Last Bus to Wisdom (29 page)

I saw what he meant. The pair of Indian pickup men, whose job it was to trail the action at a little distance and swoop in on their spotted horses to pluck the rider off after the whistle blew, were driven away by the bronc's hind hooves cutting the air wickedly at every unpredictable twist and turn. Buzzard Head plainly hated everything on four legs as well as two. Now even if Rags survived atop the murderous horse for the full ride, he would have to get out of the trap of stirrups by himself. “Meat wagon,” the gray-braided Crow in back of us issued flatly, sending one of the other Indians swiftly down the steps to the arena gate where the ambulance and its crew waited outside.

An
Oooh
ran through the crowd as the bronc levitated as high as a horse can go, the ugly head ducking from side to side, trying to yank the rope from Rags's grasp. Possibly the only person there on that never-to-be-forgotten day who thought the rider stood a chance as Buzzard Head writhed and twisted and plunged through its bag of tricks was Rags himself, athletically matching split-second reactions to those of the bronc, his long form rebounding from every dodge and dive as if he was made of rubber. I suppose a question for the ages is, What is so spellbinding about watching a man ride an uncooperative horse? Probably something that goes far, far back, the contest between human will and what it finds to match itself against. At least that is the justification for the sport of rodeo, if it needs any. I was rubbing the obsidian arrowhead so hard my fingers went numb as we watched the sunfishing horse do its best and worst, but Rags stayed in the saddle, even as his hat flew off, bouncing onto the horse's rump, then to the ground as if Buzzard Head meant to throw the man off his back piece by piece.

Time never passed so slowly. But at last, after the ten-second eternity of Rags Rasmussen's immortal ride, the whistle blew.

“Jump, right quick!” Herman shouted, as carried away as I was, watching the pickup men futilely trying to spur in on the furiously kicking bronc.

Then, in a feat as unlikely as sticking in the saddle the way he had, Rags shed the stirrups in a lightning backward kick and simultaneously vaulted off in a running dismount. Before Buzzard Head could locate and trample him, the pickup men forced their horses in between, letting Rags saunter to the safety of the chutes, picking up his hat on the way and sailing it up to the pretty woman whistle judge in the announcer's booth.

That great ride, I knew even then, was the legendary kind that would have people saying for years after,
I was there that day
, and by the luck of the arrowhead or some other working of fate, now I was one of them, forever. It was left to Herman to put the moment into words.

“That was bee-yoot-iffle.”

•   •   •

T
HEN CAME THIS,
all because I had to use the rodeo version of a convenience, one of the outhouses behind the corrals.

During a break in the action while the chute crew saddled the next round of broncs, I excused myself to Herman and trotted off to do the necessary. Naturally there was a long line there at the one-holer toilets, but I scarcely noticed the wait, my head filled with the dizzying experiences of the day, topped by the purple presence of Rags Rasmussen himself in the memory book. On my way back from the outhouse visit, I still was caught up in such thoughts, trying to decide whether to press my luck and ask the head Crow there on the platform to write himself in, too. He looked kind of mean behind those darkest dark glasses, but at last getting an Indian into the autograph album would make the day just about perfect, wouldn't it. Couldn't hurt to try, could it? Maybe if I said to him—

Whomp
, the sound of hooves striking wood next to my ear sent me sideways. Startled, I reeled back from the corral alley I was passing. In the confusion, it took me a moment to catch up with what was happening. Horses were being hazed in for the bareback riding, and barebacks generally were unruly cayuses fresh off the range and not accustomed to being corraled as the saddle broncs were. This first one being herded through from the holding pen was spooked by the cutting gate that would send it to a bucking chute and was trying to kick its way out, hind end first. Almost crosswise in the narrow corral enclosure with its rump toward me, the snorty bronc kept on kicking up a ruckus despite the swearing efforts of the corral crew. “Whoa, hoss,” I contributed uselessly as I backed away farther, ready to continue on my way. But then. Then the agitated horse turned enough that I caught sight of the brand on its hip, the double letters registering on me as if still hot off the branding iron.

