It took us four days of steady riding to make it to Portales. For two of those days, I thought my butt was going to fall off from the endless hours in the saddle. Connie laughed at my whining and teased me about it until I shut up.
As we rode, if we weren't talking, I was singing. I was dredging up songs from every era I'd lived through by the second day. Connie liked the singing as much as Melosa did, so I started teaching her the words of her favorites. Connie had a sweet voice with a slight quaver to it. Her voice reminded me a little of Tammy Wynette, and amazingly, she and I harmonized together very nicely.
I dredged up the Tammy Wynette songs I remembered and taught them to her. She liked 'Your Good Girl's Gonna Turn Bad'; the lyrics actually amused the crap out of her, being she was a dancehall girl and all. She didn't much care for 'D-I-V-O-R-C-E', but she went gaga over 'Stand by Your Man'.
"I like that song, Tyler. It says how I feel about you. Even though you are not so smart sometimes, I still love you because you are my man. I will teach that song to your other women, because they feel the same way."
Uh, I didn't exactly know how to take what she said, know what I mean? It's a little hard on the old ego when your woman says she loves you, despite the fact that you were a doofus.
On the afternoon of day four, or according to my ass, day fourteen, we rode into Portales. We stopped at the livery stable and let our horses slurp up some water, then I led us over to the swinging doors of the Cock and Bull Saloon. I pushed open one of the doors and stepped aside so Connie could walk through. She snorted derisively and pushed me inside. One of these days I was going to have to have a serious talk with Connie about how quickly she was shedding any semblance of Victorian manners.
I looked the place over as soon as my eyes adjusted to the dimly lit room, then led the way to the far end of the bar. The place wasn't exactly bustling with business, as there weren't more than half a dozen patrons in the joint. I caught the bartender's eye finally, and ordered us a couple of beers. He looked around nervously, and I followed his gaze as it settled on this big, ill-natured looking cowboy. The big man stopped the barman with a gesture and stomped towards us angrily.
"We don't allow no squaws in here, Injun lover," he said belligerently.
Before I could formulate a scathingly witty rejoinder, Connie whipped out her pig-sticker and had the point a micro millimeter away from his throat. The big man actually had to go up on his tip toes to prevent being skewered. This was just too much fun to let pass!
I said something in Japanese to Connie, hoping it sounded like Comanche to the other men in the room. She gave me a funny look and I returned her a sly wink.
"Now you've done it friend," I said. "Just stand still and everyone stay calm, while I try to save your life."
As soon as I said that, Connie rattled off some real Comanche and jiggled the knife a little. The big man looked at me uncomprehendingly, so I made up a translation.
"She said that she was going to cut out your tongue for insulting her husband. Well, that's better than I hoped because the last man to insult me is a eunuch now. I'm afraid you just made a grave error, amigo, because my woman is the daughter of the Comanche War Chief, Knock-a-Homma, bravest of the Braves. She is my woman because she was too mean for any of the braves of her tribe. I lost a bet with her father and had to take her. Her Indian name is Fawn Who Castrates Grizzlies."
The man's eyes grew as big as tea saucers when Connie reversed her grip on the knife, dropped her arm, and pressed the point up into the man's genitals. I had to turn my head to keep from cracking up as the cowboy unsuccessfully tried to control his beer swollen bladder.
I made a slashing motion with my hand.
"Idi wah kahzuma," I said in an authorative voice.
Connie shook her head and launched into another spurt of Comanche, punctuated with little jabs of the knife that made the man squeak. When she finished her little diatribe, the man turned to me beseechingly.
"Please Mister, don't let her cut me, I got a wife and a passel of young-uns at home," he pleaded contritely.
I nodded and flung out a few more Japanese words. Connie looked at the man fiercely, but lowered her knife.
"Buy Fawn beer," she threatened menacingly.
The big cowboy threw a quarter onto the bar and lit out for parts unknown, as the rest of the patrons stood around gawking. I looked around and smiled.
"Let that be a lesson to you boys, don't start no shit and there won't be no shit. Now have a beer on Tyler McGuinn, and let's all be friends."
I waved to the bartender and clanged a couple of cartwheels on to the bar, next to the disappeared cowboy's quarter.
"A beer for my sweet little lady and me, my good man, and a round for the house if you please."
