The Mystery of the Galloping Ghost (11 page)

“That’s
going to make things hot for Burke,” Trixie told Honey when they were alone.
“We’ve got to figure out where he’s hidden Al-
Adeen
before he gets nervous and does something—something final.”

Honey
nodded. “First things first, though. We have to tell Wilhelmina about Gus being
the ghost. That won’t be easy, but at least it’s simple. After that, we can
concentrate on Burke and Al-
Adeen
and all the rest of
it.”

It
wasn’t hard for the girls to leave the house unobserved after dinner. The
Murrows
were in the living room, poring over a three-county
map that Bill had bought that afternoon.

“They
still think they can find the horse if they look hard enough,” Trixie said.
“There’s just no way.”

“I
hate to see them keep trying,” Honey said. “Are you sure we shouldn’t just tell
them the truth? We could at least tell them the horse was stolen, and show them
the door of the stall to prove it. We don’t have to tell them we think Burke
did it.”

“They’d
figure it out,” Trixie said. “Even if they didn’t, they’d be sure to tell
everybody the horse was stolen. Word would get back to Burke in minutes, the
way news travels around here. Then he’d start feeling pressured to get rid of
the horse.” Trixie shook her head. “We just have to keep things cool until we
know where the horse is.”

“That
could be forever,” Honey said grimly. Trixie patted her friend on the shoulder.
“First things first,” she reminded her. “Wilhelmina has to know the truth about
the ghost.”

They
had carefully rehearsed their speech to Wilhelmina before they left the house.
As they neared the hideout, Trixie drew a deep breath, ready to begin. She
never got the first words out.

Wilhelmina
had spotted the two girls as they approached, and she hurried to meet them. Her
eyes sparkled with excitement. “I was so hoping you’d come!” she said. “I have
something extraordinary to tell you.” She leaned close and clutched Trixie’s
hand with a hand that was cool and smooth.

“I’ve
seen the Galloping Ghost!”
Wilhelmina
said
.

“I tell you
, I saw it! It was exactly the way
the newspaper articles described it,” Wilhelmina went on. “The rider was
wearing a cowboy hat and western clothes, and he was bent low and galloping
across the prairie as fast as he could. It was a multisensory experience; I saw
the horse and rider, and I heard the hoof-beats.”

Wilhelmina
looked at the girls, waiting for congratulations. Trixie and Honey stared back
at her, not knowing what to say.

The
woman shoved her glasses up on her nose. She looked hurt. “Okay, it’s not as
exciting as a
retrocognition
, but my sighting was the
most exciting firsthand experience
I’ve
had.”

“It
isn’t that,” Trixie said. “I mean—” She stopped and looked to Honey for help.

“We
didn’t have a
retrocognition
,” Honey said. Briefly,
she told Wilhelmina about their discovery that Gus had been posing as the
Galloping Ghost. “So you see,” she concluded, “the disappearing objects, the
gust of wind, the
hoofbeats
, the floating head the
surveyor saw, and even the
retrocognition
have all
been explained.”

“Was
your friend Gus trying to fool me last night?” Wilhelmina demanded.

“N-no,”
Honey said. “We didn’t even tell Gus about you.”

“Then
my experience stands,” Wilhelmina said stubbornly.

A
picture had been forming in Trixie’s mind while Honey and Wilhelmina spoke. “Did
you say a cowboy hat and western clothes?” she asked. When Wilhelmina nodded,
Trixie immediately asked, “What time did you see the —the ghost?”

Wilhelmina
pulled her notepad out of her pocket while Trixie did an impatient jig. “At
1:47
A.M.,”
Wilhelmina said.

Trixie
snapped her fingers. “It was Burke! I know it was!”

“It
was Burke
and
Al-
Adeen
!” Honey said, grasping the situation immediately.

“Al-
Adeen
?”
Wilhelmina
echoed. “Surely you’re not suggesting that a genie is—”

“No,
no, no!” Trixie waggled a hand at the woman. “Al-
Adeen
is a horse. He was— Burke wanted— Bill wouldn’t—” Her thoughts were tumbling
over themselves so fast that it was impossible for her to tell the story
clearly.

Seeing
this, Honey managed to relate the information to Wilhelmina—about Al-
Adeen’s
disappearance; about Trixie’s realization that he’d
been stolen, and by whom; about the importance of the horse to the
Murrows
; and about the real possibility that he’d be
destroyed if he weren’t found soon.

