MC02 - A Family's Blessing by Carolyne Aarsen

Author:Carolyne Aarsen [Aarsen, Carolyne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Goodreads: 56333256
Publisher: Misty Ridge Publishing
Published: 2021-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Was that a tractor running?

Ethan sat up in his bed, listening to the unmistakable putt-putt of his John Deere.

Puzzled, he glanced at the blinking zeroes on his bedside alarm clock. The power must have gone off last night.

The angle of the sun slanting into the trailer registered.

Rats. He’d slept in. And someone was trying to steal one of his tractors.

He yanked on his pants and grabbed his shirt as he slipped bare feet into his battered cowboy boots. No time for socks. He had to get outside and find out what was going on. He shouldn’t have let Scout sleep in the house with Hannah. The dog would have warned him about the intruder.

Ethan snapped the buttons on his shirt as he jogged across the yard, trying to pinpoint the sound. There. In the corrals.

Surely a potential thief wouldn’t be running the tractor in the corrals? He ran around the corner of the barn and skidded to a halt.

Scout was trotting alongside the tractor, like he always did when Ethan fed the cows, and at the wheel, Ethan caught the unmistakable outline of Hannah’s abundant hair. The bale forks held a bale of hay, and she was driving the tractor toward the feeder.

How in the world had she figured out so quickly how to run the tractor, let alone handle the front-end loader? He only remembered giving her the one lesson.

This was not going to turn out well.

The tractor slowed down, then jumped ahead, the bale on the forks bouncing.

Fearful for his tractor’s transmission in the hands of this rank amateur, Ethan vaulted over the fence and ran toward the vehicle.

She stopped the tractor, then it slowly crawled ahead. Ethan easily caught up but waited until she stopped by the feeder before he dared get into the cab.

He clambered up the steps and yanked the door open.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he shouted above the noise of the engine.

She ignored him as she studied the controls for the loader. “Up is down, and down is up,” he barely heard her mutter over the noise of the cows and the tractor.

“Stop right now,” he ordered. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

She turned to him, and he already knew her well enough to recognize the set of her jaw and the determination in her eyes. “I’m learning.”

“At the expense of my tractor.”

“I haven’t stalled it yet.” She raised the loader, inched the tractor ahead, then pushed the joystick to one side. The bale tipped down, then with agonizing slowness slipped off the forks into the feeder. She gave Ethan a smug look. “You going to get out of my way so I can cut strings?”

“Hannah, I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, but I’ll feed the cows.”

Hannah made a show of glancing at her watch. “You snooze, you lose. Besides, weren’t you supposed to be up bright and early this morning, getting your crop in?”

“The power went out last night. I slept in.”

“I’m not surprised. You must have been up until midnight working on that tractor.

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