"Miz Barbara, don't fool with me. I'm a sick man. I'm in a oxygen tent, like I tell you."
"Well, James B., if I were you, I'd move that oxygen tent across the Mexican border as fast as I could, because there's somebody out here who's just itching to take care of you—and Lee."
"Whooooo?"
"The last Mrs. James B. Smith," I said. There was a gulp at the other end of the wire and then James B. Smith and "In the Mood" were silenced forever.
The other Mrs. James B. Smith left empty-handed in hot pursuit of her fickle husband. Some women just don't know when they're well off. Lee—or Mrs. James B. Smith, III, IV, or V—did not leave empty-handed. In fact, she had the foresight to pack up half of all the nice things I owned—six settings of silver, six of every kind of china, six of each kind of crystal and linen—to take with her as a little souvenir of Rancho del Monte. By the time I discovered the loss there was no hope of tracing any of the Smiths; and although our private entertaining was curtailed to just six people per sitting, the loss was worth it, just being rid of James B. and Lee.
Bill showed up late that afternoon with yet another couple, armed with well-thumbed references and glib declarations as to their fidelity, sobriety, and talents. An hour after they'd been in the kitchen the woman came to me and said: "Mrs. Hooton, could I have a little sherry to put in the steak and kidney pie?"
"Well?" Bill said.
"Well," I said, "I'll give them just six weeks."
15. The day of reckoning
The end of our first year as guest ranchers was drawing near and I looked forward to the middle of March—ides, income taxes, equinoctial storms and all—as eagerly as though it were my birthday.
I'll admit I was at a particularly low ebb around that time. Everything had gone wrong. The couple I'd given six weeks had lasted just six days. On their first day off they had quietly packed their belongings and taken what the English call "French leave" and what the French call "English leave." Call it what you will, they were gone, never to return, and Bill and I were stuck with the guests to feed. One of our horses got sick. Another fell through a cattle guard, broke a leg, and had to be shot and carted away. The lights went on the blink and about two hundred dollars' worth of meat rotted quietly away in the freezer before the short circuit in the wiring could be located and repaired. Then the pump broke. The station wagon developed a chronic and near-fatal complaint. One of our departed guests' checks bounced—and it was a big check. One of The Girls got sick and the other joined her out of sheer sympathy. Some old New York friends of ours—the kind of people whose marriage is described as "firm as the Rock of Gibraltar"—went through a long, involved, and sordid divorce with suits and countersuits and name-calling and all that sort of thing. The cantankerous old stove blew up in my face and removed every eyelash I'd ever owned. Our wrangler of the moment presumably got a local Spanish girl into trouble, and there were all kinds of the most menacing, talk in languages I didn't understand before a sweet stiletto marriage was narrowly averted. Three sets of guests in a row—people whose reservations I'd accepted without extracting deposits—welshed on their reservations. We were first servantless and then guestless.
In a word, I was, depressed.
In a few more words, I was so sick and tired of New Mexico and Rancho del Monte at that point that one windowless room in a New York tenement with an inadequate relief check arriving sporadically looked like paradise to me.
Silently, I bided my time, went over the day-to-day figures in my deficit book, added them again and again on the office adding machine, and got all ready to confront Bill. Needless to say, I had never kept any account of the money coming in, since I can barely count to twenty on my fingers and toes and also because the incoming money, as compared to the outgoing money, seemed too paltry to consider.
Finally I was ready to pounce.
"Guess what day this is, Bill," I said one morning as we were eating our solitary breakfast.
"It's Sunday, March 14, 1954, Barbara," Bill said.
"And doesn't this date have any special significance for you?" 1 asked.
"If you mean did I mail the income tax form in, yes. I sent it last Tuesday."
"Income tax?" I asked archly. "Had we any income to be taxed?"
"Some. Why?"
"Well, Mr. Hooton, in case you'd forgotten, this is our anniversary."
"Nonsense, Barbara. We were married in October."
