Guestward Ho! (14 page)

"Bill," I began. But then I saw he was almost speech
less with rage.

"Did you ride this horse up here, Dick?" Bill asked with
that terrifying calm that means all hell is about to break
loose.

"No, sir," Dick said.

"Who, then?" Bill asked even more quietly. "You, Curly?"

"W-well, you see, Bill . . . um, Mr. Hooton
. . .
it was
like this . . ." Curly stammered, his voice echoing in the
reservoir.

"Answer yes or no," Bill said coldly.

"Well, y-yes."

"Why?"

"W-well, see, it was like this. I-I was comin' up to
check the water s-supply an' I rode Black Horse up here, an' he kinda heard a noise that made him shy an' then I
guess his weight was too heavy for the cover of the rezzy
vore an' . . . an' well, he fell through."

"I see," Bill said terrifyingly. "I don't suppose you could have walked up this hill?"

"Well, Bill—I mean Mr. Hooton—why should I walk
all the ways up here when . . ."

"When you could ride a horse up here, after I've told you not to, and then let the horse fall in, possibly break
a leg, and contaminate our water? Is that what you mean?"
Bill said.

Curly was mercifully silent. Bill was so furious that he
couldn't
speak and he conducted the extradition of Black
Horse in gestures alone, while all the guests stood timidly
around the edge making polite suggestions.

Black Horse had already been in the reservoir for two
hours, and it took another two to get the poor beast out.
Finally Bill hit upon the idea of getting the big, sturdy
barbecue table into the reservoir with the rest of the debris, then floating the horse up to the table top, and then leading him to dry land. At least, this is what I
think
happened. I was too frightened of the horse's bolting
and breaking a leg to look. I was also so afraid of what Bill would do to Curly that I ran down the hill and hid in our room. But I could
hear
what was going on, and the silence really petrified me.

The horse was safe. Dick led him back to the corral,
rubbed him down, examined him for wounds—only a few
minor scratches—and bedded him down for the night.

Then Curly did another idiotic thing. He started empty
ing the reservoir, which meant that all the stuff floating on
the water was on its way to clog the pipes leading to the
ranch house. Without a word, Bill grabbed the wrench
from him and rerouted the dirty water into the swimming
pool. When the reservoir
and
the swimming pool were emptied, the big cleanup began. It meant the reservoir had
to be scrubbed, scoured, rinsed, scrubbed, scoured, and
rinsed again—a process that lasted until midnight.

But no water meant not only no swimming and no baths, it meant no dinner at Rancho del Monte. In fact,
no meals at all until the reservoir was cleaned, filled, and
covered again. It also meant that the Hostess with the
Leastest on the Ball had to dab cologne in the more vital
spots (and I don't care what they did in the court of Louis XIV, scent does
not
replace plain old soap and water), smile, gather her flock of Texans, smile, take them out to a rich meal, smile, pick up the check, and smile.

To my surprise, the guests behaved as though they'd
never had such a romp before in their whole lives. And,
if you didn't look too closely for grime, we made a dev
astatingly chic convoy all the way in to Hotel La Fonda
in Santa Fe. But although I was behaving like the original
good-time Charlotte, my heart wasn't in it. First of all, I was scared silly of what Bill might do to Curly and vice versa; then I was sure I'd be spending the whole
of the next morning checking out our bathless and breakf
astless guests who'd tell everybody in Texas to steer clear of the Hooton household.

When we got to Hotel La Fonda, I flew straight to
Tommy Thomson, the assistant manager, who has been
more helpful to us than I can ever say. "Tommy," I panted, "something terrible has happened. Lay on the goodies and make them superb. Give us a big table and put anything on it you can think of." I stopped for a breath. Then I plunged in again. "Give them anything
they want—roast peacock, caviar, goldfish roe, champagne—
anything.
Well pay you somehow." Tommy complied.

