Guestward Ho! (13 page)

"Barbara," he stormed, "I'm not only going out there
and fire those two, I'm going to throw them off the prop
erty with my own hands—even if I get beat up doing it."

"But, Bill, Dick is such a nice, clean-cut boy. I'm sure . . ."

"Nice, clean-cut boy my ear! He's too young to drink,
but he's not too young to get fired, and that's just what
I'm going to do now!" Bill roared, reaching for his shirt.

But the female of the species is always deadlier than the male and I felt certain I could cure Dick. "You're going to do nothing of the kind," I said firmly. "You
come to bed right now. I'll take care of them both tomor
row. I don't honestly care what happens to Curly, but I
promise you that Dick will be reformed forever." For once
Bill listened to me. Still boiling, he got into bed. I set the alarm clock a full hour ahead and followed.

The next morning I got up at five, bathed, dressed
rather elaborately, and made for the kitchen. A quick
inventory of the liquor supply showed me that large
quantities were missing from a large assortment of bottles—
even the cooking sherry. Just thinking of the bizarre
combination of drinks the two culprits had consumed while
on duty made even
me
feel a little sick, and I didn't like to think of the way they'd be feeling.

But I went to the kitchen and got to work at the stove.
I cooked for two hours without stopping until there wasn't
a clean pan left. I made a whole pot of black coffee—
eighteen cups—and what I couldn't drink myself I poured down the drain. A little after seven the two of them came
groaning in, looking like death on a cracker.

Here goes Barbara's Hangover Cure, I said grimly to.
myself; then I turned my most radiant smile on the boys.
"Good
morning!"
I squealed, so shrilly that their hair
stood on end.
"Do
sit down. I've made the biggest, best
est old breakfast for you. I just woke up early and I said to myself, 'Now what would Barbara's boys like this morning any better than a big, hearty he-man's breakfast.' So I just crept out of bed and started cooking and cooking.
And here it is!"
With a sweeping gesture,
I indicated the huge kitchen table, every square inch of
which was covered with the nastiest, most indigestible
dishes possible—heavy, greasy, sweet, or all three, and
every speck of it stone cold.

"Now sit right down, boys, and eat a big, big break
fast, because I have
lots
of work for you both today. You,
Curly, are to clean up the whole corral, since we have
a lot of Texas people coming tomorrow. It's to be spot
less. And then the manure is to be carried over the hill
and spread very thinly over Joe Vigil's berry beds. Curly!
What's the matter with you? Do eat your nice
mush!
And then I have one of your favorite dishes over on that
corner of the table—rare pork chops and garlic bread." Curly looked as though he were going to faint, but he
was too smart to say anything. "Now the corral should
take you at least until lunchtime. Lunch, by the way, is
going to be an experiment: sauerkraut, creamed hog's lungs, Bavarian cream, and cherry pop."

"Oh, Miz Barbara," he moaned, half rising from the table.

"Curly,
do
sit down! You know how Barbara loves to see her boys eat. Here, try a little maple syrup over your pumpernickel. They say that's
delicious.
And as
for you, Richard," I said, keeping up a running flow of
screeching brittle chitchat, "there's all this
garbage
that has to go to the
dump.
Here, Dickie,
eat,"
I said, plopping a couple of cold greasy fried eggs on top of a wedge of leftover pecan pie I'd put on his plate. "Maybe you boys would like some dill pickles and
peaches?"

Curly got up and left the room on the double. He didn’t
come back, but I saw him out in the corral, painfully
cleaning the place in the broiling sun.

However, I still had my younger victim, Dick, to tor
ture, and I showed no mercy. "Now I'm just going to sit
here and
see
that you eat everything on the table, Dick. I wouldn't want your mother to think I was starving you to death out here."

"Really, I just can't," he moaned, holding his head.

"Why, Dickie-bird," I screamed in my gay coloratura
soprano, "if I didn't know you better, I'd swear you were
suffering from a severe hangover. But
that
isn't true,
is
it?" I said with a shark's smile.

"No, Barbara," he groaned. "All I had was some beer."

"Beeeeeeer?" I shrilled, as though it were a newly
coined word. "Where in the world did you ever get beer?
We haven't had any in the icebox for a week."

"Uh, Curly bought some and offered me a little," Dick
said miserably.

"Yes?" I asked pregnantly, knowing Curly would never
spend a nickel of his own on beer when there was better
to be swiped for free.

"Well, I just had a couple of sips of beer and it tasted so terrible that I had to drink some milk to kill the taste and then I was as sick as a dog all night."

"Just fancy," I chirped. "As sick as that on just 'a couple of sips of beer.' Well, don't worry about that.
Finish your nice breakfast, then off to the dump, then you
can curry all the horses and then wash the station wagon and then . . ."

Poor Dick. He worked like a slave all day, each chore hotter and more unpleasant than the one before. Bill and
the rest of the staff joined me in my charade of sweetness and light, asking him oversolicitously how he was feeling and offering him sticky bits of cake and candy throughout
the day. Not a word was mentioned about the night be
fore and the poor kid looked as though he were going to
drop. Curly looked even worse, but then, nobody cared about him. The final indignity came at five o'clock when
the two of them had performed at least a week's work
and were panting for a cool swim. At that point, Bill drained the pool.

After dinner, however, Bill—in the role of the heavy
father—gave them both what-for. Dick hadn't the strength
left to repeat his lie of the morning about those few sips
of beer. Naturally, Curly had put him up to the whole
escapade, but Dick was too decent to tattle. Curly, on
the other hand, started to say it had all been Dick's idea, but Bill gave him such a glare midway in the first sen
tence of this pretty fiction that he thought better of it and
clammed up.