"I didn't mean that anniversary. I meant that today makes exactly one year since we've been here. Three hundred and sixty-five days of drudgery and debts . . ."
"And dramatics?" Bill said pointedly.
Ignoring him loftily, I went on. "You recall, of course, our initial agreement?"
"Certainly I do, Barbara," Bill said maddeningly. "We agreed that if we didn't make any money the first year, we'd give up and go back East."
"Well," I said nastily, "why don't you start packing up all those little banker's gray suits? Why don't you write your old friends and see if they know of any available jobs in New York? Why don't you tell Bess Huntinghouse to come back and . . ."
"Because, Barbara, we made money."
"Impossible," I gasped, flourishing my little black deficit book. "Just tot up these deficits, if you please."
"I know the deficits," Bill said, "but do you know the income?"
To my horror, Bill had anticipated me and had all the books ready for my bumbling inspection. I felt he lacked chivalry, to say the least, to have been lying in wait for me just as I had been lying in wait for him. A real gentleman would never have stooped so low.
I was aghast at the thoroughness of his bookkeeping. I'm perfectly willing to admit that mathematics is the one exact science and it's much too exact for me. But there was everything down in black and white and red—rent, dues to various organizations, salaries, social security, food, licenses, liquor, hardware, repairs. It showed a net profit of exactly four dollars and ninety-eight cents.
"Satisfied?" Bill asked a little too triumphantly.
"Aha, but what about the current bills?" I said, leaping at my opportunity.
"All paid," Bill said smugly.
"All?"
"All!"
Feverishly I tried to think of some of the staggering bills that had come in during the last couple of weeks—repairs on the pump, the vet's fee, the charge for burying our poor dead horse, garage bills, even postage stamps. Every one of them was paid.
"So?" Bill asked.
"Okay," I said as gamely as seemed possible under the circumstances. "You win."
"Do we try it another year?"
"Yep," I said. "One more year. But just one question."
"Which is?"
"Which is: Do we take that four-ninety-eight profit and plow it into a fund for our old age?"
"We do not," Bill said staunchly. "We put every penny of it back into the ranch."
"That's what I thought," I said.
As though my defeat hadn't been bitter enough, as though another year of ranching didn't loom before me, I also got involved in a horse rustling episode that practically caused a revival of the Spanish-American War—just to launch our second year at Rancho del Monte. One morning when Bill was down at the corral feeding the horses he noticed a new animal among our string. It was a small, dun-colored mare, practically all bones, and fairly ugly bones at that. How she got there was a mystery to us. All the gates were closed and locked, and a scrawny, starving horse like that one would never have had the strength to jump the fence. She was. pitifully hungry and thirsty, and so she was watered and fed along with our steeds and then turned loose.
Not far up the road from us was a little Spanish town named Chupadero. There were a few houses and even fewer horses and burros. Every once in a while one of their animals broke loose and came down to Rancho del Monte to join our beasts for a meal. We always gave the Chupadero animals a handout and then they usually wandered back home. We thought that this must have been the case with the wretched little
mare.
But the next day she was back in time to have lunch with our horses. This time we fed her and then led her far up the road, across the cattle guard, and halfway up to Chupadero, where we gave her a thwack across the rump and sent her trotting off for home and loved ones. The following day she was back again, which meant that she had crossed the cattle guard—traditionally hell on horses—and picked her way down to our corral. This time we kept her for a few days, expecting someone to come around and claim her. When nobody did, we called the cattle inspector to come and have a look.
The cattle inspector keeps a record of all the brands in the county and can tell you at a glance just where any stray horse belongs. But he gave up on this one.
"She's an old horse," he said, "and she ain't got no brand. I reckon I better travel around some an' see if anybody's lost a nice little Palomino."
"Palomino?" I said. "That's the first time I've ever seen a Palomino with a henna rinse."
"Well, she is a little on the ginger side," he admitted, "but clean her up good and you got yourself a right pretty little Palomino mare."
