"Oh, I'm sorry, Billy! Please forgive me," pleaded Bet contritely. "I didn't know there was a wasp inside that stick. I really thought it was a strange Arizona plant."
Kit was chuckling. Never before had retribution come so quickly to her young brother who delighted in playing tricks on a newcomer to the desert.
But she only smiled at the boy. She wanted to say, "It serves you right," but she had only been back for ten minutes and decided that it was too soon to plague the child. But Billy saw her gleam of triumph and decided he would get even with Kit at some later date.
"Let's get started, girls! Everybody pile in!" commanded the Judge. "You girls go in that car with Matt Larkin. I want Tommy Sharpe with me."
There wasn't a prouder boy in the whole world at that moment than Tommy. Judge Breckenridge wanted him, and maybe someday he would be his right-hand man, as the Judge playfully called him. To himself Tommy promised that it would not be his own fault if he did not measure up to the Judge's estimate of what a right hand man should be. Bet was amused to notice the slight swagger that Tommy assumed as he took his place beside his friend in the car. She exchanged a smile of understanding with Enid.
A shower of sand hit the chassis of the car as the driver started along the road. The girls gave a cry of alarm as they saw a jack rabbit that had been startled, bound ahead of them for a few yards, then with a wild jump it landed in the shelter of the sage brush.
"Doesn't everything smell good?" Shirley sniffed the air in long indrawn breaths.
"Didn't I tell you it was wonderful!" said Kit. "I used to get so lonesome just for a whiff of the desert. And you girls could never understand it."
"Of course we didn't understand. How could we? We'd never 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.