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By sunup Kyna had put her black mood behind her and was cracking wise like the Kyna of old. She even performed a slow striptease with the motel's postage-stamp-sized bath towel, and when Cyrus got all hot and bothered, she emptied a glass of tap water over his head. |
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They put on shorts, T-shirts, their new boots andbecause Arizona mornings had a tendency to be coolKyna brought along her cardigan sweater and Cyrus carried his navy jacket. Kyna made a five-minute stop at a shopping mall in the middle of Tucson where Cyrus watched her trade six bags of quarter-carat sparklers for enough cash to make a reasonable-sized dent in the national debt. As soon as the money was safely locked in the trunk, they followed a gas station attendant's instructions past a subdivision of quarter-million-dollar homes to the parking lot in front of the Sabino Canyon visitors' center. |
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The trail started between two tall cacti at the far side of the lot and followed a series of low hills through juniper, yucca and enough rabbitbrush to provide Brer Rabbit's entire clan with affordable housing. Up on the sides of the hills, dozens of stately saguaro and old-man cacti stood guard like medieval knights wearing prickly suits of armor. The ground was both sandy and rocky, and had been baked to the consistency of pottery by the fiery desert sun. On the way up the canyon, they surprised a roadrunner feeding on a small snake and later caught a glimpse of a mule deer's striped behind as it disap- |
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