The Cactus Creek Challenge (12 page)

Ben’s ears rang, and a curious, floating feeling occupied the space between his ears. The schoolhouse wavered and wobbled … or was it him that was wobbling? He planted his palms on the ground, trying to clear the dizziness from his brain. After a moment, he forced himself to his shaky knees. Glancing behind him, he noted that the kids against the schoolhouse appeared to be all right, though some still held their hands over their ears, and Amanda had her eyes screwed up tight. Staggering forward, he made it to Ulysses.

To his shock and chagrin, the boy was laughing. A giggle at first, then great gouts of laughter that shook him from his scuffed boots to his curly hair. Quincy crawled over, and they collapsed into the grass, howling and rolling, holding their sides.

Ben wanted to throttle them.

And he would as soon as he stopped trembling like a wet kitten.

Relief that they weren’t dead, anger that they’d done something so dangerous and foolish, and a tinge of awe at their audacity made him light-headed. He sagged onto the ground and put his head between his knees.

Shouts and people running helped clear his senses. Half the town raced toward them across the empty lots between the schoolhouse and the dry goods store. His heart sloshed into his gut. Cassie was in the lead.

Right behind her came Jigger, moving faster than Ben had seen the rather tubby old fellow go in quite a spell.

“Ben, what happened? Are you hurt? Are the kids hurt?” Cassie’s finger punched the air as she counted her students, and her glare muted the prostrate twins’ laughter to stifled snickers. She went to her knees and took Ben’s chin in her hand, looking into his eyes and feeling along his shoulders and arms as if to make certain he wasn’t injured.

He had to admit, her concern felt kind of nice and the worry in her green eyes was like a salve to his scattered wits. But when she saw for herself that he was in one piece, she smacked his shoulder. Hard.

“What on earth were you thinking?” She stood and glowered down at him. “You blew up the outhouse?”

Indignation propelled him to his feet with an awkward lurch. “Of course I didn’t. It was these two limbs of Satan.” He reached down and hauled the twins up by their overall bibs. “You could’ve killed yourselves. Or one of the other kids.”

Quincy had the gall to look offended. “We made them stand back first. We ain’t stupid.”

“All evidence to the contrary,” Ben shot back.

Jigger, gasping and panting, picked his way through the debris to where a wisp of smoke and a lot of stench floated up from the hole where the outhouse used to be.

“Must’ve been a fair amount of gas down there.” He stepped back, waving his paw in front of his face.

Doc Bucknell had stopped at the schoolhouse, bending and looking into eyes and talking to each pupil. When each one from Mary Alice down to Amanda had been checked, he started toward Ben.

“A little excitement in an otherwise dull day?” He squatted and examined Quincy first. “I take it you were one of the masterminds behind this little charivari?”

“What’s a shiv-a-ree?” He grinned at the doctor with his missing tooth, looking angelic.

Ben cut in. “Don’t let his exterior fool you, Doc. This isn’t a nine-year-old. This is actually a pint-sized Jesse James in disguise. And this”—he nudged Ulysses in the shoulder—“is his brother, Frank. Get close to them at your own risk.”

Cassie put her hands on her hips. “What do you two have to say for yourselves? Look at this mess. When your mother finds out, you’ll be lucky to see daylight before you’re old enough to vote.” Authority and sternness rang in her voice. The terrible light in her eyes—half anger, half disappointment—had the boys squirming and studying their shoes. Even Ben felt guilty, and he hadn’t done anything wrong.

“What’s going on here, Son?”

Ben looked away from Cassie and into the eyes of his father. Though he’d retired from being a career lawman, the aura of strength and toughness that had made Obadiah Wilder one of the most respected men in the state still clung to him like a second skin. When Ben looked at his father, he saw everything he ever aspired to be.

And feared he would never become.

“Just a little … mishap.”

Dad quirked a silver eyebrow. Without needing an explanation, Ben knew his father had surveyed the sight and instantly figured out what happened. He had that uncanny ability—something that had made getting away with much of anything as a boy impossible for Ben and his brothers.

