Read Online The Cowboy Who Broke the Mold by Cathleen Galitz - Free Book Online Page A

“See!”
    Proudly he thrust his drawing at his father, where- upon the rest of the children held their creations up for his inspection, as well. There were drawings of lupines and dandelions and meadowlarks and aspen, and a re- markably fat bumblebee crayoned by a cherubic kin- dergartner.
    Judson pushed his hat back in that damnable sensualway of his and wiped the sweat away with the sleeve of his plaid Western shirt.
    “Now ain’t those pretty?” he said, rolling his sylla- bles over in a slow, rough-hewn manner that gave a whole new nuance to the word “drawl.”
    “Aren’t,” corrected Cowboy, clearly embarrassed by his father’s grammatical shortcomings.
    Carrie bestowed upon the boy a smile so sweet as to cause his father’s certain displeasure to fade into the distant horizon.
    “Mr. Horn,” Carrie said, firmly taking hold of the situation, “would you please remain after school for a moment?”
    Judson bore the children’s snickers humbly. Still, as he waited for them all to leave, fondly swatting his own two on the bottoms and telling them to wait for him in the truck, he felt his neck grow prickly at the thought of being held after school.
    Positioning herself behind the fortress of her old oak desk, Carrie addressed him as she would any errant stu- dent. “I will not tolerate you undermining my author- ity,” she began in a quiet yet commanding tone.
    Judson met the cold anger reflected in those sham- rock green eyes with the same defiance that had marked his own turbulent schooldays.
    “How was I to know I was interrupting? What I walked into sure didn’t look anything like school the way I remember it.”
    The remark only added fuel to the fire smoldering within the schoolteacher’s eyes.
    “I suppose not,” Carrie countered in a tone that in- dicated she rather expected him to have been educated in a cave somewhere, possibly with a pack of wolves.“Apparently,” she continued without missing a beat, “it was not enough for you to humiliate me in front of the entire school board, you had to make certain that every child in the entire school district was informed of how I fell for that ridiculous jackalope story.”
    “Wait just a minute,” Judson interrupted. “It’s not fair for you to hold me entirely accountable for—”
    Carrie did not give him the opportunity to finish.
    “Evidently you feel I owe you an apology for being born in Chicago, for being born a woman, and for hav- ing the audacity to accept this job. Well, Mr. Horn…” She paused, letting him feel the full effect of her eyes as they bore into him like emerald drill bits. “Like it or not, I am here and I intend to stay!”
    “I never said—”
    “And despite your opinion to the contrary, teaching is damned hard work. I would greatly appreciate it if in the future you would refrain from undermining my au- thority. That means not bad-mouthing me in front of your children or any of my other students, thank you very much. As well as curtailing that ‘you ain’t never gonna need none of this here book-learnin’ anyhows’ illiterate attitude of yours!”
    Judson visibly bristled. “Now wait just a damn—”
    “All I’m asking you, Mr. Horn,” Carrie interrupted, her voice rising to match her anger, “is that you get out of my way and let me teach!”
    Pointing her red pen at him like a weapon, she dis- missed him. “You may go now.”
    The silence that followed was deafening.
    Judson was too stunned by the curt dismissal he had received and the tongue-lashing he had endured to know exactly what had hit him. The last time he’d felt like this was when a bull by the name of Hell’s Belle hadtossed him into the air like a tiddledywink, knocking the wind out of him.
    Ears burning, he spun on the heels of his cowboy boots and slammed the door behind him, thinking wryly to himself that this was definitely more like school as he remembered it.
    Judson Horn had spent his entire second grade at the back of the