The Cactus Creek Challenge (29 page)

“Or she went by on the road. Maybe your folks saw her?” The Wilder place was just up the road past the bridge. Perhaps she’d gone there? But why would she?

She looked back toward town. “Maybe she went home? Or to the livery? Jenny said there’s a new foal at the livery that Amanda’s in love with. I’ll go check there.”

“Wait. I think I see something.” Ben started toward the bridge, Cassie on his heels. “There she is.”

Weak joy bathed Cassie, and she started forward. The little girl stood near the water’s edge, looking down at something. “Amanda Hart, you scared us to death. Why didn’t you come when Mr. Wilder whistled? Come on up here. It’s time to go back to school.”

Amanda didn’t move, nor did she look up.

Ben held out his hand to stop Cassie when she started down the slope toward her. “Wait.”

He squatted. “Amanda, is there a reason you didn’t come when I called?”

Her head barely moved when she nodded.

Ben slipped his gun from his holster.

“Benjamin Wilder, what are you doing? I don’t like you wearing your gun around the students. You’ll scare Amanda to death.”

“For once in your life, don’t argue with me.”

“What is it?”

“I have an idea, but I’m going to go see. Wait here.” He eased down the bank toward Amanda. “Hey, sweetheart. You’re doing great. Just stand really still, all right?”

A dry buzz cut through the air and sapped all the strength from Cassie’s limbs. A rattlesnake. Her mouth turned to ashes, and her hands went clammy.

Ben worked his way around Amanda, looking down. The snake must be just to Amanda’s right, down the slope from her.

“Amanda, darlin’, I’m going to have to shoot this snake. The gun’s going to be loud, but don’t jump. And don’t you worry. I’m a good shot, and at this distance, I can’t miss.”

Oh, Lord, guide his aim. Don’t let that precious child get bitten
.

He slowly raised his arm, the gun coming up. How could he be so steady and calm? Cassie stopped breathing as he thumbed the hammer back.

Though she was braced for it, the shot still caught her by surprise. She jerked, and in the same instant, Ben grabbed Amanda around the waist and hauled her backward, putting his body between her and the snake.

Cassie ran down the slope, skidding to a stop and snatching Amanda from his arms. She stood the girl up, checking her all over for any damage. Tears blurred her vision, and her heart felt weak. “Oh, baby girl, are you all right? You didn’t get bitten?” She alternately hugged the child and held her away to check that she wasn’t harmed.

Ben walked over to the scattered rocks along the bank and reached down. He pulled and pulled and pulled. “Got to be close to four feet long. Or at least it would be if it still had a head.”

Amanda threw her arms around Cassie’s neck and clung tight. Cassie brushed back her hair and murmured to her. “I’m sorry I yelled at you for not coming when called. You did exactly the right thing by staying still.”

“Yep,” Ben chimed in. “I knew you were brave, and not just brave, but smart to boot.”

“I was scared.” Her whisper brushed the base of Cassie’s throat.

“Anybody would’ve been. Being scared when there’s something to be scared about is the smart thing to do. And you know what we do with our fear?” He still held the snake away from his body.

Her head came up. “We stuff our fear in our hat and then sit on our hat.” She gave him one of her rare smiles.

“You realize when we get back to school the twins are going to give us no peace at all. They’re going to be mad that they missed all the excitement.”

Cassie forced a weak laugh. “That’s because the twins are barely human. And don’t bring that nasty thing any closer. Throw it in the creek.”

“Not a chance. I’m going to skin it out. Anyway, Amanda gets the rattles.”

“Yuck. Why on earth would she want them?” Cassie grimaced. “You don’t want them, do you?”

The little girl looked uncertainly at Ben.

“Sure she does. They’re a badge of honor, a sign of how brave she was. She’ll be the envy of the entire school. She might even get her name in the paper.”

At this, Amanda brightened, and Cassie stifled a groan. What sort of wild outlaws were her students becoming? Two weeks under Ben’s tutelage and even her most ladylike and circumspect student was almost unrecognizable.

Cassie sighed and checked the angle of the sun. It was leaning toward time for school to be out, and she’d been away from the jail much longer than she’d planned. The day had been way too eventful thus far. Surely the night would be incident-free.

