Chapter 8

My second week in 1877 El Paso, started Tuesday morning with breakfast with Molly Dean. I’d made arrangements for my morning meal at a later hour, so I could sleep in after working so late. I could tell that Molly was not unhappy that I was there to keep her company. Usually she only saw people during the day when she shopped or ran other errands. Molly was most pleasant company, too. She was witty and had a keen sense of humor.

“So, Mister McGuinn, would you be having any visitors this afternoon? I need to know so I can take the paintings down in the room next to yours.”

Two could play that teasing game.

“No, Missus Dean, I do not. How could I after seeing you in that dress? I’m afraid your beautiful red hair and shapely figure have ruined me for other women.”

Molly actually blushed when I said that, but she came right back at me.

“And how would you be knowing about my hair, Sir, when all you’ve seen of it is this shapeless bun I wear.”

I made my voice serious and looked her straight in the eye.

“I imagine it, Molly. I imagine first taking it down and brushing it out. Then I daydream about it spread out in all its flaming copper glory on my pillow.”

Molly’s eyes became even bigger when I said that. She opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out but a squeaky, “Oh my.”

I set my coffee cup down on the table and stood up. Leaning across the table, I softly moved a wisp of her flaming red hair and tucked it behind her ear. Then I sighed theatrically, spun on my heels and departed for El Toro Cantina, to see about furnishing my office.

Pen’s saloon opened at nine in the morning for those who needed a little liquid fortification during the day. Most of his daytime business was locals who liked to slip in for a beer and some bullshit. During the day, a Mexican man named Miguel tended the bar. He and his wife also cleaned up the saloon for the nighttime crowd.

Since Miguel and his wife were the only people in the bar when I arrived, I asked him in Spanish if he knew where I might find some office furniture. Turns out I asked the right person. Miguel looked thoughtful for a second or two before speaking.

“Maybe I do, Señor Ty. I think maybe some of the stores on the other side of the river might have some things like that. They have many such things abandoned by travelers on the Royal Road of the Interior.”

The Camino Real, also called the King’s Highway, was a sixteen hundred mile road and trail that led from Mexico City to Santa Fe. Travelers from Mexico’s Capital, traveled up the Camino Real to reach the Santa Fe Trail that carried them into California.

As had the pioneers who traveled the Oregon Trail in the 1840s and 50s, the Camino Real travelers jettisoned impractical cargo along the way. El Paso del Norte was in a perfect spot to collect some of that loot, as travelers and settlers lightened their wagons to cross the Rio Grande.

It made sense to me, so I collected Melosa, saddled her up and caught the flat-bottomed, rope-guided ferry across the river. I figured that if I couldn’t find what I wanted, I could always have some local craftsman make it for me. In addition, I was sure that prices on the Mexican side would probably be cheaper.

It was my first time crossing the river in this era. Juarez back then was a far cry from the bustling, dirty and over crowded city I’d visited many times in my future. I rode down the dusty main street, until I found a store crammed with artifacts discarded on the Camino Real. Inside the store, I found an ornately carved writing desk and two small matching bookcases. The chair that matched the table and bookcases wasn’t available, but I found three that were close enough for government work, along with a drop-leaf side table.

I dickered with the shop owner for fifteen minutes, until we reached twenty dollars in gold, a price we could both live with. I gave him five dollars in silver to hold the furniture, and headed back across the river to the Lopezes’ house, to see if I could borrow Hector’s wagon.

Hector grudgingly agreed to rent me the wagon for the afternoon, only after Anna said she would go along with me. I hitched up Hector’s horse to the wagon, tied Melosa to the back, helped Anna up onto the seat and away we went.

Once we were out of sight of the Lopez house, I gave Anna a long appraising glance. She caught my look and reached up to smooth her hair where it was tightly coiled around her head.

“You must excuse the way I look, Señor, I wasn’t expecting company.”

I gave her my most boyish grin as I openly ogled her.

