“Surely you don’t believe that yarn!” Dick smiled down at her from the first step, for he had started to climb. He reached up to catch at a higher step with one hand when he uttered a terrorized scream and fairly dropped back to the ground, his arm held out. Clinging to his coat sleeve, perilously close to his wrist, was a huge lizard, a Gila Monster, thick-bodied, hideously mottled, dull-yellow, orange-red, dead-black. It had a blunt head and short legs that were clawing the air. The girls echoed Dick’s scream. Jerry, leaping forward, gave a warning cry. “Don’t drop your arm!” Then the quick command, “Girls, get back of me!” Whipping out his gun, he fired. The ugly reptile dropped to the sand, its muscles convulsing.
Dora ran to Dick and pulled back his sleeve. “Thank heavens,” she cried, “he didn’t touch your wrist.”
“I reckon you’ve had a narrow escape all right, old man,” Jerry declared, his tone one of great relief. Then, self-rebukingly, “I ought to have warned you. Never put your feet or your hands anywhere that you can’t see.”
“Do you suppose there’s any poison in my coat sleeve?” Dick asked anxiously.
“No, I reckon not,” the cowboy said. “A Gila Monster packs his poison in his lower jaw and he has to turn over on his back before he can get it into a wound he makes.” Then, glancing at Mary and seeing that she still looked white and was trembling, he exclaimed, “Come, let’s go. I reckon it’s too hot in here at this hour.”
Dora, hardly knowing that she did so, clung to Dick’s arm as they waded through the sand to the gate.
“Oh, how I do hope we’ll never, never have to come to this awful place again,” Mary said. “To think that Dick might have lost his life here.”
“Well, I didn’t!” Dick replied. Then, with an effort at levity, he added, “Dora, you won! We did hear a gun shot.”
CHAPTER XX
INTRODUCING AN AIR SCOUT
As they were nearing Gleeson, Dick leaned forward and called, “Jerry, Dora and I were wondering if we ought to tell old Silas Harvey that we have found Little Bodil’s trunk?”