Mystery in Arizona (14 page)

Trixie nodded. “I liked the
piñata
part best. I was yelling as loudly as the kids when that little blindfolded girl finally broke the
olla
. I’m glad it was a girl, not a boy. Boys always think they’re smarter than girls but they’re not.”

Honey laughed. “You hate boys right now because Jim and Brian are tutoring you. But seriously, Trix—you don’t want to miss the rodeo this afternoon or the
square dance tonight. Please study like anything after lunch.”

Di joined them then and they went out to the kitchen for breakfast. The boys had already set the tables and were now watching Maria make
tortillas
.

“It has to be hand-ground corn meal,” she said, after greeting the girls. “And the water must be boiling and salted. Now the dough is ready. Each of you take a piece and pat it between your palms like this until it becomes a thin sheet.”

Clumsily the boys began to imitate Maria’s skilled movements. Trixie went off into gales of laughter.

“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man, bake me a cake as fast as you can,” she hooted. “I’ll take toast, thank you.”

Maria deftly slapped her piece of dough down on the hot griddle. Then she turned it to brown the other side.

“One does not become an expert all of a sudden,” she told Trixie. “But, fortunately for me, the boys learn very quickly.”

“I don’t see why you don’t give us cooking lessons,” Honey complained. “Mexican Customs is the topic of my theme so I ought to know a little something about Mexican cooking.”

Maria smiled at her gravely. “Perhaps later. There is not time now.”

The boys’
tortillas
were now browned on both sides and they sat down at the table to eat them with melted butter and maple syrup. “Dee-licious,” said Mart. “Better slap yourself up a couple, Trix.”

Trixie calmly finished her toasted peanut butter sandwich and drained her glass of milk. “I have no time for such foolishness,” she said. “I have to beard an ogress in her den.”

“How charming,” said Mart with his mouth full. “I assume that you are about to put to rights the cell of Mrs. Astorbilt Sherman?”

“You assume correctly,” replied Trixie. “She never stays in the dining-room long for breakfast, but if she gets a glimpse of a
tortilla
made by one of you boys she’ll bolt back to her room like a frightened jack rabbit.”

“But, Trixie,” Di protested, “it’s only seven o’clock. You can’t go near the guests’ rooms for another hour.”

“I know,” Trixie replied. “I’m going to do some work on my theme before eight. This is one day when I am going riding with the first group. On account of the rodeo there won’t be any second group. I am also not going to miss the rodeo.” She turned to Jim. “What form of torture have you cooked up for me today?”

“The usual,” he said cheerfully. “Weights and measures, fractions and decimals. There are ten problems on page twenty-six of your workbook.”

“I did those in school last month,” Trixie told him with a sniff.

“That’s right,” Jim said with a mischievous grin. “The idea now is for you to do them correctly. Some day you’re going to find it convenient to know that there are more than two pints in a gallon.”

“You’re wasting your breath on that squaw,” said Mart. “For years I have been trying in vain to get her to give me the correct answer to that simplest of all weights and measures problems: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?”

“Pooh,” said Di. “That’s not a problem. It’s a jawbreaker—and in case you’re interested, you said ‘How many peckled pippers’ instead of—oh, well, never mind.”

“Nobody could answer that question,” Honey put in. “There probably are no such things as pickled peppers and if there were they’d probably vary in size.”

“You use pickled peppers when you make chili sauce, don’t you, Maria?” Brian put in.

“Dried chili peppers,” she said. “But one can easily
pickle peppers by putting them sliced with onions and garlic in a crock and covering all with a brine of vinegar and salt.”

“That proves my point,” Honey said quickly. “Before you could answer Mart’s problem you’d have to know how many slices make a whole pepper. And that’s impossible.”

“Besides,” Di added, “Peter Piper couldn’t have picked a peck of peckled pippers because pickled peppers don’t grow. They’re pickled after they’re picked.”

Mart was almost hysterical with laughter. “You girls grow pickled brains,” he finally got out. “The answer to my problem is quite simple. In two words—one peck.”