The dinner was sensational, and I ordered cocktails with
a lavish hand. It was very gay—I think—and I was the
gayest of all, but it was mostly hysteria and the way the
sidecars hit me. Yet throughout the whole evening I had
the ominous feeling I would return to the ranch to find both Bill and Curly bludgeoned to death in the bottom of the reservoir, and I didn't know, how I'd ever carry on alone.

When we got back I dashed up to the reservoir to find
Bill and Curly and Dick working silently by torchlight.
Bill was still unable to speak, and Curly was bright enough,
for once, not to strike up any light banter.

The next day the reservoir had to be covered—a job
that miraculously was done in just twelve hours. But
working in the blazing sunshine gave Bill a slight touch
of sunstroke and he mumbled incoherently all that night.
Still, I was rather relieved he did, since that was the only
sound he had made since the beginning of the reservoir
incident. Then the reservoir had to be drained again for sawdust from the covering project. Then the swimming
pool had to be cleaned and refilled—forty thousand gal
lons. Bill looked like death, but he worked himself and
Curly silently and relentlessly.

At last everything was done, and poor Bill collapsed into
a chair and fit a cigarette. I was about to say something trite, cheery, and asinine about all being well that ended
well, but the expression on Bill's face warned me to keep
my big mouth shut. Curly, the darling, was not so wise.
Tweaking a cigarette out of Bill's shirt pocket, he lighted
it with a flourish and said, "Well, Bill ole boy, I guess we sure got that problem licked."

Bill didn't say a word, but he exhaled smoke through
his nostrils in a fashion that made me think of a dragon
about to go on the rampage.

Still Curly didn't get the hint. "Yessireesir, it sure was
a dirty job, but I guess I got it fixed up okay."

Still no answer.

"C-Curly," I faltered nervously, "why don't you run down and take a shower . . ."

"What was that you said, Curly?" Bill said, cutting
through my bright badinage.

"Why, Billy Boy, I said it sure was a mean job but I
guess I got it fixed up okay."

"Who
got
what
fixed up, Curly?" Bill asked levelly.

"Well, shucks, Bill, of course you done yer bit, too, but
you Eastern fellers who come out here an' expect to . . ."

"Get out," Bill said quietly.

Curly literally couldn't believe his ears. "What say, Bill?" he gulped.

"I said, get out," Bill said, still very quietly.

"Aw, Billy," Curly crooned, laying a hand gently on
Bill's shoulder. That was his mistake.

Bill made a sweeping gesture with his arm that caught
Curly across the chest and knocked him flat. "I said get out, you lousy, stupid, ignorant, thieving, lazy fathead.
Pack your things and
get out of my sight!"
He roared
the last of this farewell so loudly, the echoes are still
reverberating around the mountains. With that, he stepped
over Curly, marched down to the house, and slept for twelve hours straight.

There wasn't much for Curly to do but pack and go.
He wept and wailed ludicrously as I was writing his final
check, but poor Curly was playing to a cold audience. The only laugh he drew from me was when he said
that Dick could never manage the wrangling alone. Poor
Dick had been doing it alone ever since the first day he got there.

And what happened to our "difficult" Texans?

Well, nothing did. The Boyer family stayed on for their two-month visit just as though the service and the conveniences had never faltered. And they came back every
summer afterward.

As for the Collinses, during the tragedy Maxine Col
lins came to me with tears of laughter streaming down her cheeks and urged me to witness the sight of her handsome
husband shaving in club soda. (A tip to the gentlemen: It works just fine and produces a frothy aerated lather
that looks like a cross between marshmallow fluff and a
bubble bath.) The Collinses stayed on through the sum
mer, but they never came back to spend the summer
again. Why? Because they liked it so much that the fol
lowing year they leased a lovely house on the outskirts
of Santa Fe and moved right into it, transferring Gale's
practice from Texas to New Mexico. They may not be
our guests any longer, but they certainly are our close
friends. In fact, I've even functioned as godmother to their little daughter Mikie, to whom this story is dedi
cated, and as her spiritual mentor I can answer thousands
of questions about the Bible. Just ask me a question—New Testament or Old.