The traditional procedure for lost and found horses in New Mexico runs as follows: When you find a horse and no one claims it, you call the cattle inspector. If he can't locate the rightful owner, he puts a notice in the newspaper every day for a month. If no one claims the horse by then, it belongs to the state. The state can then either sell it for dog food or the finder can buy the horse for what the process has cost the state.
The ad ran for a month, and Ginger, which was what we took to calling her, ate off the fat of our land for a month. Still nobody claimed her, so for twelve dollars—which is what a month's newspaper ads cost the state of New Mexico—we owned a horse, and a horse that turned out to be quite a pretty little Palomino, at that.
In fact, it looked as though we were going to get quite a lot of horses for our fodder and twelve dollars because it became apparent to all of us that Ginger was in-a so-called delicate condition.
About a week after we had legally acquired Ginger, some young Spanish men from Chupadero appeared. "I think you got our horse," they said genially.
"What horse?" Bill asked.
"That Palomino," they said, gesturing in Ginger's direction.
Bill got out the bill of sale and explained all about the daily ad and how the inspector had gone up to Chupadero to inquire. They said they hadn't missed the horse until that very day because she had been out to pasture. But it was theirs and they wanted her. Bill said we'd be glad to turn Ginger over to them for twelve dollars and for what her feed had cost.
They laughed delightedly at this strange idea and drove away.
Nothing more was heard from them.
But a few weeks later I saw our wrangler tearing out of the bunkhouse, strapping his .45 around his waist. In a minute he was mounted and galloping down the drive in real horse-opera style. Since he was something of an exhibitionist, I didn't pay much attention. In no time at all, however, he was back sitting very grandly astride his horse and being preceded by Ginger and two young Spanish gentlemen. Our wrangler was wielding his gun all too melodramatically, and while this stringy procession reminded me a bit of a provincial Italian opera company's triumphal march from Aida, I didn't like to contemplate getting into any trouble with our Spanish neighbors.
Our wrangler was hardly handling the situation with what you might call tact, what with herding them all in at gun point. After all, these young men hadn't done anything underhanded. In broad daylight they had come to collect what they legally felt to be their horse. They had simply slung a belt around Ginger's neck and led her off.
Once again Bill went through the technicalities of ownership—the bill of sale, the ads, the inspector, the feed, and so on. He apologized for the cavalier way in which they had been handled and again offered to release Ginger to them for cost. Again they shrugged and went away. This happened three more times and I was getting more and more nervous with each performance. "They'll never understand these Anglo ways, Bill," I kept saying. "Since I don't want to see any of us get stabbed, let's just forget about the lousy twelve bucks and the feed—after all, that is hay—and give her back to them the next time they come down to kidnap her. First thing you know, Wild Bill Hickok out there in the bunkhouse will start taking pot shots at those Spanish boys and then we'll be in real trouble."
But they never came back and I'm certain they're still sitting up there in Chupadero wondering among themselves just how long those loco Yanquis down at the ranch are going to insist upon keeping their Palomino.
As for Ginger herself, she kept getting bigger and bigger until finally one night our wrangler, who professed to know everything about pregnancy—and should have if half the stories I'd heard about him were true—announced that Ginger's time was at hand and she should be dropping her foal within a few hours. I was in a perfect flurry, rushing about in a white dress trying to look as much like a midwife as possible. I knew absolutely nothing about the birthing of foals, or of anything else for that matter, but I was determined to be helpful. We built a great big fire and had pots of water steaming and stayed up all night in the delivery stall, prodding poor Ginger's sides and pacing up and down. Nothing happened.
When two months went by and Ginger still had not produced, we began to get worried. Then one day we were short a mount and it was essential to saddle Ginger to accommodate a rider.
I was outraged womanhood when I heard about this. "But Bill," I said, "suppose poor Ginger miscarries out on the trail? Then what?"
