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no effect—to treat the luggage with more care, she had climbed aboard to arrange the seating and discovered the actual driver, uniformed and in control, sitting behind the wheel. He had described the suitcase handler as the relief driver—of whose existence no one had warned her—and had pointed out rather menacingly that the jacket, gym bags, and tool kit tossed on the first pair of seats on the right-hand side belonged to them. Karen opened her mouth to object to this cavalier takeover of the best seats on the bus, looked at the surly face she was going to have to deal with for almost two weeks, and retreated in defeat.
    And the next passenger to board, a gray-haired woman with sharply observant eyes and a vague smile, declared that she intended to sit next to Karen in order to have someone interesting to talk to. “Rose Green,” she said, pointing to her name on Karen’s clipboard. “Silly name—but just imagine, I knew a Joe Garden when I was in school, and if I’d married him instead of Wilt Green—but never mind about that. I’m used to it now. I’m on this trip because my sister, Ruth, died and left me all the money her husband left her. Isn’t that strange? Carter was such an unpleasant man, too. What he wouldn’t say if he knew his money was paying for my holiday. My daughters—I have two daughters, Joy and Wendy—they said I had to do something fun with the money, but my son and his wife wanted to invest it all for me. . . . He’s a stockbroker, you see. But why should I invest it? I’m seventy-nine years old and everyone in my family dies from heart trouble before they’re eighty-five. Look at my sister, Ruth. Energetic as a six-year-old until the day she died and went just like that. Eighty-four. Anyway, they were so shocked when I told them that I went and booked this trip. I told the travel agent I wanted a comfortable, interesting tour, and I didn’t want to be half-dead from jet lag or run off my feet all the time, and he said this was the one. It was booked solid past June when I called last month and then they said they were putting on an extra tour in May, not advertised, to cope with the demand. They said they never take more than eight people and I liked the sound of that. I’m not sure it sounds like fun, exactly, but it’ll be more interesting than shopping.” As she spoke, Mrs. Rose Green was stowing her possessions above her head, under the seat, and in a net thoughtfully attached to the partition between passengers and driver.
    â€œHappy to have you with us, Mrs. Green,” said Karen weakly.
    A knot of four people were waiting to get by Karen, and as soon as she turned, the largest of the men pushed the rest out of the way and spread himself triumphantly across the double seat behind the relief bus driver. He threw his name at Karen as if it were a small dog biscuit, designed to keep her quiet for the moment. She checked him off and decided that she was not going to like Mr. Kevin Donovan.
    The rest of the passengers filed on more or less peacefully. A tall, elegant blonde slipped into the double seat across the aisle from Mr. Donovan and gave her name as Teresa Suarez. She didn’t look like a Teresa Suarez, thought Karen, but this was a day for the destruction of preconceived ideas. She looked more like a Diana Morris, who was also on the list. Then two couples, Brett and Jennifer Nicholls, and Richard and Suellen Kelleher, meekly filled in the next two seats. Finally, a small, dark-haired woman in her twenties, with intelligent dark eyes and a warm complexion, introduced herself as Diana Morris, and slipped into the last double seat on the left-hand side.
    â€œGood evening, ladies and gentlemen,” Karen Johnson began. “Welcome to ‘Mysticism and Magic in Old New Mexico.’ Archway Tours hopes that you have a very pleasant ten-day journey into a world that will stretch the