The Amish Christmas Cowboy

“I told you. Mr. Summerhays has taken care of everything. There’s a guest room on the first floor near the kitchen. You can recover there.”

He forced his frustration down. If he’d been thinking straight, he would have known J.J. couldn’t stay while Toby went to the hospital. Their schedule was tight, and delaying one place meant upsetting many valuable customers they hoped would give them more work.

Was this the answer to his problem on how to protect Sarah from Ned’s machinations? He hadn’t guessed it’d be for him to have a sprained ankle and be as helpless as a boppli.

“I guess I don’t have another choice.” His voice sounded childish even to his ears. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I—”

“Never mind. We need to be out front for when the car gets here, so let’s go,” she said with something that sounded like disappointment.

Disappointment? With him?

If so, she would have to get used to that during the next eight weeks. He’d disappointed everyone in his life.

Including himself.

Chapter Four (#ubc44ee9f-cdcd-5677-b51a-ea9bf2c01656)

The second annual Salem Volunteer Fire Department Berry-fest Dinner was well underway by the time Sarah arrived at the new fire station. Parked out front were the big fire engines and the ambulance that had taken Toby to the hospital earlier that day.

That day? To Sarah, it seemed impossible only a few hours had passed since Natalie had come to alert her that a cowboy was on the porch.

After a quiet drive home from the hospital in Mr. Summerhays’s luxurious truck, Sarah had been relieved when, as they came into the house, her boss had offered to help get Toby, who was reeling from his pain medication, into the guest room on the main floor. She’d agreed to come early the next day so Mr. Summerhays could finish work he’d had to ignore that afternoon. When he asked her to arrange for Toby’s physical therapist’s first visit, she realized her boss had added the Texan to her list of responsibilities.

She looked forward to talking with a trained physical therapist, but she wasn’t sure how Toby would feel about her involvement.

As she opened the door into the firehouse, she pushed that concern aside. She was attending the festive dinner with her friends, and she didn’t want her mind mired in thoughts of the injured man.

Inside the new fire station, which had been dedicated the previous year, tables were set end to end in three rows. Folding chairs were occupied by neighbors who were enjoying barbecued chicken and salads before the volunteer firefighters served them generous slabs of berry pie. A kitchen could be seen beyond a wide pass-through window where urns held kaffi and rows of cups of lemonade and iced tea waited to be claimed. Faint strains of country music came from a speaker in one corner, but it was drowned out by the dozens of conversations in the open space.

A few months ago, heads would have turned when Sarah and her three best friends walked in. However, the residents of the small village had become accustomed to their new plain neighbors among them.

She wondered what the reaction would be if they learned Sarah’s friends had jokingly named themselves the Harmony Creek Spinsters’ Club. They were too old to belong to a youth group but weren’t married, so they didn’t fit in anywhere except with each other. As a group, they enjoyed shopping in the village or attending events like the Berry-fest Dinner.

“Where do you want to sit?” asked Annie Wagler, the more talkative of the Wagler twins. She and her sister, Leanna, were at least two inches shorter than Sarah. Their lustrous black hair glowed with a bluish sheen in the station’s bright lights.

“Do you see four chairs together?” Sarah scanned the room, seeing many familiar faces. People she’d met in the village as well as those living in the new settlement along Harmony Creek.

“There.” Miriam Hartz, a tall blonde, pointed to the right. “Two empty chairs facing two empty chairs.”

“Perfect.” Sarah led the way. When she sat facing the twins, she smiled as Miriam took the chair next to her.

She was delighted. She hadn’t had a chance to talk to Miriam in the past couple of weeks because her friend was busy making preparations for the new school year, which would begin at the end of August. As the Amish school opened two weeks before the private school the Summerhays kinder went to, she was hoping to arrange for a visit. Her charges had so many questions about their plain neighbors, and it would be a gut way to introduce them to kinder their own ages.

“What a wunderbaar idea!” Miriam exclaimed when Sarah brought up the subject. “It’ll help my scholars, too, by letting them meet younger Englisch neighbors. For the most part, their interactions have been with Englisch who work in the stores in Salem.”

“When do you start school?”

“The last full week of this month.”

“The same week as the Washington County fair?”

