Desert Moon

I didn’t argue any more about it. For twenty-five years I had been housekeeper of the Desert Moon ranch-house, and I had learned, during that time, that there was only one subject, concerning Sam, or the place, on which I could never hope to have any say-so. Trying to argue with Sam about anything that had to do, in any way, with Margarita Ditsie, when she was Margarita Ditsie Stanley, or when she was Margarita Ditsie Canneziano, was about as sensible as hoisting a chiffon parasol for protection in the midst of one of our Nevada mountain cloudbursts. Margarita Ditsie was of French-Canadian parentage; a dark-haired, big-eyed beauty. Her father kept a gambling hole in Esmeralda County in the early days. Her mother had run away from a convent, after she had become a nun, to marry him. The girl had some of the nun, some of the runaway, and some of the gambling house proprietor in her. It made a queer combination. When she was eighteen years old she came from Carson to visit Lily Trooper, over on the Three Bars Ranch, in northeastern Nevada, about sixty miles from here. Sam met her there, at one of Ben Trooper’s big barbecues. She and Sam were married two weeks later. She was a lot younger than Sam; but, even then, he was the richest man in the valley, with every unwedded woman for a hundred miles around setting her cap for him. Whether Margarita married him for his wealth, or whether it was to spite the other girls who would have liked to marry him, I don’t know. All I know is that Margarita never had a mite of love for him. She stayed with him, though, and acted decently enough for two years, until Dan Canneziano came to the ranch and got a job on it as cowpuncher. It was during those two years that Sam built this ranch-house for her. He had an architect in New York draw the plans for it; and though now on the outside, with its towers and trimmings, it looks kind of old fashioned, I think it is still the finest house in Nevada. Sam’s lead and silver mine had just come in, and there was not anything, from Italian marble fireplaces to teakwood floors, that was too grand for what Margarita called the Stanley Mansion. She left it, all the elegance and the luxury, and she broke her marriage vows, for love of this wop cowpuncher. That, I guess, is fair and full enough description of Margarita Canneziano. I don’t blame her. I quit blaming folks for things a good many years ago when, after firing three Chinese cooks in six weeks, I decided that, if we were to live healthy and wholesome, I’d have to take over the job of cooking as well as housekeeping for the Desert Moon Ranch, and set about it, and learned to cook. In other words, when I became a creator myself, I got to know creations and so quit blaming all of them. If I forget to put the soda in the sour milk pancakes, it isn’t their fault if they don’t rise. They are as I made them. Margarita was as the Lord made her. He, I suppose, either had His own good reasons for turning out such a mess, or else He was tired, or flustered, or, maybe, was just experimenting on the road to something better when He did it. I should explain, I suppose, wishing to be as honest as possible in spite of the fact that I am writing a mystery story, that Canneziano was different from the ordinary breed of cowpunchers. His father, he claimed, had some hifaluting title in Italy, before he got into a peck of honorable, patriotic trouble and had to skip to the United States to save his neck. That may be true, and it may not. Canneziano had a good education; he talked poetry, and played the violin. Margarita heard him playing, down in the outfit’s quarters one day, and had Sam invite him up to the house to play. She accompanied him on the grand piano that Sam had bought for her. Before long, Dan Canneziano was spending a good part of his time at the ranch-house. Sam, being nobody’s fool, soon saw how the land lay; but he, according to his custom then and now, kept his mouth shut and his eyes open. Sure enough, one evening they tried to elope together. Sam went after them and brought them back. I remember, yet, how the three of them looked, coming into the house that night. Margarita, her head high, defiant, but pretty as a fire’s flame. Canneziano, slinking in at her heels, like a whipped cur, expecting worse; and Sam, following behind them, calm as cold turkey. The three of them had about half an hour’s talk together. Then Sam herded Canneziano down to the outfit’s quarters and, I suppose, told the men to keep him there, for there he stayed until Sam was ready for him again. The next morning Sam started to the county seat. He reached there that evening. The following morning he got his divorce. He came back to the Desert Moon on the third morning, with his divorce and with a preacher. He sent for Canneziano, and stood by, while the preacher married Margarita Stanley to Daniel Canneziano, decent and regular, according to the laws of Nevada. There it should have ended. It didn’t, because Sam never got over loving Margarita. I don’t hold that to his credit. I see no more virtue in keeping on loving a person who has proved unworthy of being loved, than I see in hating a person who has turned out to be blameless, or in continuing to do any other unreasonable thing.