Guestward Ho! (28 page)

At the end of her stay she marched indignantly into
the office and told me she'd been watching them every
morning for two weeks, that she'd never been so in
sulted in her life, and that it was a disgrace to virtuous
womanhood.

Uh-huh!

Nature, as I say, is a wonderful thing and I simply
love it—but in its place. And its place is not between my
sheets, under my bed, in my dresser drawers, or inside
my pumps. The Girls, however, adored this period of our lives, and just to prove how much they loved us and what
self-reliant little huntresses they were, they brought in almost daily offerings of mangled mice, freshly slain lizards, and once a not-quite-dead bull snake, and laid them tenderly onto my bed.

My birthday always came during this, our sylvan
period, and I felt ten years older every time it did. One
summer when Margo Marsh, the sculptress, was in residence, we even managed a fairly large champagne party
spang in the middle of the bed. The Girls had made it a
red-letter day by bagging a rabbit for me—also on the bed—and I must say that Margo took it all in her stride and never batted an eye while we clinked glasses and
made elaborate toasts to me until the dinner bell sounded.

During our summer idyl in the bunkhouse either The
Dreadnought or "my People" made almost daily tele
phone calls and even a few visits. "My People," I dis
covered, consisted of The Dreadnought's business staff.
There was a dim, hag-ridden son; a browbeaten daughter-
in-law and a kind of squelched female cousin—all ap
parently entangled in The Dreadnought's web. Being
weak and easily bullied themselves, they underwent ago
nies of embarrassment every time they were badgered into driving but to case the joint. I was rather miffed at these forced entrances into our house, but my wrath
must have been nothing to encounter as compared to
The Dreadnoughts', so I began to accept as natural little
sight-seeing parties made up of the Dreadnought's People. They tiptoed around in a body, jotting down notes
and murmuring in voices usually reserved for vital con
versation in church. "I think
she'd
want blue." "Don't you think that
she'd
want the sofa against that wall?"
"She
said twelve baths."

I still considered The Dreadnought one of the most
unpardonably horrible old dragons ever created, but I was
almost mesmerized by her sheer gall, and although I was enjoying myself that summer—
outside
the bunk-house—with a full house, I still didn't want to slam the door in her whiskery old face. I had discovered by then
that we actually
hadn't
made a profit during our first year
and even if we were having fun with our twenty-five guests
that season, a long, cold, deficit-ridden winter was on its way and the state relief rolls didn't look like my idea of Utopia. If we couldn't make a go of the ranch, the
smartest thing to do would be to sell out at a profit—to
quote The Dreadnought—and set ourselves up back in
New York again. So I kept my eyes open and mouth shut
and did a lot of deep soul searching out among the wild
life in the bunkhouse.

One day late in August I was having an especially
gloomy little soul search out in my bunkhouse boudoir.
Sprawled on the bed—the only place one
could
sit—I wasn't liking what had been searched out of my soul and
I was in one of those What-is-a-lovely-talented-exquisite-creature-like-me-doing-in-a-dump-like-this? moods. Some
thing had come up to annoy me. Some
thing?
Indeed, about two hundred things. Lunch had been lousy—not
bad, but just dull because of my bungled menu planning;
the laundry was late with the sheets; Bill and I weren't seeing enough of one another except in the bunkhouse when we were seeing altogether too much of each other; a tradesman had padded his bill and there had been a scene; our bed had collapsed in the middle of the night
and for once neither of us had been amused (the wrang
lers, however, had been convulsed, which only made Bill
and me madder); The Dreadnought had been particularly nauseating on the telephone that morning and I had been
afraid that Bill would overhear my end of the conversation; a perfect flood of letters and post cards had poured in from our rich New York friends, every man Jack of
whom seemed to be living "practically free" in the most
heavenly apartments in England, France, and Italy for
the summer; my own heavenly apartment was unbeliev
ably hot, stuffy, and buzzing with insect life. I was, in a word, glum.

"Having a nice cry?" a voice said.

I turned, and standing in the doorway was Connie
White, looking exasperatingly smart and armed with two
cans of cold beer.

"Connie!" I said, cheering up immediately. "Back from
Colorado Springs?"

"Colorado Springs and San Francisco and a number of other places. Can you put me up for a few days?"

"I think so," I said. "It's the end of the week. Somebody's due to leave."

"Good—oh," she said. "Here.
Skol!"
Connie plumped
herself onto the middle of the bed and got all set for a good gab session. "Been busy?"

"Mobbed. The house full. Bill and me living out here with the wranglers. Isn't it pretty?" At that, a creature of
some kind scampered over the roof and both The Girls took off in pursuit.

"It isn't so bad," Connie said. "You could knock down
a couple of partitions, insulate it, cut a few big picture windows into the walls, and take all that useless garage space for bathrooms and a kitchen. For five to ten thou
sand dollars you could turn this into quite a nice house."

"Well, I just don't happen to have five to ten thousand
dollars on me at the moment!" I snapped, irritated for
the first time with Connie. "And if I had, I wouldn't be
spending it on this shack. In fact, I wouldn't even
be
here!" Then I calmed down, remembering that Connie,
like so many of the very, very rich, often spoke of mere
money as though it were something everybody had in
superabundance, like bills, gray hairs, and problems.

"Have you thought at all about what I suggested to you?" she asked.

"You mean about buying out our interest in the ranch?"

