Amanda's Beau Read Online Free

near the jagged masonry walls. No doubt a professional archeologist would be horrified by his disregard for the old Indian site. But many of the structures had already been damaged from years of rain and snow pooling on the roofs, slowly rotting the wooden slats and beams, which had crashed, carrying chunks of the wall masonry with them.
    Peering down into the collapsed chambers choked with centuries of rubble, Gil figured his students couldn’t do any serious damage with their spades and trowels. He noticed Rex had moved away from the other students, selecting a section near a collapsed wall to explore on his own. The boy was hunkered down on his knees, scraping at the hardened earth with the tip of the spade. Bonita sat in the shade, watching the boy’s every move.
    "Want some help?" Gil asked.
    "Sure," Rex replied with a ready eagerness. He moved over to make room for them both.
    Gil liked Rex Stewart. He was a bright pupil, always eager to learn. It was a shame the boy’s father had died so unexpectedly, leaving the kid to shoulder the responsibility of a sick mother and ailing baby sister. Sometimes Gil didn’t know whom he felt sorry for most — Rex or his pretty aunt.
    The two worked together in companionable silence. Once in a while, Gil glanced over at Amanda. She appeared to be supervising Greta and Gertrude, who seemed more interested in picking wild flowers in the rubble than exploring the ruins. When he and Rex had dug nearly four feet down, they uncovered a row of pine log roof beams, which seemed to make up a ceiling of some sort. Using the hatchet to chop through the brittle mass, Gil made an opening large enough to peer through.
    "Look, Rex! There’s a chamber below." He sat back on his heels and studied their location. "We’re on the roof, I think."
    "We’ve found something!" Rex hollered out. The other boys, abandoning their own efforts, dashed over to join them. Amanda came too, gently herding the blonde sisters in front of her like two little lambs in pinafores.
    "Is it a dungeon?" the Hurtado boy asked, his eyes gleaming with hope.
    "Any bats or rattlers down there?" Jerry asked. He bestowed a wicked grin upon the nervous Schwarzkopf sisters.
    Gil dropped to his hands and knees. "I can’t see anything," he told them. "It’s too dark. I’m going down there. Give me the rope and a candle," he ordered. Making a few more chops and slashes to enlarge the hole, Gil secured one end of the robe to a nearby scrub oak and shoved a candle into his jacket pocket. He then lowered himself down into the black cavity.
    "I’m coming with you, Mr. Gladney," Rex insisted.
    "All right, but bring a candle down with you," Gil called up to him. He heard the boy order the whimpering dog to ‘stay’ and watched as Rex inched his way over the side of the hole into the chamber before carefully making his way over the side and down into the hole.
    "It smells down here," Rex said, wrinkling his nose.
    "It is pretty musty." Gil struck a match on the bottom of his boot. He lit his candle and then Rex’s.
    "Can we come down too, Mr. Gladney?" one of the other boys called down.
    "Me too?" Jerry hollered.
    Wiping his hands on the seat of his britches, Gil stared up through the hole at the ring of boyish faces peering down at him. Of course they’d want to come down too. This was an adventure they’d been looking forward to for quite a while.
    "Okay, you can all come if you want to, but one at a time down the rope." The descent was only about eight or nine feet. The boys took their time going down the rope and lit their candles from Rex’s already flickering one. When the last boy had made his descent, Gil looked up and saw Amanda and the two girls peering down at them.
    "Greta, Gertrude, you can come next, if you want to," Gil said.
    "Do we have to come down, Mr. Gladney?" Greta whined.
    "If you’d like me to, I’ll stay up here with the girls," Amanda