cry that echoed off the mountains around me.
“Liv! What the hell’s wrong with you?”
I felt a warm tongue lick my cheek. I opened my eyes. Beulah was standing over me and Michael was kneeling by my side, holding the side of his face. There was no mountain lion. Just Michael nearby and Beulah sitting beside me.
“Geez, that hurt,” Michael was saying, his hand pressed to his cheek.
He pulled his hand away from his face and I saw the scratches I had made, thinking he was the cat.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. My breath recovered.
Beulah wagged her tail and licked my face again. I coughed.
“Way to go, pooch,” Michael said to the dog. He stood up and tucked his pistol back into his holster. I followed his gaze off into the woods. “Come on. Before that mountain lion comes back.”
“So there was a cat.”
I remembered the loud crack, wondering if what I had heard was a gunshot. But I didn’t see any blood, other than from the scratch I’d made to Michael’s cheek. I assumed his shooting would have at least injured the mountain lion. I wondered if Michael had missed completely.
Looking a lot like a young, thin Wilford Brimley in an old cowboy flick, Michael stood over me, petting Beulah’s knobby head. Glancing at his pistol, he said, “Just scared him off. My granddaddy told me that when he was a boy, he used to walk to and from school five miles each way in the woods. His daddy gave him a small pistol. Not big enough to shoot at the mountain lions, but loud enough that when he shot into the air, the report would scare off any big cats that might be preying on him. He said it always worked.”
I stared at him, incredulously. My mouth dropped open. “And what if it hadn’t?”
Michael shrugged, a rascally grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. Then I realized he’d been messing with me. Michael knew what he was doing. In that split second when the cat had pounced, he had made a decision about leveling his sights on the beast. First, the large, young male likely outsized Michael’s ammunition. Second, the cat was moving, and so was I, which meant Michael would either miss altogether or possibly hit me or Beulah with the bullet.
I realized Michael had decided to aim his pistol in the air intentionally to scare off the cat, rather than taking aim at him. And I realized the mountain lion had probably changed its mind when it bowled me over and decided to run right past me when I hit the ground hard enough to lose my breath and injure my ribs. Beulah must have lunged for the cat and landed on top of me, her massive weight crushing my back. It hadn’t been the lion’s hot breath I had felt against my neck, but Beulah’s.
I suppose Beulah thought she was standing guard over me, protecting her master. But I could barely breathe with her eighty-five pound mass sitting on my back. She stuck so close to me, I could actually tell what flavor Dog Chow she’d had for breakfast.
“You saved my life.”
I sat dazed, assessing the damage. My palms stung and I felt a sharp pain in my lower chest.
Michael shrugged. “You saved mine.”
I plunged my hands in the snow for relief and wished Mom were here to lift me up onto the washing machine, spray my skinned palms with Bactine, and blow on them to take out the sting.
Michael was stroking the bloodhound’s ears. “Well, maybe not you. More like Beulah saved my life. That mountain lion was stalking me. In broad daylight.”
“I think I broke a rib.”
“Good girl.”
“How sensitive of you,” I said, shifting my weight to lessen the pain.
“I meant Beulah, not you. Don’t be stingy with those dog treats.”
As I offered Beulah a fistful, Michael spread his fingers over Beulah’s knobby skull again and added, “Don’t tell me—now that you have a taste for cats, you’re spoiled on humans?”
Beulah panted, enjoying his attention.
“Help me up,” I said.
Michael reached down and yanked me to my feet. Pain shot across my back and