Chapter 3

I woke up on my second morning in El Paso to bright sunlight pouring through the south-facing window of my corner room. I yawned and stretched contentedly after a very good nights sleep. The horsehair mattress beat the heck out of sleeping on the ground, once you pummeled the lumps in it into submission. I stood up and stretched some more. I felt gloriously alive, as I pulled the chamber pot out from under the bed and took care of some pressing business.

After relieving my bladder, I moved over to the dry sink and tipped some water out of the ewer into the basin. I think the morning routine was the thing about the twentieth century that I missed most. Instead of a nice hot shower, I had to content myself with washing my face in the basin.

One thing I had been pleasantly surprised with during my trip to the general store yesterday, was finding a toothbrush and a form of toothpaste. The brush was made out of boar bristle attached to a carved whalebone handle, while the toothpaste (Dr. Sheffield’s Creme Dentifrice) came in a small jar. The toothpaste tasted like chalk, but it cleaned my pearly whites pretty well.

After brushing my teeth, I looked at myself in the small mirror above the basin and debated shaving. Uncle Ty didn’t have much to shave yet, but I was a creature of habit in my morning routine. I looked at the shaving mug, brush and straight razor for a minute and decided that I’d spend a dime at the barbershop and let a trained professional take care of my peach fuzz.

I was dressed and down in the lobby in fewer than ten minutes. As I hit the desk, I checked the big Railroad Regulator Clock that was mounted on the wall behind the clerk’s station. I was happy to find out it was only eight fifteen and the restaurant was still serving breakfast. I detoured into the dining room and took the same seat I’d sat in yesterday. I had the entire place to myself. Unlike for the evening meal, there were no menu choices for breakfast. That was okay with me though, because I was so hungry, my big intestines were eating my little ones.

I had a different waitress this morning. She resembled the one from last night, but was a few years older. I greeted her pleasantly.

“Good morning beautiful, I’d like breakfast and coffee, lots and lots of coffee.”

She did not appear to be amused by my banter, as she rather abruptly nodded her head and retreated towards the kitchen. When she returned, another woman about the same age was with her. The surly girl poured me coffee while the other one started clearing off tables. After giving me a curt nod when I thanked her, the waitress went over and started talking to the other woman in Spanish.

“That is the hombre Maria was talking about last night. I should poison him so that he can’t do to her what that bastard did to me!”

As you can imagine, her little spiel had my full and undivided attention. The other woman gave me a hard look as I pretended to be looking elsewhere.

“He is a handsome gringo, Juanita, and Maria is ripe for the plucking, but maybe she learned something from your shame.”

“Maybe,” Juanita allowed dubiously, “but she is a Lopez, and all the women in our family have passionate natures. If he is as smooth a talker as he is handsome, I’m afraid I won’t be the only one with a baby and no husband.”

The other woman laughed good naturedly, as they walked back towards the kitchen.

“So we are calling it a passionate nature now eh, Juanita?” she teased.

Since my whole intent since I arrived here was to avoid dying, you can see that Juanita’s plotting to off me for the sake of her sister’s honor was disconcerting. There was also something else rattling around my brain too. That something had to do with Juanita’s last name. My sainted grandmother was named Isobel Lopez McGuinn. Her mother’s maiden name had been Lopez. My great-grandmother married my great-grandfather, Calvin McGuinn, in El Paso in 1893. Hell my middle name was even Lopez back (forward?) in 1977. Things here were too weird already to take a chance that I wasn’t somehow related to Juanita and her family. When she came back with my ham, eggs and grits, I said my piece in a language she could not help but understand.

“Your sister’s virtue is safe with me, Juanita, so save your murderous plots for the next Anglo you meet,” I said angrily in Spanish.

Juanita’s eyes, already big and round, almost did that cartoonish popping out of the head thing. She turned a dusky pink color from the top of her head down to where her high-necked dress fastened at her throat.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled as she fled from the table.

To her credit, Juanita had the courage to come back out and refill my coffee cup. Since the restaurant was empty, I coaxed her into taking a seat at my table. Her first real question was how I’d learned to speak Spanish so well. I told her the truth.

“My grandmother was half Mexican, she raised me from the age of eight. When my mother died, she moved in with my father and me. She insisted I learn to speak Spanish and know our culture, just as she had with my father.”

My story fascinated Juanita and before I departed the restaurant, I accepted her invitation to attend church with her family on Sunday. After church, I was going to have Sunday dinner with her family, too. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Juanita’s new plan was to seduce me before her sister could.

From the hotel, I meandered over to the barbershop for a shave. The trip to the barbershop became an almost daily ritual for me from then on. If you wanted to know about anyone in El Paso, all you had to do was drop in to the barbershop and let Clem fill you in.

After a leisurely shave and some gossip with Clem, I went over to the livery stable and checked Melosa. It made my day when it was apparent that she was happy to see me. I fed her an apple I’d cadged at the restaurant and petted her some before I ambled back to Pickett’s Mercantile to see if he had a watch for sale.

Turns out he had a couple that he had taken in trade. Mr. Picket took me to his office and pulled the watches out of a strongbox he had chained to the leg of his desk. He tried to sell me this fancy ‘American Watch Company’ watch, but I opted to pay him six dollars for a nice silver chased pocket watch with a hunting scene carved on the front. The fob and chain for it cost me another dollar. The watch was made by the Elgin National Watch Company.

I was setting the watch against Mr. Pickett’s, when I spotted a set of books sitting askew on a shelf by the window. I strolled over to them and found they were an eight-volume set of the ‘Laws of the United States and the Great State of Texas.’ With another eerie sense of déjà vu, I inquired about the set.

“Sad story, those books,” Mr. Pickett said, shaking his head. “They belonged to a young chap not much older than you. He was a dandy, but he was likable enough. He opened an office here about six months ago. He was shot down outside his office not three months later. He called himself Chet Benton, and he hailed from New Orleans. Missus Dean sold me the books. She said she took them to pay his back rent at her boarding house.”

Actually, his name was Chesterfield Bovis Benton. I knew that because I’d read it on the flyleaf of volume one, when I was ten years old, and those books were in my father’s office. After my father, a Captain with the El Paso Sheriff’s Office, was killed in the line of duty, they ended up in the law offices of Raymond J. McGuinn, Jr., Attorney at Law. RJ McGuinn was my older brother.

I had been in my third year of college, a pre-law major at UTEP (University of Texas-El Paso) when my father was run over by a drunk driver during a routine traffic stop. After his death, I went on a three-month bender that resulted in me getting kicked out of college and losing my student deferment. I was drafted and spent two years as a clerk for the Army Judge Advocate General of Okinawa.

I didn’t go back to school after I was discharged. Instead, I fell in love with Stella Wright, wife number one. Stella was a barrel racer on the rodeo circuit. She was blonde, beautiful and thought sex with me was better than sliced bread. To be near her, I signed on with the rodeo and eventually became a bull rider for lack of any other skills. After three years, Estella left the rodeo and me for a wealthy oilman. It’s funny, but the year after she left was my best on the tour.

So anyway ... I had a feeling these books were sitting here waiting for me, and I suddenly knew what I was going to try to do for a living, besides play poker. I knew from college that there were no formal law schools in Texas until the late 1880s. Lawyers learned from other lawyers and from books, or they attended school out of state. That’s why attorneys out here were men who ‘read the law.’ To practice law before a court, you simply had to convince the presiding judge of your knowledge. Out here on the western frontier, how hard could that be?