Guestward Ho! (18 page)

I was really too busy that summer ever to stop and ask
myself if I was actually happy on the ranch. If I had, the
answer would surely have been a big, resounding No. I
knew Bill was happy, and that was nice, but never in my
wildest dreams had I planned on spending my life as the
hostess of a perpetual house party. Bill's idea of paradise
and mine were just two different things. His was the ranch.
Mine was a large one-room apartment with air condition
ing and all the modern conveniences. But I had to admit
once in a while that the old boy had a point.

I felt it especially at dinner, looking down the long
Spanish table and seeing everyone attractively dressed for the meal (by "dressed" I mean things like clean jeans and
cotton frocks; I've been in evening clothes
once
since 1953) and watching pretty Nan and Sue serving it with
the help of Dick and the cook's wife. Then I'd look out
through the casement windows and see a great big splashy
sunset, frantic with blues and pinks and reds and violets,
and I'd make everybody stop talking for a minute and
just look. (Really, how tiresome I used to be about those
Southwestern sunsets!) Then I'd dig my fork into a delicious, tender slice of rare beef, surrounded by the pan-browned potatoes I'd probably peeled myself, and look at
the corn on the cob and the green vegetables we'd grown
ourselves. Then I'd contemplate the pie that was coming, made with our fruit. And then I'd look at the guests again
and realize that all those lovely people were not only
with us, but
paying
to be with us. Then I'd close my eyes
and simply sigh.

That, ladies and gentlemen, East or West, town or coun
try, is known as contentment.

Somehow we got through that first summer alive. Memo
rial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, the Fiesta, and
the Rodeo had all come and gone. As a matter of fact,
we even rode in the Rodeo Parade that first summer. Bill
painted our elderly buckboard a spanking black and yel
low and drove it in the parade with me sitting at his side—feeling like a fool—and seven guests riding behind us. We won second prize, and although I still accuse Bill of
fixing the judges, he swears up and down that he didn't.

The Rodeo de Santa Fe is great fun, much more fun
than the Fiesta, I think—a good deal more exciting and a
whole lot less alcoholic. One of its prime movers is our
dear friend, Slim Green. We were lucky to find Slim so soon after our arrival at Rancho del Monte because he is
the
authority on all things pertaining to horses, the coun
tryside, pack trips, roping, riding—anything Western. Slim
is a saddle-maker by trade, a transplanted Texan and a
former member of that gone-but-not-forgotten glamour
branch of the Army, the Cavalry. Today he has a modern combination house and shop in the Tesuque Valley, where,
surrounded by cats and children and stray visitors, he does
perfectly beautiful leatherwork—saddles, bridles, riding
skirts, belts, chaps, and almost any other leather item you
care to mention. A great raconteur, Slim often finds his workrooms so crowded with men who drop in simply to listen that no customers can be wedged into the place. We
just love him, and it suddenly occurs to me that maybe
it was Slim who fixed it so that the Rancho del Monte
contingent won second prize in the Rodeo Parade.

But as Labor Day dwindled away, so did a lot of our staff and a lot of our guests. Nan and Sue and Dick, each
weighing ten pounds more than at the beginning of tie
summer and each a little surprised and distressed at the
discovery, headed back to school, as did Don Campbell.
That left us with the cook and his wife and children and
the part-time services of the excellent Joe Vigil—and they
were enough.

The house was only half full after Labor Day, which
was more guests than I'd actually expected, but surprising
in still another way because, to me, autumn is New Mex
ico's nicest season. It is spectacularly beautiful time of
year, with the aspen and the chamiso turning a vivid gold,
followed by the reddening of the scrub oaks, so that soon
the whole mountainside is a solid tapestry of green and
gold splashed with scarlet. Wild flowers bloom everywhere;
and while the days are warm and sunny, nights are cool,
with fragrant piñon fires burning on all the hearths. Blood-
red strings of drying chili pods festoon every house. Riding
is wonderful then. Invigorating. The horses seem to sense
the coming of winter and they're far friskier. It's a lovely
time to ride out on picnics and just gaze silently at the
splendor that is everywhere. But try to convince the
average American tourist or the usual travel agent of this.

