The Cactus Creek Challenge (21 page)

“I’ll be back after school to check on you, Jigger. Doc, take good care of him. And Cass, we’re not done with our discussion.”

He left before she could argue with him.

Odd how familiar the schoolhouse had become to him in just twelve days. He studied the ground in front of the steps, grinning when he spied his father’s piebald paint’s tracks in the dust. He hadn’t forgotten. The trail wouldn’t be long, because the kids would be on foot, but it should prove to be a good exercise.

He eased open the door, checked the water level in the crock, and walked into the schoolroom proper. He had a few minutes left before the kids would show up. Opening the top drawer of Cassie’s desk, he scrounged for a tablet and pencil so he could jot a few notes about tracking to tell the kids.

Odd. He could’ve sworn he’d left the tablet in this drawer.
Hmm
. Must be in the next one. One after another he opened all the drawers, searching. No joy. He returned to the top drawer and pulled it out to its limit. A corner of paper caught his eye. Wedged into the slide. Careful to avoid tearing it, he worked it slowly back and forth until it came free.

A jolt went through him when he realized it was a letter addressed to him.

Though the letter was unsigned, he had no doubt who had put it in the desk. Tugging on his earlobe, he pressed his tongue against the backs of his teeth and scanned the page once more. From the outset of this little teaching jaunt, he’d known Mary Alice Watkins was nursing a crush on him, but this letter put it on another level. Leaving love notes. He hadn’t had a love note left for him since he was in primer school and Ruthie May Grove pledged her eternal devotion with lots of hearts and flowers all over the scrap of butcher’s paper she’d stuffed into his lunch box. That was right before she punched him in the eye on the playground and decided she liked Jimmy Richardson better.

Mary Alice had probably laid the paper neatly in the drawer, and all his scrabbling around for a tablet had wedged it into the drawer slide. Embarrassment prickled his chest. She thought he had beautiful brown eyes, and his walk set her aflutter? How was he even going to look her in the eye after this? And how did he divert her affection to someone more her own age?

“Good morning, Mr. Wilder.”

He jerked and jumped to his feet, shoving the paper into his pocket. “G–good morning, Mary Alice.”

“I thought I’d come in a few minutes early to fill the water crock and beat out the erasers for you.”

Her dewy-fresh expression made Ben feel as if he were being pricked with a thousand red-hot sewing needles.

“Um … fine … yes … I … I’m going outside.” He couldn’t get to the door fast enough and made sure to make a wide arc around his enamored pupil. Outside, he took a deep breath. This was incredibly awkward and another reason this year’s Challenge needed to be over now. Resettling his hat, he decided he’d just have to treat her the same as he treated the rest of the kids, perhaps with a little more distance, and hope she got over her crush quickly.

Several of the kids had arrived and, as usual, scampered here and there like mice. Though they didn’t know it, they were obliterating the beginning of the trail his father had laid.

“Hey, c’mere, you wild children.” He sat on the steps, willing to push the notion of Mary Alice and her love letter out of his mind for a while.

They clustered around, and he counted noses. “Where’s Pierce?”

Chris shrugged. “He’s got a drippy nose and a cough. He wanted to come, but his ma wouldn’t let him. I had to promise to tell him everything that happened.”

“All right. So we’ll be eleven today.” He was aware of Mary Alice coming out the door behind him. The back of his neck grew hot, and he forced himself to ignore it. “Now, we’re going to learn about tracking today. Tracking is useful for all sorts of things. Finding game to eat, following a horse that gets loose, or, in my case, trailing a criminal.”

Grateful for their attention, he squatted by the steps and pointed to the footprints and smudges in the powdery dirt. “Tracking isn’t easy, but there are a few key things to watch for that will make it less difficult. First, when you come across a track, everything you need for finding the next one is right there. Never skip a track, and don’t try to take shortcuts.” He could hear his father’s voice in his head.

“The more you know about your quarry, the easier tracking will be. You know a deer or buffalo is going to be heading toward grass and water and a herd if possible. But a man on a horse could be heading a lot of different places. He might be going toward a hideout or a railroad or a place where he can ambush you. If he knows you’re chasing him, that affects his movements.”

They hung on every word, eyes wide, a few with their mouths open in concentration.

“Now, there is a trail not ten feet from where you’re all squatting, and we’re going to follow it. A single horse with a rider. Let’s see who can find the tracks first.”

They fanned out like hens after bugs, all studying the earth, some even crawling on all fours. He smiled when they missed the obvious tracks. The only one not concentrating on the ground in front of the school was … Mary Alice. She stood beside him watching the kids and occasionally glancing up at him from under her lashes.

“Are you going to look for the tracks?” he asked.

“I thought I’d let the
children
look first.” She smiled indulgently at the younger pupils as if she didn’t count herself among them. “I actually know a little bit about following a trail. My dad taught me. We had a mountain lion causing some trouble last spring, killing calves on our ranch, and dad took me with him to track it down and shoot it.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Did he get it?”

“I have a mountain-lion-skin rug beside my bed.” She lifted her chin. “Maybe, if you come by our ranch, you can see it. My dad is very proud of it.”

“I found one!” Bekah squealed and hopped up and down pointing at the ground.

Ben escaped Mary Alice and her awkward half invitation. “Be careful. When you find a track, back off a little bit to make sure you’re not scuffing up others.”

The kids formed a ring around the spot where Bekah pointed. There in the dust was a hoofprint.

“All right, what can you tell me about it?”

“It’s a horse.” Quincy snickered and elbowed Ulysses.

“It’s wearing a horseshoe,” Sarah offered.

Silence.

“That’s it?” Ben looked from face to face.

“What else is there?”