Texans are difficult? Phooey!

But once again the help problem was solved—one
employee for every three guests, which was too many, but
at least they were good employees and not people like
Curly, who later turned out to have had a prison record,
a deserted wife, and to have heisted a good deal of Bill's and my personal property. We had a cook in the kitchen,
guests in the bedrooms, water in the reservoir, God in His
heaven, and all was right with the ranch—for nearly two
weeks.

It there is one sight that depresses me, it is the predatory
female gunning for a man at a resort. What is even more
depressing is to see long verandas filled with them, dressed
to the teeth, their ferret eyes raking over every new arrival (male) as matrimonial bait and every new arrival (female) as cut-throat competition. And what is most depressing of
all is that I have seen the system from both sides.

During my working days in New York I used to hear
Jennie and Elsie and Blanche plotting out their two-weeks-
with-pay with all the care and cunning that went into the
attack on Pearl Harbor. Surrounded by circulars and
travel folders, by fashion magazines and by their omnipresent "best friend" (they usually campaigned in pairs—
unwisely, I think), they spent a good three months plan
ning the fortnight's man hunt. They went into hock buying too many too-expensive clothes that were wildly inappro
priate for the lives they normally led. Finally, equipped
with enough luggage to see the Duchess of Windsor through a tough season at Biarritz, they set off, only to
find the happy hunting grounds glutted with girls exactly like themselves. If they ever did find Mr. Right, he was
almost inevitably Mr. Wrong—on the prowl for a rich
wife and temporarily taken in by the counterfeit splendors of Jennie or Elsie or Blanche, only to decamp when he
discovered that she was really a poor typist the other
fifty weeks of the year. The
real
Mr. Right was usually
back in the stock room or two doors up the street, but Jennie and Elsie and Blanche never learned and they
spent summer after summer in their dime-novel dream
world of finding glamour, matrimony, and cold cash on
the American Plan until too many summers had flown
past for any man to be interested.

At the receiving end, I'm glad to say that there has been
only one case of virulent, unquarantined man fever at
Rancho del Monte and that the patient went home thor
oughly cured.

Oh, certainly, we entertained lots of single women and
lots of single men. Bill and I even had a modest stag line
of Santa Fe bachelors who were always happy to come
out for dinner or a swim after work and give our girls a whirl. But we were lucky in that our unattached women
came to us only for fun and relaxation and not to bag big game. Rancho del Monte was never intended to be
a matrimonial agency, I'm happy to say. And let me also
say that even at those resorts that purport to bring you
a proposal with the daily breakfast toast, the resultant
weddings are few and far between, ladies; mighty few and mighty far between.

However, sex reared its ugly—and I say
dyed
—head
right in the middle of our very first summer.

We had two reservations from two lone females. One had written on scented paper with big circles dotting the
I's, which I considered kind of tacky, but nothing more.
The other had written in a neat, prim bookkeeper-ish kind
of hand. They were both arriving on the same day and
that was also the day Bill was to pick up the new wrangler
whom we had hired sight unseen—but on Grade A recom
mendations—to replace Curly. So that the whole trio burst upon the ranch at once. And an odder assortment I have yet to see emerging from one station wagon.

Passenger Number One looked like an aging movie
starlet left over from the prewar days of glamour with a capital G. Her blue-black bob was so long it covered both
shoulder blades in back and one hawk eye in front. She
wore a shocking pink suit with a lot of beadwork over
the bosom, which
couldn't
have all been hers, shocking
pink sandals that seemed to wind all the way up from
the ankle to somewhere mid-thigh, and a cape made of
mink-dyed something. ("So appropriate for ranch life," as
I confided cattily to Maxine Collins.) She traveled with
six suitcases in graduated sizes, also in shocking pink.
What delights they contained I could only imagine. She
strode along the flagstone path like someone coming down the runway at Minsky's, with Bill almost breaking
his neck to get her tawdry pink bags into the house and
she just loving it. At that moment a little voice within me thundered, "Oh-oh!"

