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 like 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 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 younguns' 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 16th, 1877, Connie and I rode up to our rancho. I think even little Comanche woman was more than ready to unass 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.
As I explained the balance sheet, I lobbied for keeping most of the profits in the bank for contingencies. It was an argument that fell on mostly deaf ears, because the partners knew I was overly conservative when it came to money. In the end, the partners voted to keep twelve grand for contingencies, and we split fourteen thousand between the seven of us. I didn't object a bit when the other partners vote me a five hundred dollar bonus and authorized me a thousand dollars to pay bonuses to our employees.
After the meeting, Belle was quick to point out to me that she had made back all she had invested in the partnership, and a nice sum on top of that from her Piano bar, and all in only three months. I congratulated her by sticking my tongue out at her 'told you so' smug self.
I used a chunk of my bonus money to throw a Christmas party for the people who really made the businesses work. Belle and the ladies took charge of decorating her piano bar, and on Sunday afternoon of the twenty-third of December, we had a private Christmas party for the thirty-seven people who worked for the three businesses. We had a buffet meal, spiced rum, eggnog and sang Christmas carols around the piano. I made myself happy handing out bonus envelopes to my crew, although I wished that I had a Santa suit to wear while I was doing it.
My family and I celebrated Christmas Day at the rancho, exchanging small gifts and enjoying being together.
On New Years Eve, we threw a big shindig at the ballroom and had over five hundred people reveling in the year 1878.
Right after the New Year, I floated the idea of moving to Belle. The idea intrigued her.
"Where would we go if we moved?" she asked.
"Somewhere we can live openly as a family, yet still do the things we love here. Wyoming maybe. I hear that the Mormons have an enclave near Cheyenne, and that Cheyenne is a lively place. We could have a ranch and still start us a business in town. I think we could sell our shares in the club for enough to get started. I'd like it if we had a club like the one here with only family as share holders."
Belle nodded and patted my arm.
"We need to have a family meeting about it, dear. You know some of the others might not want to move."
It was my turn to nod glumly. Yes, I had thought about that more than a little.
"Well, we don't have to pull up stakes and move immediately, that might make it easier on them. And we could take a trip up there to check it out before we take the plunge," I said hopefully.
We did have a family meeting, and to my surprise, the other women had plenty of questions, but no real objections. I had been worried that Anna might have a problem leaving her family behind, yet she was as interested as everyone else. The other women didn't have any ties to El Paso past some friendships, and liked the idea of being able to live openly as my wives.
At our family meeting, Connie caused a stir when she said that she had missed her monthlies and thought she was pregnant. Strangely, after being kissed and hugged by the other wives, the only woman who wanted to join the knocked up contingent was Mina. Belle and Feleena's plans included keeping their figures for a while longer. Mina agreed that she'd wait awhile, so only one of them would be in a family way when we moved, and I agreed to keep her filled with little swimmers until she took...
So my family and I moved through the rest of the winter and into early spring. All of us worked hard, yet still found time to be together. The club, ballroom and restaurant were still doing a brisk business. Our second quarter gross profits were down about three percent. Because we had no unexpected expenses, we only added five thousand dollars to our contingency fund, so we actually netted an extra thousand dollars each. I was a happy boy that night as I sat in my office and tallied up what I had managed to save since buying the small rancho.
Money was about the biggest sore point between my sweeties and me, because I scrimped and saved while they spent money as if they were drunken sailors on shore leave. It sometimes irritated the crap out of me that they knew my financial status down to the penny and I didn't know a thing about theirs. I didn't even know what Feleena, Connie and Mina earned, because they all worked for Belle. Hell, even Anna was on Belle's payroll as manager of our house and farm. Every time I brought the subject up, they told me I worried too much. I finally gave up in exasperation when Mina called me Scrooge one day.
The Rio Grande River started to rise in early May of 1878 from the melting snow up in the Rockies. That was our sign that it was time for us to plan a trip to Wyoming. It was amazing how easy a trip from El Paso to Cheyenne was, thanks to the railroad. Heck, we even had options on the route we took.
We could go from Santa Fe northeast to Wichita, Kansas, on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe and from Wichita to Cheyenne on the Union Pacific. Or we could go north from Santa Fe to Denver on the Southern Pacific, then Denver to Cheyenne, again on the Union Pacific. The Denver route was a day shorter, but the trip through Kansas went through buffalo country. I lobbied for the longer trip, because I sure wanted to see some bison in the wild.
