“Most of the time, Candy Cane,” I teased and kissed his cold lips.
He laughed and passed Elvis to Natalie, and then he held out his hand to help me up. “Do we hear what, Killer?” he asked while helping me brush off my backside rather thoroughly.
“That rumbling.” I adjusted my hat so it didn’t cover my ears, listening in the wind. The sound was definitely louder, sort of growling now. “I think it’s coming from that way.” I pointed toward the dark road behind us.
Natalie moved up next to me, Elvis wrapped in her arms, and stared into the darkness behind my Honda. “Maybe the snowplow driver is coming back with a mechanic.”
“That ain’t no whiny snowmobile engine,” Harvey said, walking past us. He stopped at the back bumper and stared into the flying snow beyond it.
We all joined him, Natalie pausing long enough to shove Elvis inside the warm vehicle.
What started as a dull glow in the darkness grew and brightened as the rumbling intensified.
“It sounds like my uncle’s Sherman tank,” Cornelius said next to me.
Harvey did a double-take. “Yer uncle has a tank?”
“He has three, including a Panzer. He takes his war games seriously.”
Harvey’s two gold teeth glittered in the red glow of my taillights. “I’d sure like to play on his battlefield.”
“You think that’s Cooper and his cavalry?” I asked nobody in particular.
“I sure hope so,” Harvey sniffed. “ ‘Cause it’s cold as a cast-iron commode out here, and my twig and berries are one stiff breeze from breakin’ free and blowin’ clear to the Wyoming state line.”
“Mine, too,” Natalie said, shivering. When Harvey and I both frowned at her, she added, “My berries, I mean, since I’m currently twig-less due to my sabbatical.”
“You’re twig-less, all right,” I said.
“Can it, ninnyhammer.” She nudged me into Doc, who steadied me in front of him.
The glow became a glare in the white landscape, making me squint. I counted eight headlamps. “What is it?” I asked Doc as the engine growl became louder than the wind.
“A snowcat.”
I shielded my eyes as the imposing beast of a machine came to a stop in front of us. “Where on earth did Cooper get a snowcat on Christmas Eve?” I shouted above the noise.
Harvey grabbed my elbow and tugged me off to the right, out of the bright spotlights. The diesel engine idled down to a low, rhythmic rattle, making it easier to hear. “It ain’t Coop’s, it’s Reid’s.”
Now that I wasn’t blinded by the eight headlamps, I had a better view of the snowcat. Sporting a snow blade on the front and two wide tracks in place of wheels, the big boxy cab had four windows running along each side and a rack on the top.
The driver-side door opened. Reid Martin crawled out onto the wide track and jumped down to the road, joining us along with Doc.
Reid’s red canvas coat and Santa hat matched the color of his snowcat. “Hey, Sparky. I hear you’re in need of a big strong fireman again.”
I laughed and gave him a hug. He smelled like hot chocolate and felt as warm as a toasted marshmallow. “Am I glad to see you, Fire Captain Martin. Please tell me you left a certain crabby-pants elf back in Deadwood.”
“Nope. Coop threatened me with bodily harm if I didn’t bring him along for the ride. He’s inside letting dispatch know we found you.”
Dang. Of course Cooper would want to come up here and chew me out in person for dragging his uncle into this blustering mess.
“What do you have there, Martin?” Doc asked, pointing at the snowcat. “A magic sleigh?”
Reid grinned, thumbing toward the snowcat. “That little thing? That’s a ’74 Thiokol Spryte 1200C with 44-inch wide tracks able to cut through sand, swamp, mud, snow, or anything else you can throw in its path.”
“Like this blizzard?” I asked.
His eyes crinkled in the corners. “Sure. I can punch a road through the snow without breaking a sweat and haul your gear up top, too.”
Doc’s face lit up as he admired Reid’s big-boy toy. “Where’d you pick that up?”
“Yellowstone National Park was auctioning off its old snowcats a few years back. I grabbed one, figuring it’d be good to have here in the hills for emergencies in the backcountry. I gutted the back and refitted it with fold-up bench seats in case I needed to use it as a makeshift ambulance.”
I joined Doc in his admiration. Something this big could fit all of us in it and my Christmas haul, too. “How fast does it go, Reid?”
“Fast enough to get you down to Rapid City in time for Santa Claus to wiggle down that chimney.”
Cooper rounded the front of the snowcat. “Dotty wanted me to remind you that you’re invited to her place for Christmas dinner if you have nowhere else to go,” he told Reid, before turning on me with a chiseled glare under his black knit beanie hat. He crossed his arms, looking even bigger and more intimidating than usual in his bulky police coat. “Parker, you picked one hell of a night to get stuck out in the middle of nowhere.”
I raised my chin. “Did you come all of the way up here to rub that in, Cooper?”
“No. I came up here to drag your ass back to town.”
I dug in my heels. “I’m not going back to Deadwood.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, she’s not.” Natalie took my side, literally, and locked elbows with me. “And you can’t make us.”
Cooper’s gaze narrowed as he looked back and forth between us.
“We’re headin’ down to Rapid, Coop,” Harvey said, huddling his shoulders as a stiff wind rattled us. “And yer comin’, too.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because we want you to,” I said, bumping Natalie’s shoulder. “Don’t we, Nat?”
“Yeah, we sure do,” Natalie said, although she could have tried harder to sound like she meant it, darn it.
I turned to Reid. “You have enough fuel to get us down to Rapid?”
He nodded. “But I need a favor in
