Chapter 42

When we returned to the Double E Ranch (Earl Eustis’ brand was back to back capital letter Es), Ray hired Otis Griggs as his first ranch hand for the Texas Ranch. With Otis on the payroll, I wouldn’t have to drive the second wagon to El Paso. That was a development that didn’t bother Melosa or me a whit. That evening I pigeonholed Otis and Ray about the best place to hunt us up some turkeys. They gave me some excellent directions, and Otis even loaned me a few braided leather and spring wire snares.

Connie insisted on being involved in the discussions of a hunting trip, and said she was familiar with the leather snares, because the women in her tribe used them to catch small game. It took her all of thirty seconds to understand the operation of the wire snares, which she rejected, because they were sure to kill the turkey. We needed the turkeys to be alive, because it was over a week until Thanksgiving, and we had no way to refrigerate the birds.

With five snares and high expectations, we trotted out of Ray’s yard early the next morning, heading for Mora County, New Mexico and the foothills south of Truchas Peak. I had my hands full talking Connie out of taking Dog with us. I told her we’d catch up to the slower moving wagons in a couple of days, and everyone promised they’d keep an eye on the already spoiled mutt for her.

It took us a full day of traveling to reach the wild foothills where the turkeys ranged. Connie was in her element setting out her snares and finding the turkeys’ roosting trees. The turkeys were danged smart and ever alert with two or three in a flock seemingly on guard as the others scratched and pecked at the ground. I don’t think I could have bagged one with a machine gun, because they beat-feet before I could get within a hundred yards of them. Connie, stealthy as a snake, could almost walk right up on them, though.

I loved both versions of Conchita Raphael, but when she was in Comanche mode, I stayed hot for her all the time. Connie liked the hell out of the fact that I lusted after her little Indian butt, because to her, that meant that I accepted and loved what she considered the real her. The upshot of that was she was a sexual dynamo when she went native, and I was her walking hard-on.

Despite the fact that Connie and I were making like bunny rabbits several times a day, we (well, actually she) managed to capture six turkeys by the second night. We only caught two via the snares, but Connie bagged the rest by shinnying up the trees in which they were roosting, grabbing one of the slumbering birds and stuffing it into a feed sack she had tucked into her belt.

We left the foothills the next morning after Connie prepared the turkeys for traveling. You are not going to believe how she did that, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Connie cut down a sapling about six feet long, and an inch and a half in diameter with her big knife. She trimmed the small limbs off the sapling and tied a dozen leather thongs to it, spaced out evenly in pairs. Next, she tied the turkeys’ feet to the thongs and put little cowhide hoods over their eyes. She balanced the stick with the snoozing turkeys across her saddle in front of her, and away we went. It was amazing to me that as long as she kept the gobblers hooded, they rode along sleeping peacefully.

It took us two days to catch up with Ray and his two wagon convoy. The mules we’d bought were moving right along, and they were making excellent time. I figured it would only take them another five or six days to reach El Paso.

I liked the hell out of the pair of mules I’d bought, and for the life of me couldn’t understand why I hadn’t bought any sooner. They were smart as hell and, as long as what they were doing made sense to them, they were very well mannered. I named ours Moe and Curly then hung the monikers Larry and Shemp on Ray’s pair.

Connie was happy to give up her turkeys on a stick. Otis had made a small chicken wire coop that rode in the back of his wagon for the birds. Connie was even happier to get her puppy back. I started having a bad feeling about Mister Dog when I saw how much he’d grown in just four days. For some reason, he was about twenty percent bigger than his siblings were. It was obvious that Connie hadn’t felt compelled to settle for the runt of the litter.

Connie’s people were very familiar with dogs, as they had used them to pull travois even after the Spanish brought horses back to North America. But I was pretty sure Connie’s experience was limited to the North American wild dog, a brown canine related to the coyote. Those dogs rarely exceeded sixty-five to seventy-five pounds, while a one hundred twenty-five pound Catahoula hound wasn’t that unusual.

Dog seemed even happier to see Connie, as the mutt yipped excitedly and wagged his tail at about a hundred miles an hour.

Connie and I rode the rest of the evening with Ray and his family, each of us with one of Ray and Lisa’s young’uns riding on our horses in front of us. In addition, Dog rode with Connie in a little papoose carrier that she rigged to hang over her chest. I was leery of Cal riding on Connie’s half-tame horse, but the pony seemed fine with it.

You’d think, that given how Connie picked her name for the dog, that her horse would be called Pony or something, but she actually named the thing ‘Runs like the Wind’. When I suggested shorting it to ‘Wendy,’ Connie ate the idea up. I didn’t know it at the time that I was saving J. M. Barrie having to dream up a name for his character in Peter Pan.