As soon as the barkeep turned towards his tap, another cowboy came walking towards us. Connie started reaching for her knife, but I stayed her hand. I recognized the man as one of the cowboys from the ranch at which my brother worked. The man stopped a few feet from us and eyed Connie warily.
"That really you, Tyler? We heard you was dead."
"An obviously untrue rumor, Otis. How are things with you?" I asked as I stuck out my hand.
Otis allowed that things were just dandy, and asked me where I'd been and what had I been doing. This was one of those times where I didn't think it was prudent to give out too much information, so I told him I was working in El Paso and living on a small spread I'd bought. Even that little bit of news was enough to make Otis Griggs whistle.
"Dang, boy, no one here thought you had it in you to go straight, that's why it was so easy to believe the stories that you was dead."
Having lived with my Uncle Ty Ringo's memories for the last six months, I had to agree. Remembering my manners, I turned and introduced Connie. I couldn't resist continuing to perpetrate our little fraud.
"Otis, may I present my wife, Fawn. Fawn, this here is an old friend of mine named Otis Griggs."
Connie flashed me a happy smile at being called my wife. She stuck out her hand daintily and in a perfect imitation of Belle, said, "Charmed, I'm sure, Mister Griggs."
Otis cut his eyes towards me at her finishing school Southern drawl.
I just shrugged in reply.
Otis filled me in on the happenings around Portales and Clovis, the town right up the road to the north-east, during the seven months I'd been away. He said my brother was doing fine, but was too good a man to be working for old man Eustis. I couldn't agree more.
Connie and I left the saloon, collected our horses and headed north. If my memory of geography was anywhere close to accurate, the ranch that Ray ramrodded was located where Cannon Air Force Base was situated in 1977, about seventeen miles north of Portales. Seventeen miles was a pretty good stretch, and we'd never make it to Ray's before late that night. Yet, Connie was firm in not wanting a room in Portales for the night.
"We'll sleep and make wild love under the stars again tonight, my husband," she said.
After seeing her in action with her knife at the saloon, I wasn't about to argue the point. Besides, we'd been making wild, coyote howling love under the stars for the last three nights, and I had enjoyed every second of it. The fresh air jacked up Connie's libido and added about twenty-five decibels to her already loud yowling. You know, life is pretty darned good when your biggest complaint is how loud your woman yells when you give her the big O.
We found a place to sleep on the bank of the Portales creek. The creek was low in its bed, but was still flowing. In this part of the country, flowing water this late in the year was a nice surprise, because most streams, creeks and even some rivers dried up until the snow melts off in the Spring.
Later that night, I put Connie on her hands and knees and let her howl at the moon as loud as she wanted as I plundered her tight little cleft from the rear. I loved holding onto her narrow hips as she gyrated that muscular little ass around like a jitterbug dancer. I don't know why I did it, but that night I swatted her on the ass and teased her.
"This is the way I will have to take you when your belly is too big with our son to do it any other way."
Connie moaned and turned her head to look at me over her shoulder. Her eyes were glittering onyx gemstones.
"You would have a baby with me even though I am a half breed?" she asked in wonder.
I turned serious and answered her.
"I love you because you are you, Conchita Raphael, and I would be honored to be the father of your children. We'll start making them whenever you are ready."
Turns out Connie was already ready, because she pulled away from me, spun around and gently removed the condom from my rampant penis.
"It will probably not be tonight, my warrior, it is too close to my time, but who knows what magic the gods of my ancestors may bring to us out here," she said.
We made a different kind of love that night. It was so sweet... so tender and emotionally charged, that it left us both with tears in our eyes. Yet it was also passionate and thrillingly intense. After my second mind numbing climax and Connie's who knows how many, I tried to roll off her to the side, because I couldn't hold my weight above her for much longer. Connie clamped those steel cable legs around my waist and pulled me down on top of her.
"Don't move, My Love. I want to feel our skin touching for a while longer," she said.
I agreed, but rolled us both over until she was on top of me. Connie sighed and wiggled until she was comfortable as I stroked her hair. I pulled a blanket over her back and we fell asleep.
The next morning, Connie woke me up when she slipped down onto my morning erection. When the sleep cleared from my eyes, she was perched smiling on my woody.
