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 . . .
"Bill," I began. But then I saw he was almost speechless 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 rezzyvore 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 emptying 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 devastatingly 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 breakfastless 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 gallons. 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 t
he conveniences had never faltered. And they came back every summer afterward.
As for the Collinses, during the tragedy Maxine Collins 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 summer, but they never came back to spend the summer again. Why? Because they liked it so much that the following 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 dedicated, 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.
10. Man hunt
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 planning the fortnight's man hunt. They went into hock buying too many too-expensive clothes that were wildly inappropriate 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 thoroughly 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 recommendations—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 dislocated 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," Bi
ll 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 summer 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.
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