By the fourth machine Maya stopped pretending she was casually inspecting.
She crouched.
Pulled a small flashlight from her back pocket.
The younger ranch hand watched closely.
“Find something?”
“Maybe.”
Clayton laughed.
“That’s what the Denver guy said.”
Maya glanced at him.
“Did he ask for service records?”
Clayton’s smile faded.
“He had whatever he needed.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“You always answer questions with questions?”
“When people avoid the first one.”
The older ranch hand looked away again.
Clayton came closer.
“He had access to records.”
“All of them?”
“Ask the foreman.”
Maya looked toward the man in navy coveralls.
The grin disappeared from his face for the first time.
Clayton gestured.
“Logan Mercer. Shop foreman. Eleven years.”
Logan uncrossed his arms.
“Records are in the office.”
“Digital?”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Some old handwritten stuff.”
“I want all of it.”
Logan laughed.
“You planning to read ten years of maintenance in seven days?”
Maya straightened.
“I didn’t know I had seven days.”
Clayton’s amusement returned.
“You don’t.”
She looked at him.
He pointed across the silent machines.
“You came here because your shop needs work.”
“My shop has work.”
“Your shop has a leaking roof and a bank note.”
Maya went still.
Clayton lifted his eyebrows.
“Small towns.”
“People talk.”
“People should learn hobbies.”
“Your father owed more on that place than it was worth when he died.”
Maya said nothing.
Her father had been dead four years.
Daniel Carter had operated Carter Diesel & Equipment Repair outside Billings for thirty-one years.
The shop sat on six acres with two old service bays, a machine shed, a small house, and enough accumulated equipment to make an auctioneer either delighted or suicidal.
When Daniel died suddenly from an aneurysm at fifty-eight, Maya inherited all of it.
Including the debt.
She had been twenty-two.
Customers had offered condolences.
Then half of them quietly moved their business somewhere else.
A few told her why.
One asked whether she planned to hire “a real mechanic.”
Another wanted to know if her boyfriend handled hydraulic work.
One farmer waited until she repaired his combine, then asked whether her father had walked her through it over the phone before he died.
She stopped explaining after that.
Engines were better arguments.
A machine either ran or it didn’t.
Four years later, enough people had returned that Carter Repair was surviving.
Barely.
But survival and security were not the same thing.
The bank knew that.
Apparently Clayton did too.
Maya looked at him.
“You invite me here to repair machines or audit my finances?”
Clayton smiled.
“I wanted to know whether you were hungry.”
“For what?”
“To prove yourself.”
“I repair equipment for money.”
“That simple?”
“Usually.”
Clayton glanced toward the nine dead machines.
Then toward Logan.
Then back at Maya.
“You get all nine running properly in seven days, the north herd is yours.”
Nobody spoke.
The older ranch hand turned.
Logan laughed first.
A full laugh.
“You’re serious?”
Clayton ignored him.
Maya stared.
“What north herd?”
“Breeding cows.”
“How many?”
“One hundred.”
The older hand stopped smiling.
A hundred healthy breeding cows represented more than a joke.
Depending on age, genetics, market prices, and pregnancy status, they were worth well into six figures.
More importantly, they could become the foundation of a cattle operation.
Maya’s father had owned cattle once.
Thirty-two cows and one bull on leased ground.
He sold them when her mother became ill.
He never rebuilt the herd.
Maya still had access to eighty acres behind the shop and a grazing lease on another four hundred acres belonging to an elderly neighbor who had told her for years he would rather lease to “Daniel’s girl” than a development company.
She had land enough for a beginning.