“You can,” she answered drily. “I drove my father’s tractor, which was computerized, and tilled the soil every spring and fall starting at age twelve. I’ve never been on an old tractor like this before.”
A one-cornered grin appeared on his mouth. “No worries. I know how to use it.”
“You can teach me?”
“Sure, if you want.”
“I do.”
He looked around. “This place needs a lot of work,” he murmured, “but then, I know you realize that, too.”
“I need a barn, or something similar, to put all this equipment inside to keep it protected from the weather. Plus, a place to do oil changes, and repairs.”
Nodding, Colin gestured to the elephant in the room, the log cabin. “What are you going to do with this?”
“Fix it.” She saw his straight black brows rise. “I know it’s broken-down, but it’s part of the history, an important part of it for the ranch family who first came here. I want to save it.”
He nodded slowly, holding her gaze and then lifting his chin, assessing the cabin. “You know? I feel like that poor ole cabin most days. At least no one has told me I should be scrapped yet.”
She felt an immediate kinship with Colin. His words had come out low, emotion veiled in them, and the look on his face broke her heart. He was in just as bad a place as she was. Maybe the reasons were different, but the outcome was the same. “Funny,” she murmured, giving him an understanding look, “I stood here a while back after buying this place and saw myself in that old beat-up cabin, too.”
Colin turned, studying her for a moment, and then returned his gaze to the cabin. “You sure don’t look beat-up,” he said in a rasp.
“Looks are deceiving,” was all she’d say.
Taking the elk-skin gloves out of his back pocket, he pulled them on. “That’s true, “ he said. “Chase is working with the local feed-and-seed store. He’s going to get a Quonset hut structure out here that’s made of galvanized aluminum and steel, a barn of sorts, that will take care and protect all this equipment. He said it will be coming in about a week and the crew that’s delivering it will set it up for us.”
Shocked, she stared at him. “A Quonset hut?” Mary had said nothing about putting a hut on her land! She knew the prices of Quonset huts; her father had one for his tractor. “That’s a lot of money!”
“This is one that Chase has had on his ranch and he’s not using it. He’s going to have the wranglers take it apart and I’ll haul it up here on this flatbed.” He hooked his thumb toward the truck. Looking up at the cloudless sky, he said, “It rains a lot in April, but we have about a six-day window of no rain, and he’s planning on getting it set up here so we have a place to store and work on the equipment, before the bad weather arrives.”
“Still, that’s amazing,” she murmured, shaking her head. “I’ve never seen such generosity. Ever.”
“Welcome to Silver Creek Valley,” he said, giving her an amused look. “The folks here stick together like glue. They help each other out where and when they can.”
“I’ll need to repay him someday,” she said, worried about that.
“Naw, Chase said it was yours to keep. Like I said, he has no use for it any longer. Just consider this a repurposing of it, instead of being junked.”
Uncomfortable, she looked around the area, trying to deal with a surge of emotion: disbelief and wanting to cry all at the same time because people she didn’t even know were giving her more than a helping hand. Clearing her throat, she tried to hide her surging feelings. “Where would you put that Quonset hut, Colin?”
“Why don’t you give me the layout as you see it, first, so I know more before answering you?”
That was fair, and for the next ten minutes they walked around where the log cabin stood and she gave him a verbal map of what she was going to do, and where it would be located.
Finally, when they were done with the walkabout, they stood next to the flatbed. “What is your idea of where things should go?” she asked, looking up at him. Colin was not pretty-boy handsome, his face lean, nose clean and sharp, high cheekbones with that growth of beard making her feel things toward a man she’d not felt in a long, long time. Seeing the look in his gaze change, become more thoughtful, he glanced one way and then the other, his gaze sweeping the area.
“You want your barn near the road so you don’t have to build a large driveway in order to get to it.” He pointed to where she wanted the vegetable crops, which would be located behind the log cabin area. “You’ve got a wide, strong-flowing creek. That’s good news and bad news.” He pointed to the rutted dirt road that was covered by the creek. “That is going to require some construction to put a small bridge across it. You can’t keep driving through it all the time, especially with heavier equipment. And you don’t want your Quonset hut too close to it because in the spring, like now, it’s flooding from the snow melting off the mountain range and coming down into the valley, here. If this were my ranch, I’d place the Quonset hut closer to the entrance to this ranch, and very close to this old road that’s seen better days.”
She lifted her hand, shading her eyes, looking at where he was pointing. “Because it’s drier and out of the flooding area?” she guessed. She saw him nod and give her a look of praise. It felt good. Feeling pummeled by so many things that were happening at once, she was grateful that Colin knew so much.
“Exactly. Plus, if you have to have a piece of equipment taken out for major repair or something? It will make it easier to be on ground that doesn’t have any other buildings nearby.”
“All good reasons,” she said. Giving him a grateful look, she whispered, “I’m really glad Mr. Bishop is allowing you to be up here to help me. Do you have a degree in engineering?”
“No, just common horse sense. And I’m sure Chase will be coming here within the next week to assess your place and give you some good advice and ideas. You can bet he’ll see things I don’t, and be able to help you set up the structures you need in good places.”
“I feel like the cavalry just rode in. I never expected so much help and gifts.” She turned, gesturing to the tractor on the flatbed.
“People of this valley pitch in and help. We’ve all been in places where we need a hand up,” he said, rubbing his jaw, looking around. “Did you know that Mary Bishop has a double-wide mobile home coming to your ranch next week? It’s going to be our sleeping quarters, our offices and HQ.”
Gasping, her eyes widening, Dana pressed her hand to her heart. “She what?”
Grinning a little, Colin told her everything that Chase had told him about the mobile home. She looked like a lightning bolt had struck her: stunned and with no words. When she said nothing, her hand still pressed to her heart, he added, “It’s got four bedrooms. One at each end of it. Mary is going to have the bedrooms next to where we sleep, turned into offices for each of us. In this coming week? We’ll be having a plumbing company out here, a couple of wranglers from Chase’s ranch bringing in a concrete mixer to pour a foundation for the mobile home, plus the electric and phone company coming out. You’re going to be busy, so we need to decide right away where you want your living quarters.”