Maria's Cantina

Maria’s Cantina

Lordsburg, NM

Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM

Three Stars.

I caint tell you what it must of been like. I don’t think anybody could. But I can tell you what come to pass. I can tell you that.

They first caught sight of the yelpers round about 1879. They come from the south but they wasn’t Mexicans. Wore cowls like monks. Spoke with a outlander accent. They made a sound that is lost to memory but you could call it a coyote yammer. Anyways that’s how they come to be called yelpers by the good people of Lordsburg.

Now back then they was some strange folk in the borderlands. Polygamists. Cultists. Renegade indians. So you can imagine the trepidation of the settlers in that little town. No help for miles. These monks comin in from the hills yammerin like wild dogs. And the things they carried. Sextants. Plumb lines. And each with their own notebook. Never without them notebooks. They was always writin them yelpers.

But the yelpers also had money. Gold dust by the sack. And pretty soon that little outpost was boomin. You see the yelpers had this hunger. To try ever little thing. Take its measure. Put it in the little book. As if they could take the chaos of that world and bring form to it. Corral it somehow. I’ll admit it was unnatural. But that’s how it started.

Sometimes I wonder what those townfolk was thinkin. All this strangeness around them. But they took the money. Hell I would of too. But I kindly doubt they knew the true cost. What was bein bought. What was bein sold.