Daisies in the Canyon(41)

Abby had been raised in a tiny apartment with her mother; Ezra had lived like a king. She figured Cooper must have a similar setup on Lucky Seven, but when the big two-story white house came into sight, she gasped. Several turned porch posts supported a sleeping porch that wrapped around three sides of the house, with doors that opened out of bedrooms on the second floor. Several cats lazed against the railings.

Cooper was sitting in the first of a line of rocking chairs lined up on the wide porch. He waved and said, “Welcome to this side of the barbed-wire fence.”

“You scared the shit out of me,” she said breathlessly. “I figured you’d be in the field and I’d have to call you to tell me how to get there.”

He chuckled. “Sorry about that. I waited on you so we could take my old farm truck. Come on with me and we’ll drive out to the back of the ranch. It’s on the southwest corner of the property and I’d hate for you to drive your good vehicle down the rutted path.”

She held out a paper bag. “Chicken, cookies, and half a dozen leftover biscuits stuffed with strawberry jelly.”

“You are an angel straight from heaven,” he groaned.

“You might have trouble convincing Shiloh and Bonnie of that.” She laughed. “Show me the way. I’m still a rookie, but I’ll do my best.”

“Long as the seed gets in the ground, I’m not complainin’.” He helped her into the old truck with a blanket thrown over the wide bench seat. No console between them. No fancy dash or CD player. It looked like it might fall apart any minute, but when he started the engine, it purred like a kitten.

“Radio doesn’t work, either,” he said when he caught her scanning the inside. “Grandpa bought it used in the sixties. It’s like an old mule. Still got a lot of good in it, if you baby it just a little and don’t use it like a hot rod. And Abby, you don’t have to work until midnight. When you get tired, just call me and I’ll drive you back to the house. Weatherman says it’s going to rain cats, dogs, and baby elephants tomorrow, so I wanted to get the seed in the ground. It’ll be too muddy to get the tractors in the fields if it does rain.”

“A wise man I know told me once that friends help friends. I think his initials are CW.” She smiled.

“Imagine that,” Cooper said.

They were both quiet on the way to where the moonlight lit up two big green tractors sitting at the edge of a freshly plowed field. With darkness surrounding them, they looked like monsters instead of machinery.

“Here we are. We’ve got about five hours and that should get the job done with both of us working,” he said.

She turned toward him and nodded. “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do my best.”

She was in the tractor cab making the first round exactly like Cooper told her when she realized what he’d said about the weather on Saturday. He and Rusty would be in a patrol car transporting a prisoner to San Antonio. She and her sisters—when did she start thinking of them as sisters, anyway—would be doing chores. If it was raining all that hard, there was no way they’d be able to plow or plant that last field that Rusty mentioned. That meant a day off and she planned dozens of ways to use the time as she drove the tractor up and down the field by the scanty moonlight.

All the light disappeared behind clouds after a couple of hours and she had to depend on the headlights, instinct, and hope. She could see the lights of Cooper’s tractor across the fence from where she worked and he seemed to be going faster than she was. Afraid that she’d mess up, she kept her speed steady. She’d seen the cost of the seed they’d planted on Malloy Ranch and there was no way she’d waste that much money by not doing the job right.

Besides, you want to please him, right? It was Haley’s voice in her head that time and Abby’s eyes were too heavy to even argue with her friend.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a ziplock bag full of candy, opened it with one hand, and dumped all the pieces on the seat beside her. The sugar rush woke her up, but talking to Cooper on the phone for an hour was what really helped.

“So what is your favorite kind of music?” he asked.

“Country.”

“I’m shocked. I figured you for a hard rock girl like Bonnie.”

She laughed. “Then prepared to be double shocked. Bonnie listens to country music, too.”

“Your favorite artist?”

“Travis Tritt and Blake Shelton. It’s a toss-up,” she answered.

“And female artist?”

“Miranda Lambert and or the Pistol Annies. How about you?”

“Male artist is George Strait. Female would be a tie between Martina McBride and Patsy Cline.”

“Did your grandpa introduce you to Patsy?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah. He loved her and Loretta Lynn. We’ve still got a turntable in the living room and dozens of vinyl records that I play sometimes.”

His roots really did go way, way down into the ground.

“Favorite food?” he asked.

“Don’t laugh at me, but I love good old greasy hamburgers made on a charcoal grill. Not one of those gas ones, but real charcoal,” she said. “Your turn.”

“Steaks on a charcoal grill.”

A few rain sprinkles dotted the windshield, but they didn’t last long. Maybe the weatherman had been wrong or perhaps the storm blew right over the top of the canyon and went on its merry way.