The Cactus Creek Challenge (41 page)

Then she smiled up at him and he could breathe again.

“I like your haircut. You look so nice.”

“Figured it was about time. Hadn’t trimmed my beard since … for three years.”

“It’s all right, Carl. You can say it. You haven’t trimmed your beard since your wife died?”

“Agatha didn’t like my beard at all, but she’d tolerate it if I kept it short.” Carl twirled her as if they’d been dancing together for years while the fiddle player sawed away, and he concentrated on not stomping on her tiny feet with his clodhoppers.

Jenny glanced up, as shy and rosy-cheeked as a girl. “I like beards, I think. My husband was clean shaven, but I’ve always wondered …” She broke off in delightful confusion that made him want to hug her tight and gave him hope.

“How long does this shindig last, anyway?”

“Hours more, I’d imagine. There’ll be more dancing and the toasts and the gift opening. It will be well after dark before they wrap things up.”

“Sure are a lot of people. Think anyone would notice if you and me went for a walk down by the creek? There’s something I need to say to you.”

They stopped dancing, and she lowered her eyes as if searching for something inside herself. Then she nodded with a sweet smile. “Just let me get someone to keep an eye on Amanda.”

Jenny left her daughter in the care of Mary Alice and found Carl. She put her hand in the crook of his elbow, and they strolled down the gentle slope away from the house and toward the bend of Cactus Creek. Her heart felt like it was crowding high in her chest, as if it might fly right out.

The late spring breeze rustled the leaves of the cottonwoods and hackberry trees, and sunlight glinted and twinkled in a dazzling dance across the creek water that lapped the bank.

Carl steered her to the shade of a tree. One thick branch, low to the ground, bent over the water into a handy seat, and he shrugged out of his jacket and laid it there for her in a gallant gesture that touched her heart. Her late husband never would’ve thought to do something so simple yet so selfless.

No, she didn’t want to think about him now. She was done with all that. The old Jenny Hart no longer existed, the woman who had cowered and feared and walked small. She was a capable business owner who had successfully made a place for herself in this community. She’d run a stable, gentled a stallion, helped arrest a pair of thieves, had her daughter stolen and restored to her, and bless her, she’d fallen in love.

“Amanda seems fine after her ordeal.” Carl stood looking out over the water. He reached up and snagged a branch, tearing leaves off, dropping them in the water.

“I think the fact that she played a role in her own rescue has gone a long way to staving off nightmares or fears. I hated that snake rattle when she first brought it home, but it saved her life.”

“She’s a smart little thing. I was afraid for her right after the rescue, when Ben took off for town. She didn’t say anything, just hugged me tight and cried for a while, then fell asleep.” He sent a few more leaves into the slow-moving current. “But the next morning she popped up from her bedroll and started chattering, and I don’t think she’s stopped since.”

“It might interest you to know that you are the primary topic in her conversation. I hear all day long about ‘Mr. Carl.’”

“That’s too bad. You must be sick of it.”

“I didn’t say that. I … quite like it.”
Oh, go ahead and say it. You’ll regret it forever if you don’t
. “I’ve missed seeing you the past few days.”

“You have?” The branch splashed into the water, and he covered the distance between them in two strides.

She nodded. “I kept expecting you to walk through the stable door. I’d find myself listening for your footsteps.”

He took her hands. “Funny, I had the same trouble down at the bakery. Every time Amanda came home from school, I’d quiz her for news of you. With all that’s been going on, and you staying up late to make the wedding cake, and all, there never seemed to be time for us to talk. Then the doc asked me to help lay the last of the flagstones for that patio so the wedding guests would have a place to dance. But all I did was think about you. The truth is …” His throat lurched as he swallowed. “Jenny Hart, I love you. I want to marry you and be your husband and be Amanda’s father. I promise I’ll spend my whole life taking care of you two.”

She sucked in a breath, and he gripped her hands hard, as if his whole life depended on her answer.

“Carl, my first marriage wasn’t a good one, and I swore I would never marry again and put myself in a position to be dominated by a cruel man.”

The light faded from his eyes, and his hands eased on hers.

“But all that changed …. I don’t know when it happened. Maybe it was the way you kept your tack room so neat, or how you knew just what to do for that foal, or the concern you showed when I was hurt, or maybe it was all those ridiculous biscuits….” She laughed, squeezing his hands. “Whenever it was, however it came about, somewhere along the way, I fell in love with a man, a man who is nothing like my first husband. You couldn’t be cruel if you tried. You’ve always treated me with respect, even when we were having a disagreement. I know you weren’t doubting my intelligence, only my muscle power and experience running a stable. And the way you care for Amanda makes me want to cry with thankfulness.” She took a shaky breath and reached out to touch his face and said the words she’d never thought to utter. “In answer to your question, yes. I will marry you and count myself the most blessed of women.”

His hug nearly broke her ribs.

And she learned kissing a man with a beard was very, very nice.

C
assie stood at the back of the schoolroom, a covey of quail fluttering in her middle. She’d had no time to prepare the children for this. Ben had insisted she let him take care of the school program for Mr. Stoltzfus, and she should tend the jail and help with wedding preparations all week. Now that the final day of the Challenge was upon them, she’d spent the hours alternately twiddling her thumbs and biting her fingernails. Her teaching job rested on tonight’s performance. All her life she’d dreamed of only two things: being a teacher and being Mrs. Ben Wilder. The latter was now within reach, but the former seemed to be slipping away.

Her father stepped onto the platform and rapped his knuckles on her desk. “If you’ll all come to order, we’ll get this evening started. Thank you for coming, and the council thanks you for being willing to postpone the Challenge ball in favor of the children’s program tonight. We’ll hold the Ball this coming Saturday, though we plan to announce the winner of the Challenge tonight when the kids are through with their part and everybody has a chance to cast their final votes.” He tucked his fingertips into his vest pockets. “We’d like to welcome Superintendent Stoltzfus, and now we’ll turn things over to the children and their teacher.”