W
hat do you mean you’re leaving?” Cassie almost dropped the basket of food she’d brought for the guards’ breakfast. Her nerves had been stretched thin since the gold’s arrival yesterday, and lack of sleep last night had left her jumpy and unsettled. When she did sleep, she dreamed of snakes and clattering tree branches and shotguns.

Rand Franks held the telegram out to her. “I have to go. My daughter has been injured, and my wife needs me at home.”

Cassie set the basket on the desk and scanned the half-sheet of paper.

It was signed by a Doctor Phillips.

Cassie looked up into his handsome face. “Felicity?”

“She’s four.” He stuffed his jacket into his duffel. “Phoebe is my wife, and she’s due to deliver our second child in less than a month. Doc Phillips is our family doctor in Dallas.”

Uneasiness trickled down Cassie’s spine. “Have you confirmed this?”

“Confirmed it?”

“Might this be a ruse to get you out of town and leave the gold exposed?”

He stopped his fussing and frowned at her. “It’s signed by my doctor. Who else would know who our physician was?”

“I don’t know, but if I was a robber, I’d be looking pretty hard for a way to get my biggest obstacle out of the way before I tried to seize the treasure.”

Rand removed his hat and jammed his fingers through his hair, tugging on it as he thought. “What time does the eastbound train arrive?”

She glanced at the clock. “Twenty minutes.”

“Then there is no time for me to telegraph Dallas to confirm. It would take them more than twenty minutes to get to my house or the doctor’s office and get a reply back to us. I have to go. If I miss this train, there isn’t another one until tomorrow. What if Felicity is so badly hurt she dies? I can’t risk it.” He picked up his shotgun and pack. “Keep the door locked, keep your wits sharp, and keep your guns close. The detachment from Fort Benefactor will be here in another day or so.”

Jigger’s brows lowered, and he hitched up his pants with his one good hand. “Cassie, just in case, maybe you’d better send a telegram to Dallas anyway. If it is a ruse, we could use that information.”

Rand nodded, his hand on the doorknob. “Good idea.”

Cassie tugged on her lower lip. She was afraid, but Ben’s words on fear came back to her.
“Stuff the fear into your hat and sit on your hat.”
That’s what she would do. She could be no less brave than Amanda had been with that snake.

“Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t advertise that you were leaving. I’ll go ahead of you to the train station and get your ticket and send the wire asking for confirmation. They’ll hold the train for you. When you hear the first whistle, hotfoot it to the station and get right on board.”

“Hey, I have an idea.” Jigger stood up and plucked a disreputable striped garment from a peg behind the door. “If you pull your hat down low and wear my old serape, folks might mistake you for me. Everybody in town knows this serape. They might not think twice seeing a man walking down the street in it.”

“That’s good. You can hide the shotgun under it, too.” Cassie took the gun from Rand while he poked his head through the ragged hole in the middle of the garment. “Jigger’s had that thing since I was a kid. You’re just lucky I got it away from him long enough to scrub it a couple of times.”

The Wells Fargo guard replaced his hat on his brown hair, ducked his head, and slouched a bit, a good imitation of the deputy. “I can’t imagine what it looked like … or smelled like before,” he mumbled.

“That’s perfect.” Cassie gave him the shotgun. “I’ll go to the station now. You follow when you hear the whistle.”

Though she scanned the street as she closed the door, she saw nothing out of the ordinary, no strangers skulking about, casing the jail. Mrs. Pym ambled along the boardwalk near the bakery, a basket on her arm and her little dog on a leash, trotting proudly ahead of her.

Forcing herself to walk calmly instead of hiking her skirts and running to the depot, Cassie’s mind tumbled through the possibilities.

Lord, if little Felicity is truly injured, I pray You would comfort her, that Your healing hand would be on her. And I pray for her parents. I know how I feel when one of my students is hurt or in danger. It must be even worse when it is your own child. Give them strength, and protect that little unborn baby
.

And if this is some sort of trick to get Rand out of town, I pray that You would help me to discern it and to protect the gold. Keep my mind sharp, and please, if at all possible, keep anybody from getting hurt
.

She continued to pray as she strolled past the saddle shop and the photographer’s studio. Jenny carried a bucket, heavy from the way she tilted away from the weight, and waved a gloved hand as Cassie went by.