I stood there like a complete moron, unable to take my eyes off the
WW
in the horseflesh. It didn't take any figuring out that the same would be on all the broncs in the bareback bucking string. No way had this ever entered my mind, that Wendell Williamson, livestock contractor to rodeos though he was, might furnish Double W bucking stock to this one all the way across the state. But perfectly like the next thing in a nightmare, here came the familiar braying voice in back of the milling broncs and the frustrated corral crew. “Don't let 'em skin themselves up on the cutting gate, damn it. These nags are worth money, don'tcha know.”

In horror, now I could see the chesty figure through the corral rails. Sparrowhead, flapping a gunnysack at the hung-up bronc and barging in on the hard-pressed corral wranglers. My blood drained away.

“Here, let me handle the sonofabitching thing myself—” He broke off a hotter streak of swearing and scrabbled up onto the corral to run the cutting gate. Instinctively I backed away fast, but he spotted me. The beady expression of recogniton on the puffy face expanded into something far worse.

“Hey, you, Buckshot! Get your thieving butt over here, I want that arrowhead back!”

I bolted.

Behind me I heard Sparrowhead hollering for the tribal police. Luckily I was able to dodge out of sight around the corrals and back to the arena before the gate cops knew what was up. Every lick of sense told me, though, it would not take long before they tried to sort me out of the crowd. Heart beating like a jackhammer, I scrambled up the stairs beside the bucking chutes to reach through the platform opening and grab Herman's ankle. “Hah?” I heard him let out, before he had the good sense to glance down and realize it was me.

He descended as fast as I had gone up, ducking behind a head-high trash bin of the kind called a green elephant where I was hiding. “Donny, what is it? You look like losing your scalp.”

“We're in trouble up the yanger,” I whimpered.

“Don't want that, I betcha.” Herman waited for translation and explanation, hanging on every word as the story tumbled out of me about how I took the arrowhead when I left the ranch and Sparrowhead now wanted it back to the extent of siccing the Crow cops on me.

When I was finished, he poked his hat up as if to get a closer look at me. Too close for comfort.

“Took. As means, stealed?”

“No! I found it in the creek, fair and square. You said it yourself, sharp eyes and light fingers. I mean, Sparrowhead thinks it's his because he owns the whole place, but why isn't it just as much mine, for seeing it in the creek when nobody else had since before Columbus and—”

He held up a hand to halt any more explanation. “Let's think over. Maybe give it him back?”

“No.”
I moaned it this time. “Herman, listen. It's like when you were a chicken hunter. Didn't you take only what you needed? I—I can't really explain it, but the arrowhead is like that to me. Something I need to have.”

“Different case, that is.” His expression changed, in my favor. He cast a look around the rodeo grounds and that horse-high, hog-tight fence. “We must get you away.”

There was this about Herman. When he really gave something a think, you could see him generating a brainstorm until his eyes lit up, somehow even the glass one. That happened now, as I listened with every pore open to hope while he assuredly outlined the
eye-dea
to me. Anything was better than being arrested and branded a thief and handed over to the authorities who would send me to the poorfarm for kids the other side of the mountains and I'd lose Gram and my life would go right down the crapper. But Herman's plan set off all kinds of fresh worries in me.

“You—you're sure that'll work? I mean, they'll
know
, won't they? I don't think I can—”

“You betcha you can.” He had more than enough confidence for both of us, not necessarily a good sign. “Come on, no time is there to waste.”

Scared half out of my wits as I kept looking for the trooper hats of Crow cops to show up, I stuck tight by his side as we sifted along the arena corral where people were watching the rodeo from the backs of pickups and the fenders of their cars, blending in as best we could.

At last safely reaching the area of food booths and crafts tables and so on, we made straight for the homemade
SLEWFOOT ENTERPRIZES
camper, where the bearlike Indian man sprang up from his leatherwork when he saw us coming.

“Howdy. You fellows collectors, maybe? 'Cause I got some nice things stashed in the camper here. Buffalo skulls and like that.”

“Hah-uh.” Herman shook off that approach, glancing over his shoulder in one direction while I nervously checked over mine in the other. “Something else, we are in hurry for.”

