"And it's a secret to the death!" laughed Shirley. "She says she'll never tell and when she dies she will bequeath the recipe to her best friend. Won't that sound funny in a will?"
Kit laughed heartily at these new friends and Bet continued: "Oh yes, Auntie Gibbs makes a sort of religion out of her cooking. And when she hits upon something especially good, she guards the recipe as if it were a treasure and freezes up hard if anyone asks her how she made it."
"She says if everybody makes the same thing, it's no treat."
"This is very different from an Arizona picnic, girls," exclaimed Kit suddenly.
"Do tell us about it, Kit. What did you eat?"
"We mostly had Arizona strawberries and mountain trout," chuckled Kit and was pleased to see Bet's face express disbelief.
"Why, I didn't know you had strawberries in Arizona."
"And where do you get trout in that hot desert country, when the streams all go dry half the time?" asked Shirley.
Kit laughed with all her might. "There I knew I'd get caught at that old joke. Well you see it's this way. Arizona strawberries are the little red Mexican beans, which we pretty nearly live on out there. And the mountain trout are the strips of bacon that are fried to go with them."
"Oh you mean thing, trying to fool us like that!" shouted Joy, who had been sitting still so long that she had grown tired. Now she danced away down the path with a sandwich held above her head.
"What else would you have for a lunch?" asked Shirley.
"Oh like as not we'd take a Dutch oven along and bake biscuit--and make coffee. They are great on coffee in the desert. Sometimes we have great big picnics when people for miles around come."
"And are there lots of cowboys there?" asked Joy. "Now I'm getting interested. Imagine a picnic with lots of handsome cowboys. Oh, Kit you should have seen the show the other night. It was simply grand!"
"Oh, Joy, do keep quiet! Kit was telling us about the big picnic. What do they have at that?" Bet was interested in the description of the country that was unknown to her.
"What in the world is that?" demanded Joy.
"The men dig great holes in the ground, and make a fire in it, and when there is a good bed of coals they hang a whole steer in it until it is roasted."
