Mystery in Arizona Page 4

  Mart shrugged. “If you know so much about Apaches, why did you pick Navahos? However, I am very well-informed on the subject, so you may feel free to seek my advice at any time when I am at leisure. For the small fee of a dollar an hour.”

  Trixie snorted with disgust. “Go find another bonanza.”

  “A what?” Di demanded curiously. “Are you talking about some of those awful lizards?”

  Mart chuckled. “A bonanza is nothing for you to be afraid of, Di. If you were a miner and found one it would mean that you had struck a rich vein of gold or silver. In slang it simply means anything yielding a large return of money.”

  “Which thing,” Trixie said emphatically, “I definitely am not. I have exactly two dollars—a dollar a week for spending money. Period. Full stop, Mart.”

  Just then the pretty Apache stewardess began to serve lunch. Mart let out a yelp.

  “Roast turkey with stuffing and candied sweet potatoes as I sniff and die!”

  “A sniff,” said Babs cheerily, “is all you’re going to get for quite a while. I am going to serve Mr. Lynch now and then the girls. The boys get their trays last.”

  “You’re not a true Apache woman,” Mart groaned. “If this were a wickiup or hogan the womenfolk would have to wait until we menfolk were through.”

  Babs, on her way back to the galley for two more trays, stopped to pat his freckled cheek. “In this big flying wigwam it’s ladies first. In fact, with my people it always has been ladies first. We who do the cooking must always taste, must we not?” She narrowed her dark eyes, laughing softly. “One can do a great deal of tasting before one pronounces the meal ready for the big braves!”

  Mart collapsed, his face flaming. “I never thought about that angle,” he admitted gruffly. “The average female probably had already consumed a full meal before she yelled, ‘Come and get it.’ ”

  “You have a lot to learn,” said Trixie complacently, when the girls started to eat. “Most Indians had a great deal of respect for their women, especially the grandmothers. Navaho women were mistresses of their homes—are, I should say, because they still contribute a lot of money to the family income. They make rugs and jewelry and grow corn and they own the herds of sheep and goats.”

  “How and where did you pick up all that knowledge?” Mart demanded suspiciously. “Sounds to me as though it came out of a tourist’s guide booklet.”

  Trixie tossed her blond curls. “You probably don’t know either that Navaho husbands are terrified of their mothers-in-law. In fact, they never meet face to face if they can possibly avoid it, because it is believed that if they should look at each other one or both of them will become blind or wither away.”

  Mart started to laugh but Babs, bringing the boys’ trays, joined in the conversation then. “Trixie is right. Navaho women are greatly respected by their men. At some dances the girls choose their own partners and when they marry young couples live with the wife’s family in a nearby hogan.”

  She shook her head, smiling faintly. “In Navaholand there is no such thing as a dependent woman. When the widowed grandmother becomes aged, a healthy young boy or girl is given to her so that she will receive proper care and affection until she joins her ancestors.”

  Everyone, even the boys, listened attentively as she continued in her soft low voice. “Contrary to general belief, Indian marriages are not arranged by the parents. A girl may remain unmarried all of her life if she chooses without receiving any criticism whatsoever. But both Navaho and Apache girls have coming-out parties. I made what you might call my debut at the ceremony of the Big Wickiup which lasts for three days. You can imagine how much it cost my father to provide food for many guests during all that time. But he has never once scolded me for deciding to have a career instead of getting married.”

  Mr. Lynch, from his seat across the aisle, laughed. “You’re still too young to be considered an old maid, Miss Slater,” he said.

  Smiling, Babs took his tray and went back to the galley for dessert and coffee.

  When they had all finished lunch, Brian said sternly to Trixie, “Study hall is that empty seat way up in front. Come on. We’re going to do fractions and then more fractions. By the time we land in Tucson you should be able to reduce at least a few of them to the lowest common denominator.”

  Trixie groaned. “I’d like to reduce you to the lowest speck of dust on earth.” But she meekly followed him up the aisle, and studied hard until the plane circled above Tucson and came down to land at the Municipal Airport.

