"The bastard! Who is ouzels?"

"Oh, ouzels are birds, the waterfall birds. It was the year of the huge snowfall, and that spring we had waterfalls coming down all these cliffs, and the ouzels came down from up north."

"Migawd, they'd never believe me, you come have a Martini," and she was being propelled under the sycamores before she could protest.

The other man and the two women were lolling on the grass between their cabins having cocktails off an up-ended washtub.

"It was the waterfalls spring and all the ouzels swooped down up north and picked every one of her petunias!"

They weren't just high. They were crocked.

She insisted on just half a Martini and was introduced. Jo and Lou, Ted and Mark. She sipped and received rave compliments on her lodge and answered questions about the country, then got convulsed when Lou, the younger woman with the funny, high, chirpy voice, asked for the best trail for her and Jo to go squirrel hunting and could they get them cooked if they got any, and the men in mock horror threatened to write the Audubon Society about bloodthirsty females. Then she was appointed referee-but with never a chance to speakto decide if that wasn't just for birds in a wild argument that included ASCAP, NAACP, George Bernard Shaw, Corinne Griffith and anti-vivisection, and the two men pounding on the washtub declaring they were Going To Write A Letter To The Times.

Weak from laughter, she suddenly remembered the Baked Alaska and got up to leave.

"Don't worry about us behaving at dinner?" Jo said. "I'm herding this sousy crew, including myself, in the sulpher vapors right now."

Obviously, Jo, the oldest, played the laconic mother to them though they were all over forty, at least.

Entering the kitchen, she suddenly was frozen still on meeting a stare coming from her head waitress, Mrs. Hays. For eerie seconds she met, hypnotized, the stare.

"Mrs. Hays?"

Mrs. Hays flushed deep red.

"Oh Mrs. Smith, I'm sorry. I-I I-I don't know what came over me. It's so funny, but when I first saw you I-I didn't recognize you, and then when I did it was like I'd seen a-a ghost. I mean-well, you were smiling and-well, different."

"Different?"

"Yes, happy. Oh! I mean it sounds crazy, I know. But it was the creepiest thing. I'm sorry. I guess it's just not my day." Flustered and embarrassed, Mrs. Hays rushed away.

What the hell? Ghost? Not to be recognized by the only waitress who had worked for her there every summer? Different? Happy? What the hell? Ghost!

Yes-no-but oh yes, there had been that tiny moment meeting Mrs. Hays' stare when she had felt like a ghost! What the-

The boom of the first dinner gong, with its echoes in the granite canyon, startled her out of the daze. With the chef she checked the Baked Alaska. It was up, perfectly so.

Later, during a lull, she glimpsed them from a kitchen window. They were

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