IN the wilderness our social life was not madcap. Week ends we frequently had guests from Tucson-- the hardy kind who really liked to rough it and were very useful as woodchoppers. We also occasionally had the "I-love-the-common-people" variety. This species thought we were "just terribly quaint, my dear" and "Isn't it absolutely thrilling getting close to Nature." They were usually useless and invariably got so close to Nature on one visit that they departed with the conviction that it wasn't quaint we were, but crazy.
About once a week we saw our closest friends, Can and Barbara Tuthill, archeologists, who were digging up a dead civilization near by. They knew how to cope with our folkways and mores because theirs were similar.
Weekdays when we had any social life, which was rare, it was with our neighbors. This usually consisted of the men in one corner discussing the "feed" (the state of the grass that the cattle grazed on), and the women in another corner window shopping together through the Sears Roebuck catalogue.
We did have a temporary dizzy whirl of popularity, at the time we put in plumbing. Everyone came to gaze at the wonder of it all: We thought of holding open house with punch ladled from the bathtub. One family, with whom we were only on nodding terms, brought all seven of their children over for an educational call.
These little pets all had running noses that their Mother couldn't catch up with. She was the official custodian of the one family handkerchief, and she swabbed here and there when the situation got really acutely effusive. It was obvious from the beginning that they had all come over merely to try out the new plumbing. Someone was in the bathroom all evening--usually two at a time--one to instruct and one to perform.
One rancher's wife demanded that her husband install plumbing at their place. After all, she argued if we could have it, why couldn't she? He gave out with the following incomprehensible logic. "You don't need plumbing," he told her flatly "They only need it because that poor woman is crippled."
"Honestly!" the ranch wife told me, "it just makes me want to break my leg--I swear it does."
Actually, our most congenial and constant companions in the wilderness, of necessity, were animals. A lonely life promotes a strong kinship between animals and humans. This kinship is likely to get completely out of hand, in fact, and become almost pathological.We found ourselves continually comparing our dog's looks and character to that of some our oldest friends and relatives--with the dog winning all the Oscars.
We were on cordial terms with a great variety of creatures. We even had an amiable relationship--or at least a friendly truce--with a skunk who lived under our house. We also had a tame baby bassarisk (the ring-tailed cat) and a tame road runner or paisano, the comical bid of the Southwest who makes better time on foot than on wing.
Our real intimates, however, were Pancho, a huge German shepherd one hundred pounds on the hoof and built on the general lines of a great Dane; and a small runt of a gray tomcat, named "Oscar the Wild," but known to his consorts as "Kitty."
I would gladly have taken a correspondence course in barking and meowing for the privilege of communicating with these two in their own language. The dog, however, was an intellectual. He could understand English. I almost believe he could have spoken it too, if he'd had a mind to. But he was an unpretentious fellow who felt he should remain a dog for appearances' sake. When I got really frantic over silences. I talked to Pancho by the hour. He, more than anyone I ever knew, treated my opinions with grave respect.
Pancho was remarkable. He looked upon most humans with a wary. suspicious eye. We didn't discourage his cynicism. A good ranch watchdog is more valuable than a dozen Yale locks. Nobody ever unlatched our gate, uninvited, when Pancho was on the other side of it announcing his intention to rip the intruder into mouth-size bites. The dog tolerated our friends, but he simply didn't love anyone except Sherman and me--and all other people who used crutches! He first displayed this gentle quirk in his nature one day when we were in Tucson. Pancho always walked along the city streets on a leash, carrying his aristocratic nose high and peering down it at pedestrians. Frequently people spoke to him admiringly, but he treated them with the disdain of a royal prince grossly insulted by a commoner.
But one day, as we strolled along, his tail started wagging ecstatically and he pulled me right up to a stranger standing by a shop window. The man used crutches. Pancho made a great demonstration of approval. I finally dragged him away.
It didn't occur to me then that it was the crutches that softened the heart of the dog. I merely assumed that from a canine point of view, the stranger. who was none too scrubbed and tidy, must have had a very delicious and meaty smell.
However, when we were in California, Pancho again displayed an instantaneous interest in a crutch user whom we encountered on a tree-inspection tour down San Pasqual Avenue in Pasadena. This was a very neat and fastidious woman. Pancho went right up to her and, showing a great deal of his old-world charm, told her in a most cordial manner that she was a femme fatale.
"That's a nice, friendly dog." the woman said. "Well," I explained, "actually, he is generally regarded as a menace to life and limb. You know, I think he likes you because you use crutches." "All dogs like me," she said, but this was a confession that always left Pancho cold. I was convinced it was the crutches.
Just to test this theory, I took the dog around to call on a two-crutch friend of mine. And instead of snubbing her, which was his usual superior practice with my friends, Pancho greeted her with humble servitude.
