Read Online Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore - Free Book Online Page B

it, but I had to keep up momentum or be hogtied by my own arguments.
    On one hand, it would have been weird
not
to be curious about the discovery. Maybe a bit macabre, but I didn’t think even Phin could wrangle an invitation if the professionals didn’t think the dig was more history than homicide. I’d have felt no conflict about heading over the fence at all if it weren’t for the ghost.
    Given my family’s reputation, even the
rumor
of a ghost complicated things. Deputy Kelly’s visit had invoked my paranoia about judgmental authority. As long as the Goodnights were quirky but harmless, that was okay. But if someone got the idea we were
involved
somehow? Maybe it was far-fetched to worry, but there
had
been an officer of the law on the doorstep last night.
    Only, it wasn’t just a rumor.
Something
had appeared in my room. Maybe it was the same entity as the storied ghost of McCulloch Ranch or whatever had caused the ranch hand’s fall the night before. But even if those were fiction, the ghost beside my bed had been fact.
    A chill swept over me despite the warm air, and I congratulated myself for spoiling the morning.
    I focused instead on the barn and the greenhouse and the dew-sequined foliage as the dogs and I walked along therows of fragrant herbs and down the hill into the lavender fields—my favorite part of the farm. This had once been a vineyard, one of many in the area. But Uncle Burt had turned the land from grapes over to my aunt’s ventures when they got married, and it had worked out pretty well for everyone.
    When we reached the river, I turned northwest, upstream. The graveled path turned into two parallel wheel ruts cut into knee-high scrub grass. They led to a barbed-wire fence and a five-rail gate between Goodnight land and the McCulloch place. The grass had grown up around the bottom, so I didn’t bother to pull the gate open. The dogs went easily through the rails, and I braced my hands on the top, my foot on the bottom, like they were the rungs of a ladder.
    Curiosity welled up in me like the fizz in an ice-cold Coke. Excited curiosity, the kind that had made me take a flashlight to the haunted river in the middle of the night all those years ago. And
that
made me nervous. My carefully laid-out boundaries existed for a reason. I didn’t like how fuzzy they got when I spent too much time in the Goodnight world.
    Who was I fooling? Visiting the dig was like poking around a fire-ant mound. And whether it had a ghost that was real or rumor, I’d have to go carefully not to get stung.
    While I was at it, why didn’t I just admit that climbing the fence into McCulloch property—by (secondhand) invitation—was a sort of spit in the eye to McCranky for (maybe) setting the sheriff’s department on me.
    Oh, and by the way, I sure thought about him a lot for someone I never wanted to see again.
    Whose fence you are about to climb
.
    Jeez Louise, that settled it. I had to do
something
just so I would stop talking to myself.
    I hauled myself over and joined the waiting dogs.
    Committing to an action seemed to ease the knot in my stomach and quiet the voices in my head. With a new spring in my step, I set off along the cattle trail beside the river embankment. The dogs snapped at dragonflies and explored the shrubs for rabbits, except for Lila—the part-time search-and-rescue dog (when she wasn’t fleeing from goats)—who trotted ahead, nose in the air, then back to make sure I was following.
    The land certainly didn’t look like a likely spot for a haunting. The breeze carried the smell of dust and sage and juniper. Later in the day, the sunlight would bleach everything to austere brown and beige, but at the moment the colors were all contrast—puffy white clouds and seamless blue sky, pale limestone outcroppings and rich umber and deep green live oak and mesquite.
    In the spring the rugged hills were carpeted with wildflowers, and in the summer it was stark and hot, but the rivers made green