The Cactus Creek Challenge (4 page)

Ben chuckled and shook his head. Always haring off in a snit, just like a kid. He’d give her a week at the most. She’d cave and quit, and he could go back to sheriffing, and she could go back to dressing up and sitting behind a desk all day. But for now he was the teacher, and he’d best do some teaching.

“If you’re gonna teach ’em, you’d best go round them up.” He braced himself with a deep breath and walked outside.

He was met on the steps by a pair of grubby faces. Grubby identical faces.

“You’re the new teacher, ain’t you?” asked one.

“We heard all about you from our pa. He says if we’re bad, you’ll lock us up in the jail. Is that true?” asked the other.

“Ma says you can’t lock kids up, but we never know when Pa’s joshin’ us, though I guess we should know, since he joshes
all
the time.”

Ben found his head swiveling between them as they took turns peppering him with their words.

“Mama says we’re
exactly
like him, but that just makes him laugh.”

“Will you lock us up in the jail? We want to know what it’s like.”

“Can we ring the bell?”

“The bell?” Ben tried to grab hold of the conversation, but it proved to be slippery. The boys finished each other’s sentences and budged in on each other’s words almost seamlessly.

“To call the kids in.”

“Miss Bucknell rings the bell every morning.”

“She said we could if you said it was all right.”

“We figured you wouldn’t mind if we rang it, since we’re finally off pr’bation again.”

“Miss Bucknell puts us on pr’bation seems like every other day or so, but we ain’t been bad in pert near a week, so can we?”

Feeling as if he was the rope in a tug-o-war, he nodded. “Sure, go ahead.”

They bolted past him and returned with a handbell, wrastling it between them, four dirty little hands grabbing at the handle, clanging the clapper in discordant little jerks.

“That’s enough, boys. Thanks.” He took it from them, standing back as kids streamed past him. He counted an even dozen, the smallest a girl with long golden sausage curls and large blue eyes who looked to be about six or seven, and the biggest a girl of about fifteen or sixteen who blushed and ducked her head when he looked at her. In between were an assortment of kids in overalls and pinafores. None of them as individuals looked too threatening, but as a group, they appeared just this side of terrifying.

While they clattered their lunch pails and slapped books onto desktops, he hung his hat on a peg by the door and made his way to the front of the room. Sliding the chair out, he sat and regarded them. Twelve pairs of eyes stared back.

He’d rather face the Sam Bass Gang unarmed and in nothing but his long johns.

Stop being so foolish. It’s a roomful of kids, not outlaws. You told Cassie you could handle it, and you can
.

What should he do first?

His eyes fell on the attendance book. Aha!

“I’m going to take attendance. I’ll call out your name, and you let me know if you’re here or not.” That way he could match names with faces and kill two birds, as it were.

One of the twins snickered. “How’re we gonna tell you if we’re not here?”

A titter went through the group, but he gave them his best stern look, and they quieted.

“Amanda Hart.”

Silence.

He quickly counted the names in the book. Twelve names, twelve children.

“Amanda?”

Her age was listed as seven. He looked at the youngest girl, closest to him on the front row all by herself—or rather he looked at the top of her head. She stared at her hands.

“That’s her,” one of the twins said, pointing to the little girl. “She don’t talk much, not even hardly to Miss Bucknell. And she never talks to men at all.”

Wonderful. What was he supposed to do with a student who wouldn’t talk to him? He checked the box next to her name.

“Ulysses Harrison?”
Ulysses? Really?

“I’m here, and so’s my brother.” The twins pointed at each other, shoving and tussling.

“Quincy?” He placed two more checkmarks. “Settle down, boys.”

He went on down the list until he finally called out Mary Alice Watkins, the oldest girl in the school. When he was done, he looked at the clock. Only a couple of minutes had passed. This might turn out to be the longest day of his life.

“You’re supposed to pray. Then we say our psalm,” Ulysses—or was it Quincy?—piped up.

He closed the attendance book and remembered that Cassie had mentioned putting a schedule somewhere. Oh yeah, the back of the record book.

And so on. The only things he read on the list that didn’t give him the heebie-jeebies were recess, lunch, and dismissal.

Prayer. He prayed all the time, but he wasn’t all that comfortable praying in front of others, especially not this little hoard of monsters. An idea struck him.

“Anybody want to volunteer to pray this morning?”

Quicker than a wink, Quincy—or was it Ulysses?—hopped to his feet. “I will.” And before he received permission, he clamped his eyes closed, slapped his hands together under his chin, and launched into a dreadful Scottish accent.

His eyes snapped open and he plopped into his seat, beaming.

Snickers and snorts rippled through the classroom.

“That ain’t no school prayer, you mug. That’s saying grace before you eat.” An older boy seated behind them poked him in the shoulder.

“It’s the only prayer I know.” Quincy shrugged. “One prayer’s pretty much as good as another, ain’t it?”

“Naw,” his twin piped up. “You gotta say a special prayer for every occasion. Miss Bucknell says a different prayer every morning.”

Quincy shrugged again. “Next time
you
pray then, if you know everything.”

“Boys, that’s enough. Now, what psalm are you working on?”

All the students slid out of their desks and stood up straight. Mary Alice started them off.

“Psalm forty-six. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah. There is a river …” And they went on right to the end. “Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.”

And like a little well-trained army, they all sat down. Through it all, while Amanda Hart had stood and sat when everyone else did, she never opened her little mouth, staring up at him through her pale lashes as if she thought he might hop over the desk and grab her. Now that he had time to study her face, he saw that she was the spitting image of her mama. A little porcelain doll. Had something happened to make her so man shy? He’d have to go careful with her.

