Afraid to close his eyes again, he stood and began pacing from one end of the room to the other. On one of his trips, he noticed two little beady eyes peeking out from underneath the sofa and came close to jumping up on the workbench, but then a little gray kitten inched its way toward the stove. In a few seconds, a yellow one and then a black-and-white one did the same. And then a big calico cat came from the tiny bathroom with a dead mouse in her teeth. She dropped it beside the kittens, and they began to growl and fight over their dinner.

“I’m not afraid of mice or spiders, and I’ve seen rats as big as possums and spiders that would cover a dinner plate,” he told the cats, “but snakes are a different matter, and for a second there, I thought for sure you were one of those.”

He went back over the symptoms of hypothermia—fumbling and confusion. He ripped his gloves off and held his hands out. No tremors. That was a good sign, but talking to himself and seeing snakes instead of kittens wasn’t.

The mama cat came right over to him and began to rub around his legs, her purrs so loud that they covered up the crackling sounds of the fire. Cody squatted down and rubbed her fur from the top of her head to the tip of her tail. “Are you depending on mice to raise these kids of yours, or has Max got some dry food hiding somewhere in this room?”

As if she understood him, she went over to a plastic bin shoved up under the worktable and sniffed it. Cody pulled the lid off, and sure enough, it was filled to the brim with dry cat food. He found an empty margarine container and scooped out enough to fill it, then set it beside the stove. “That should keep you for a day or two, but you’re a good mama to give your kids a taste for mice. That will keep the varmints out of the barn.”

His hands and feet finally stopped tingling, so he removed his hat and coat and tossed them on the end of the sofa. The room was warming up nicely, and there was nothing to do but settle in for the duration. He laid his head on the sofa arm and closed his eyes. With all the work going on at the ranch, and his doctoring business, he was usually on the run from daylight until after dark. Jesse would come rescue him by morning, so he might as well take advantage of a free evening.

*  *  *