"I had a vision last night, Tyler. In it we made a son during this trip. I dreamed our son had a son who was a great warrior and married a woman much like Anna Lopez."
My face must have registered my shock, because Connie stopped her gentle movement on me and asked what was wrong. I struggled for something to say as she sat there looking concerned.
"I think that will come true, Princess," I finally managed to say.
Yes indeed, her vision would come true, because my sainted Abuela, Isobel Lopez McGuinn, had married a distant cousin of hers named David Raphael McGuinn. I never met my grandfather, because he died years before I was born. He was killed in World War Two during the fierce fighting on Iwo Jima, and posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery. It shook me to the core when I recalled that she told me he was a big gentle man, with a will of iron she attributed to the Comanche blood coursing through his veins.
After we made love, Connie and I bathed in the creek. I was still stunned by the newest connection I'd just discovered between my present and future self. Of course bathing in the creek brought back thoughts of the time as a river analogy, too. It was at that moment that I realized that in order for history to work, Tyler Ringo McGuinn couldn't be in El Paso for much longer. I was going to have to move far enough away that my presence didn't negatively affect the futures of the twentieth century Tyler McGuinn's ancestors there.
After our baths, Connie and I dressed in nicer clothing than we'd worn on the trail. Connie slipped on one of those split skirted riding outfits, and I wore a traveling suit. When we were dressed, we mounted up and rode the last twelve miles to Skinflint Eustis' huge spread.
We arrived at the small house my brother in this life called home, at around ten in the morning. Ray himself came out of one of the barns to greet us when we pulled up. When Connie and I dismounted, he looked me up and down as we solemnly shook hands.
Ray and my Uncle Ty had always been close, even after Uncle Ty turned into a dickhead. Ray was five years older than this version of me, and was about the hardest working man I'd ever known. Ray started working when he was eleven, soon after his and Ty's father, a cavalry sergeant in the Confederate Army, was killed during the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863.
"Otis said Tyler was bringing home a wife, but he said she was some wild Indian girl, not some beautiful young lady," Ray said, as he gently took Connie's small hand in his big calloused one.
Connie smiled sweetly and blushed. Dressed in normal clothes, Connie reverted to the shy young woman I first met. It boggled my mind that she could be such a hellion one minute, and so proper the next.
Ray took us to the house and introduced Connie to his wife Lisa and his children, Amanda who was six and four year old Cal (Calvin Andrew McGuinn — my future self's great-grandfather). Lisa and Connie seemed to get along well enough, and the kids liked Connie a whole lot.
Lisa McGuinn was a typical pioneer woman, she was strong, resolute, and she worked as hard as her husband. She was her normal polite but distant self to me. She didn't much care for Ty Ringo, but tolerated him because he was kin. I was hoping to change her opinion on this trip, because if Lisa was against moving to El Paso, it wasn't going to happen.
I sat down at the kitchen table to speak with Ray and Lisa, while Connie let Mandy and little Cal drag her out to the barn to see their new puppies.
"Your wife seems to be a wonderful person, Tyler. The children don't usually take to anyone like they did to her. She'll be a good mother."
That remark was from Lisa, and I think they were the most words she'd ever strung together and flung at me.
I nodded my head and told her we were working on the children thing. The conversation segued from children to what I had been doing the last eight months, besides finding a wife. I gave them a mostly truthful but sanitized version of my life since I'd left Clovis last April.
I told them that I took being bitten by the rattlesnake and almost dying as a sign the good Lord wasn't all that happy with me so I changed. I worked now, and had a small two hundred acre place right outside of El Paso. Ray and Lisa both looked at me suspiciously when I mentioned owning a house and property.
"Where'd you get the money for that?" Ray asked pointedly.
I looked my brother in the eye and told him.
"I earned it, Ray. Some I made gambling, but most of it came from work. None of the money I accumulated after arriving in El Paso is stolen, if that's what you are asking."
Ray nodded in understanding, but he didn't seem convinced.
"Listen Ray, I know I was a cretin before, I can't undo that no matter what I do. So I'm trying to live a better life going forward."
I reached into my inside vest pocket and pulled out the leather bifold case with my badges in it, flipped it open, and laid it on the table.
I am the Deputy US Marshal for west Texas, and a part time deputy sheriff for El Paso County. Marshall Cahill in Santa Fe and Sheriff Faulkner in El Paso will both vouch for me."