“Your
sighting last night is the only clue we have to Al-
Adeen’s
whereabouts. Your information can save his life and the
Murrows
’
ranch and—and everything,” Honey concluded.

Wilhelmina
gave Honey a
skeptical
look. She was still
disappointed about not having seen a ghost, but the importance of what she
had
seen was obviously a comfort.

“Where
did you see the rider?” Trixie asked eagerly. “And where was he headed?”
If she reaches for her notebook again, I’ll
scream,
she added silently.

To
Trixie’s relief, Wilhelmina chose to speak from memory. She pointed to the open
land directly ahead of them, just behind the ranch house. “The horse and rider
first came into my field of vision right there,” she said. “They continued in a
path parallel to the river and disappeared into the forest there.” She made a
smooth, straight arc with her finger.

Trixie’s
face lit up. “He rode into the woods, of course! Nobody bothered to look there
because we all knew Al-
Adeen
wouldn’t venture in
there alone. He’d obey a rider’s commands to go in, though.”

“That’s
due to Pat’s good training,” Honey said in a sad, proud voice.

“I’ll
bet that’s right where Burke left him, too,” Trixie said.

“If
he’s been outside all day with the deer-flies, he’s as good as destroyed
already,” Honey said, sounding near tears.

Trixie
felt a surge of horror at the thought of Al-
Adeen
driven crazy by the flies. Then another piece of the puzzle fell into place.
“It’s all right,” she said. “He isn’t outside. He’s in Burke’s construction
trailer.”

“Of
course,” Honey agreed. “That’s why the model unit was open while it was still
so messy and noisy. Burke had another purpose for the trailer.”

“It
would be the perfect hiding place. If the
Murrows
fell for the broken stall door, they’d be looking only for a runaway horse, not
a hidden-away horse.”

“Without
the Burke Landing
sign
on its side —which I’m sure
Burke removed—the trailer parked in the woods could belong to a state forestry
crew. Nobody would think a thing about it,” Honey added.

“That’s
if somebody stumbled across it, which would be unlikely in all those acres and
acres of forest,” Trixie finished.

“Then
how are
we
going to find
it?” Honey asked.

“That’ll
be easy,” Trixie told her, “because I think we know where to start looking.”

“Gunnar’s cabin!”
Honey guessed.

“It
makes perfect sense, in a twisted sort of way,” Trixie said. “Old Gunnar
Bjorkland
gets hanged for stealing a cow. A hundred years
later, one of his descendants comes back to the same part of the world to
redeem the family name with a successful real estate development. To make it all
work out, he has to steal a horse and hide it for a few days. Where else but
back where the thieving tradition first started?”

“Let’s
go!” Honey said. She stepped out of Wilhelmina’s hideout and took three steps
into the open before Trixie caught her by the arm and dragged her back. “What
are you doing?” Honey protested.

“What
are
you
doing?” Trixie
countered. “Somebody could have seen you.”

“Good,”
Honey said. “Then I won’t have to run all the way back to the ranch to get
help.”

“Oh,
they’d help us, all right,” Trixie said. “As soon as you told them that Al-
Adeen
was spotted being ridden into the woods by Burke, and
that the spotter was a psychic investigator who’s been hiding out in their
woods for the past week, they’ll help you right to the nearest hospital for a
nice long rest.”

“I
see what you mean,” Honey admitted. “So far, nobody but you and me and Gus
knows that Al-
Adeen
was even stolen.”

“I
know, too, of course,” Wilhelmina reminded her.

“Of
course,” Honey said politely.

“We
have to find Al-
Adeen
on our own,” Trixie said. “If
we can get into the trailer, we’ll bring him home ourselves. If we can’t,
that’s the time to go for help. And all we’ll have to say is that we’ve found
the horse. Nobody will ask questions until Al-
Adeen
is safe and sound in his own stall.”

“That’s
what counts,” Honey admitted. “Can I be of any assistance?” Wilhelmina asked.

“Just
wait for us to come back,” Honey said. “If we don’t—”

“I’ll
alert the proper authorities no later than tomorrow morning,” Wilhelmina said.
Realizing that her statement sounded pessimistic, she added, “In the rare event
that it’s necessary to do so.”

“Ouch!”
Trixie slapped at her neck. “Could you also loan us some bug spray? Those woods
are going to be murder.”

