Free One Texas Cowboy Too Many (Burnt Boot, Texas) by Carolyn Brown Page A

the war was over, the Brennans outgrew their little two-room school, so they added several classrooms onto it, and while they were building, they added a couple of bathrooms—one for the boys, with two stalls, two sinks, and three urinals, and one for the girls, with four stalls and two sinks.
    To save the money to put in a proper septic system, the head of the school of the time, Miss Elizabeth Brennan, came up with the idea of using the old cistern for a septic tank. With the new well they’d had put in, they had running water inside the school. The big underground cistern would be totally useless, and what was a septic system anyway but a holding tank in the ground? So they routed all the new plumbing into the cistern. For the past sixty years, the school had paid a company to pump it out twice a year. They had a permanent schedule: pump the cistern during Christmas break and in late summer, before school started.
    * * *
    “Why do we have to go inside their school?” Eli Gallagher asked.
    A tall, lanky cowboy with a mop of blond hair and brown eyes, he and his cousins Randy and Hart had been chosen to do Naomi Gallagher’s bidding on this job. They’d managed the last assignment, which involved stealing Mavis Brennan’s entire pig stock and selling it off, so they were now in Granny Gallagher’s good graces. That, according to Hart, was a damn fine place to be.
    Randy, who was as tall as Eli but outweighed him by thirty pounds, took off his cowboy hat and mopped his sweaty face with a red bandanna. When he finished, he shoved his bandanna back into his hip pocket. “It’s damn hot in here, but we promised nobody would get hurt, so we got to make sure nobody is hiding out in the school.”
    “Why would anybody be in here at midnight?” Hart asked.
    Shorter by a few inches than the other two, he was the pretty cowboy that all the girls flocked to in the bar or at a rodeo. He oozed charm and had a swagger that drew female eyes to his tight-fitting jeans. And he knew his way around dynamite and any other kind of explosive, which was a good thing when it came to blowing up tree stumps or taking care of a rock in the middle of a pasture.
    “Why can’t we burn the place down like they did ours?” Randy asked as the three of them made their way down the halls, opening doors and checking closets.
    “If I were a teenager, lookin’ for a hidey-hole to make out in with my girlfriend, it wouldn’t be in a schoolhouse in August. It’s like a furnace in here,” Hart whispered.
    “If things work like they should, then I don’t reckon it matters if it’s hot as hell or if the air conditioners are runnin’ full force, does it?” Eli said.
    “Looks like it’s empty as a tomb,” Randy said when they’d checked the whole place. “Did you check the girls’ bathroom, Hart?”
    “Yes, I did, and if y’all go tellin’ anyone I was snoopin’ in a girls’ restroom, well, remember I know shit on you too.” Hart smiled.
    “We’re ghosts. We were never here.” Eli opened the back door, and they looked around before trooping out across the yard to the implement shed, which they’d parked the truck in.
    “I guess it’s a go, then?” Eli asked.
    “Did you poke that dynamite down in the hole like I told you?” Hart asked.
    “I did. You run the wire to the truck, Randy?”
    “I did, but Hart has to hook it up to the battery. Ain’t no way I’m touching that shit. It scares me worse than rattlesnakes. I’ll be sittin’ inside the truck. Soon as it blows, we’ll back out of the shed and be halfway to Dallas by the time Orville gets here,” Randy answered.
    “Y’all get on in the truck. Granny is a genius. Blow up their septic tank and there won’t be no school here next month either. It’ll take weeks for them to clean up the mess and decide what to do. If they can set fire to our school, we can blow up their shit,” Hart laughed.
    “Wait!” Randy yelled from the truck bed. “I’m back here