“Stop fishing for compliments, you know how beautiful I think you are.”

I meant that sincerely too. Even in her black widow’s weeds, she could pass for a woman fifteen years younger. She tried to look offended at my brazenness, but her sparkling eyes gave her away.

“It is most impertinent to speak that way to an old woman,” she said, trying to sound stern.

I grinned again.

“I’ll remember that next time I talk to an old woman,” I replied.

We chatted amicably after that, on the hour-long trip back across the river. With a little judicious prodding from me, Anna told me about herself and her life. It was a damned good story. I was doing first-hand genealogy for the lineage of the me that wouldn’t be born for another seventy-five years. Pretty neat trick, huh, sitting here gabbing with the woman who was Tyler Lopez McGuinn’s great-great-great great grandmother.

Anna Lopez was born in 1827, on the gigantic rancho of Juan María Ponce de Leon. Ponce de Leon was granted the rancho in 1821, as a reward for his service during Mexico’s war of Independence from Spain. Anna’s father had been the chief Wine Maker for Ponce de Leon’s vineyards. It was an important and respected position, because the vineyards produced some of the best wines in the world.

When she was fifteen, Anna was married off to Fernando Cruz, the son of the foreman of the ranch’s vaqueros. Her husband worked with his father tending the cattle herd, and she worked in the hacienda kitchen. She was sixteen when Juanita’s mother Ramona was born. She delivered Fernando a son a year later. They lived on the ranch even after The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848 established the border between the United States and Mexico at the Rio Grande, and Patron Ponce de Leon lost his claim to his ranch. Fernando stayed working as a cowboy for the new Anglo owner of the ranch.

Her daughter married Hector Calis in 1860. Her husband and son were killed on a cattle drive in 1863, when Union Army soldiers attacked them and confiscated the herd. After the death of Fernando, she moved in with her daughter and Hector.

From Anna I learned two of my surnames, Calis and Cruz. In Spanish Catholic naming conventions, the mothers surname always had ascendancy, thus Lopez was carried down to my grandmother. However, it was not unusual for a person of Hispanic descent to know all the surnames in their linage as far back as four generations.

By the time Anna and I arrived at the shop where I bought the furniture, we were best of friends. The shop keeper help me load my purchases, took a Gold Double Eagle in payment, returned my silver dollars and sent us on our way. We were back across the river at Pen’s saloon by two in the afternoon. With Miguel’s help, I had the wagon quickly unloaded. Anna helped me arrange the office and went with me back to Molly’s boarding house to pick up my law books.

Now I want to make it clear right now, that while I thought Anna was an attractive woman and teased her about it, I never had designs of having sex with her. Having said that, I have to confess that, when it came to Lopez women, what I wanted didn’t matter in the least. I had absolutely zero resistance to them, and every single one of them seemed to know that.

Anna was subtler than Juanita, but no less effective in seducing me. We were barely in my room, before she unleashed those hypnotic eyes and mesmerizing voice on me. I know it makes me sound weak, but I swear, I didn’t have a chance.

Anna’s body was, of course, not in the same league with Juanita or Liz, but it was fine nonetheless. Her breast weren’t big, but they were surprisingly perky, with large sensitive nipples. She was wider in the hips than either of the other women, and her butt was softer and fleshier. She was what she was, a well preserved mature woman. I wasn’t ashamed for a minute for bedding her.

In my bed, her age and experience were most gratifying to me. Unlike Juanita or Liz, Anna needed no instructions, for she was not a novice in the boudoir. She gave as good as she got. She wasn’t shy about telling me what she liked, and boy oh boy, was Anna the Elder ever kinky!

Anna told me later that she saw me as her chance to live out all the salacious thoughts she’d ever had. Because of her age, finding someone she connected to sexually was something Anna had never thought would happen. When it did, she decided that she would try everything of which she’d ever dreamed. Undoubtedly, Anna must do a lot of dreaming, because for two hours, we tried damn near everything.