Miriam gave her a wry smile. “It was either that, or we’d be in session when it was time for next spring’s planting. However, we’ll be doing half days at the end of the first week, so the scholars and their families can go to the fair later in the day. The days count toward our total, and to be honest, the kids have too much summer on their minds to get much work done.”

“Especially as they had to make up days in June and July.”

With the disruption of moving into the new settlement in Harmony Creek Hollow, many of the school-age kinder hadn’t attended the minimum number of days required by the state, so a short session had been necessary. Miriam had held school in her home until the new building had been completed after the Fourth of July.

“I’m hoping they’ll be eager to get back to work,” Miriam replied, “instead of thinking about playing ball. Some would be happy to do that all day, every day.”

The Summerhays kids didn’t play ball other than in video games. A basketball court behind the house hadn’t been used except for storage of supplies for the house renovation. Other than Natalie, who took every opportunity to be with the horses, the kinder preferred to stay indoors. Each time Sarah had insisted on them joining her for a walk, they complained as if being sent to the North Pole in the middle of winter, instead of enjoying the chance to pick fresh berries from the bushes along the road and edging the farm’s fields.

“Sarah!”

She stiffened at her older brother’s voice, which seemed to silence everyone else. She wondered if Menno’s hearing was being damaged by their sawmill. He usually had sawdust clinging to his hair, but tonight it was neat.

Her brothers stopped by where she sat. Menno was short, only an inch or two taller than Sarah. Benjamin’s head reached several inches higher than their older brother’s. Both were built wide and thick like the stumps they left behind when they felled trees on the wood lot. Benjamin worked at the sawmill, but he’d spent most of his time for the past month planting apple trees.

“Why didn’t you tell us you were coming tonight?” asked Menno. “You could have come with us. I don’t like the idea of you driving alone after dark.”

Heat rose along Sarah’s cheeks as eyes turned toward them. Why did her older brother, who was ten years older than she was, treat her as if she were Mia’s age? Her brothers had always been protective of her, but since their move to the new settlement, they didn’t seem to believe she could breathe without supervision.

“I came with my friends,” she said, irritated that her brother’s sharp voice had drawn attention to them. “We hired Hank Puente to bring us in his van.” She couldn’t keep from raising her chin in defiance. “I mentioned that to you at least twice in the past week.”

Benjamin nodded with an apologetic smile, but Menno didn’t crack his stern facade. For a long moment, her older brother stared at her. She met his gaze, refusing to let him daunt her. At last, he clapped Benjamin on the shoulder and walked away.

“Whew,” Annie breathed. “Is it my imagination, or are your brothers keeping an eye on you more closely every day?”

“It’s not your imagination.”

Leanna reached across the table and patted Sarah’s hand in silent consolation.

“That’s ridiculous,” Miriam said at the same time. “You’re a grown woman, not a boppli.”

With a smile she hoped conveyed her appreciation for her friends coming to her defense, Sarah said, “I’ve tried to tell them that, but they don’t want to listen.”

“But they’re okay with you working for the Summerhays family?” Annie asked.

“They haven’t said otherwise.” She didn’t add her brothers knew—as she did—how important her wages were while they worked to establish their sawmill as a viable business.

In the past few weeks, Benjamin and Menno had been discussing the pine trees in their steep fields. A Christmas tree farm is what Benjamin called it, and she guessed that they hoped to sell fresh trees as the holidays approached. Plain families wouldn’t buy them, but Englischers might. However, until the harvest was in and the holiday season rolled around, the household depended on what she was paid each week. That her pay from Mr. Summerhays was always on time was a blessing she never took for granted.

“Guten owed, ladies,” came a deep voice, silencing her thoughts.

A look over her shoulder wasn’t necessary when Sarah saw the soft smile blossoming on Miriam’s face. Even if Sarah hadn’t recognized the voice as Eli Troyer’s, her friend’s expression announced how happy Miriam was to see the carpenter who lived at the far end of the hollow. The two had been walking out together for the past few weeks, a fact Sarah had guessed, though neither Miriam nor Eli had said a word.

Setting plates in front of them with a flourish worthy of the finest restaurant, Eli reminded them the dinner was all-you-can-eat.

Sarah chuckled when she looked at her plate heaped with chicken, french fries, and potato, macaroni and green salads. “I can’t eat all this.”