The Mystery of the Galloping Ghost (13 page)

Pat and Regan
bundled Burke into his pickup,
wedging the developer between them on the front seat.

“Are
they taking him to the sheriff?” Trixie asked. “I want to go along. I can
explain everything.”

“You
most certainly will explain everything,” Charlene Murrow said in an unusually
sharp tone.
“First thing tomorrow morning.
Right now,
you’re going home to bed.” She took Trixie by the arm and led her to the horse
that Regan had been riding.

There
was no point arguing, Trixie knew. Besides, the idea of home and bed was
suddenly very appealing. She began to fall asleep on the ride home, soothed by
the gentle rocking of the sure-footed little Arabian mare. The memories of the
past few hours grew hazy in her mind.

Back
at the ranch house, Trixie pulled off her damp clothes, got into a nightgown,
and tumbled into bed. She was only dimly aware of Honey doing the same.

The
next morning, Trixie still felt a little dazed. She kept drifting in and out of
sleep, sensing that there were reasons to be up and questions to be answered,
but too
cozy
and content to move. At last, with
bright sunlight coming through the window, she forced herself to sit up in bed
and stretch.

“Is
it time to get up?” Honey mumbled. She rolled over and watched in amazement as
her friend suddenly leaped out of bed.

“
Gleeps
!
I’d forgotten
all about Al-
Adeen
and Pat and—and everything,”
Trixie said. “Come on—we’ve got to find out what happened.”

Honey
rubbed the last traces of sleepiness from her eyes and jumped out of bed. In
minutes, the girls were dressed and heading down the hall.

Trixie
had expected to find the kitchen deserted at that late-morning hour, but there
was a full crowd around the table: Regan, Pat, Bill, Charlene—and Wilhelmina
James!

Conversation
ceased as the two girls entered the room. Pat jumped to his feet and hurriedly
pulled out the vacant chair between him and Wilhelmina. There was no mistaking
whom the invitation was for.

Honey
happily took her place next to Pat. Then she asked Wilhelmina, “Have you been
here all night?”

“Oh,
no,” Wilhelmina said. “That is, I was out in the woods for most of the night.
Then, early this morning, I went back to my room in town for a brief nap. I
must admit I couldn’t sleep, however. The
Murrows
had
told me that I might check in on you girls in the morning. So here I am.”

Now
Trixie knew that Wilhelmina had a rented room somewhere in town. Trixie felt a
nudge of curiosity to find out more about the interesting woman, but Wilhelmina
was not her most pressing concern this morning. She bounced on her tiptoes, too
excited to sit down. “What happened to Burke? Is he in jail? Did he confess? Is
Al-
Adeen
back? Is he okay?”

Bill
Murrow raised his hands, pretending to snatch the imaginary questions out of
the air as they sailed past his head.

Trixie
giggled at the pantomime. She plunked herself down in a chair and said, “All
right, all right. Just tell me what happened last night.”

“Last
night... last night,” Bill said musingly, as though he couldn’t think of
anything interesting to tell. Seeing that both girls were about to burst from
curiosity, he relented. “Well, we took Burke off to jail, where he stayed till
first thing this morning. Then he got out on bail.”

“Out on bail!”
Trixie protested.

Bill
nodded, making a disgusted face. “Apparently, horse-thieving isn’t the crime it
once was.”

“Not
when the horse is
back
home, safe and sound,” Charlene
said.

“Is
he okay?” Honey asked Pat.

“No,”
Pat said, looking serious. Then he broke into a wide grin. “He’s absolutely
terrific—just the way he always was!”

“Don’t
let the bail fool you,” Regan added.

“Burke
stole an extremely valuable piece of property, and the law will see that he’s
punished for it.”

“So
much for Burke Landing,” Pat said happily.

“Will
all the work just stop?” Trixie asked, remembering the huge shell of the first
building and the foundations that had been dug for the others.

“Probably,
unless someone wants to buy the land from Burke and pick up where he left off,”
Regan guessed.

“Before
that happens, we may be able to buy that land ourselves,” Bill said. “We could
tear down Burke’s Tinkertoys and let the prairie take the land back.”

“Now
that’s something to shoot for!” Pat exclaimed.

Bill
nodded. “It’s not so unbelievable, either, now that your girlfriends got our
horse back for us.”

Trixie
allowed herself a proud smile—and that was a mistake.

Charlene
Murrow said sternly, “This could have been a gathering of a much different kind
this morning, if you girls had drowned in the river or been taken away by
Burke.”

Trixie
winced as she remembered the night before. “Everything turned out all right,
though,” she said simply. She would tell the
Murrows
about the connection between Burke and old Gunnar later. “We really owe it all
to Wilhelmina.”

The
woman shook her head. “No one owes me a thing,” she said. “I was a fool—a
dangerous one. In spite of the years I’ve spent developing objectivity, I let
myself believe in a ghost story that was quite flimsy. I believed the
retrocognition
much too easily. Then, as a consequence, I
believed I’d seen the ghost. If I hadn’t been such a fool, I might have
realized that someone galloping past me on a horse in the middle of the night
was a sign of something unnatural, not
super
natural. I might have done something to help then and
there, instead of merely taking notes.” Wilhelmina looked down at the table,
shaking her head in dismay.

