Probably is toooooo long.

Conroy III, Henry AKA Luke Tonto (Tarantula) – b. 1938, d 1981

When he was fifteen, Henry Conroy III discovered his father, a former vaudevillian (see the entry for Henry "Hank" Conroy Jr. in see his entry in Vol. 1: Films of Heart and Humor) turned Arizona rancher in mid-tryst with a former flame from back East. The younger Conroy, who had felt troubled by his own sexual attraction to a number of the J Bar C ranch hands, ran away, hopping an old freight train that crossed parts of the state, and then setting out on foot.

Exhausted, he finally ended up at the small and quiet town of Desert Rock, where he found work at the horse ranch of Alan Alanson. Conroy refused to give his real name to his employer but did drop hints that troubles with his father were the reason he left home. Alanson, a devout religious man, nicknamed Conroy "Luke" after the Biblical story of the prodigal son. The moniker took and, when Conroy accidentally mentioned that he hailed from Tonto City, everyone at Desert Rock began referring to him as Luke Tonto. Conroy grappled with his desires, worried that he had inherited a sinful nature, but still masturbated to thoughts of Burt Lancaster from the film Apache.

The halcyon life at the ranch and town was interrupted when a test animal, an imported tarantula injected with a growth serum, escaped from a desert lab disaster. The mutated Brachypelma vagans attacked local wildlife, molted and grew at an astounding rate, until it menaced larger fauna like cattle and even humans. Conroy found the remains of the Alanson herd after the tarantula's first attack on the ranch. Alanson himself was devoured the next evening when he attempted to save his horses.

The United States Air Force dispatched the behemoth tarantula using napalm. Government scientists investigated both the ruins of the desert laboratory and where the creature had struck. As Alanson’s widow could not bring herself to remain at the ranch, Conroy found himself both without bed or board and volunteered to escort Jonah Albano, one of the forensic entomologists assigned to Desert Rock. Albano admired more than just the young ranch hand’s assistance and offered to share his small room at the town's only hotel as long as discretion was part of the deal. When Prof. Albano finished his investigation, he paid for a ticket back to Washington, DC. for Conroy.

Albano helped Conroy legally change his name to Luke Tonto and enroll at Virginia Polytechnic Institute to study agriculture. Despite more than two decades separated their ages, the pair developed a strong and lasting relationship. But in 1977 the federal government sent Albano back to Arizona to investigate more trouble with tarantulas, this time in the town of Verde Valley. Albano did not return, though and the Department of the Interior refused to reveal what happened. Hoping to find his lover, Tonto overcame his distaste for the Copper State and flew to Flagstaff. He discovered that Verde Valley, covered by a shroud of cobwebs visible from a distance, was quarantined by the government for an infestation of highly virulent tarantulas. Albano had been a casualty of the investigation, as the government did not want to simply destroy the spiders, which might have a military use.

Furious at this blatant disrespect for the loss of his lover, who had been a devoted civil servant (who had even voted for McGovern), Tonto purchased a large quantity of fertilizer and fashioned several explosive devices that, with the prevailing winds, burnt Verde to the ground. Realizing this act of retaliation would lead to reprisal, Tonto left Arizona one last time and settled in Guaymas Valley, where he helped the locals farming but remained single despite the attention of many maricón. He passed away from lung cancer.