“But Dad,” said Bea, tears still in her voice. “I’ll just ask Daddy Clay.”
“Daddy Clay says the same,” said Clay as he came out of the tack room with a soft body brush for Cinders. “You can brush her down, and then walk her up and down inside the barn a little.”
“Why can’t she ride Cinders this morning?” asked Ty, his heart oddly wrenching at the thought of the little girl being unable to have her heart’s desire on Christmas morning.
“It’s cold,” said Bill. “But more than that, the snow is deep, and the tractor we normally use to plow the road is on the fritz.”
“Oh,” said Ty, feeling useless as he stood there while Bill went into Leland’s office and came out with two cups of hot coffee from the new Keurig machine.
Ty tasted his, it was creamy and tasted of hazelnut and was a bit on the sweet side, but he was grateful for it, just the same.
“Yeah,” said Bill as he watched Clay petting Cinders’ soft nose. “Normally Jasper, our blacksmith, he’d already have taken care of it, but he’s stuck in his cabin down the road. But he’s been busy making more of those fire pits, like the one we got here. That and jewelry made out of horseshoe nails and suchlike so some of the general mechanical maintenance has fallen by the wayside.”
Not sounding like he was blaming Jasper at all, Bill gestured to the as yet unlit fire pit sitting cold and still in the middle of the barn.
Ty worked his jaw. He knew he could fix that tractor and plow the road clear in under half an hour. But was it his place? He wasn’t either of Bea’s two dads, so he should keep his mouth shut and mark the time until he could reach someone to pull his rig out of the ditch it was currently in.
Or….
Orhe could make an offer to fix the tractor and plow the road, only to have it turned down.
Or….
Orhe could simply find the tractor, fix it, and plow the road, all without asking permission, and let the chips fall where they might.
It was the least he could do to repay the ranch’s kindness for taking him in for the night. Not to mention, his own heart was about to break at the sight of Bea’s face, and those big green eyes so desperate with the hope that one of her two dads would change their mind.
He walked into Leland’s office and put his half-finished cup of coffee on the desk, then came out again, zipping up his down vest, pulling his gloves out of his pocket, tightening the scarf around his neck.
“Bill,” he said, low, so only Bill could hear what he had to say. “Where’s that tractor?”
“Can you fix it?” asked Bill, his mouth barely moving from behind the edge of his coffee cup, his eyes never moving from Cinders in her box stall.
“I can try,” said Ty, a bit of brightness building in his chest. His own life might be in tatters but that didn’t mean that Bea and Cinders couldn’t have a terrific Christmas morning.
CHAPTER 6
The crystal, polished-glass air filled Ty’s lungs as he bent over the engine of a good-sized yellow-and-green John Deere tractor, complete with hefty plow in front. The problem was, quite simply, a detached alternator coil wire, which would have been hard for anyone not familiar with the tractor’s engine to see.
Jasper would have found the problem inside of a moment, but he’d evidently been busy making beautiful fire pits, the benefit and beauty of which outweighed the needs of a tractor’s engine. Except, for now, on a crystal clear Christmas morning when there was a new pony to ride.
Ty attached everything that was loose and had the tractor up and running inside of fifteen minutes. With Bill’s efficient instructions and guidance, had a good stretch of snowy road plowed just about down to the dirt in half an hour.
The almost soft snow would freeze back up by noontime, but meanwhile, as Bea stood in the doorway of the barn hopping up and down as she watched the road become safe for her to ride, Ty knew he’d done the right thing.
Behind Bea stood Austin and Clay. They both looked likethey were trying to appear stern and dubious but were failing miserably and, within a heartbeat, Clay disappeared inside the barn.
Ty drove the tractor back up to the metal storage shed where he’d found it, parked it, turned the engine off, and listened to the silence fall around his ears.
This wasn’t his family or his home or even his Christmas morning, but he knew he’d done the right thing and, if Santa truly existed, then that fine old gentleman would have approved of what Ty had done and then some.
“Get on out of there,” said Bill, coming up to the shed, his breath in the blue air swirling around his head in a wreath. “You might as well watch this.”
Following Bill back to the barn, Ty realized that, in spite of the new red scarf, how cold he was, as he’d left his knitted cap in the cabin, and he’d quite forgotten his gloves in the shed. He rubbed his hands together, and stopped when Bill stopped, then came around to Bill’s side to watch the magic unfold.
Clay was leading Cinders out of the barn, and the dappled pony was picking her way daintily among the clumps of snow left behind by the tractor’s snow plow blade.
On her bare back was Bea and she was not sitting up straight, no. Instead she was leaning forward, far enough so she half-lay on the pony’s neck, her hands and face buried in the pony’s silver-gray mane, hugging the horse with all of her little might.
