Ordinarily Myrtle was not given to such fits of timidity. But she had entered the country under trying conditions, and therefore was not prepared for the many unexpected irregularities. We had not counted on our train being so far behind time as to land us out there in the middle of the night. With my memory of the surroundings as I last knew them, it required a lot of silent argument with myself to get up courage to subject her to the risk we must necessarily take in finding accommodations of any sort, at Jean. I knew there were ten miles of desert on either side of the railroad station. That the country was not inhabited might or might not have been in our favor. Certainly, it presaged loneliness—and it was dark. A woman at the hotel in Goodsprings thought she had glimpsed the deadly thing, at dusk, near the sleeping quarters—and Myrtle’s door had been left open for a brief spell while she was out. Or rather the door had been found open on her return—she just wasn’t sure how it was. Myrtle informed me that all the other women in camp were just as frightened as she was. And she bade me look under the bed, forthwith. The thing I was supposed to make sure was—or wasn’t — there, had an overall length of about two feet, a width of four to five inches, an inch or so less in height when inactive—and it was a little pot-bellied. It was rusty in color, with yellowish spots distributed the full length of its body. It had a fat meaty tail, and a broad ugly looking head. There really was something alive under the bed. It moved. Its eyes moved toward me. Also there were now two people upon the bed. And simultaneously the door swung open, as if the devil was in cahoots with the thing, bent on letting in all the demons of a wicked world. I had hit the bed on the bounce with a jarring thud, causing the door to swing in, as it invariably did when not securely latched. And the cat “hightailed it” out into the night. But the house cat was not the thing so much dreaded. Mr. Springer’s Gila Monster, a lizard-like reptile, even more poisonous than the rattlesnake, was on the loose. It had got out of its place of confinement two days back, and diligent search by the whole camp had failed to locate it. On the third day, however, the Monster was found at a water-hole, an old trench dug years before by our former Wetmore citizen, Green Campbell. The camp demanded that the reptile be killed immediately. Elwood Thomas, also formerly of Wetmore, was a close neighbor to Mr. Springer, and he had carried the word of caution to Myrtle. It was all so very exciting—even worse than a panther scare. And, miraculously, the wife was to experience that one too before leaving the Goodsprings camp.