The Mystery in Arizona

puhleeze,” Trixie begged him, tossing her blond curls. “If you’d make up problems that made sense, I could get the right answers.”
    Brian appeared then behind Jim’s broad shoulders. “Nobody made up those problems,” he said firmly. “At least Jim and I didn’t. They were copied out of the math book you were supposed to study last month. If you were at all familiar with said book, you would have recognized the problems.”
    Jim stepped aside, and Brian strode into the small room. “And how about your theme on the Navahos? Any progress to report? I gather that Di and Honey did your dishwashing for you so you could bone. Just what have you accomplished?”
    Trixie collapsed on the lower bunk, utterly deflated. “Oh, go away, slave drivers,” she moaned. “Forget that I ever wanted to ride. I’ll spend the afternoon studying. I’ll spend the night studying, too. That’s why I came out here to Arizona: just to study all the livelong time. Or didn’t you know that?”
    Jim, grinning now, reached out and pulled her to her feet. “Listen, Trix, we don’t like to pick on you, but we promised your parents that we’d tutor you. If you’d just concentrate on your assignments instead of trying to solve mysteries that are purely figments of your imagination!”
    Di burst in then from her own room. “It’s all settled. Mr. X. W. is going with us tonight. He can hardly wait. I told him that we had decided to adopt him and—why, what’s the matter, Trixie? Have you been crying?”
    Instead of replying, Trixie cried out, “Oh, gosh! I forgot that I was supposed to talk my Calamity into going to La Posada, too. Did you have any luck with Mrs. Sherman, Honey?”
    Honey shook her head. “There wasn’t time. Speaking of which, we’d better get down to the corral fast, or they’ll go off without us.” She gave Trixie a quick hug. “I’d stay with you, but I know you wouldn’t be able to do any work with me hanging around.” After they had all gone, Trixie sat down again at the small desk, and this time she did concentrate. By three o’clock she had finished the problems and was fairly sure that the answers were correct. So she started on her Navaho theme, but the very word reminded her of Rosita, and her thoughts began to wander again.
    “Maybe a dip in the pool will clear my brain,” she thought, and donned her bathing suit. “Jim and Honey are right If I’m going to have any fun at this ranch, I’d better stop worrying about other people’s problems and concentrate on my own.”
    But deep down inside she knew that she would never have any real fun until she had solved some of the mysteries—or, at least, what seemed like mysteries to her.

"Madhouse!” • 12

    THE POOL, like everything else in Arizona, was enormous, and the water in it seemed to reflect the bright blue of the cloudless sky. Around the edge of it were groups of chairs and tables which were painted in colors to match those in a desert sunset, and everything gleamed in the dazzling sunlight.
    But, to Trixie’s surprise, there were hardly any people there at a time of the day when it was really quite hot. Some of the guests, she knew, were riding with the first group; others were getting dressed to go with the second group. The tennis and squash courts were all occupied, and several men and women were playing golf. But, even so, a lot of guests were unaccounted for.
    “Guess they’re still taking siestas,” Trixie decided, “so they'll be wide-awake at the fiesta this evening. But how anyone over six can take naps in the daytime is beyond me.”
    The word naps reminded her of Bobby and then of Petey, and she began to wonder who Tio was. As though in answer to her question, she spied a Spanish-English dictionary which someone had left on the sand under a large multicolored beach umbrella. Maybe “Tio” was a real Spanish word and not just someone’s name, as she had been thinking. Trixie promptly decided to look it up. She soon found it and the definition: “Uncle. Man (denoting contempt). Good old man.”
    “That’s a big help,” she said to herself. “Was Petey talking about an uncle or a man he despises or a kind old gentleman?”
    The strange Mexican who had argued so loudly with the Orlandos the night they left didn’t sound much like a good old man. The second definition seemed to fit him best, except that if you were afraid of someone, you didn’t describe him with a word denoting contempt.
    “I give