On Monday, the thirteenth of May, 1978, the six of us boarded the train for Santa Fe. We had an hour's wait in Santa Fe before we boarded the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe day coach to Lamy, New Mexico. Lamy was the railroad's hub city and only a branch line ran to Santa Fe.
We were in for a surprise when we reached the station in Lamy, or at least all of us not named Belle were surprised. Miss 'Spend money as if it were sand' Sikes had chartered us a luxury travel coach with three bedrooms and a nice sitting room. No hard benches or lumpy berths for her.
When I tried to say something about it, she glared at me and put her finger to her lips.
"Don't say a word, Cheap Charlie, my family owns a third of this railroad. I telegraphed my father with our destination, and he arranged for the car."
It chagrined me that she would call me Cheap Charlie, because I had once called Riverboat Bill Braxton that nickname, when she told me how tight fisted the man was. I was also starting to get an idea of why money wasn't a big deal to Belle.
We pulled out of Laming the next morning at eight on the button. Our fancy railcar was the last on the train. I loved that luxurious private car; it was as if we were at home. I also appreciated the car because it rode smooth and gentle for our pregnant little Comanche. Connie was about four months along, and just starting to show. We were all very solicitous of her, even though we were often baffled by the mood swings her hormones were putting her through. Thank goodness for Anna, because the other five of us knew zip about how pregnancy worked.
I was reminded of all that about an hour out of Laming, when Connie came and plopped down in my lap with tears in her eyes.
"I miss Dog," she sniffled.
"I miss him too, Honey," I lied. "You know we had to leave him behind to protect the rancho while we are gone."
Connie nodded, pulled a handkerchief out of her sleeve and blew her nose noisily as I rocked her in my arms.
Dog was about seven months old now and weighed at least seventy-five pounds. He was an eating machine, and was as lazy as a male lion. The women were all convinced that he was their ferocious protector, but I could see him pointing out the good stuff to burglars in exchange for a ham bone. Dog was also smart as hell; he knew exactly how to act to keep the women spoiling him. Me, he ignored completely unless it was to whimper pitifully to get me in trouble when I tried to correct his behavior. For Connie and the women, he would do these amazingly clever tricks, yet he wouldn't even raise his big ugly head when I called him. Mangy fleabag.
We traveled a day and most of the night to Wichita, then changed trains and headed northwest on the Union Pacific. It was way cool to me that the A, T&SF rail yard crew simply unhooked the car we were riding in and an hour later, a Union Pacific crew attached us to their High Plains Flyer passenger train.
We Pulled out of Wichita early in the morning and headed towards Nebraska. We weren't two hours into the trip when I saw my first herd of Bison. Man, I was as excited as a kid at the circus as I hung out the window as they thundered away from the train whistle.
Connie was sitting in my lap again, a place she spent a lot of her time lately. She watched the retreating herd with the rest of us. When they were out of sight, she told us that twenty years ago, her mother's people had owned these plains. She also related that her grandfather had told her stories about great buffalo hunts when the number of buffalo in the herd exceeded the number of stars in the sky.
I knew a good deal about the Whiteman's version of her people's history, and it was seldom flattering. Most historians agreed that the Comanche were the best horsemen of all the plains tribes, but they were also the most warlike. The Comanche Nation probably never exceeded twenty thousand members, yet they wage war from the Dakotas all the way down into Mexico and Central America. When bands of Comanche couldn't find anyone else to wage war against, they turned to fighting each other. Amazingly, the Comanche didn't believe in having a tribal chief, instead, each band picked a war chief who only served during the conflict they were involved in at the time.
We saw a few more herds as we traveled that day, and the train even stopped once when a herd was near enough for passengers to take pot shots at them. I was appalled at the idea of just shooting the big beasts for amusement, but Connie was livid about it.
"Those men killed enough buffalo today to feed my mother's tribe for months," she said bitterly.
And you know what? That was exactly the idea, because the government thought that removing the chief source of food would force the tribes off the plains. In three decades, the orgy of slaughter reduced the bison population from an estimated seventy million to less than a thousand.
We rolled into Cheyenne around noon the next day. After three days on the train, we were all for walking around the town to check it out. We had barely walked a half a block from the railroad station, before the women excitedly pointed out a family group like ours, with the addition of a couple of children, walking into the general store. With Belle tugging on one of my arms, and Mina pulling on the other, they practically dragged me to the store.
Joe J & Wet Dream-Girl