We camped with Ray and his family that night and left early the next morning after Connie had given Otis some very specific instructions on caring for the turkeys. Connie made no bones about how irritated she’d be if all six didn’t make it safe and sound to El Paso. Otis listened to her attentively, probably recalling the last man who’d irritated my little Comanche Princess.

We parted ways with Ray because we were anxious to get home, as we’d already been apart from our family for eight days and still had a three-day ride in front of us.

The three days in the saddle were only so-so, but the two nights before we arrived home were spectacular. Connie was as passionate as she could be as we wrung out every drop of pleasure that we could from each other.

On Friday, November 16^th, 1877, Connie and I rode up to our rancho. I think even my little Comanche woman was more than ready to un-ass her saddle after ten days on it. Our homecoming was even better than I imagined it would be. Every one of us had missed the others terribly.

All the other women made a big fuss over Dog. Despite my objections, they set him up with a pallet on the floor of our bedroom and a cozy spot in the kitchen. I lobbied that he was a hound and should be outside, but old Dog saw what the deal was and acted for all the world as if he were a Poodle. It helped a lot that it took only two accidents before he got the hang of being housebroken, and he loved getting bathed and fussed over. Dog received at least one bath a week. One of the women would say ‘bath’ and he’d do back flips out to the bathhouse.

My first day back to work was the next day, the Saturday before Thanksgiving. That evening, Ray Jarvis gave the ballroom customers a sample of the El Paso Orchestra he’d cobbled together. I was proud as hell as I listened to them perform their last tune up before the big free concert on Thanksgiving night. They sounded better than I had even hoped they would. Raymond had even found an old gentleman over in Las Cruces, who knew how to conduct. We had an odd mish-mash of instruments, as not many symphony orchestras had two banjos in it, but I thought they were great.

Ray McGuinn arrived in El Paso on Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving. I introduced him and Lisa to Belle, and told them she was the owner of the spread. I didn’t volunteer any information beyond that. Belle led them out to the farm after Otis proudly presented Connie with her turkeys, all living and all even a little plumper than before. Connie set old Otis to blushing when she kissed him on the cheek in thanks.

Connie and I didn’t go out to the spread to show Ray and his family around, because we hadn’t been involved in preparing the place for their arrival. That had all been Belle and Anna’s doing, with some help from Mina and Feleena. I also have to say that I didn’t want to be around if the nature of my relationship with the women slipped out. What I did do, though, was get a firm commitment from Ray and Lisa that they would come into town, share Thanksgiving with us at the club, and stay for the festivities in the park.

Thanksgiving was everything I wanted it to be. And why not, I was surrounded with people I genuinely loved, and the food was fantastic. My ladies and I served the food to our staff, family and friends cafeteria style, then sat down and ate with them, spreading ourselves among the tables.

That night’s concert was a big hit, with close to two thousand people packed around the stage the merchants’ association had cobbled together. The El Paso Orchestra didn’t disappoint either, as they played a variety of music from Classical to Mariachi, with some Anglo favorites thrown in for good measure.

I introduced the Orchestra to kick off the festivities, telling everyone in English and Spanish, how much we appreciated them coming out to hear us. Yeah, I said us. You didn’t for a minute think that I wasn’t going to do a couple of numbers did you? I did ‘Ring of Fire’, which since the lightning strike, was sort of my theme song. For that song I had two Mariachi bands, plus the orchestra behind me, and it sounded some kind of good.

The second number I performed was a rewritten version of ‘El Paso’ with a happy ending. The ladies in my life were sitting on a couple of blankets near the front of the stage, when Ernesto Calderon and the guitarist for the New Cats picked out the opening riff. They had only played a couple of notes before about a third of the crowd yelled, “FELEENA!” At a nod from me, Belle and Connie pushed blushing Feleena to her feet and I started singing.

For most of the people in the crowd, it was the first time they’d heard the song, and for everyone else it was the first time hearing my new lyrics. Gone were the references to unrequited love, in their place were verses in both English and Spanish about love conquering all. I wasn’t going to perform that song again after that night. Instead I was going to pass it up the line so that it ended up with Marty Robbins in the future.

Life went back to normal for the rest of November and early December. It was a blessing to me that the Christmas season was anything but frenetic in 1877. No lines at the mall, no pressure to find gifts at the last minute.

On the fifth of December, the El Paso Gentlemen’s Club Partnership held its quarterly meeting. I made the partners very happy when I presented each of them with a copy of our balance sheet. The club, restaurant and ballroom had exceeded our wildest profit projections.