she’d left her disabled husband in the hands of his family three years ago to come after him, would she have succeeded in pulling him up out of his self-indulgent withdrawal any sooner? Probably not. He’d licked his wounds for such a long time that he got used to the taste of his self-pity.

Ian grew wearily cold, craving long underwear. He’d been out in the woods for hours. He ate snow rather than drink the bottled water, in case he found the boy and needed it for him.

Then he saw a smear of blood and some tracks, partially covered by a new blanket of snow. By the width and weight of the trail, it was the cat, wounded. He followed the trail just a short distance, realizing the cat was dragging itself heavily. A moment later Ian realized that Travis would have intelligently gone in the opposite direction to this bloodied trail. So Ian did also.

Ian made it to the river and was looking left and right along the edge as night fell. He’d have to head back to the truck soon, at least to confer with Jack and discuss the plan for searching at night. Part of such a plan would have to include long underwear and dry socks. But he just couldn’t make himself stop.

Darkness fell in earnest. He shone the flashlight on his watch and saw it was nearly six o’clock and he yelled for the millionth time. “Travis! Travis!”

Then as the light from his flashlight fell upon the snow, he noticed a drop of blood here, a drop there. Travis was hurt and doing just what Ian expected a smart kid to do—he was following the river home. Using the flashlight to scan the ground as darkness thickened around him Ian saw something. Not far away from the river’s edge was a pile of dead pine needles and brush, covered with a little new snow. A mound. It didn’t look like much, but he gave it a slight kick with his boot and when some of the debris fell away, he saw a sleeve. He was instantly down on his knees, digging. In mere moments he uncovered a boy, his face white, his lips blue, his eyes closed. Ian shook him vigorously, not knowing if the boy was dead or alive.

“Travis! Travis!”

The boy’s eyes finally came open, and he blinked not knowing where he was. He smacked his dry lips. He looked up at Ian with a dazed expression. “Sorry…Dad…”

“Aw, Jesus, Travis!” Ian said, relieved beyond words that the boy was alive. “You’re going to be okay, buddy.” Then he rolled him carefully onto his side and saw that the back of his jacket was shredded and he was bleeding. The damn cat had got him from behind but, thanks to Travis’s clothing, the mauling had not gone deep and, with the help of the snow, his bleeding had been stanched.

“You get him, son?” Ian asked.

“I don’t think so. I’m sorry, Dad.”

He was delirious, probably more from cold than his injury. Thank God he’d buried himself under dead leaves and pine needles to preserve his body heat. “I’ll get you outta here, son, hang on,” Ian said, now running on automatic. He stood and fired twice into a thick tree—three shots were the signal that you were lost, two was a standard response from a search team, and one shot could be mistaken for a hunter. You never sent a bullet into the air with the possible outcome of it returning to earth to find a living person or innocent livestock.

Then he put the rifle strap over his shoulder and scooped up Travis in his arms. Immediately he remembered doing the same for Bobby. But this time it was different—there was muscle tension in Travis’s body. He was responding to the pain, maybe from the cold, maybe from having a mountain lion’s claws in his back.

“Wake up, Travis! Wake up! Did the cat get you, huh? Tell me,” he panted, walking as fast as he could. He hoped he wouldn’t fall. His torso was okay—he had on a T-shirt, sweatshirt and jacket, but his legs, knees and feet were now soaked with ice and snow. “You with me, buddy?”

“Who…you…?”

Ian laughed in spite of himself, just hearing the kid’s response. “Your guardian angel, my boy! You shoot at the cat?”

“I…think…”

“He left a bloody trail—you get a shot off?”

“I…I couldn’t a hit ’im,” Travis answered, his tongue thick.

“Yeah, bet you got lucky. He’s bleeding way worse than you. Good for you,” Ian said. “Talk. Keep talking. Tell me.”

His speech was slurred and labored, but Travis did as ordered. “Got me…from…the tree…I saw him…I had him…bastard got Whip…”

“Keep talking,” Ian said breathlessly, now laboring heavily under the weight of Travis combined with the difficulty of moving through the snow. “Almost there,” he said, but in fact, he wasn’t sure how far it was. He kept tromping. And tromping. But he knew the woods, knew the river’s edge that ran by his property. “Talk to me! Tell me about your girl!”

And the boy tried. He named her—Felicity. Must be the next generation’s girls’ names, Ian thought, almost laughing if he’d had the breath. “Keep talking!” he demanded. “This Felicity, you in love with her or something?”

“She’s a good girl…”

“That bites,” Ian said. “Sucks she couldn’t be a bad girl. You don’t know, bud—those bad girls, they get right under your skin. She pretty?”

“Pretty,” he said.

“Atta boy, keep talking,” Ian said, laying the boy carefully on the ground. “I’m going to fire a couple shots to let them know we’re coming.” And Ian quickly put another two in a fat tree, just to be sure there was some backup on the way. The kid was in rough shape so, if he had to, he’d take him out of here and come back in the dark of night for Jack, but it would be better if—