Passenger Number Two was male and, to my way of
thinking, absolutely unexceptional. His name was Harry
and he was to be our new head wrangler. If Curly had
been nothing else, at least he had been young and eager,
with a certain oily charm. Harry was none of these things.
He was tall, fortyish, and better-looking than average,
but so shy that he was incapable of speech. When I said
hello to him he went scarlet, gulped, and burst into a cold sweat, leaving my right hand outstretched in the mountain
breeze.

But passenger Number Three took the prize. She crept
out of the car with all the grace of a lame penguin, six or seven straps sliding down her shoulders as her skirt raised itself unbeautifully to reveal what I believe one still calls
bloomers. She was in her late twenties, but for the way she
dressed she could have been twice that age. She was the
epitome of the young old maid in fullest flower and the one word that describes her thoroughly is "dowdy."

Once they all got into the ranch house it seemed to me
that Bill was simply itching to juggle all of the glamour
girl's shocking pink bags at once, while the plain Jane
had to struggle as best she could with her own modest luggage. As for Harry, he just stood around on one boot
and then another and blushed.

Finally I said, a little acidly, "Bill, why don't
you
show
Harry to the bunkhouse and
I'll
take care of the ladies."
He didn't look at all pleased by my suggestion, but he
complied.

Just as I was registering the dowdy girl, Gale Collins
strode into the lounge and I could see the enchantress light
up like a flash bulb. There wasn't much I could do except introduce Dr. Collins to the new guests, and that
seemed to be enough for old shocking pink.

"Oh, Doctor," she said in one of those voices pitched
somewhere between Tallulah Bankhead and a bassoon,
"I wish you'd take a look at my back. I think I've dislo
cated it on the train."

If I tried walking the way
she
did, my back would be
broken!
However, I said, "Dr. Collins isn't that
kind
of
doctor,
dear.
But I know a sweet old osteopath who has
practiced out here for more than fifty years. Ill call him
if you like. My
husband
and I swear by him—and so does
Dr. Collin's
wife."
That seemed to cure her back. "Now, if you'll just sign the register . . ." Gale sauntered out vastly amused and a little pleased with himself, the cur!

Bill and I had a mild hassle as we were dressing for
dinner that evening.

"Well," I said, "you certainly brought home the bacon
today! An old maid who's so dowdy she'll scare the men
away; a nymphomaniac who's so brazen she'll scare the
women away; and a mute wrangler who's so shy that
everyone will scare
him
away!"

"What do you mean?" Bill said. "Harry's a wonderful
wrangler. You should have seen the references he had."

"You
should have seen the poise he had!" I said.

"Well, he's no personality kid, but he'll be good to the animals," Bill admitted. Then he said, "You certainly are
right about the old maid one. You know what I call
her? I call her Miss Mouse. But the other girl seems
awfully—"

"And do you know what I call
her?"
I stormed. "I call
her"
—well, what I called her you could never set in type
and get away with—"I call
her
Miss
Ladydog!"

The evening was pure agony—for me. Since there were
no unattached men in residence, I sat between the two
unclaimed treasures, largely to keep Miss Mouse on the
ball and to keep Miss Ladydog off the husbands. But I
noticed that as far as the other wives were concerned, I needn't have bothered. Not one of them yawned and said
she was about to turn in—not as long as Miss Ladydog
stayed around.

