It was no unusual thing for merchants to loan large quantities of their goods, bales of prints and muslin and sacks of sugar and coffee to their neighbor merchants, to be repaid in kind when their wagon train arrived.
Carriages and buggies were considered as almost community property, and the man who refused to lend them was considered a bad neighbor.
Everybody had credit at “the store,” and everybody paid up—sooner or later.
There were no hotels. Travelers stopped at each other’s houses and even strangers were welcome there. Any one having any claim to gentility or education was cheerfully received and entertained by the officers at the army posts, and many, very many, by the collector of customs at El Paso.
There was one peculiar fact about the El Paso of those early days, for which I could never give any good reason.
Perhaps there were several reasons.
Our little village was better known, or, rather, it had greater notoriety and elicited more interest and inquiry, than any other town in the United States of twenty times its population. I know this from my own experience during my visits to Eastern cities, and the same statement was made by every El Paso wanderer on returning home. I mean that a gentleman registering from El Paso in any of the great cities received more attention and was more questioned about his town than one from San Antonio or Denver.
It seemed impossible to go anywhere without meeting an army officer or some one who had lived at El Paso, or some stranger who had heard of the little hamlet and was eager to learn more.
In spite of privations, our little village seemed to have an unaccountable fascination for every one who saw it, refined American ladies as well as the less fastidious and sterner sex.
This was my El Paso. To me it was like the Deserted Village to Goldsmith.