I cocked an eyebrow at him in disbelief. “What?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Actually nothing comes to mind. You’re right.” He turned back as if to go. “I’ll just head back to my room and put my feet up while you take care of things out here.”
I grabbed his arm, smiling, all the while wondering who I was and why it was so easy to touch this man’s arm. Maybe it was because we were close once, that he felt like family? “Alright, maybe I’ll let you stay. The pancakes weren’t that bad.”
“Is Bob coming out?”
“My grandma drugged his juice with Tylenol PM last night. He’s still asleep. Which he’ll be furious about.”
He looked impressed. “Way to go, Susan. Our number one goal, for you and me, is to keep him in the house.”
“Agreed.”
Dusty accessed the snowdrifts blocking the manger for a moment. “Did your power go off in the house?”
“Yes.” My eyes widened. “Did yours?” In all my work to warm up and get the fires started this morning, I hadn’t even thought about the power going off for Dusty. There was no fireplace in the motel.
“Yeah.” He jumped up onto a rung of the gate to get a better vantage point in the corral. I was still mentally smacking myself at my lack of concern for him.
“Were you okay? Did you stay warm enough?”
His eyes met mine, unconcerned. “Yeah. I just threw on the extra blanket. Listen, I’m worried that the water pipes froze.” He motioned toward the water trough covered in two feet of snow. “I had just a tiny trickle of water this morning before it shut off completely. Did you have water pressure in the house?”
I thought back to my morning. The last time I used the restroom was at 4 am. When I washed my hands there had been a burst of water before a gurgle and then nothing. I hadn’t given it much thought because…ahem…4 am. “No. I don’t think there’s water pressure.”
He nodded, rubbing his hands together briskly before cupping them to his mouth and blowing on them. He appeared to be deep in thought, mulling over something.
I looked around. There was water in the house, but ten gallons of water wouldn’t last a day with the number of cows we had.
“Does your grandpa still have that tractor in the shed?”
I turned and eyed him, curiously. “Yes.”
“Any idea if it runs?”
“No.”
“Let’s go find out.” He jumped down from the fence. He motioned to the snowdrifts along the manger, the place where the cows stick their heads out of the corral and eat. The drifts were mountainous and would prevent us from feeding the cows as they were. “First, we have to move the snow here so we can get the cows fed. They’ll have enough water left in the tank to get them through until lunchtime. So first thing, I think we should get your grandpa’s tractor running and try to push the snow off the manger. Then we can feed them.”
“What about the water?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out. Any ideas?”
I looked around at the mountainous piles of snow glistening in front of us. “If the cows would just eat the snow, our problem would be over.”
“They’re not the brightest crayons in the box,” Dusty agreed. “But they do taste good, so maybe they’re worth all the extra work.”
“Mmm, now all I can think about is a hamburger.”
“With bacon.”
“And a big slab of pepper jack cheese.”
“You better stop that dirty talk.” Dusty grinned and rubbed his hands together, warding off the chill. “Let’s figure out water.”
My first thought was the creek up the road we used to play in as kids. Memories of a kiss flashed through my mind as I debated mentioning the creek, but I did anyway. For the cows. “How about the creek? It’s only about half a mile away. We could chip away the ice and fill up buckets there? Maybe take the tractor? Or the snowmobile.”
Dusty’s eyes lit up. “He’s got a snowmobile? Why didn’t you say so? That’s our whole afternoon, right there.”