The twins looked at Obadiah Wilder, their mouths open and adoration glowing on their faces. Here was a legend in the flesh. A man that men talked about with awe. A fearless lawman who even had a dime novel written about him. When Ben’s father bent a stern gaze on them, they froze, hitched up their overalls, and hung their heads.

Ben wondered how was it that everyone in this town could get these boys to toe the line but him. This day could not possibly get any worse.

Jigger sauntered over, put his hands on his hips, and announced to the assembly, “I guess Ben isn’t in any danger of winning the Challenge, is he?” Laughter rippled through the crowd.

Ben bit back a growl and didn’t look at Cassie, who had to be gloating. Not that he blamed her. He’d want to gloat, too.

Time he took control of things. “All right, folks, the excitement’s over. Nobody was hurt, and these two culprits”—he waved toward the twins—“have just volunteered to give up their Saturday morning and build a brand-new privy for the school.”

Slowly, they dispersed, still chuckling, leaving Ben, Cassie, and the kids. Ben waved the children over. “School’s dismissed early today.”

With shouts of approval, they bolted off, no doubt afraid he would change his mind. When the twins tried to escape, Ben clamped down on their shoulders. “Not you two. You’re going to clean up this mess and stack the wood. We’ll see what can be reused and what we have to buy from the lumberyard in the morning.”

Cassie covered her lips, but her eyes sparkled at the dejected tilt of their shoulders.

“Never counted on having to rebuild it. What a waste of a Saturday morning.” Quincy stuck the tip of his tongue through the gap in his front teeth.

Ulysses let out a sigh. “It was a beaut explosion though.” He followed his brother toward the scene of the crime.

Ben refused to look at Cassie. A man could only take so much.

This was supposed to be his day off from this blessed Challenge, but there was no rest for the weary, it seemed, or the wicked. Ben shifted his grip on his toolbox and rounded the corner of the schoolhouse.

The little renegades were waiting, sitting on the fulcrum of the seesaw, shoulders bowed, scowls evident.

“Morning, boys. Ready to get to work?”

“I ’spose.” Ulysses scuffed the dirt with his toe.

“Guess you should’ve thought of the consequences before you threw that bottle of whiskey into the privy, eh? Speaking of which, where did you two get your hands on a bottle of liquor?”

“We found it.” Quincy straightened and tugged his earlobe. He looked away too innocently.

“Found it where?”

They looked at each other for a long minute. “In Daddy’s desk.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “You just happened to find it there and happened to stumble upon some matches, and I suppose you happened to trip, and the lit bottle just happened to fall in the outhouse hole?” He let the toolbox
thunk
to the ground, rattling the tools. “Where did you even get the idea to blow up an outhouse?”

“Uncle Tyler. He said some kind of gas built up inside outhouses, and sometimes, if you were lucky, if you threw a match in there, it would make a little pop when it exploded. We wanted a big pop, so we threw in a whiskey bomb.”

He rubbed his hand down his face.
Thanks a lot, Uncle Tyler
. They were lucky they hadn’t blown their fool heads off.

“We’d best get busy if we’re going to be done by noon.”

A stack of new boards from the lumberyard, delivered last evening, sat in the grass. Ben had picked over the remains of the exploded outhouse and decided there was nothing worth keeping. At least some of the smell had dissipated.

“You boys ever build anything?”

“Nope. You gonna teach us?” Quincy picked through the toolbox, lifting Ben’s hammer and testing the weight.

“Yup. Let’s get organized. If you have any questions, ask.”

From that moment on, Ben didn’t have a scrap of peace. The boys talked to each other, over each other, and about each other.

“I bet you wonder about our names. Everyone does. Ma named us after presidents because she wants us to grow up to be famous men. I’m named after a general. But Daddy says he was a drunk and a Yankee, and he can’t believe Ma would curse us with Yankee names.”

Ben had no doubt the twins would be famous … or infamous … someday.

