A Virgin River Christmas (Virgin River #4)(70)

Afraid he might come home from school one day to find her gone, he cut school and went alone to the vet and held her while she drifted off, painless. He couldn’t stand the thought she might go alone; he wouldn’t put it past his father to take her, drop her off, leave her to die by herself. God, her face was more peaceful and rested in death than it had been for the last year of her life. Seeing that, it should have made him feel glad for her, relieved—she wasn’t going to last much longer anyway.

He couldn’t let Velvet go alone. He had needed the time to say goodbye, and he didn’t want to come home and find her gone. He needed to be with her—like Marcie had needed to be with Bobby. He swallowed hard.

But his memory drifted back to Velvet, remembering the whole loss, how it tore him up. He’d gone off to private places where he could cry like a girl, unable to let his parents or friends see he had that amount of emotion.

“That mountain lion’s been bothering their property—stalking,” Jack said. “The dogs have been running it off, keeping it away from the goats and hens.”

“How old was the kid’s dog?” Ian asked.

“I don’t know, exactly. Six or eight—a border collie, a herder named Whip. They had a half-dozen farm dogs, mostly herders, outdoor animals, but Travis raised that one himself. He picked her out of a litter and for a while she was a 4-H project. Goesel said he couldn’t keep the damn dog out of the kid’s bed. You know farmers and their dogs—they don’t get overly sentimental as a rule. I don’t know how the cat managed to get to the dog—they usually aren’t looking for that kind of a fight.”

Ian ground his teeth. “Think I’d go after the son of a bitch, too.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Yeah, I had a dog growing up, too. Big dog—Spike, no kidding. He was almost a perfect animal. But he let my sisters dress him up. That used to make me sick, I’m telling you. The way he let himself be humiliated like that.”

Ian shot him a look and a big grin. He was picturing a German shepherd in a tutu and a disgruntled teenage boy. A laugh shot out of him.

“It wasn’t funny,” Jack said.

“I bet it was,” Ian said. Then he pulled off the road at a sharp left. “Gimme a minute here.” He jumped out of the truck, got some tools out of the box in the bed and went around to the front. He loosened up the brackets on the plow hitch, pulled the plow with all his might to angle it, then lowered it and tightened the brackets. It wasn’t the kind of plow fitting that had hydraulics inside the vehicle to move the blade, it was all manual, old and old-fashioned—but it got the job done. He threw his tools back in the box and got behind the wheel.

“I don’t see a road. You see a road?” Jack asked.

Ian laughed. “I know where the road is.”

“How?”

“I can feel it. Relax.”

Jack braced a foot against the floorboard, a hand against the dash and said, “I’ll relax when we’re not in a ditch. Go slow.”

Ian laughed at him. “So,” Ian said, maneuvering slowly, “if the kid’s smart, we’ll be looking for some kind of recent tracks, shelter, or…”

“A body,” Jack supplied.

“If he was lost, he might’ve followed the river or the road. About the time night was falling, he might’ve seen any one of several old logging roads,” Ian said. “You’re not going to see the road with the snow, but you’ll know it’s there by the tree line. Like I’m doing now.”

“I’m not convinced there isn’t a big hole right in your path, hidden by snow. You could go slower,” Jack said, tense.

“You could relax. I’ve been all over this place.” Then after a bit, he stopped the truck. “Want to head out from here?”

“Let’s do it.”

They exited the truck at the same time. Ian took a rifle out of the rack in his truck and a flashlight out of the glove compartment. Jack was digging around in his duffel.

“I only have one flare gun, but I have an extra stocking mask and a scarf—put this around your neck. We’ll start down this road together, but when we separate, if you find anything, just fire a couple rounds. With me?”

“Gotcha.” Ian buttoned up his jacket and thought, I didn’t have any reason for the long underwear this morning, damn it. He wrapped the long plaid scarf around his head and neck, partly covering his face. He missed the heavy beard right now. “See, I think the dog wasn’t as scrappy as the other dogs because she was a little spoiled by Travis,” Ian said, speaking as though he knew Travis and the dog. “That could’ve been working on him at the same time.”

“I know,” Jack said. “How’s your flashlight? You need batteries?”

“To tell the truth, I’m not sure.”

Jack pulled some extra batteries out of his duffel as well as a hand gun he tucked in his waist. He tossed Ian the batteries, then two bottled waters that Ian put in each pocket. They walked down the road, looking right and left, and hadn’t gone far when Jack said, “Okay, I’m going this way into that stand of trees.”

“I’ll head this way,” Ian said, and they separated.

Ian walked toward the river, eyes trained on the ground, on the landscape, and occasionally up into the branches just in case that big cat was having a little game of hide and seek. And he thought some about the kid remembering himself at sixteen; he’d been a hothead, devoted to a few things in his life, and his dog was one of them.