  “Welcome to the Sunshine City!” Di’s uncle called to them as they followed the crowd into the waiting room. Mr. Wilson was not much taller than Jim but he was so thin that he looked much taller. Like his sister, Di’s mother, he had very blue eyes which usually twinkled merrily.

  But now, although he greeted them cordially, Trixie sensed that he was worried about something. His eyes were frowning in spite of the broad grin on his weather-beaten face, and right away he drew Mr. Lynch and Di off to a far corner of the waiting room.

  While the boys were collecting the luggage, Trixie whispered to Honey, “Did you notice how worried Mr. Wilson seems? I’ll bet he wishes we hadn’t come now.”

  Honey nodded. “I wonder what could have happened. He certainly wanted us very much when he telephoned Mrs. Lynch on Friday morning. What could have happened during the weekend to change his mind?”

  “I have no idea,” Trixie moaned. “Oh, look at Di. She’s on the verge of tears.”

  “So am I,” Honey admitted. “Oh, Trixie! I have a feeling that we’re going to be sent back home on the next plane!”

  Chapter 5

  Trixie Solves a Problem

  Di’s huge violet eyes were filled with tears as she and her uncle and father came slowly back across the waiting room to join the others.

  “Under the circumstances,” Trixie heard Mr. Lynch say, “I am forced to agree with you. I’ll make arrangements right now so that the kids can be flown back home tomorrow morning.”

  “It’s a shame,” Mr. Wilson said sorrowfully. “I wouldn’t have had it happen for the world.”

  The boys stared at him in speechless amazement. “But I don’t understand, sir,” Jim finally got out. “Why—”

  “I’ll explain while we drive out to the ranch,” Di’s uncle said.

  Dismally they followed him out of the terminal and over to the parking lot. As she climbed into the station wagon Trixie said to herself fiercely in order to keep back the tears of disappointment, I don’t care. I’d much rather spend Christmas at home anyway. I don’t care. I don’t care!

  But she did care and so did all of the others. Even Mart, who usually said something funny in moments like this, was wearing a subdued and puzzled expression on his freckled face. They all stared unseeingly out of the windows as they passed through the city.

  “What a sunset!” Mr. Lynch murmured. “Glorious, isn’t it? Did you ever see such flaming colors?”

  Honey, always polite no matter how awful things were, said, “All of the colors in the rainbow. You never see anything like this back home—not in winter anyway.” Her voice dwindled away, and at last Mr. Wilson began to speak.

  “I’m just sick about it,” he began, “but there’s nothing I can do. The servant problem is always acute at this time of the year when all of the guest ranches are packed and jammed. Reservations are made months in advance, you know, and a great many ranch owners hire extra help for the Christmas season. So I haven’t a prayer of getting anyone who might take the Orlandos’ place, nor is there the slightest chance that I could farm you kids out at another ranch until the emergency is over.”

  “I still don’t understand, sir,” Jim said. “Who are the Orlandos and why—”

  “Oh, Jim,” Di broke in tearfully, “I don’t quite understand it myself and neither does Uncle Monty. The Orlandos are a Mexican family who work for him. Suddenly last night, without any warning, they went away. So now he has a houseful of guests but no h
elp except the cook who can’t do everything, especially since she has a little boy about Bobby’s age.”

  “That’s right,” Mr. Wilson said dolefully. “The señora is my housekeeper; her husband, Señor Orlando, is my major-domo. Their sons and daughters serve as waiters, waitresses, and maids. Their daughter-in-law, Maria, is my cook, and why she didn’t depart with the others I’ll never know. I am very grateful that she stayed on, but of course in a household as large as mine, not to mention the guest cabins, she can’t be expected to do anything except cook. She really can’t even do that without some help. Who is going to prepare the vegetables, wash the dishes and pots and pans?”

  He sighed. “I can do the marketing myself and have the laundry sent out, but where am I going to find someone who will cope with the other household chores? Who is going to wait on the tables, tidy the ranch house and the cabins? I could probably find someone who would come out once a week and do the heavy cleaning, but the beds have to be made daily, the furniture must be dusted.…” His words ended in a groan of despair.