Dick was dying to get between the sheets and forget he'd ever been born, but Bill didn't let him go until he swore he'd never touch another drop again. And I'm as sure as I am of my own name that he never ever did.

As for that Curly, he was put on the strictest probation, after a display of tears that would put the fountains of
Versailles to shame. But of course we should have known
him well enough by then not to have given him another
chance.

A week later Curly didn't just crack again, he split
wide open, and I began the season not only with a house
ful of guests, but also with a
second
splash, and this one a lot more serious than the first.

The guests were solidly Texan, and I don't mind telling
you that the prospect of Texans made me more than a
little nervous. In New York City, at least, Texans were
reputed to be difficult customers. I'd had no personal experience with any of them before, but the oil-rich or
mutation-mink Texas dames I'd seen you-alling their way
through Bergdorf Goodman's had
certainly
been difficult
customers and so I naturally deduced that
all
Texans had
more money than taste and more oil than sense. But Texans made up a large proportion of New Mexico's
visitors because New Mexico is not only handy to Texas,
but also because New Mexico has cool summers while
Texas summers are unbearably hot.

The first wave of Texans consisted of Dr. and Mrs. Gale Collins and their little girl, Mikie, from Midland—a boom town in oil and cattle millions. I was scared witless at the very prospect of them, and when Gale stepped—or, rather, unfolded himself—from his car, I
was quite speechless. He stood about six feet five in his
heels. He had wavy blond hair and when he smiled his
teeth were so bright that I reached for my sunglasses. But
at least he
had
smiled. Still, it was like being visited by a silent screen star, because he hardly spoke at all. In
stead, he just looked the place over, selected one of the
houses for his wife and his daughter, almost entirely in
pantomime, and disappeared into it.

The second Texas family was even more scarifying be
cause they had been coming to Rancho del Monte for
years while Bess Huntinghouse was running it. Thinking
back to our dismal failure with the two women who were
seemingly inconsolable over the absence of Bess earlier
in the season, I was afraid the same thing would happen
with the Boyer family—personality problems and all that
sort of thing. The Boyers had booked a whole house for
two months and they were preceded by quite an array of
personal effects. They sent ahead their own saddles, Mrs.
Boyer's painting equipment, a collection of books that would have done justice to a small library, and, of all
things, a Hammond electric organ! Finally the Boyers
themselves arrived, accompanied by their college-age
daughter, Henrietta, and two cocker spaniels. Since they knew the place much better than I did, it seemed rather
pointless to show them around. So that influx of Texans also disappeared into a house, and all I heard from them
was the organ. It made me feel a little like the Phantom of the Opera, except that Mrs. Boyer was playing "Tea For Two." All in all, the Texans had been a most un
settling experience and I was sure they were going to be
more than difficult—they'd be
impossible.

And so, naturally, it was just at this time that Curly chose to act up again. He'd been becoming more and more difficult to get along with. He worked poor Dick like a stevedore and did nothing himself. He had taken to bossing the whole staff around as though he, and not Bill and I, were running the place, and he'd driven Nan and Sue to tears more than once. On top of that, Curly
was getting increasingly fresh with Bill. He seemed to take
pleasure in doing exactly the opposite of whatever Bill
told him to do, considering Bill, I guess, a green city dude
who was frivolous and easygoing and just in business for a romp.

Well, my Bill might have been frivolous and easygoing,
but he was dead serious when it came to earning and saving as many dollars as possible whenever it
was
pos
sible. And just because Bill and I have placid dispositions
and aren't given to melodramatic scenes of passion, rage,
or despair doesn't mean we can't get just as sore and be
just as serious as the next fellow. Still, Curly, whose in
telligence never began to match his conceit, just wouldn't
believe Bill could snarl as well as smile, or that our few
rules and regulations were meant to be followed to the
letter.

One rule—and a rule, it seemed to me, that was self-
evident—was that horses were not to be ridden around
the grounds or anywhere near the house or pool. Riders
went down the drive when they left and came back up
the drive to the corral when they returned and that was as
close as they ever came to the house. All riders, that is,
except Curly.

But on our second day of "difficult" Texans, Dick came
panting into the house and said, "Bill, have you any idea
how to get a horse out of the reservoir?"

"Get a
what out
of the
what?"
Bill said.

"A horse out of the reservoir," Dick repeated.

"Of course you're kidding," Bill said.

"No. I'm not. Black Horse is in the reservoir and we can't get him out."

Bill and I raced up the hill to see one of the grisliest
sights in the history of New Mexico. Our reservoir was
almost as big as our swimming pool. It was about six
feet deep and it supplied all the water—drinking, cooking,
bathing, everything—for the household. And there, stand
ing up to his belly in the reservoir, shivering with cold and frenzy, and surrounded by dirt, gravel, chips, flies,
and bits of wood and tar paper, was Black Horse. Curly
was in it, too.

It was quite bad enough to think that we and our guests
would be without water until the reservoir could be emptied, cleaned, and refilled. But what made it even
worse was that Black Horse didn't even belong to us. He
was spending a trial period at Rancho del Monte prior to being bought by Bill and me. Oh, let me tell you, I
had a pretty picture of seeing Black Horse breaking a leg
and being shot. Then there we'd be with a monumental
horse stone, cold dead in the reservoir and two checks to
write—one to the owner and one to the man who could
get Black Horse out, cart him away, and bury the remains.
As for the guests and the water supply . . .