Anyone on crutches who loves dogs has to watch out for the enthusiastic ones who jump up. A crutch with its basic construction of the split stick, the two parts spread at the top and gradually slanted to join in a ferrule at the bottom, creates a vicious trap for a friendly paw. The first lesson I teach a new puppy is not to jump up on me, anyway.
In spite of all my communing with animal life, I found time a little heavy on my hands when Sherman was caged up writing Western pulp stories, the cat was off sparring with mice, and the dog was out chasing jack rabbits. I was the only nonprofessional member of the family. To break the habit of tapping my foot against the floor to amuse myself. I also took to writing short stories.
I used the kitchen table as an office desk. To this day, I find that my only touch of artistic temperament is a tendency to work most effectively with the odor of stew or baking beans in the air. When inspiration fails me, I can usually summon it back by cleaning out the refrigerator or baking a pie. I miss the coal bucket, however, on which I used to prop my peg.
I have often thought that if I ever get rich and famous I'll buy myself a sterling silver coal scuttle, all it with hunks of black obsidian, and have it sitting by my desk for a peg stool. I think that would be a rather appropriate whim for an eccentric literary figure.When I sold my first story I simply couldn't regard the check as serious money. I was too amazed at becoming an "author." The honorarium seemed like a windfall from Heaven, like an inheritance from a distant relative I'd never heard of. I treated it precisely as I used to heat quarters slipped me by an indulgent uncle when I was ten. I went right out and spent it frivolously, buying myself some fancy clothes that I had absolutely no place to wear. Sherman and I still refer to a neat little black number that hung unused for two years in my closet as my "author's dress." It wasn't until the war and Sherman kissed me farewell and marched of to fight for Old Glory that I began treating my "literary" checks with proper respect--buying bread and bacon and gingham dresses with them.
The war took us away from our little canyon haven. It would have been a perfect place for a draft dodger to hide, as I pointed out to Sherman, but he couldn't get into an enlistment queue fast enough. We packed into our station wagon all our possessions worth transporting, and assigned custody of Chico, the road runner, to the country schoolteacher, who also took over our lease. With the dog and cat, we set off for California. Sherman stowed me away in a cottage at Laguna Beach before rushing off to protect the Four Freedoms. Pancho, who should have made a splendid hospital orderly in the K-9 Corps, as Comforter First Class to convalescent on crutches, was our only fatal wartime casualty. He was a wilderness dog who recognized the splintered scream of a mountain lion and knew the menace of the dry paperlike crackle of a rattle snake, but he was naive about city hazards. One night I let him out for his usual run on the beach before bedtime. I never walked him myself along the shore because crutches sink deep into sand and make hard going. He didn't return.
I called him several times. But since he frequently strayed for long periods, wildly racing the waves along the shore and stirring up the seagulls into white clouds, I wasn't worried until a young man came and knocked on my door.
"Is your dog here?" he asked me. Somehow I could tell that this was only a rhetorical question. "No," I answered. "No, he isn't here." I suddenly had a stomach full of sick fear.
"I'm afraid your dog is badly hurt," the young man told me. "He tried to get home but he fell just down the street. It must have been a hit and run driver on the blacked out highway. I recognized him as the big black dog who belonged to the girl on crutches, so I started hunting for you, even though I didn't know your name. A man three doors down said that a girl on crutches lived in this house. A friend of mine is getting his car. We'll drive you to the veterinarian."
"You're very kind," I said, "but I have a car."
"No, it would be best if we drove you through the dimout. It's probably hard for you to drive."
Tenderly these two good Samaritans lifted the broken body of the beautiful dog into their car. With gasoline more precious than Chanel No. 5, they drove me eight miles along the war-darkened coast highway to a veterinarian.
The dog knew, I think, that his head rested in my lap. He gave a deep, shuddering sigh, half agony and half content, before he died. If it hadn't been for my identifying crutches, my dear old friend would have had to depart in loneliness. It is curious what strange purposes they have served.
Sherman bought me a frisky, leaky, new German shepherd puppy on his next leave. He was an engaging little fellow and I loved him, but he never quite filled my heart, which was stretched to accommodate the big, crutch-loving old Pancho.
I wish I had done as much for the war effort as my crutches did for me during the war. In a patriotic effort to keep Democracy alive, I finally had to wear my artificial leg when I went to stand in a meat line.Frenzied women, frantic for a smell of beef, would still push me and my crutches right up to a counter ahead of themselves. I always felt so apologetic that I'd have only enough courage to ask for a soup bone. Since I figured I'd probably get rickets before the war was over on such rations, I wore the leg. On it, I was allowed to take my turn and fight honorably for my half-pound of hamburger.