Free Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore

ribbons of respite from the heat. As I picked my way up the hill, avoiding cactus and cow patties, I could see why getting cattle to the other chunk of McCulloch land might be a problem. As the land went higher, the river ran faster and deeper, cutting into the rock and making a natural fording impossible, unless you were part mountain goat, part amphibian.
    At the crest of the next hill, Lila gave a bark and started down the other side, leaving a puff of white dust in her wake.Sadie took off after her, and even Bear looked tempted to desert me. It seemed I’d managed to find the dig.
    And then I had a horrible thought. Dogs plus dirt plus bones equaled an excavation nothing like what the University of Texas had in mind.
    “Oh
hell.
” This was not going to keep me under the McCulloch radar.
    I sprinted up the hill; the first thing I saw on the other side was a big yellow bulldozer, parked in a cleared space by the river, looking abandoned in the middle of its work. I took it in with a glance, along with a van with the burnt-orange UT logo, a canopy pitched to shade folding work-tables, and a handful of people digging in the dirt like kids in a sandbox.
    Lila and Sadie were still running full steam ahead. In desperation I gave a shrill two-fingered whistle—a useful thing I’d learned on a soccer field. It stopped all three dogs like I’d superglued their paws to the ground.
    The dogs weren’t the only ones startled into stillness. Heads turned, as they say. Baseball caps, wide-brimmed straw hats, and one Stetson I recognized—oh
effing
hell—all swiveled to stare up the hill.
    I’m sure I made an unimposing picture in my T-shirt and cutoff shorts, my hair in pigtails. On the other hand, I was fully clothed, so this was a marked improvement over yesterday.
    Nothing to do but brazen it out. “Lila, Sadie!” I didn’t bother to yell at Bear, because he had only gone five steps and was looking very ashamed of himself. “Stay right there.”
    I made my way down the steep slope, which was full ofloose scree that made my descent anything but graceful. But I stayed on my feet, more or less, and caught up with the dogs at the bottom.
    Ben McCulloch crossed the field on an intercept course. He did not look happy to see me. There was a shocker.
    “What the hell are you doing here?” Mr. Personality stopped in front of me, his hands resting on his hips, which should have looked prissy but didn’t. It made him seem imposing, which I was sure was his aim.
    But I needled him anyway. “Were you
born
a cranky old man?”
    The dogs swarmed around him, holding no grudges, beating his legs with their ecstatic tails. He ignored them and glared at me. “What happened to ‘see you on the other side of never’?”
    Slayed with my own words. “I didn’t know you’d be here. And as it happens,” I began with dignity, intending to tell him I was invited. But it occurred to me that “we” were invited might well be Phin’s interpretation and not the mysterious Mark’s intent. And that would have been humiliating. So I finished lamely, “I was just taking a walk.”
    He gave me a look of exaggerated suspicion, and feeling like a coward, I busied myself calling the dogs to heel. “Stop that.
Sit
, Lila.”
    To my shock, she did, and what Lila did, the others imitated. Ben raised his brows, but he looked more sarcastic than impressed. “They’ve learned some manners since yesterday. What did you do, cast a spell?”
    If I
could
have cast a spell, it would have been to wipe that snide curl off his lip. I hadn’t forgotten the deputy’s visit.
    But I
had
forgotten about the ranch hand until just then. “How is your guy?” I asked. “The man that went to the hospital.”
    He looked confused, but that might have just been from the rapid-fire change of expressions on my face: anger, realization, chagrin, worry. His made its own progression: bemusement, surprise, irritation, then finally grudging admission. “He’s