  “It’s really a very serious problem,” Mr. Lynch put in. “You kids are old enough to understand that. Mr. Wilson’s many guests have paid him in advance. They naturally expect service. Most of them are asthma sufferers and stay out here for eight months of the year for that reason. Even in an emergency like this none of them could be asked to do any household chores whatsoever.”

  “I’m not particularly worried about the asthmatics,” Mr. Wilson said. “Our resident R.N., Miss Girard, and her assistant, a practical nurse, can take care of them. And I did have the good fortune early this morning to hire a friend of Maria’s, a full-blooded Navaho girl who for some reason has left the Indian school here in her senior year. Her real name is something like Rose-who-blooms-in-the-winter, but Maria calls her Rosita. She’s as pretty as she is competent, and is already very popular with the guests.”

  He shook his head. “She can’t begin to take the place of the Orlandos, of course. You don’t often find a wonderful family like that. They came to me last January, and after they showed me what they could do, I hired the whole clan then and there. And clan,” he added emphatically, “is the right word to use when describing them in the English language. They are a very close-knit family, proud of their ancient lineage. I gather that they can trace their family tree back to an Aztec noble.”

  “They sound like wonderful people,” Honey said. “I can’t understand why they left you in the lurch like this, Uncle Monty. Didn’t they give any explanation?”

  He shook his head again. “All they said was, ‘A family emergency, señor,’ as they departed. I simply don’t understand it. My own conscience is clear. I treated them all very well. Let them run the whole place without any interference whatsoever. They did a grand job and apparently loved it.”

  Still shaking his head he added, “But it’s my problem, not yours, kids, so forget about it. I only wish you could be here tomorrow night for the beautiful ceremony in the elementary school. It is strange that the Orlandos would want to miss La Posada. I think you know that it is based on ancient Mexican-Spanish tradition, which holds that Joseph and Mary spent nine days during their journey from Galilee to Bethlehem searching for a posada which is the Spanish word for lodging. On the ninth night they found it, in the stable where the Christ child was born.

  “Here in Tucson La Posada is staged on only one night, but in Spain and Mexico it is celebrated for nine days. A procession, consisting usually of school children, travels by candlelight from door to door seeking admission. A boy and a girl representing Joseph and Mary may head the procession, and figures of Mary on a burro with Joseph walking beside her are carried on a decorated litter.

  “The children chant the ancient Spanish litany and are refused admittance until the ninth night, Christmas Eve. This is the end of the ritual and from that moment on it becomes a gala festival—a joyous fiesta. Do you boys and girls know what a piñata is?”

  “No,” they chorused.

  “Well,” he said, “it might be compared to the custom we Americans have of allowing each child to open one present on Christmas Eve. In the home where the procession is finally admitted on Christmas Eve, there will be suspended from the ceiling a beautifully decorated pottery jar which is filled with candies and little toys. Now the fiesta becomes a sort of blind man’s buff. Each child in turn is blindfolded and given a stick with which to whack the jar. When the piñata finally breaks, the kids scramble all over the floor to gather up the Christmas goodies as they descend from the ceiling.”

  “What fun!” Honey cried. “Sort of like the old nursery rhyme about Little Jack Horner. Do the Mexican and Spanish children receive their presents the next day as we do, Uncle Monty?”

  “Well, yes and no,” he told her. “Those who have become thoroughly Americanized celebrate Christmas the way we do. But according to tradition the day of gift-giving does not take place until January sixth, the day when the three Wise Men came to the manger. The night before, children fill their shoes with hay and then place them on the window sills. The hay is for the camels and the Wise Men show their gratitude by refilling the shoes with gifts.”

  “Oh, how Bobby would love to hear about that custom!” Trixie said enthusiastically. “Every Christmas Eve he insists upon leaving cookies and milk under our tree for Santa and a box of hay for the reindeer.”

  “Said box of hay,” Mart added, “being a shoe box, Bobby’s size, and filled with grass cuttings which, when dried out, are barely enough to line the bottom of the box.”

