little—waiting for me.”

“How’re we ever going to get to the house, then?” asked Jo Ann. “Will we have to go back down to the cart road and walk all the way around the mountain? Why, that’s miles, and in this hot sun!”

“I think I know a place where we can manage to climb up the cliff,” Florence told them. “How about it? Want to try it?”

“Sure,” replied Jo Ann. “’Most anything’d be better than walking miles out of the way when the house is only a few hundred yards from here.”

Florence led the way back down the trail a short distance, then began climbing the sheer surface of the cliff. By sticking their toes in the crevices of the rock and catching hold of the scraggly shrubs growing in the cracks, all three finally reached the top of the cliff.

After they had walked along the ledge for a short distance, Florence remarked, “I think we ought to be able to see the snake from here—if it’s still there.”

Cautiously she pulled the bushes aside and peered down on the path.

“Ugh! There he is—right in the same place!”

Peggy and Jo Ann leaned over to look.

“See that big black thing that looks like a log?”

Jo Ann gasped, “Gosh! What a snake!”

“That’s the biggest one I ever saw, except in a zoo,” declared Peggy, wide-eyed.

Florence pointed to the snake. “See those bumps in him. He’s probably had some squirrels or rabbits for his dinner and is lying there in the sun digesting them.”

“I didn’t dream there were such snakes around here,” Jo Ann added.

Before they started for the house, all three girls picked up stones and pitched them down at the snake. When one of the stones struck him, the huge reptile slowly disappeared over the edge of the path.

“It’s a good thing you saw it in time,” said Jo Ann. “I’d hate to have that terrible thing get after me in a place like that, where I couldn’t run.”

As they hastened across the mesa to the house, Florence remarked, “Maybe we’d better not tell Mother how big that snake was—she’ll worry 

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