Dressed
in sneakers and jeans, and protected from mosquitoes and flies, the girls found
the going fairly easy. When Trixie first caught sight of Gunnar’s cabin, she
felt a sinking feeling of disappointment.
There’s no trailer! I was so sure
—

Suddenly,
Trixie saw Honey point toward the river. There, a few yards beyond the cabin,
was the trailer! There was no mistaking its looming size and shape.

The
girls half ran toward the trailer, stumbling over branches and tree roots. A
few feet away, they both halted. Trixie held her breath, listening, knowing
that Honey was doing the same. For a long, horrible moment there was silence.
Then the girls heard the sound of hooves shifting on the trailer floor and the
soft nickering of a horse.

“Let’s
see if we can get him out,” Trixie said. She started to circle the trailer in
one direction, and she
signaled
Honey to head off the
other way.

Rounding
a corner of the trailer, Trixie noticed a louvered vent high up near the flat
roof. By standing on a piece of
molding
at the bottom
of the trailer and grabbing the top
molding
with her
hands, Trixie was able to boost herself up and look inside. She got a
reassuring sight of Al-
Adeen
, asleep on his feet. The
smell of hay told her that at least the horse’s basic needs were being met.

She
let go of the
molding
and dropped to the ground,
massaging her scraped hands as she continued around the trailer. Honey was
coming toward her. “There’s a padlock this big,” Honey whispered, curving her
hands to indicate an object the size of a grapefruit. “The door is hinged from
the inside, too. There’s no way we can get it open.”

“There’s
nothing on that side but a little vent,” Trixie said. “You can see Al-
Adeen
, though.”

Honey’s
eyes shone.
“Really?
Oh, Trixie, I want to see for
myself that he’s all right!” She hurried to take a look.

Trixie
made her hands into a stirrup and offered Honey a leg up. With the advantage of
added height off the ground, Honey was able to steady herself by holding on to
the roof of the trailer.

It
was in that position—Trixie bent over and holding Honey’s foot, Honey spread
spiderlike against the trailer—that they were caught in the beam of Burke’s
flashlight.

The
man’s left hand was still wrapped around the wire binding of a bale of hay. In
his right hand was the flashlight, probably pulled out of his pocket when he
saw the shadowy shape against the trailer.

All
three of them remained frozen for a long moment. Burke seemed not to have
realized that he could let go of the hay bale. Trixie and Honey simply didn’t
know what to do.

Desperately,
Trixie tried to think. More than anything, she wanted to get away from Burke—to
run straight for the edge of the forest, then across the clearing to the
Murrows
’ house. She trusted herself to be able to
outdistance Burke on the open land.

But he probably wouldn’t even try to chase us across
the open land,
Trixie thought.
Once we’d run toward the house, there’d be ample time for him to kill the
horse and tumble its body into the river. Then it would be our word against his
that Al-
Adeen
was ever here. He’s a big-shot land
developer, and we’re a couple of kids who believe in ghosts. Who are they going
to believe?

Burke
was starting to act now. He set down the hay bale and began walking toward the
girls—confidently, but with a look of anger on his face.

Trixie
began to panic, when suddenly a second option occurred to her: the girls could
make a run for it, staying in the woods along the river. If they didn’t head
straight for the
Murrows
’, Burke might chase them
without thinking about where he was headed. When the girls finally cut across
the open land, they’d be closer to the
Murrows
’—and
he’d be farther from Al-
Adeen
. He might not have
enough time to harm the stallion before help arrived.

Very
softly, Trixie said to Honey, “When I count three, I’m going to let you drop.
We’ll run back toward the
Murrows
’, but stay in the
woods.”

“All
right,” Honey said. Her voice sounded high-pitched. Trixie could only hope that
her friend understood the plan. Whether she did or not, Trixie knew she’d
follow it.

“One,”
Trixie counted softly, “two... three!” She unclasped her hands and started
running for the woods. This time, she made no attempt to keep quiet. She wanted
Burke to know exactly where she was.

Trixie
ran as fast as she could. She could hear Honey close behind her, making as much
noise as she herself was. There were other, distant noises, too.
Oh, please, let Burke be following us!
Trixie thought. At that moment there was a loud thud and an even louder curse
in a masculine voice. Trixie felt a wave of relief that she turned into a renewed
burst of energy.

Trixie
suddenly realized that she must be nearing Wilhelmina’s hideout at the edge of
the woods.
This is no time to run
into her!
Trixie thought in panic. She began veering toward the
river side of each tree she had to cut around. Soon she was in unfamiliar
territory, but she didn’t dare slow down more than a fraction.