Mystery in Arizona by Julie Campbell

Author:Julie Campbell [Campbell, Julie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-80874-5
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-11-02T04:00:00+00:00

It was Tenny the cowboy; she was sure of it. But what had happened to his speech? Last night he had spoken in typical cowboy lingo; today he talked without a trace of it.

What had Rosita meant when she said, “You and I are in what you might say is the same boat?” And why had Tenny implied that if he had five hundred dollars he wouldn’t be working at the ranch?

What was the accident which might ruin Rosita’s whole life because she blamed herself for it? Who had lost the use of his hands? What place was she talking about when she said, “I can’t go back”?

Where had she got the one hundred dollars which had obviously aroused the cowboy’s suspicions?

Trixie knew from her research on the subject that white men had cheated the Indians in all of their treaties and had literally stolen their land from them. Perhaps, then, an Indian would not think it was dishonest to steal from white people.

Had Rosita stolen money from the guests? It would have been so easy for her, while tidying the cabins on Monday, to slip into her apron pocket any money she found lying around: small amounts which would not be missed but which would total a hundred dollars!

Trixie dismissed the ugly thought from her mind. “Speaking of totals,” she scolded herself, “you’d better get back to your problems.”

But now she couldn’t concentrate at all. Who cared about fractions, decimals, weights, and measures? The real problem was this:

Were Rosita and Tenny somehow tied up in the mystery of the Orlandos’ sudden departure? Was Calamity Jane Brown, who had spent the night before weeping out on the patio for no apparent reason, involved, too?

And what had Petey meant when he spoke of eating skeletons? The boys thought that he had simply been letting his imagination run away with him. But Trixie felt differently. Perhaps he had exaggerated a little, but where there was smoke there was bound to be fire. Wherever his grandparents, uncles, and aunts had gone was certainly a mysterious place.

What could Petey have been talking about when he spoke of an enormous ape that was all ready to jump down on him and “eat him all up”? If he had been exaggerating a great deal, the ape might have been a pet monkey in a cage that hung from the ceiling in the place that was “all dark and shadowy in the corners ’cause it’s not lighted ’cept with candles.” Was that scary place a cellar?

And what about “that great big ole green man wif the big red eyes and the horns”? And who were the “horrible peoples” that were “mostly sort of animals”? Trixie did not believe in hobgoblins or ghosts but she knew that children of Petey’s age often had wild dreams about them.

Trixie was convinced that Petey had not been talking about a nightmare. Even though he had probably been letting his imagination run away with him, he had definitely been describing the place where he had gone last year and where his grandparents had gone again this year.

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