  “But it’s the spirit of the thing that counts,” Honey said quickly. “Bobby is so cute and funny that I’m almost glad we’re going back home tomorrow so we can spend Christmas with him.”

  “We’re not going back tomorrow,” someone said.

  Trixie jumped. It was she who had said that!

  “I’m sorry—” Uncle Monty and Mr. Lynch began, but Trixie went right on talking just as though she were all alone in the station wagon. She couldn’t seem to stop herself from thinking out loud.

  “We boys and girls could easily take the Orlandos’ place. The boys have had lots of experience waiting on tables at camp and they’re all grand cooks. We girls can help Rosita with the housework. Even Honey learned how to make beds and keep her room tidy at boarding school. She—”

  Trixie’s voice dwindled away. Honey and Di and the boys were staring at her in amazement. The expression on their faces said plainly, “Do housework on our vacation? Are you cra-azee?”

  Of course I’m crazy, Trixie thought miserably and wished like anything that she had held her tongue. The sensible thing for them to do was forget about Arizona and go back home tomorrow. She opened her mouth to say, “I was just kidding,” when Uncle Monty pulled the car over to the side of the road and braked it to a stop.

  “Wow!” he breathed. “Are you serious, Trixie? That would be the answer to my problem. I’ll pay you what I paid the Orlandos, two hundred dollars a week, and you could still have plenty of time for fun.”

  Trixie closed her eyes. It was too late then to back out. The other Bob-Whites would hate her for the rest of their lives. Why was she forever doing and saying impulsive things that got them all into scrapes? This would be the scrape to end all scrapes: Two weeks of sheer drudgery loomed ahead of them instead of the good times they had planned. Why, they probably wouldn’t even have time to go near the corral let alone get on a horse and gallop across the desert! And as for La Posada and the other festivals, they’d be lucky if they had time to read about them in the newspaper.

  In the awful silence that followed Uncle Monty’s offer, Trixie died a thousand mental deaths, but somehow she managed to say, “We’d love the job, Uncle Monty. All of us would.”

  Because, after all, they had flown more than a thousand miles to spend the holidays in Tucson. It didn’t make sense to fly back again the next day. Maybe it wouldn’t be much of a holiday, but at least they could say for the rest of their lives t
hat they had spent Christmas in Arizona!

  Chapter 6

  A Dark Stranger

  Honey, who was always both tactful and sympathetic, came to Trixie’s rescue then. “Of course we’d love to take the Orlandos’ place, Uncle Monty. It’ll be fun.”

  Nobody else said anything except Uncle Monty. He let out a loud sigh of relief and started up the motor again. “Great! The work, with all of you helping, won’t be awfully hard. I’ll see to it that you have plenty of time for riding and swimming.”

  Trixie opened her eyes and to her amazement in that short interval it had grown dark. The sun had dipped down behind the mountains, the flaming sky had changed to dark purple, and the air was growing chilly. Trixie shivered and slipped her arms into the sleeves of her coat.

  The others followed suit and then Mr. Lynch said, “Well, it would certainly solve a lot of problems for you, Monty. How do you feel about Trixie’s suggestion, Di?”

  “I’m very much in favor of it, Dad,” she said, and the boys added, “So are we.”

  But Trixie could tell from the tone of their voices that far from being in favor of the plan they thoroughly disapproved of it—and of her.

  Ten minutes later when they arrived at the ranch house, Mart made it plain how he felt. “Well, Calamity Jane,” he whispered, as he pretended to help her climb out of the station wagon, “I hope you end up with dishpan hands and housemaid’s knee.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” Trixie retorted. “And, in case you’re interested, four hundred dollars is not to be sneezed at.” She brushed past him to join the others on the patio.

  Uncle Monty opened the door and, bowing, said, “Bienvenidos! Welcome.” He led the way into a spacious living-room, all four walls of which seemed to Trixie to be nothing but picture windows. On one side were the purple mountains and on the other a shadowy expanse which must be the desert. The “picture window” facing her, she slowly realized, was really a double glass door which opened onto another patio.