The Mystery in Arizona

the livelong time the way Mart does. Sometimes Mart and his so-called brains drive me insane.”
    Honey laughed. “You and Mart are crazy about each other, Trixie, and you know it. He does tease you a lot—that I will admit. Jim teases me, too, but he’s nowhere as bad as Mart.”
    “I wouldn’t care how much they teased me,” said Di, whose twin brothers and sisters were much younger, “if only I had an older brother. You’re lucky to have two of them, Trix.”
    “That’s what you think,” Trixie replied with a sniff. “Anyway, let’s get back to dude ranches, Honey. What did you enjoy most when you visited them?”
    Honey thought for a minute. “It was fun all of the time, but I think what I enjoyed most were the rides. Sometimes we’d start out early in the morning and have a picnic lunch or a barbecue on the desert.”
    “That must have been fun,” Di cried. “I just love to go on picnics.”
    Honey nodded. “Desert picnics are different, though,” she said. “You get used to seeing coyotes lurking around, but you’ve always got to keep an eye out for rattlesnakes.”
    “Ugh,” said Di. “Maybe I don’t like picnics, after all.”
    “I was awfully scared of everything at first,” Honey said confidingly. “You might as well face the fact right now: The desert is beautiful from a distance, especially at night or when the sun is setting. But when you get up close to it, it’s really and truly an awfully bristly sort of place.”
    “Bristly?” Trixie frowned and looked down her nose. “I know it’s sandy, but I didn’t think it was bristly.”
    “It is,” Honey insisted. “It bristles with all kinds of burs and cacti that practically leap out at you as you ride by. And, instead of worrying about ants at a picnic, you have to watch out for all sorts of frightful insects and reptiles.”
    “I don’t believe it,” Di moaned. “I won’t. I won’t”
    Trixie giggled, but Honey shivered and said, “I don’t want to scare you, Di, and honestly, the great hairy tarantula, or the bird spider as it is sometimes called, is really as harmless as a bumblebee, but it does seem to leap right out at you.”
    Mart, across the aisle, snorted with derisive laughter, then moved over to the empty seat on the girls’ side of the aisle.
    Trixie groaned. “Oh, oh, here comes Mr. Brain. Will somebody please open the door so I can jump?”

A Doubtful Welcome • 4

    MY DEAR SQUAWS,” Mart began, “I feel it necessary to give you a brief lecture on the Arizona desert fauna. The tarantula appears to leap simply because the poor thing is so nearsighted it cannot stalk its prey. Actually the ugly creature is a boon to mankind because it exists solely upon crop-destroying insects.”
    “Well, you can have him,” Honey retorted, without bothering to turn around. “I imagine they make wonderful pets.”
    She went on talking to the girls, as though Mart had not interrupted. “The dear boys will probably lasso and tame another bloodcurdling desert horror, which is the giant centipede. The only one I ever saw ran away immediately on all of his hundred legs, but he didn’t move any faster than I did.”
    “I'm never going on a desert picnic,” Di moaned. “That’s final.”
    Mart spoke again, quite loudly. “Since the bite of the centipede can be very painful, I have no intention of attempting to rope and throw one of that species. However, I must assure you timid squaws that he will not attack unless cornered and forced to defend himself. Now, the scorpion is something else again. He doesn’t bite, but does he sting!”
    “Never mind,” Jim interrupted. “You don’t have to scare the girls to death, Mart It’s perfectly true that in the Gila Valley there are plenty of death-dealing scorpions, black widow spiders, coral snakes, and rattlesnakes—so what? In our own Hudson River Valley there is the deadly copperhead. And we all go for rides and hikes in the woods just the same.”
    “True,” said Mart. “True. I personally have no fear of the desert fauna or flora. If possible, I intend to hunt both with my camera. If I do not return to the East with a picture of the Gila monster, I shall consider that I have wasted my vacation.”
    Di uttered a faint scream. “The Gila monster?”
    “A very poisonous but most sluggish lizard,” Mart explained loftily. “A direct descendant of dinosaurs that once roamed about the Gila Valley. In fact I understand that he closely resembles in