“In a hurry, huh? Funny, you don't look like fugitives from a chain gang.” Humorous as that theoretically was, there was small-eyed suspicion behind it as the Indian vendor studied the pair of us trying too hard to compose ourselves. “Anyhow, the something else. What might that be?”

“Your help, ja?” So saying, Herman extracted a twenty-dollar bill from his billfold but held on to it.

“Huh, twenty smackers,” the Indian acknowledged the sight of the cash, “that's starting to look like the price on something else.” He jerked his head toward the rear of the camper. “Step around the tepee on wheels here and let's palaver.”

Back there out of sight, I breathed slightly easier. Waiting to hear what we had to say, the Indian stood there broad as a bear. Even his head looked like a grizzly's, round and low on his shoulders. Herman couldn't wait to ask. “You are Apache, maybe? Winnetou, you know about?”

“Winnie who?”

“Not now, okay?” I hissed to Herman.

“Apaches aren't from around here, friend,” the Indian helped me out in putting us past any further Karl May enthusiasms out of Herman. “I'm Blackfoot. Louie Slewfoot, to boot,” he introduced himself, Herman and I shaking hands with him the proper soft Indian way while keeping our eyes off his clubfoot that jutted almost sideways from the other one.

Briskly he got down to business. “What can I do for you to loosen your grip on poor old Andy Jackson there,” he indicated the twenty-dollar bill in Herman's fist. “Look, he's turned green.”

Herman glanced at me, I endorsed what he was about to say with a sickly smile, and he spoke the momentous words that would either save my skin or not.

“Dress up Donny like fancy-dancer. Long enough to get him out from here.”

“Whoa, no way.” Louie Slewfoot backed away a lame step, laughing in disbelief. “These costumes are sort of sacred to Indian people, you can't just wear them for Halloween.” He gave me a sympathetic wink. “Nothing personal, cowboy, but them freckles of yours are a long way from Indian.”

“Hey, that's not fair,” I bridled. “I have an Indian name even, Red Chief. Nickname, I mean.”

“Sure you do,” he rolled his eyes, “and I'm Tonto.”

“And look at my moccasins, don't they count? They're Blackfoot, like you.” His heavy dark eyebrows drew down as he took a good look, but that was the extent of it. “And I went to school some at Heart Butte with Indian kids,” I persisted insistently, “and—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he butted in, “all of that gives you full standing in the Whooptydoo tribe, chiefie, but I can't go around duding up a white kid in—”

“How about this, then,” I butted right back, reaching the arrowhead out of my pocket and peeling back enough of its condom sheath to flash the slick black obsidian to him in my palm.

“Wah.” Silent now, he put a hand toward the shiny black stone, but didn't touch it. “That's big medicine. Where'd you git it?”

“It's, uh, been in the family.”

“Tell him all, Donny,” Herman warned before wisely hustlng off toward the front of the camper to keep a lookout.

I spilled the whole tale of arrowhead and Sparrowhead, Louie Slewfoot listening without ever taking his gaze off the obsidian gleam of it.

When I was done, he laughed over the Tuffies as Herman had, saying, “Pretty smart, but the problem with them things is they can spring a leak and you end up with something you wasn't expecting.” That explained it! Why the arrowhead sometimes worked like a charm and sometimes didn't, if its luck could leak out like that. Louie had the way to fix the matter, reaching onto his table of leather goods and tossing me a small leather sack on a buckskin thong. “Let's git it out of its cock socks and into a medicine pouch, hokay? Hang it around your neck and treat it right if you don't want to lose the big medicine.”

At the end of that, he growled deep in his throat. “That wampus cat, Williamson. He runs the Gobble Gobble You like the whole earth is his. We have to chase its goddamn cattle off the rez land all the time. The rich sonofabitch sure to hell don't need any big medicine like that.” With something like an animal grin, he sized me up in a new way. “Dearie dearie goddamn,” he expressed, which went straight into my cussing collection. “How did I git myself into this, fixing you up as a fancy-dancer? Gonna take some doing.” He laughed so low it barely came out. “But it'd be a helluva good joke on these Crows, wouldn't it. They was on Custer's side, you know. Bastard scouts for Yellow Hair.”