Linda Castle - Temple's Prize

“Yes—tell them that C. H. Cadwallender was the best teacher a man could have, but I fully intend to be the first explorer to find and catalog a new species of extinct reptile and name it for Filbert Montague. I am confident my quest will be a short one. You can tell Mr. Montague to get that one-hundred-thousand dollars dusted off, because it will be going to Ashmont University, the institution of my choice, very soon.”

Constance read the newspaper article again. She found it hard to believe that Temple Parish could be bristling with so much confidence, but there it was in black and white. He had issued a blatant challenge to her father, and the prize at stake was the endowment promised by Mr. Montague. She sighed and set the paper aside.

“Papa will be beside himself,” she told the mynah bird eyeing her from its black iron perch.

“Awrk,” the bird said. “Beside, beside, beside.”

“Be quiet, Livingstone. This is serious. I have to find some way of helping Papa and the university.” Any chance of trying to reason with Temple was out of the question now. Even if he were inclined to make some private and amicable arrangement with her, the newspapers would hear of it and everyone involved would risk being discredited by Dandridge University and her father’s stuffy, narrow-minded colleagues.

She pushed her spectacles up on her nose and tried to think. Sunlight was streaking through the beveled glass transom in the hallway. The parquet wood floor was striped in shadow and light. Livingstone hopped down from his perch to the round oak table and started shuffling through the day’s mail. He picked up several envelopes and then dropped them to the floor. Then he found a letter more to his liking. While Constance was preoccupied he began to pierce the paper with his sharp pumpkin-colored beak.

“Give .me that—you nuisance.” Constance jerked the envelope from Livingstone’s bill. “You pesky little thief.”

She held up the perforated letter and looked at the damage with a critical eye. “Now look what you have done.”

Luckily it was addressed to her, C. H. Cadwallender. Papa was beginning to grow impatient with her pet. He was far too talkative and his habit of ruining anything he got his beak into had begun to wear on her father’s nerves.

She ripped open the tattered envelope, tossed it into a wicker wastebasket and began to read the letter. A frown creased her brow. Constance retrieved the discarded envelope and read the address again.

“C. H. Cadwallender,” she mused. She refolded the letter and replaced it in the envelope. A smile curved her lips. It was a natural mistake, since she and her father had identical initials.

“Perhaps Papa can go on that dig after all.” She urged Livingstone to step onto her hand and returned him to his cage before he destroyed anything else. While she picked up the scattered mail from the hall floor a plan had begun to form in her mind. By the time the uneven tap and click of her father’s cane announced his arrival home, Constance was ready.

She opened the door and greeted her father with a kiss to the cheek. “Good afternoon, Papa.”

C.H. hung his hat on the tall oak hall tree. “Honoria. You seem in particularly ebullient spirits—what has made you so buoyant?”

Constance straightened her collar, nudged her spectacles up on her nose and looked her father straight in the eye. The time had come to tell him her plan. “Come sit down, Papa, I have something to discuss with you.”

C.H. hobbled to his chair and flopped down awkwardly. Whenever Honoria got that glint in her eye he knew he was in for stormy weather. Constance placed the ottoman in front of him and gently put his foot in the middle with a pillow beneath it. When he was as comfortable as she could possibly make him, she drew in a deep breath and told him of her plan.

Professor Cadwallender stared at his daughter in disbelief. She had come up with some bizarre schemes in her life, but this one was the most far-fetched yet.

“I can do it, Papa. I am a better digger than many men and I know how to map and grid by using the system you taught me. I can do it—I am sure I can be successful.” Constance heard a challenge ringing in her own voice.

“It’s ridiculous. It’s no place for a female on her own. To even consider it is preposterous.”

Constance felt her own pride surging forward. She wanted this chance to prove herself. “I have gone on many digs with you in the past.”

“That was entirely different, Honoria. Those were my digs. If you went to Montana you would be completely on your own.”

“Would you rather see Temple Parish win by default?”

She knew her words had hit their intended mark when her father’s lined face turned three shades of crimson.

“That bounder!” Professor Cadwallender struck his cane against the fat pillow elevating his cast. A spiral of dust wafted into the still air of the overcrowded study.

“I am capable of succeeding, Papa. And I would be able to make detailed sketches for Dandridge’s archives.” Constance reassured her fatheragain.

He’ looked up at her and tilted his head much as Livingstone did when studying a new toy. “Are you sure, Honoria?”

“You can depend on me, Papa—I promise you won’t be disappointed. You have my solemn oath, I will not allow Temple Parish to win.”

C.H. sighed in resignation. “All right, Honoria— go. Go and show that ungrateful Temple-Parish what we Cadwallenders are made of.”

Temple propped up his feet and stared out the window of the train car as mile after dusty mile of terrain rattled by the window. The fine film of grit that coated the glass added a soft sepia tone to his view of the world.

Other than an occasional antelope springing away with a flash of its white rump, and the sporadic long-eared jackrabbit bounding alongside the tracks, Temple seemed to be the only person in the train car who was not napping. Not a sound came from the other passengers. It was the kind of quiet that grated on Temple’s nerves—the kind of quiet before a godawful thunder-boomer raced across open country, or some terrible disaster swept into his life—or he was cursed to have a month’s worth of nightmares about his mother’s death. He rubbed the scar on his cheek and directed his thoughts to his recent departure, forcing the old pain below the surface of his consciousness.

He would reach the tiny town of Morgan Forks tomorrow morning. There, he was to meet with the local man Filbert Montague had hired to guide him to the ravine where a cache of bones was rumored to be. From that point on it would be a soft job.

All he had to do was dig out some unknown critter—and most everything being found was unknown—ship it back to New York and watch Filbert Montague hand over the money to Ashmont University.

“After reasonable expenses,” Temple muttered to himself. The cash he had managed to save from his last dig was rapidly dwindling. He had hoped Ashmont would be grateful enough to offer to finance a new expedition, but they had not. Luckily Filbert Montague’s inflated ego and fat bank account had solved his problem. “For the moment,” Temple muttered aloud.

The job would be easy and quick, hardly so much as a challenge. He knew he should be happy about that, but he was still sorely disappointed that C. H. Cadwallender had been unable to make the trip. It had been a ten-year-old thorn in Temple’s side that old C.H. never gave him his due, just as he had never given him the benefit of the doubt.

Temple was good at what he did—perhaps he was even the best—and he was itching to prove it to C.H. and the rest of those stodgy old fools at Dandridge who had been so quick to pass judgment on him ten years ago.

He wondered why it should mean so much to him, after all these years and all these miles, but deep down inside he knew. All he had wanted since C.H. found him living in the streets and started teaching him the science of the past was to measure up in the old man’s eyes. He longed to show C.H. and his fellow academics that book learning was not the only way. And he needed to hear them admit that he was just as honorable, just as fair, as somebody who had not grown up in the gutters of New York. Temple had been forced to learn his methods through backbreaking work, but they would not acknowledge his skill or forget the rumored scandal that still clung to his name like dust to his boots.