Trixie glared at him. “Oh, for Pete’s sake!”

Mart groaned. “Are you referring to Pete Piper? If so, I’d rather not hear any more about him.” He turned to Jim. “In fact, if anyone mentions the name Pete in my presence I shall lie on the floor and scream.”

“Don’t look now,” said Trixie, “but prepare to scream. Hi, Petey,” she shouted, as Maria’s little boy came in.

Everyone, including Maria, burst into laughter, and the little boy stared at them solemnly. Maria sobered quickly.

“I told you to stay in bed until I called you,
mi vida
,” she said.

“Want my breakfast,” he announced. “I’m going to school.”

“Well, all right,” Maria said reluctantly. “I guess you have not caught cold after all. Come and have some
tortillas
. The big boys are eating theirs with butter and syrup. You will like that, yes?”

“I’m tired of
tortillas
,” he said. Trixie slipped past him through the doorway, and then to her amazement she heard him say, “I won’t eat anyfing ’less I can have some dead people’s bread.”

Oh, oh
, Trixie thought as she hurried on to her room.
Dead people’s bread! What on earth could he mean by that?

Then she dismissed everything else from her mind and concentrated on her theme. The day before she had borrowed from the bookcases in the living-room a stack of beautifully illustrated magazines which contained articles on the Navahos. Soon she was completely absorbed in the history of Navaho silver craft.

She learned that
concha
belts derived the name from the shell-like form of the decorations on them. Some of the Plains Indians wore these round or slightly oval plates on their long braids. The Navaho warriors
wore their hair in a single queue at the back of their heads, so they attached the
conchas
to pieces of leather which they wore around their waists. One
concha
, with a diamond-shaped slot in the center, served as a buckle for the leather lacing of the belt. The old belts, Trixie discovered, were wider and heavier than modern ones and always had exactly seven
conchas
in them.

She was about to write in her own words what she had learned about
concha
belts when the breakfast bell chimed. Quickly she tidied the desk, giving Mrs. Sherman time to get to the dining-room.

But her plotting was wasted. When she tapped on the elderly woman’s door a cross voice said, “Come in, come in.”

The door was yanked open by Mrs. Sherman who looked larger than usual in a voluminous pink satin and lace negligee. “Oh, my goodness,” she greeted Trixie. “I hoped you were Rosita bringing me a cup of black coffee. I have no time for breakfast. I must pack.” She waved her hands. “Did you ever see such a mess? I hardly know where to begin.”

The small room did indeed look as though a hurricane had rushed through it, leaving in its wake a tumbled mass of clothing. Sheer stockings and lingerie were impaled on the spurs of Mrs. Sherman’s beautifully decorated cowboy boots which were sprawling incongruously on top of her desk.

The bed was heaped high with bright shirts, Levi’s, bandannas, sweaters, and skirts. Sitting on top of the mound was a ten-gallon Stetson. The chaise longue was hidden by a thick layer of full-skirted evening gowns, and Trixie guessed that the dressing-table stool must be at the bottom of that pile of bathing suits and terry cloth robes.

Slowly it dawned on Trixie that Mrs. Sherman had come to the ranch planning to spend several months.

“Oh, you can’t go,” she heard herself cry out. “Not until you’ve tried it for a week anyway. The rodeo this afternoon will be fun. And the square dance tonight. And Friday there’s going to be a moonlight ride with a steak fry on the desert and—”

She stopped suddenly as her eyes wandered to the cluttered dressing-table top. “Oh, you’ve got some beautiful Navaho jewelry. Just like the colored pictures in my magazines. And—and, oh, Mrs. Sherman! A real old, old
concha
belt.”

Mrs. Sherman let out a loud sigh. “Yes, the jewelry is beautiful and the belt belongs in a museum. And I need ’em about as much as I need two heads. But what could I do? Poor little Rosita needed a hundred dollars in
a hurry so I bought the lot from her. I plan to leave the whole kit and boodle in her room when I depart—if for no other reason than that there’s no room in my trunk for them.”

