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Oct. 21st 1921.

Two Weeks in New Mexico
(Letter to Ray Rosenbaum)

They had been back from their historic trip to the Hopi Snake Dance for a week or more. (Mabel had taken cold, she thought, from sleeping on the ground during it, and said that had stopped her menstruation for a week). Now, after lying around some days, she was all over this and seemed interested in doing something, but mostly, to judge from remarks dropped by her and others, in meeting Eve Young-Hunter before she and Mr. Young-Hunter went East again. They had been camping some distance from Taos and making various attempts to meet Mabel without coming to Taos where the former Mrs. Young-Hunter is still living near Mabel's place.

Mabel said once impatiently that "it did seem a nuisance that they can't come here". Which seemed to me a characteristic specimen of Mabel's tendency to foment an uncomfortable or exciting situation, and her childish obviousness in it, and her heartlessness.

Since the former (I was about to say, the real) Mrs. Young-Hunter is ill or hysterical because of the divorce, and her husband's marriage to Eve who was acting as Mabel's housekeeper when they met, and which one feels was, indirectly at least, another case of Mabel's separations of married people. Mary Young-Hunter is living next door to Mabel still, alone or with the daughter Gabriel in her home and studio acquired there two years ago. She is an English lady.

I heard Mabel arrange by telegram, etc., to meet the present Young-Hunters on their way to an Apache Indian Dance, the roads to which were reported impassible and so on. There was always some hitch so that Mabel said "it looked as if she were not to get there."

All her arrangements were made with her son, John Evans, and Tony without a word of the possibility of myself or Alfred being invited for the trip, so that I took if for granted that we were not going in any event and made no preparation for a camping trip. 

Meanwhile Mabel turned over John's Ford to Alfred and me to use if we asked permission. The battery had been taken out to be put into a Monroe runabout that John was interested in at the moment, which had been left in Mabel's garage by two boys arrested for cattle stealing. The Ford was hard to crank and I had vowed that I would not drive any cars this time while in New Mexico, for the time required to take care of them, the attention and mental attitude involved is directly opposed to my natural condition of observing nature and my mood for work.

Nevertheless, here was an opportunity to let Alfred learn to drive the car, now that mine is sold (he could not drive in N.Y. at 10 years old anyway) and also to take some little trips with him--as to the Hot Spring for a bath, etc.