The Cactus Creek Challenge Read Online Free PDF

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