“Check and see if there is any dew in the print. If there is, then you know the print was left before the dew showed up this morning.”

They inched closer, bending to study the mark.

“Also, check to see how sharp the edges of the track are. The longer it has been there, the fuzzier the outline will be. I can tell from this track that it’s fairly fresh, made within the last couple of hours, that the horse is being ridden, and that he’s got a loose nail in his shoe. That mark will make it easy to follow this horse if we cross trails with another rider. Now, find the next one.”

They followed the plain-as-day trail up the road first, heading west out of town and toward his parents’ little spread. Ben, with the most experienced eye, noted where his father had ridden into town first, then doubled back to the school, the tracks going both ways over the bridge that spanned Cactus Creek. They passed the Wilder place, the marks evident in the dusty, brown dirt. His mother sat on the front porch, her sewing in her hands, and she waved as they walked by the front gate. Mary Alice stuck to his elbow like a sandbur every step of the way.

After another hundred yards or so, the tracks disappeared from the road.

“Where’d they go?” Thomas shoved his hands into his pockets. He had been in the lead most of the way, and the class clustered around him, staring up at Ben.

Shrugging, he tilted his head. “Is there any rule that says a rider has to stay on the road?”

They spread out in the grass, and he followed, stopping beside the first clear track. “Look here.” He put his fingers into the slight depression, outlining the edges of the print. “When you’re tracking over grass, you have to look for bent blades, small hollows in the earth, disturbed pebbles or leaves.”

Once they knew what to look for, they found more hoofprints.

“Try to think about where your quarry might be going. Most folks try to travel in a straight line to get where they’re headed as soon as possible.”

Ahead of them, a bend of Cactus Creek lay on the prairie, scrub trees and brush sticking up above the banks. Ben glanced over his shoulder. They’d covered about three-quarters of a mile, and so far, the only hitch in the trail had been getting off the road. He’d expected more from his father. Thomas took off along the hoofprints, quicker than the rest, already showing great promise as a tracker.

Without much trouble, he led the rest of the kids right to the creek bank.

“See where he stopped to let his horse drink?” Ben pointed to the deeper impressions in the damp earth.

“What did he do then? I don’t see any more tracks.” Thomas pinched the tip of his nose, his go-to gesture when he was thinking hard.

“What do you think happened? Work it out from what his options were.” Ben spoke to the group, inviting input.

“He could turn back to town.”

“He could, but did you see any tracks going that way?”

“No.”

“What else could he do?”

“Ride along the creek.”

“Yep, but you can see he didn’t.”

Amanda tugged at Mary Alice’s sleeve and whispered into her ear when she bent down. “Amanda says he rode into the water.”

“Good job, Amanda. That’s exactly what he did. Boys, you shuck off your shoes and socks and roll up your pants. Wade over to the other side and divide into two groups. You don’t know if he went up-or downstream. Follow along until you see where he left the water, then holler out. Girls, you’ll divide on this side and look for tracks.”

Of course he found himself in the group with Mary Alice and Amanda. Bekah and Sarah grabbed hands and headed upstream, running too fast to notice any tracks. Mary Alice batted her eyes, but he pretended not to notice.

Less than a hundred yards downstream in the direction of town, the twins shouted. “He got out here. There’s tracks straight up the bank, but then he turned around and went back into the creek.”

Ben turned around and put his fingers to his lips, letting out a piercing whistle to the teams upstream. The kids in that direction bolted toward him, the boys splashing through the water and wetting the legs of their jeans. Their shoes, tied together and hung around their necks, flopped and jounced with each bound, and he remembered his own childhood, the carefree days of skipping rocks and playing in creeks and chasing girls with frogs.

What wouldn’t he give to go back to those days before he donned a badge, when he just
pretended
to be his dad, the greatest sheriff ever? Before the Challenge and gold shipments and students with puppy love and getting on Cassie Bucknell’s bad side.

She would’ve liked today’s lesson, since he remembered her tomboyish ways as a kid, climbing trees and racing the boys and flipping over rocks along the creek to see what creatures might be squirming around underneath.

And she was still trying to best the boys with her bravado and daring. But there was a big difference between being able to climb higher or whistle a grass stem better than anyone else and defending and protecting a town and a gold shipment. The boys she would be trying to best this time were bigger and stronger and more ruthless than she could ever be. The thought of her facing down thieves, standing in harm’s way, turned his knees to water.

The twins found where the horse had exited the creek again. Ben was so preoccupied, he almost walked right over the trail.

“Where you goin’, Mr. Wilder? The tracks lead this way.” Mary Alice put her hand on his arm, and his mind jerked back to her letter and her crush and what he was going to do about it. He snatched his arm away, then tried to cover it by pretending she’d startled him.

“Sorry, I was thinking about something. Go on ahead, Mary Alice. I’ll follow in a minute.” He sounded like a bumbling idiot. Maybe that was the way to turn her interest elsewhere. Act like a complete fool around her, and maybe she’d think she could do better and leave him alone.

Of course, the way things were going, he wouldn’t have to act. If he polled the women in his life, most of them would probably say he had the fool role sewn up tight. Mary Alice ignored his suggestion that she go ahead and stayed by his side.

The trail soon rejoined the road, and by the time they reached his parents’ gate once more, the kids could make out a horse and man across the bridge standing at the school’s front porch. Most of them ran pell-mell, all elbows and knees and shouts of success. Amanda stayed with Mary Alice and Ben and arrived at the school a few minutes later.

“You found me.” His father pushed himself up from the stairs. “And in pretty good time, too.” He tousled the twins’ curls and gave a light cuff on the shoulder to Thomas. “Good work. I thought I might give you the slip there at the creek.”