Ray and Lisa looked at the badges incredulously. I could not have astounded them more if I'd have thrown a sack of nuggets and a claim to a gold mine onto the table. I turned my attention towards Lisa.
"Lisa, I have changed, for one, I haven't missed Mass a single Sunday in the last six months. Talk to Connie about it why don't you? Connie wouldn't tell a lie if you were torturing her."
Then I leaned back in my chair and addressed both of them.
"It is important that both of you believe me, because I have a job to offer Ray that will require you all moving to El Paso. The job is ramrodding a ranch for a friend of mine. My friend will pay you fifty dollars a month, and one third of the ranch's net profit. The spread is a tad over five thousand acres, with good reliable water. The ranch is fairly well equipped, including a very nice ranch house, but the place needs someone to make it work. You'll have free reign in hiring and setting wages, as long as you don't go wild. There is also a budget for you to buy the stock and equipment you'll need, within reason, of course."
Ray and Lisa were both staring at me even more gaped mouth than before.
"Why in the hell would anyone hire me for a job like that out of the blue? And how are we going to just up and move if I take it?" Ray asked.
My friend is offering you the job based on my word that you are the best man they could hope to find. I'm proud to say my word is worth something now, and I wouldn't have recommended you if I didn't think you were everything I touted you to be."
I reached inside my vest to the other pocket and pulled out an envelope.
"As for making the move, if you take the job, here is enough money to cover your expenses. You will need to collect receipts for any of the money you spend on the move; any money left is a bonus for you taking the position."
Lisa opened the envelope and gasped as she showed the four hundred dollars in it to Ray. I excused myself so they could talk about it, and went out to join Connie and the kids. I found the three of them in the barn, each with an arm full of squirming puppies. My brother had a breeding pair of Catahoulas. The dogs were big and ugly as sin, but they could herd cattle with the best of them. Connie was holding up this one particularly ugly grey specimen with black spots and a goofy look on his face.
"The children gave me a puppy, Tyler," Connie said excitedly.
I squinted my eyes in consternation, because those Catahoula hounds were developed by mixing Spanish War Dogs (a mix of mastiff and Greyhound) with red wolves. The son of a guns were as wild as they were smart.
Connie caught my look and held the puppy tighter as it licked her face.
"It will be a good addition to our rancho, and I will care for it," she said defensively.
I knew this argument had only one solution, so I gave in gracefully.
"What are you going to name him?" I asked.
"He already has a name silly, he is Dog."
Of course he was. How could I have missed that?
That evening after supper, Ray and I sat on the porch smoking a cheroot, while Connie helped Lisa in the kitchen. Ray was trying to act nonchalant, but I could tell he was excited as he fired questions about the ranch at me. I answered him honestly, stressing that the ranch needed a lot of work, but it had lots of potential. He went to bed that night, promising me that he and Lisa would discuss the offer and have an answer for me in the morning.
Although Lisa wanted to fix us a pallet on the living room floor, we ended up sleeping in a cozy nest of hay Connie made for us in the barn. As soon as she spread out my blanket, she went across the barn and fetched Dog to sleep with us. It was a real family night as we curled up under one of Lisa's quilts. I was sleeping on my left side, Connie snuggled against my back and Dog cuddled against her. I had it in my mind to tell Connie it wasn't a good idea to get the puppy used to sleeping with us, but she had an amazing way with animals. If Connie thought it was alright, then I couldn't much argue against it.
The next morning at breakfast, Ray accepted the job and asked me if I could hang around for a few days and help them move down to El Paso. That hadn't been in my original plan, but I could live with it, especially when I thought about the wild turkeys that ranged about forty miles northwest of where we were. A half dozen plump gobblers would make a mighty fine spread come Thanksgiving, providing I could catch that many alive and keep them that way on the trip back to El Paso.
"No problem Ray," I said, "where do we start?"
We started by going to Clovis and buying two wagons and four mules.
Ray only wanted one wagon, as he said it would do for his family
because not much in their house belonged to them. I bought the other,
because we didn't have one on the small ranch and I needed a way to
transport the flock of turkeys that were dancing drumsticks in my head.
While we were in town, I sent a telegram to Belle, care of the Hotel,
telling her that I had hired Ray and we were helping him move.