Cassie crossed her arms at her waist, pressing her palms into her sides to try to quell her butterflies as two men pushed the desk to the side and the children filed in two lines onto the platform. From Mary Alice down to Amanda, they were all dressed in their Sunday best, and even the irrepressible twins had suffered the indignity of having their hair slicked down with pomade.

Ben stood just to their side and addressed the crowd. “Evening, folks. The kids have worked real hard, and they’re anxious to show you what they’ve learned.

“First, Ulysses and Quincy will demonstrate their arithmetic skills.” The students parted, and the twins went to the blackboard.

“If a bank gets robbed at three p.m.,” Quincy drew a square on the board and then two stick horses racing away from it. “And the bank robbers are traveling at twelve miles per hour …”

Ulysses grabbed the chalk and drew another square. “And the posse leaves town at three thirty, traveling thirteen miles per hour …”

Cassie didn’t know whether to laugh or melt into the floor.

The students moved on to observation skills, botany, zoology, and a wild version of campfire domestic science that had the audience rapt. The spelling portion had Cassie biting her lip as they spelled words like
surveillance
and
penitentiary
and
incarceration
. And for a coup de grâce, they finished with a dramatic rendition of
The Legend of Obadiah Wilder
—taken straight from the pages of the dime novel by the same name—which afforded the twins the opportunity to die glorious and prolonged deaths, flopping on the stage and groaning like Shakespearean specters.

Cassie dared a glance at Mr. Stoltzfus, who sat as if in a bell jar, completely still and wide-eyed.

She wasn’t sure where it started, but someone began clapping and others joined in. Soon everyone was applauding, some were stomping their boots, and a few even let loose some ear-splitting whistles. Chairs scraped as people got to their feet.

The children beamed, some clapped, and Amanda hopped, her braids bouncing. The twins scraped themselves up off the floor and bowed like theater veterans. Cassie found herself threading through the crowd to get to them. When they saw her, they clustered around, faces lifted for her reaction.

“Oh, I’m so proud of you all. What a wonderful program. You covered every subject, spelling, arithmetic, science, history, drama, and so much more.” She hugged them. What did she care that Mr. Stoltzfus might give her a dressing down? The children had demonstrated that they had more than mastered the material put before them. They had learned and they had applied it to real-life situations. Wasn’t that what education was all about?

Her father mounted the platform and called for order. The children went to their parents, and Cassie joined Ben along the side of the room. He took her hand, lacing their fingers out of sight of onlookers.

“That was … amazing.”

“It was the kids’ idea.”

“Do you think I’ll keep my job?”

He didn’t answer, just squeezed her hand. “I’ll see to it that you don’t starve if old Stoltzfus gives you the boot.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, it might seem quite an anticlimax after such a wonderful showing, but we do have the little matter of the Cactus Creek Challenge to wrap up tonight. If you’ll take the ballots out that you were given at the door, we’ll hear from our contestants one last time. Shall we start with Mr. Gustafson?”

Carl’s boots sounded loud on the floorboards as he made his way to the front. He shoved his hands into his pockets, rocked on his heels, and said, “’Bout the best thing I can think of in my favor is that nobody died from my baking.”

Laughter filled the air.

“Truth be told, I don’t think I’m the one who deserves the prize this year. Any of the other three did a better job, I think. Jenny came to my rescue this weekend and turned out as pretty a wedding cake as I’ve ever seen …. I’m hoping she’ll bake one like it for our wedding.” He grinned down at her in the second row, and she blushed and nodded. A smattering of applause rippled through the crowd. “Whether you vote for me or not, I’m coming out of this month a winner.” He took his seat next to Jenny, engulfing her hand in his.

Ben left Cassie’s side and took the stage. “When we first started this venture—seems like half of forever ago—I was dead set against trading places with a woman. My Pa said something that I didn’t appreciate at the time, but I’ve come to recognize as wise words. He said the Challenge wasn’t meant to make things easy on the contestants. It was for stretching folks, making you carry someone else’s burden for a while. He also said we might be surprised about what we learned, not just about the other person, but about ourselves. He sure was right. I think, if you asked all the contestants, they’d tell you the same thing. We’ve all accomplished more than we thought we ever could, and our … I guess you could say … opponents sure did more than we ever imagined they were capable of doing. We’ve learned about each other, and we’ve learned about ourselves.”

He held out his hand to Cassie, who joined him on the stage, and he motioned for Carl and Jenny.

“I don’t know if the council intended for matrimony to be the result of the Challenge this year, though I wouldn’t put it past any of them.” Ben raised his eyebrows at the three men lining the wall to his right. Doc put up his hands to protest their innocence, and his father’s white moustache twitched as he put his hands in his pockets. “I suspect you’ll have bachelors applying in droves for next year’s Challenge.”

Laughter once more. Cassie’s heart swelled at the easy way he commanded the room and expressed himself.

“Tell you what, folks. We all four needed help with some part of the jobs we took on, and I’m happy to say, we found that help in each other and in you, our neighbors. Whether it was moving a load of feed or baking a wedding cake or tracking down a kidnapper or guarding a fortune in gold, we all got help in our jobs. We all had some rough adjustments, from outhouses blowing up”—he had to pause until the laughter stopped—“to a couple of students teaching a stable hand to make something other than biscuits, or even a few of our most observant kids practicing their surveillance skills and helping us catch a kidnapper and some robbers. Nothing seems to have gone as planned for us this month, but I don’t know that there’s much I would change.”