“Lady, I got one thing to ask you. _Only_ one. If you got to take my electric lights,--if you’ve sunk as low as that, lady,--all I ask is, _don’t_ take ’em off my dining-room table. I’ve seen all sorts of people here in my day,--all sorts, but none of them would steal the lights off my dining-room table.” “I have never been so insulted in all my life,” exclaimed Miss Susan. “Lady,” said John, swaying as by an invisible breeze, “I am _trying_ to be as nice as I know how.” A few scared employes later sought our tents, to apologize for John. “John is never like this,” said one succinctly, “except when he’s this way.” “I thought Arizona was a prohibition state,” I said, remembering the sheriff of Pima County, “where does he get it?” Their eyes wandered to the horizon, and remained fixed there. “Vanilla extract,” said one. The scientifically minded Toby made an excursion to the Inn, and came back with a satisfied sniff. “It wasn’t vanilla,” she reported positively. Upon the hotel porch, we could see John’s white jacketed fat figure mincing up and down before a group of late-comers holding an imaginary skirt in one hand. First he was Miss Susan, red-handed and infamous; then he became himself, majestic yet forbearing. “Took them right off my dining-room table,” we heard him say. CHAPTER X THE APACHE TRAIL AND TONTO VALLEY Fearing the wrath of John, we made a guilty start in the freshness of the next morning. But when we paid our bill and left, John was still heavily under the influence of vanilla, and to Miss Susan’s relief, we did not encounter him. Even in bright daylight with no traffic we were an hour and a half driving the sixteen miles to Fish Creek. Salt River Valley became a narrow chasm, dark and gloomy but for the glint of emerald cottonwoods edging the stream at the bottom. A chaotic heap of brilliant-hued peaks filled the valley. The road was all that had been claimed for it. Had we not been inoculated with horizontal-fever serum on the still more precarious Winkleman trail, we might have fallen over the precipice in sheer giddiness. The natural hazards of a road which skipped from top to bottom of a series of thousand-foot rocks were increased by tipping outward up-hill and around corners, so that frequently we lurched over steep chasms at a far from reassuring angle, while our long wheel-base increased complications. Boulders loosened from the crumbling cliffs above, cluttered the road at the most dangerous turns. A glance ahead at a dizzy drop of several thousand feet, then beyond to a corresponding climb, and still further to dips and swoops exceeding the most breath-taking devices of Coney Island, would make me weak-kneed. But taking the road in a near-sighted way, after one quick glance over switchbacks to make sure we should meet no traffic, and meeting each problem in driving as it came abreast the steering wheel, I found the Apache Trail as safe as a church.