"I mean about buying out your interest in the ranch," Connie said matter-of-factly.

"Then you weren't kidding?"

"Not at all." Then Connie went all over girlish. "Listen, Barbara, I've met a man. He's a transplanted Easterner, like me. He's crazy about the West and about
ranching and riding and doing all the things I like to do. And I
think
he wants to marry me. At least he gave every
indication of it."

"Connie!" I said. "That's wonderful! What's his name? What's he like? Where did you meet him? What does he
do?"

Once again we were at it—two almost-middle-aged
women gossiping like schoolgirls. Snapshots, a Sinatra
record, and youth were all we lacked.

Connie had indeed met a man she liked. He was thirty-
five,
retired,
and dying to live in the Southwest. In fact,
when Connie had met him, he was shopping around
quietly for a guest ranch to buy which he could run "for
fun
and
profit." Those words sounded sinisterly familiar
to me, but apparently money was the least of the young
man's worries. Now Connie was back with us to share her richly deserved happiness.

Connie was established in a recently vacated bedroom
and set about once more to charm the whole household.
She still had all people of all ages falling at her feet, but
I thought I detected the certain sappy softness of a woman
in love this visit. Connie had also developed a certain
proprietary air about the ranch, and she bustled about every morning working twice as hard as I did, making beds, shaking rugs, answering the telephone, doing all
kinds of managerial things with such gusto and efficiency
that you would never have dreamed she had been born
to the purple. She worked so hard, in fact, that there was
almost nothing left for me to do. So one morning when
everything seemed well in hand, I deserted the ship and
drove into town with Bill to pick out some sorely needed
new duds at Kay Stephens' shop.

When I returned, looking—or so I thought—just as
fetching as an expenditure of twenty dollars would allow
anyone to look, Connie met me at the door with her black
eyes blazing.

"What kind of double cross
is
this?" she demanded
dangerously.

"What kind of double cross is
what?"
I asked, stunned.

"That old bezum on the phone this morning—Mrs.
Washington Jefferson Lincoln, or whatever her name was . . ."

"Oh, you meanThe Dreadnought?"

"Well,
she
seems to think
she's
going to buy
my
ranch!
I told her in no uncertain terms she . . ."

"Connie, you didn't
insult
her?"

"Since I was so mad that I did it in Greek, I don't sup
pose the old battle-ax knows whether she was insulted or not. But
I
certainly am. What kind of friend are you to go
sneaking behind my back and selling
my
place to her?"

"Connie!" I said. "Relax. I haven't gone sneaking be
hind
anybody's
back. The Dreadnought came sneaking in
here all by herself and ever since then her People have
been sneaking around. But I didn't say I'd sell it to her. I
didn't say I'd sell it to
you.
I just don't know."

"You mean to stand there and tell me that you'd even
consider
selling it to her, after all you and Bill and I . . ."

"Connie, I haven't considered selling to a soul. I haven't even mentioned it to Bill. I still don't know. But
if we were going to sell out, I'm sure we'd choose you—
first, because we both love you and we'd want the ranch to go to someone we loved, and second, because I think we could gouge more money out of you. The Dreadnought is fairly close with a buck, let me tell you."

"Well, why do you vacillate around like such a ninny?"
Connie demanded. "If you don't like it here, why don't
you just tell Bill, sell out, pack up, and start life all over
again someplace that you
do
like?"

"It's not quite that simple, Connie," I said. "In the first place, I
don't
not like it here. I get to like it better every day and, of course, Bill loves it. He always has. But I'm not sure we can ever make a go of it or that we won't end up on the bread line. I just don't know how
much longer we can afford to scrape along making zero
profit, or, even losing every year."

"Well, in that case, name your price. Whatever it is—
within reason—I'll give you. You can take your time
moving out and go to New York and start in at something
else."

"Connie," I said, with the patience of Job, "it isn't all
quite that easy. Bill and I aren't as well off as you." There
was a little gem of understatement! "We can't just pick up
and go whenever we feel the urge, as you can. We'd have
to find an apartment we could afford. Buy furniture. Settle in. Before we did that, both of us would have to
find jobs. I know it's hard for you rich to understand, but
people like us—and that's most of the people in the world—
have to . . ."

"Well, if
that's
all you're worried about," Connie said
calmly, "why didn't you say so? I have an apartment in
New York that isn't bad at all. Four good-sized rooms
and a full kitchen on that treesy block of East Fifty-fifth.
You could walk to work and save carfare and the rent hasn't gone up a cent since before the war."

"How come?" I asked suspiciously.

"Because Daddy owns the building."

"Any furniture?" I asked. "It would cost thousands to
furnish a . . ."

"I've got all kinds of furniture right in the flat. It's mostly French stuff, if you like that; some Italian. I'd throw that in with the rest of the deal. That is, if you wanted it."

"I love French furniture," I said dreamily. "Ill bet it's beautiful. But what you don't understand, Connie, is that
we couldn't live indefinitely off the money you paid
us for our lease on the ranch. I mean, Bill would have to
find another job—and a good job. And good jobs aren't so easy to come by, especially if you've been out of touch for this long. A man gets a reputation as a floater and . . ."

"Don't give it another thought," Connie said expansively. "I'll bet there are millions of things Bill could do
in one of Daddy's companies. There's a bank and a real
estate company and a shipping company and . . . Is Bill good at figures and keeping books and things like that?"