Trixie’s weak knees gave way and she sank down to the multi-colored Indian rug on the floor. “So that’s how Rosita got a hundred dollars so quickly,” she heard herself mumble.

Mrs. Sherman placed her hands on her hips and glared down at Trixie. “I’m an old fool, there’s no getting around it. But what could I do? I happened to be awake early Monday morning when Rosita arrived and poured out her heart to Maria. I was in the pantry getting myself a glass of fruit juice and since I’m not deaf I couldn’t help overhearing every word they said. So later when Rosita came in to tidy my room I offered her five hundred dollars for all of that jewelry she was wearing. She refused to sell the junk for more than a hundred dollars, so that was that.”

“But it isn’t really junk, is it?” Trixie asked incredulously.

“Of course not,” Mrs. Sherman snapped. “But I happen to detest jewelry, and I’m so allergic to silver that if I should wear one of those Navaho bracelets for ten minutes my arm would look as though I had a bad
attack of poison ivy.” She shrugged. “Sooner or later, in order to avoid hurting Rosita’s feelings, I’d have to wear some of her ancestral crown jewels, so I decided to depart. If I broke out in a rash I’d become a patient of that prim Miss Girard and that I could not endure.”

Trixie scrambled to her feet. “I know now what Tenny meant when he said you had a heart as big as a horse blanket, Mrs. Sherman. But you don’t really have to leave just because you don’t dare wear Rosita’s jewelry and are afraid of hurting her feelings if you don’t.”

Mrs. Sherman narrowed her bright blue eyes. “To be honest, Trixie, I don’t want to go. I have a feeling in my old bones that Maria is suddenly going to disappear, and then I could have fun. But there’s no way out of this noose I’ve stuck my neck into. Rosita is both proud and intelligent. And I’m a coward. I’d rather be stomped by a wild stallion than become a patient of that prissy Girard woman.”

Trixie giggled. “If I show you how you can wear silver and not break out into a rash, will you promise to stay?”

Mrs. Sherman crossed her heart with a plump finger. Trixie took a bottle of colorless nail polish from the cluttered dressing table and quickly painted the underside of a lovely turquoise-studded bracelet.

“There,” she said. “The lacquer will protect you from the silver for quite a long time. It’s a trick I learned from my Aunt Alicia. She loves to sew but she can’t use my great-grandmother’s silver thimble unless she paints the inside of it with nail polish.”

“Well, I’ll be hog-tied!” Mrs. Sherman exploded. “Out of the mouths of babes and teen-agers, as the saying goes!” She began to scrabble through her evening gowns. “Now I can wear that little number I had made especially for a dude ranch square dance. Saved flour sacks for the skirt right up until the day I sold our restaurant. That’s what the pioneer women used when they couldn’t get hold of a bolt of calico.”

She held the dress up by its short sleeves. “There. Isn’t the squash-blossom design just as pretty as anything a Fifth Avenue designer ever dreamed up?”

“It’s perfectly lovely,” Trixie said truthfully. “Moms makes house dresses and aprons and dish towels out of our chicken-feed bags, but the patterns aren’t that pretty.”

She hesitated. If she stayed here and helped Mrs. Sherman straighten her room it would mean that she wouldn’t be able to finish her chores before lunch. And that would mean tidying some of the cabins after lunch instead of studying. And then she couldn’t go riding—might not even be able to go to the rodeo.

Trixie sighed. She couldn’t leave such a kindhearted person alone amidst such confusion. She picked up a hanger. “Let’s start putting things back in the closets and bureau drawers. I’m so glad you’re not going to leave, Mrs. Sherman. You’ll be the belle of the square dance tonight.”

As they worked together, creating order out of the chaos Mrs. Sherman had created, Trixie asked, “Do you know why Rosita needs money so desperately?”

“It’s because of her father,” Mrs. Sherman replied. “Mind you, she never said anything directly to me, and probably I shouldn’t repeat what I heard her tell Maria Monday morning when she came out to apply for a job.”