Nothing happened on that ride except that it was discovered that Ginger was a lovely little riding horse with nice gaits. From then on those bestial men saddled her regularly, each time over my heartfelt protests. At the end of ten months, Ginger still hadn't dropped her foal and it was then that we discovered that there never had been a foal to drop. Ginger, the little glutton, had simply got so attached to the Rancho del Monte diet after the sandy pastures of Chupadero that she'd eaten herself into obesity and it had taken a good deal of riding to slim her down.
At that point I lost all sympathy for Ginger and for equine maternity. "You little fraud," I said, looking her squarely in the eye. Then I supervised her grooming myself to make her look even more like a Palomino and took her over as my own special mount. She became the nicest small horse in our string—frisky but easy to handle—and I adored riding her, false pregnancy and all.
Just one last word about Bill's and my day of reckoning and that big, fat net profit of four dollars and ninety-eight cents for our first fiscal year. I was robbed. I was bilked, cheated, hoodwinked, duped by my husband.
Just three months to the day after Bill had gone over the books to show me we were in the black and therefore remaining for another year, we were invited to a real dress-up, black-tie evening party. It was Bastille Day, and I was. so mad at what I discovered that I could have stormed the Bastille and razed it singlehanded.
Having got out my own fluffy evening things for the big occasion, I decided to be terribly wifely and get out Bill's dinner clothes for a bit of airing and pressing after all the time spent unworn in his bottom drawer.
I dug through a great stack of neatly folded, dressy city suits that had lain fallow, so to speak, ever since our arrival at Rancho del Monte. At the very bottom I unearthed his dinner jacket. As I flicked it deftly out from under the stack of clothes a folded sheet of white paper fluttered out and drifted to the floor. Contrary to all established procedure in our household, I knelt down, unfolded it, and read it. It was a bill from the American Field Service in the amount of five dollars and dated March 1, 1954. It wasn't receipted and there was no record of its payment in our check book.
Seething, I awaited my mate.
"William," I said when he came in from the pool, "a word with you please . . . alone."
"Yes, dear?" Bill said, closing the door of our room.
"You dirty dog! You cheat, you liar, you crooked bookkeeper, you hound of hell!" I st
ormed. "What about this and your big phony profit of four ninety-eight?"
"Oh, that," Bill said casually. "Yes, I guess I ought to pay it. I just sort of filed it there under my old city clothes so . . ."
"So I wouldn't find it and so you could balance your wretched, crooked books. Isn't that right?"
"Well, yes . . . more or less."
"Are there are others hidden away like that?" I asked.
"No," Bill said. "Just that one."
"So we really didn't make a profit our first year, did we?" I fumed.
"No, not actually. But it's only a difference of . . ."
"Why, Bill Hooton, for two cents I'd . . ."
"For two cents you'd be back in New York, wouldn't you?" Bill said.
"Yes," I said quietly. "I guess I would." Then I began wondering if I really would have wanted to be back in New York.
"What would you have done if I'd balanced the books absolutely honestly—counting in this bill—and we'd had a deficit of two cents for the year?"
"Frankly, Bill," I said seriously, "at that particular time I'd have started packing and I'd have made you do the same. A bargain's a bargain. But right now . . . today . . ."
"Yes?" Bill said.
"Now I think I'd have broken open my penny bank and presented you with three cents. Now go make us both a drink while I get beautiful for the party tonight."
16. The end in view
But to get back to my story in its chronological order, I had got through the winter of my discontent and was now embarked on the second spring of my ditto. Acquiring a Palomino horse for twelve dollars and keep was nice, but not nice enough to snap me completely out of my doldrums.
As our second Easter approached, Bill and I were looking forward to something of a crowd, like the one we'd had the year before. Lots of inquiries came in, but not a single reservation. Eventually one guest moved in, a stately older woman who looked very much the grande dame but who wasn't at all after you started talking to her. She had been everywhere and done everything twice and she was delightful company. But it looked as though she might be our only company for the whole gladsome season. I'd already commenced a new deficit book and, profit or no profit from the first year, it looked to me as though we were getting deeper and deeper into a hole. Easter was almost upon us with nary a sign of guests.
Guestward Ho! Page 19