I don't know what there is about the term Labor Day
that, like "Off Limits,"
"Verboten,"
and
"Tabu,"
seems
to denote the end of the world to the American public.
Like those overly fashionable women I used to see swelter
ing on Fifth Avenue in furs and velvets and tweeds just after the first Monday in September (when anyone with
any sense would have been at the beach), Labor Day seems to denote fall, work, and the coming Ice Age—
even if it's ninety in the shade for the rest of the month.
Only the brave and the unconventional will break the
tradition by venturing out into the balmy blasts of our
Septembers and Octobers, and that is indeed a pity be
cause they are New Mexico's loveliest months, rivaling
even the spring for exhilaration and beauty.

That first fall was also the first time I can recall feeling
consistently happy about living in New Mexico. By then Bill and I had become fairly accustomed to the routine of
running the ranch. With only half a houseful, the work was
easier, and all the guests were getting along beautifully.

In fact, the guests were getting along so very beautifully
that I should have sensed trouble. And it came, too, when
politics slithered like a viper into our paradise.

Two women from Chicago were visiting us, both of
them cultivated and charming and terrifyingly intelligent. They had been guests at the ranch in Bess Huntinghouse's day, but they seemed to like us just as well and they were enormously popular with the other guests. After some of the prize packages I've described, it was really a pleasure to come into the dining room and see all the guests laughing and joking and calling one another by pet
names—not a bad egg in the whole crate. I should have
known that it was too good to last, but I was more inno
cent in those days.

The storm was brought about by none other than Adlai
Stevenson. Both of the Chicago women were passionately interested in politics and were ardent Democrats. One eve
ning that fall they announced that Adlai Stevenson could
be heard giving a brief radio address in their room at
eight o'clock sharp, that all other Stevenson fans were welcome to drop in and listen, and that all others would kindly
stay the hell away.

My mother always told me there was a basic rule for
female conversation and that was to avoid the five D's—
doctors, diets, domestics, diapers, and dress. There is an even more stringent rule for the conversations of people
who run guest ranches and that is "Lay off Politics, Reli
gion, and Philosophy." So Bill and I settled for a movie at the local drive-in and skedaddled well before Mr. Stevenson hit the airwaves.

When we got back, the fur was flying for fair. Naturally,
the Republicans couldn't resist dropping in to hear the
speech. And while each of them undoubtedly said to him
self, "Now, I won't say a word unless specifically asked for
my opinion," something had obviously slipped up some
where, because the whole household was divided into two
violently opposed camps—one staunchly Republicans, the
other rabidly Democratic. And as in all mass arguments,
our affectionate guests had gone well beyond the original
question at hand. Every American president from Eisen
hower back to Abraham Lincoln had been disinterred, if necessary, and dragged into the fray. The air was blue with
long-forgotten expressions such as Hooverville, New
Dealer, Teapot Dome, NRA, CCC, and WPA. Men who
had joked and ridden and fished together for weeks sud
denly appeared not to recognize one another. When they
met in the lounge. People who had been on a first-name
basis exchanging addresses and telephone numbers poke not at all or only through interpreters: "Would you please
ask Mrs. Blank to pass the biscuits?"—as though Mrs. Blank were totally unable to understand even basic Eng
lish.

Bill and I were caught right out in the middle of it all—in the very no-man's land of politics. And don't think we weren't approached surreptitiously by both parties for sup
port. I would gladly have ripped my tongue out by the
roots before advancing any opinion at all except for the very true and sound opinion that it was all too silly for
words and that they were ruining their sleep, their diges
tions, and their vacations. Bill steadfastly maintained that the only party for him was the Vegetarian Party and kept
coolly aloof from the whole thing.