“You
helped when the time came,” Honey said. “That’s what really matters.”

But
Wilhelmina wasn’t easily consoled. “No,” she said. “I’m glad I was able to
help, of course. But what really matters is that I violated the spirit of
scientific inquiry. My objectivity on this project is ruined. I’ll have to give
up and go home.”

“Oh,
no,” Trixie exclaimed sympathetically. Wilhelmina shrugged. “It’s a small loss.
There was no true evidence of phenomena, after all. Everything we observed was
part of a prank.”

Trixie
darted nervous looks at Charlene and Bill. From their calm expressions, she
decided that Wilhelmina had already told them the story of Gus’s “haunting.”

“Gus!”
Trixie said aloud. “Is he all right? Did he make it back here last night after
he pulled me out of the river? Where is he?”

This
new barrage of questions produced confused looks from Bill and Charlene. “Gus
is out in the stable, working with the horses. What do you mean about pulling
you out of the river?” Charlene asked.

Trixie
told about how she’d seen Gus looking down at her from the riverbank. “I just
reached up, grabbed his hand, and pulled myself out of the water. But—but
didn’t he come back here afterward, to get help?” she asked, realizing for the
first time that Gus hadn’t been among the rescue party the night before.
“Trixie, Gus went home last night on time,”

Charlene
explained. “And he came to work this morning on time, too. That’s when he found
out about what had happened last night —and it was the first he’d heard of it.”

“He
was there. It was dark, but I distinctly saw an old cowboy up on the bank,
looking down at me, and—” Trixie broke off and felt a wave of chills spreading
over her body.

“The
Galloping Ghost,” Honey whispered.

“Here
we go again,” Bill Murrow groaned.

“Well,
if it wasn’t Gus, who was it?” Trixie demanded.

“Probably
a gnarled old tree that looked the tiniest bit like a human face, and a gnarled
old branch that you mistook for a hand,” Bill said.

“It
was so clear,” Trixie said.

“How
clear is anything to a person who’s being swept away in an icy river?” Bill
countered. “You needed to believe help had arrived, so your brain supplied some
for you.”

“But—”
Trixie turned and looked at Wilhelmina.

“Mr.
Murrow’s explanation is very believable. The human mind is capable of
powerfully realistic hallucinations in time of crisis. I couldn’t help but
notice, Trixie, that you said you grabbed the hand and pulled
yourself
out of the water. Surely if it had been a real
person, you’d have had a sensation of
being
pulled up, instead.”

Trixie
squinted, trying to remember the sensation. “I don’t know. I guess it was all
kind of a jumble,” she said.

“Ghost
or tree branch or ring-tailed baboon, it saved your life by making you believe
you had a chance,” Bill said. “Let’s be grateful for that.”

“I
wholeheartedly agree,” Wilhelmina said, rising from the table. “Now that I’ve
had a chance to see for myself that Trixie and Honey are all right, I must be
going. Thank you for the breakfast.”

Trixie
and Honey followed her outside. Parked in the driveway was an old, wood-
paneled
station wagon that Trixie guessed was Wilhelmina’s
car. The girls walked over to it with her.

“I’m
sorry you’re going to be leaving,” Trixie said. “We still have a few days’
vacation left, and I thought we could learn some more about phenomena from
you.”

“Well.”
Wilhelmina frowned, struggling for absolute accuracy. “I may not leave
immediately.”

Trixie
frowned, too, unable to understand Wilhelmina’s sudden discomfort. Then the
reason became clear.
She was ready
to leave until she heard how I was rescued from the river. She sounded as if
she agreed with Bill, but she must have some feeling that there’s more to it
than that.
Trixie wanted to ask the question out loud, but she knew
it was the wrong time. Wilhelmina’s embarrassment at believing in the
retrocognition
was still too strong. She’d be bound to deny
that Trixie had been rescued by the Galloping Ghost.

Instead,
the girls let Wilhelmina get in her car, start the engine, and drive away. They
stood and looked after her, waving good-bye.

“We
thought that Burke came here to redeem the family heritage that old Gunnar had
almost ruined,” Honey said softly. “What if it turned out to be the other way
around—old Gunnar making up for Burke’s wrongdoing?”

Trixie
shivered and smiled at the same time. “That’s a nice thought, isn’t it?
In a spooky sort of way.”

“I
guess we’ll never really know,” Honey added. “But at least all the real
mysteries got solved. We know that Gus was responsible for the other ghostly
happenings. We know that

Burke
stole Al-
Adeen
. And we know that the horse is safe
and sound.”

“All
that’s left is the mystery of how I got out of that river,” Trixie said. “Was
it a ghost or a tree branch or a ring-tailed baboon?
I
guess
we
won’t
ever
know
.”

But I know what I believe,
Trixie added to herself. Then, suddenly feeling very hungry, she turned and
headed back to the kitchen.