Miss Mouse, I discovered, had a genius for doing just
the wrong things with herself. Possessed of rather pretty hair, she had a talent for arranging it just the worst way
possible—three tight little sausage curls over the forehead, a brittle, lacquered wave over one temple, and a bird's nest of ringlets in back. Rather sallow, she had
chosen a fussy ocher-colored dress that made her look
exactly like a crate of lemons. What little jewelry she
owned was antique and good in its way,, but she always
gave the impression of wearing at least three cameos, two
lockets, and one necklace each of coral, amber, and jade.

I
shuddered to think of what would happen when she was
turned loose in the native jewelry shops. She had nice legs and little feet, but her shoes were always the kind that are said to combine the practicality of nurses' oxfords
with the high style of Paris—you know the kind, they're
always named something like "Flapperette" or "Miss
Romany" or "Lady Grace." She had good features and a
lovely complexion, but her face was devoid of all cosmetics
except for a dab of ugly orange lipstick, applied Cupid's
bow fashion. She worked for a firm that printed railway timetables,
and her conversation was more or less limited to the
difficulties of daylight saving time, the changes in the sum
mer schedule of a line called something like the M.N.O.P.
& Q.R.R., and the attractive round-trip excursion rates on railroads headed for other places. Other than railroading,
she was able to discuss only the girls' club in which she
lived and the humidity in St. Louis. Miss Mouse was
sweet, she was nice, she was genuine. But she was a great
big bore.

As for Miss Ladydog, she was every bit as badly dressed
as Miss Mouse, but the effect was more provocative if
you happened to be a man. She came slinking in to dinner
in a black lace dress so taut across her padding that the
whole sleazy outfit was in imminent danger of bursting.
Sporting another pair of wrap-around sandals and a ton
of fake jewelry, I suppose her getup was okay for street-walking but it was wildly inappropriate for life on a ranch.
She'd slapped on so much scent and make-up that the
effect, while far from natural-looking or pleasing—if you
happened to be a woman—stunned the average man into
thinking she was Aphrodite.

Miss Ladydog came from California and spoke of her
self as "in pictures," although she never said in what
capacity. She tossed around first names like Marlene and
Marlon and Gary and Cary with great monotony. She also gave herself airs and graces that were as funny as
they were phony—if you happened
not
to be a man. Un
like Miss Mouse, Miss Ladydog was
not
sweet or nice or
genuine. But like Miss Mouse, she was also a bore and the
biggest
bore I've ever met in my life.

Both of the extra ladies were booked in for two weeks,
and while I had a vague feeling that neither of them would
ever last it out, I was dead certain that I never could.

Since Miss Mouse was painfully shy and since Miss Lady
dog wasn't shy at all, I made it a point to keep an eagle
eye out for both of them so, that Miss Mouse would have
a good time and so that Miss Ladydog wouldn't have
too good a time at the expense of some other woman. It
only took about two days for the Hollywood bombshell to
alienate every other female on the place. Even the cook's wife came to me and said, "Mrs. Hooton, Jim's a decent
family man and he's a good cook, but if the rolls is tough
tonight it ain't his fault and it ain't mine. It's that dyed-
haired chippy from California."

"Whatever do you mean?" I asked stupidly.

"You know exackly what I mean," she said, turning a dull red. "All day long that fly-up-the-creek has been out in the kitchen foolin' around with my Jim. Jim's no dif
ferent than no other man and I'm no different than no
other woman, but let me tell you that if she don't get out
of the kitchen,
we're
gettin' out. I got kids to raise an' I want 'em raised decent."

"Why, I, um . . ." I faltered.

"Excuse me for talking so blunt," she said and marched
out of my room with a sob.

Even the Collins' daughter Mikie, who was only six, despised Miss Ladydog. In front of Gale Collins, Miss
Ladydog simply couldn't see enough of Mikie—"Oh, I just
adore
little ones, Gale!" she had cooed. But when
Mikie and the seductress were alone arid Mikie tried to
reciprocate this undying devotion, she got short shrift and
a sharp slap that not only wounded and mystified the
child but also galvanized her into action as the youngest
member of the Ladies' Team.