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Beautiful girls in festive attire, with pleasant smiles on their lips, and the light spirit of youth in their hearts "Marys," with roses in their hair, but without carriage and postilion flitted to and fro in the wild dance. Where were the heads, where the feet? As if stung by tarantulas, they sprang, laughed, rejoiced, as if in their ecstacies they were going to embrace all the world.

"MUSHY!" she repeated, and shook down her hair so that it framed her face and those eyes of hers. "I suppose that's what they all say behind my back. And how can a girl be nice WITHOUT being mushy?" She drew the brush meditatively through her hair. "I am scared to death of Indians," she admitted, with analytical frankness, "and tarantulas and snakes but MUSHY!"

Busy as ants, the other Sisters hurried backwards and forwards, attending to the wants of their guests, who sat about on rocks and boulders, or with due precautions taken against puff-adders and tarantulas, lay upon the grass of the high bank in the shade of the fern and bush.

Little Jerry Goldboy, being naturally a nervous creature, and having his imagination filled with snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, etcetera, would fain have slept in one of the waggons above the baggage as did many of the women and children if he had not been laughed out of his desire by Dally, and induced to spread his couch manfully on the bare ground.

Small tarantulas, with beautiful wine-colored cephalothorax, made their home deep in the nest, guarded, perhaps, by their dense covering of hair; slender scorpions sidled out from the ruins. They were bare, with vulnerable joints, but they had the advantage of a pair of hands, and long, mobile arms, which could quickly and skilfully pluck an attacking ant from any part of their anatomy.

While he lay thus, meditating upon his blessings, little brown cottontails would shyly frolic through the yard; a covey of white-topknotted blue quail would run past, in single file, twenty yards away; a paisano bird, out hunting for tarantulas, would hop upon the fence and salute him with sweeping flourishes of its long tail.

I knew a man who used to keep tarantulas under his mosquito-nets so that they might devour any stray mosquitoes that got in. The example is hardly worth following. The Australian tarantula, though innocent of poison, is a horrible object, and would, I think, give you a bad fright if it flopped on to your face. Australia is rich in ants.

It is bad enough to have to stay here nine-tenths of the time with nobody in the house but Tabitha, without being in constant fear of one's life all the time." "How many people do you ever hear of being killed here on the desert by centipedes or scorpions or tarantulas, or even snakes? I tell you they aren't half as bad as they are made out to be."

You were a kid, about seven, a-riding a little yellow pony up and down. Amos and me stopped at your home for a little grub when we were trailing that band of Mexican cattle thieves down through Karnes and Bee. Great tarantulas! and you're Amos Colvin's little girl! Did you ever hear your father mention Luke Standifer just kind of casually as if he'd met me once or twice?"

We here had our first experience with scorpions and tarantulas, and soon learned that it was prudent, when bivouacking on the ground, to carefully turn over all loose rocks and logs in order to find and get rid of those ugly customers. The scorpions were about four or five inches long, the fore part of the body something like a crawfish, with a sharp stinger on the end of the tail.