r been here!"
Bet Baxter's face was glowing with happiness.

It was only ten o'clock but already the sun was blazing hot. There was
a fury about the heat that the girls had never before experienced.
They were glad to be under the shelter of the automobile top.

"Oh, Matt," called Kit, when they had driven a few miles, "let's stop
and get the girls some of those cactus fruits. They've never tasted
them, think of that!"

"You don't say so!" The driver smiled back at the eager young faces
and brought his car to a stop. The girls jumped out glad to get nearer
to the strange plants of the desert.

Suddenly a rasping whirr seemed to come from the ground at their feet.
It was a sound to hold the nerves taut, to send the cold shivers up and
down the spine.

"A rattler!" exclaimed Kit delightedly. "Now I do feel as if I were
really home again. Where is it? I want a good look at my old friend,"
she added as another insistent whirr was heard.

Matt Larkin had taken his automatic from his belt and pointed it, and
in that instant the girls saw a black and yellow skinned snake coiled,
its head poised with darting tongue, ready to strike.

There was a menace in that coil.

But the next minute the head had been neatly severed by a shot and the
long body writhed and squirmed on the ground.

"Oh!" cried Bet. "Look at the pretty pattern on its skin."

"Pretty!" snapped the man beside her. "When you live in Arizona you
never see any beauty in a rattler. He's just plain pizen to everybody.
There ought to be a reward offered fer every snake killed. Then maybe
they could be exterminated."

The girls were glad to get back into the automobile again, out of the
glaring sun. Each held a luscious cactus fruit gingerly in her
fingers, trying to open it without getting the tiny pronged spikes in
their fingers. The driver climbed into his place and set the car going
once more, headed toward the hills that seemed to beckon them.

They had outdistanced the other car, for Judge Breckenridge was driving
slowly for the sake of the invalid.

When they saw the foothills ahead of them, Kit began to get excited.
"I've been up that road," she exclaimed. "Once Dad and I went up to
Jasper Crowe's claims to sell him a horse."

But Shirley was staring ahead. Suddenly she cried: "There's a lake!
Isn't it refreshing after so many miles of desert? I had no idea you
had such large bodies of water in this country."

The driver turned