ct in the road
with an exclamation of surprise. One of the largest rattlesnakes he had
ever seen lay stretched out there, and Mary, having dropped her club,
was proceeding to drag it toward the surrey by a short lasso made of a
piece of the hitching-rope. The postman stood up in his cart to look at
it.

"Better be sure it's plumb dead before you give it a seat in your
carriage," he advised.

Mary gave a glance of disgust toward the blue-veiled figure in the
surrey.

"Oh, it's _dead_," she said, witheringly. "Mr. Craydock shot its head
off to begin with, over at the orange-grove this morning, and I've
killed it four different times on our way home. He gave it to me to take
to Norman for his collection. But Miss Scudder is so scared of it that
she makes me get out every half-mile to pound a few more inches off its
neck. It was a perfect beauty when we started,--five feet long and
twelve rattles. I'm so afraid I'll break off some of the rattles that
I'll be mighty glad when I get it safely home."

"So will I!" ejaculated Miss Scudder, so fervently that the postman
laughed as he drove on.

"Any mail for us?" Mary called after him.

"Only some papers and a letter for your sister," he answered over his
shoulder.

"Now why didn't I ask him to take me and the snake on home in the cart
with him?" exclaimed Mary, as she lifted the rattler into the surrey by
means of the lasso, and took the reins from the new boarder's uneasy
hands. "Even if you can't drive, Bogus could take you to the ranch all
right by himself. Lots of times when Hazel Lee and I are out driving, we
wrap the reins around the whipholder and let him pick his own way. Now
I'll have to drag this snake all the way from the ranch to the Wigwam,
and it will be a dreadful holdback when I'm in such a hurry to get there
and see who Joyce's letter is from.

"You see," she continued, clucking cheerfully to Bogus, "the postman's
mail-pouch is almost as interesting as a grab-bag, since my two brothers
went away. Holland is in the navy," she added, proudly, "and my oldest
brother, Jack, has a position in the mines up where mamma and Norman
and I are going to spend the summer."

Three years in the desert had not made Mary Ware any the less talkative.
At fourteen she was as much of a chatterbox as ever, but so diverting,
with her fund of unexpected information and family history and her
cheerful outlook on life, that Mrs. Lee often sent for her to amuse some
invalid