The cold war of Rancho del Monte raged on for two or three more days until the Jeanne d'Arc of the Stevenson Army did something that was just as funny and endearing
as it was odd. Coming back from town one warm day
with one or two of her aides-de-camp, she saw the swim
ming pool gleaming bluely in the warm autumn sunshine.

"It looks so lovely and cool," she said, "that I just
can't go down the hill and bother with changing." With
that she removed her wrist watch, stepped out of her pumps, and dived in—dress, stockings, slip, girdle, and
all. Fully clothed, she swam several lengths and climbed
out again, looking like a drowned rat but fully refreshed.
Then she put on her shoes and her watch and went sop
pily down the hill to her room, leaving the rest of the
guests so stunned that they forgot all about their recent
political differences and could talk of nothing else for
days.

Playing the host or hostess at a guest ranch can be a
very difficult job unless you lay down ironclad rules for
your own conduct. Even at small-sized Rancho del Monte,
where Bill and I treated the clientele as our guests and
our friends, we had to remember that they were still
pay
ing
and that all of them were total strangers until they
finally did become our friends. It's the filthy lucre, I sup
pose, that makes the difference, but it
does
make a diff
erence.

Gambling with guests, for example, is one sure way to
get into trouble. Since I hate cards and play them so
I wretchedly that nobody in his right mind would ask me
even to sort his hand, I was always perfectly safe. Bill,
however, is a brilliant player, but he's also a brilliant
enough host to realize that the shortest distance between
a happy guest and an angry guest is a straight flush. True
that once in a blue moon, if he knows the guests
very
well,
the game is "just for fun," or for stakes so low that
nobody could lose more than a dollar, and if a fourth
absolutely
cannot
be found, Bill will take a hand at bridge.
But
only
under those conditions. The guest ranchers out
in the Southwest all have a wonderful example to think
back upon whenever they're tempted into a "friendly little
game," and if they have any memory at all, the answer is
No.

Several years ago a well-heeled and devastatingly at
tractive man from San Francisco retired to Arizona be
cause of his health. For something to do, he started a
guest ranch—very posh, very successful, and catering almost entirely to rich dilettantes who spent most of every
waking hour clustered around the bridge table, just as they
could have done back home without going all the way to
Arizona. The host was a marvelous bridge player and
always delighted to make up a table with any three of his
guests for any stakes they cared to mention. But one eve
ning he accepted an invitation to play with the wrong trio—three women from Chicago who lived high, wide, and
handsome on fat alimony checks.

The man was perfectly innocent, of that I'm convinced.
His three female guests set the stakes, checked on the
score at the end of every hand, alternated as the host's
partner, and even supplied the cards that were used.
But at the end of the evening the host was the only win
ner to the tune of several hundred dollars—purely a
matter of luck and skill. But did those three furies pay up?
They did not. They accused him of being a card sharp and a cheat. They started such a to-do right then and
there that his ranch was soon emptied of guests. Outraged,
he ordered them off the place without bothering to collect
their bills or their gambling debts. But that didn't satisfy
the women. They started a whispering campaign—
whis
pering,
did I say? They practically bought radio time—
in every other resort around the country that kept guests
away in droves. Naturally, the host got wind of it and sued for slander. He won the case, I'm glad to say, but
he still lost, because by then his reputation and that of his
ranch had been so damaged he was never able to repair
either. He sold his ranch at a tremendous loss, his health
broke completely, and he spent the rest of his radically-
shortened life shunned as a card cheat, all because of sit
ting down with three bad losers. No thanks.

To get back to the religio-politico question, it was al
ways something Bill and I simply would not discuss with our guests, singly or en masse. We listened to their opin
ions with the stony impassivity of all those gigantic presi
dential faces blasted into the sides of the Black Hills, but
when it came to expressing any opinions of our own, well,
we just wouldn't have done it under torture. Since I am
more or less apolitical, this was never much of a sacrifice
for me, but back in our New York days there was nothing Bill loved quite so much as an all-night session of
political discussion. Still, we were bright enough from the
very beginning to keep our mouths carefully closed at those rare times when any mention of politics came up.