“Ma says we should try to be good, and so does Miss Bucknell, but we don’t hardly ever feel like being good. Being bad is a lot more fun. And we’re pretty good at it.”

“You are that.” Ben nearly hit his thumb with his hammer, he was trying so hard not to laugh. “Hold this board for me.”

By the time they had the new floor and east wall in place, he’d heard a detailed description of each of the kids in the school all the way from “Mary Alice acts like everybody’s mother. You can’t hardly get away with anything because she blabs to Miss Bucknell before you even do nothing,” to “Amanda Hart is such a baby. She’s scared of everything. Once I told her I was thinking about chasing her with a mouse, soon as I caught one, and she ran away screaming. I didn’t even have to chase her or find a mouse and she was already running. Girls are babies.”

And he learned a lot about Miss Bucknell, too.

“We can’t never fool Miss Bucknell. She can tell us apart better than Ma can.”

“Ever’body can tell us apart now that you knocked my tooth out.”

“She lets us read dime novels if we’re good. I read one about how your pa helped catch the Dickenson Gang, and it was crack. I think when I grow up I’m going to be a sheriff. Or an outlaw. I haven’t decided.”

Look out, Texas. If the twin tornadoes hit the outlaw trail, it would rain rattlesnakes and prickly pear for a decade.

“Miss Bucknell is nice most of the time. She let us use our new pocketknives to sharpen her pencils, and she didn’t even get mad when we whittled them down to nubs. She said it kept us quiet for a whole hour.”

Ben strangled his laughter and sawed the next piece of wood.

“I wish she wouldn’t make us memorize so much, especially the gazindas. I’m fine with the timeses, but I can’t figure the gazindas.”

He paused and glanced up to where Quincy sat on a board across the sawhorses, fingering the nails in a paper sack. “The gazindas?”

“Yeah, like two gazinda four twice, two gazinda six thrice, two gazinda eight four times. After I get past the five gazindas it gets too hard.”

“Boys, I think it’s time to take a break and get a drink of water.” He took out his bandana and wiped his face. The gazindas. Heaven help them.

Sitting in the shade of the schoolhouse, he stretched out his boots and crossed his ankles. The twins plopped down on either side of him and emulated his pose.

“So, what would you boys study if you could learn anything you wanted in school?”

Quincy picked up a pebble and fired it at a clump of brush. “Nothing. I hate school.”

“C’mon now. Anything.”

“I want to learn to track and shoot and start fires without matches.”

“I want to learn to ride a horse and speak Comanche and hunt and cook over a fire. All the stuff we’ll need if we want to be outlaws.”

“Or sheriffs?” Ben asked.

“’Zactly. Any of that would be better than memorizing poems and spelling words and the names of the presidents.”

A ghost of an idea began to take shape in the back of Ben’s mind and continued to grow. By the time he’d cut the half-moon shape into the door and tightened the screws on the new hinges, he had a new plan of attack for school Monday morning.

He let the boys go just before noon and packed up his tools. A quick glance at his watch told him he’d have time to get some lunch at his folks’ place before he had to be back in town for campaigning for the Challenge. Leaving his toolbox inside the school, he hotfooted it the quarter mile west along the main road toward the little ranch his folks had retired to.

“You home?” He eased through the back door. His mother turned from the stove, a wooden spoon in her hand and a flowered apron covering her dress.

“Benjamin. You’re just in time for lunch.” She raised her dewy-soft cheek for his kiss. No matter how big her sons got, no matter that every one of them stood more than six feet tall and upheld law and order, they would forever be her boys, and they would greet her with a kiss on the cheek. “You’ll have to eat quickly, though, because I have an appointment in town before the speeches. Cassie has a little something planned down at the jail, and she invited me.”

Ben’s curiosity stood straight up like a prairie dog and sniffed the wind. “What’s she doing?”

Ma shook her head. “It’s something for ladies only. You weren’t invited.”

“Come on, Ma. It’s my jailhouse. If she’s planning something, shouldn’t I know about it?”