Consulting his list, he saw it was time for the primer reader class. Calling upon his memory of school days past, he searched for a ruler. His teachers had always rapped the desk with their ruler and called for a class to come forward. Cassie must keep hers in a drawer somewhere.

The instant he opened the top drawer, something fluttered and shot upward. He rocked back so hard he tipped his chair over, his feet going skyward and his head colliding with the chalk tray on the blackboard. Stars burst in his skull as laughter and squeals erupted.

He scrambled to his feet, kicking the chair and grinding a stick of chalk to dust under his boot. His first instinct was to grab for his gun, and he had almost cleared leather when he remembered where he was. A panicked bird swooped past his nose and flapped around the room. Kids scattered and hollered, some screaming and some laughing.

Ben gathered his scattered wits, clomped down the aisle, and opened a window, continuing on to the next. One of the older boys on the far side of the room followed suit, opening the three windows on his side. Grabbing his hat off the peg in the cloakroom, Ben shooed the bird, yelling and swatting. He didn’t know if he wanted to catch the thing, squash the thing, or just get it to leave. Students fled before him, scrabbling over desks and darting away from the bird. At last, the infernal avian menace gained his freedom, swooping through an open window.

Gasping, he turned and faced his pupils, hands on hips, one fist gripping the brim of his hat. Some of the girls huddled in a corner, and the twins lay in a heap on the floor, howling with laughter. The glee on their awful little faces made his blood boil.

He marched over to them, hauled them up by their overall straps, and glared. “I don’t suppose you know how that bird got in that drawer, do you?”

They stopped laughing, though it was obviously at great effort. Gulping, they each donned an angelic expression, wide-eyed as newborn calves.

“You two scared about ten years off my life with that little stunt, and you frightened the girls. What do you have to say for yourselves?” He gave them each a little shake. His heart still thundered in his chest, and he wondered if his hair was turning gray as he spoke.

“That was beaut. Way better than we thought. Miss Bucknell didn’t even squeal when we did it to her. You should’ve heard yourself holler. Worse’n a girl.” One of them snickered, and then they both let go with belly laughs.

Heat surged through his veins, up his neck and into his face. The little horrors. “Now I understand about you being on probation.” He marched them to the back of the room. “You’ll each stand in a corner for one hour. Don’t even think about turning around.” He stood them, one in each of the rear corners of the room so he could keep an eye on them, and marched to the front.

“The rest of you find your seats.” He hadn’t meant to bark so harshly, but he was mad clean through. Digging in the drawer, his fingers closed around the wooden ruler, and he rapped it on the desk hard enough to take a chip out of the end of the ruler. “First Primer Class, come forward.”

Amanda Hart slid off her seat, gripping a battered blue and white copy of
McGuffey’s First Reader
. All the blood had left her face, and she trembled from head to foot. Without a word, she placed her toes on a crack in the board floor, looking as if she wished she could turn into that bird and fly away. He closed his eyes and prayed for patience.

He hadn’t a clue what to do next. Did she even know how to read? How did a person teach someone to read? The minute school was out, he was going to head to his parents’ home and share a few choice words with his father for putting him in this mess, plunk twenty-five dollars on the table, and call it quits. If things had gone according to plan, he’d be currying horses and cleaning stalls right now down at the livery, not trying to think of a single blessed thing to say to a little girl so she wouldn’t burst into tears.

Movement caught his eye and he glanced up, sure the twins were up to something. But it was Mary Alice. Her hand rose slowly.

“Yes?”

“Sheriff Wilder, sometimes, when Miss Bucknell is real busy, I help out with the younger kids, especially Amanda. If you’d like, I could work with her on her letters this morning.”

It probably wouldn’t be appropriate, but he wanted to race down the aisle and hug Mary Alice. Her offer of hope was like a lasso landing on a longhorn mired in quicksand.

“Thank you. That would be fine.”

He consulted Cassie’s list.

“Second Primer Class, come forward.”

Nobody moved.

“Second Primer Class, I said, come forward.” He planted his knuckles on the desktop and stood. “Enough of this foolishness.”

Again, Mary Alice’s hand rose, slowly, halting about halfway up.

He dragged his hand down his face. “Yes, Mary Alice?”

With a pitying tone that reduced him to about boot high, she said, “The twins
are
the Second Primer Class, and you told them not to move from their corners for a whole hour.”

By afternoon, he felt like he’d crossed the
Llano Estacado
barefoot in the blistering August heat. His head hurt, he was hoarse, and he couldn’t make sense of even the simplest lesson. The older kids’ grammar exercises had left him feeling like a complete fool as they instructed him on the proper parsing of sentences containing gerund phrases, and as for geography, why on earth would kids need to learn the exports of Brazil by heart?

Just before three o’clock, he closed the record book and dismissed school. Today had been the biggest waste of his time since he didn’t know when. This kind of book learning might be all right for kids east of the Mississippi, but how were they going to survive in the West if all they did all day was spell long words and learn poetry?

He glanced at the calendar. Only twenty more school days in April.

This was going to be the longest month of his life.

Cassie pinned the badge on her lapel and walked away from the school. That man could drive her crazy quicker than she could skip a rock across Cactus Creek.
Teaching was easy, was it? He didn’t need her advice, did he? Well, fine then. Sink or swim, Benjamin Wilder
.