Another Shadowlands submission, also edited for clarity.
My father’s home in the canyon
Hi, my name is Jess, and from 1998 to 2000, my father lived in a tiny house at the bottom of a canyon in Crosbyton, Texas. In this canyon, there are two other houses, but they are both on the other side of the Caprock and we hadn’t ever really met them, other than a chat while my fater and I occasionaly rode our horses past (Crosbyton is an old, run down ranch town where there aren’t a whole lot of people). Anyway, when my father was showering one morning alone, he claimed he heard someone calling his name. Thinking it was my aunt who lived down the road about 7 miles, he quickly dressed and went out to look for her. He called her name, and when there was no reply, he assumed she had returned home. About 10 minutes later, he called my aunt, and when she picked up the phone, she had been asleep! While in that house, my sister was less than a year old when they moved in. She would lie in her crib and smile and laugh when my stepmom would be sewing or something. When she walked over to see what Emmy (my sister) was excited about, she saw Emmy watching something dash from one side of the ceiling to the other. While on my grandparents ranch (also in Crosbyton — the L7 Ranch) my father took his old horse Dudley out in to an isolated pasture that my Grandpa didn’t use much. As he entered the pasture, Dudley, who by nature is a very calm horse, went wild. There was absolutely no way that horse was going to go inside the pasture. Wondering what was wrong with Dudley, my Dad dismounted and checked his hooves for something that might have hurt him. There was nothing. He finally got Dudley calmed down, but as soon as he mounted him to try to get him inside the pasture, my father heard the faint crying of a baby. When he realized there wasn’t a living person within a mile’s radius, my father and the quite shaken horse got out of there as fast as he could. Later on, they discovered many Comanche grave sites that haven’t been touched in over fifty years, as the ranch has owned that land for quite some time. In those graves, they discovered a chief, a few men, and, in one grave, a tiny child no older than 3 years. To this day, neither my father, nor the horses or cattle will enter or graze this sacred pasture.
(Wonder if he means this L7 Ranch)
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