The depot sat quiet on the east end of town, a bookend to the school on the other side of Main Street. As she reached the rectangular red building and mounted the steep steps up to the platform, she spied the eastbound train in the distance, a black smudge of smoke announcing its imminent arrival.

Ralph’s eyebrows rose as she entered. “Hey there, Cass, I didn’t expect you today. You meeting the train?”

“I need to purchase a ticket to Dallas right away for Mr. Franks.”

He nodded, slipping the bit of pasteboard from his pocket. “I figured he’d be leaving when I got the telegram. Made this up for him as soon as I got back from delivering it.”

“Thanks, Ralph. Don’t tell anyone he’s gone. We wouldn’t want word to get out. He’ll be here in a few minutes. We thought it would be best if he boarded at the last minute.”

“Good thinking. I won’t tell a soul what was in a telegram, but you’d be wise to let Ben know Franks is leaving.” He stood a little straighter, his pale moustache bristling. Though Ralph wasn’t her particular cup of tea when it came to men, her sister had chosen well. He was steady and dependable, and he doted on Millie and would make her a good husband in just about two weeks.

She checked the clock. “I saw the eastbound on my way over. Have you heard any talk about the gold?”

He hefted the mail sack from behind the counter, ready to put it on the train. “Sure. The whole town is talking about it. It was the main topic of conversation at your parents’ house last night. Your father wasn’t pleased that you didn’t join us, by the way.”

“I know, but I had work to do.” He had forbidden her from spending the night at the jail, but that didn’t mean she would leave off patrolling the town in the evenings. Although her patrol last night had netted her one public scolding when a cowhand had tried to ride his horse into one of the saloons, it hadn’t turned up any potential thieves. The bartender had assisted in shooing the horse and rider back out onto the street, and then proceeded to yank the rider off his horse and toss him into the dirt. The horse had taken off, back to the ranch, no doubt, and left the chagrinned and chastened cowhand afoot, which under the circumstances, Cassie deemed punishment enough.

The only other incident of the night was when a cowhand had mistaken her for a sporting woman and tried to proposition her. She’d shaken off his hand on her arm, showed him the badge at her waistband, and asked if he wanted to spend the night in the pokey. He’d blinked his unfocused and more than slightly intoxicated eyes, shaken his head, and whistled. “A girl sheriff? I think I need to lay off the rotgut. I’m starting to see things.” He’d reeled away, passing through the flopping saloon doors, evidently not heeding his own advice.

The train hissed and chugged to a slow halt, sidling up to the loading platform, clicking and wheezing in the morning sunshine. Two passengers got off, the Gullivers who had been visiting their daughter in Denver. Cassie smiled and nodded as they met in the depot doorway.

“Why, Cassie, what are you doing here? Is there no school today?” Mrs. Gulliver sniffed and tugged at her gloves. “Is that a gun?”

“There is school today, but it’s Challenge month, remember? This year the council included women for the first time. I’m the acting sheriff, and Mr. Wilder is teaching school. That’s why I’m wearing the gun.”

Mr. Gulliver chuckled. “Well, if that isn’t an interesting turn of events.” His cheeks jiggled, and his round belly bounced.

Cassie couldn’t help but laugh, remembering how once at a church social Mr. Gulliver had been laughing, and Ben had bent down to whisper in her ear, “That has to be jelly, because jam doesn’t shake like that.”

Cassie had nearly choked, stifling laughter. She missed the easy way she and Ben had gotten along before the Challenge had come between them. Would they be able to go back to that when May rolled around? Not that she wanted to go back to that, exactly, but anything had to be better than the way they were bickering now.

“Really? What were those men thinking?” Mrs. Gulliver sucked her thin cheeks in and pursed her lips. “We’re gone for a month and the town falls apart.”

Biting her tongue lest she say what she was thinking, Cassie stepped aside to allow them on their way into the depot. “Nice to have you folks back.”

From the corner of her eye she spied movement and turned toward it, tense and ready to pounce, but when she saw the Shoop brothers leaning on one another and careening unsteadily toward their horses tied in front of the saloon, she relaxed. Those two were so drunk they couldn’t hit the ground with a hammer, and at this hour of the morning, too. But at least they weren’t brawling in the street.