Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig
“Welcome to Crow Fair, don’t get too close to the horses.” The gray-haired Number One Indian made short work of us and swung back to overseeing the commotion in the chutes beneath our feet where the rigging crew was wrestling saddles onto thrashing broncs.
Establishing ourselves at the far end of a long bench softened by gunnysack cushions filled with cattail reeds—boy, these Crows knew how to do things—Herman put his attention to the printed program that listed saddle bronc riding, calf roping, steer wrestling, barrel racing, bareback riding, and of course, the fancy-dancing exhibition. “Same as circus, many acts,” he expressed in satisfaction as I read over his shoulder. But then, coming to the names of the broncs the riders had drawn, Widowmaker and Funeral Wagon and Dive Bomber and similar ones, he nudged me in concern. “Sounds like war, this buckjumping.”
I had no time to reassure him on that as the saddle bronc riding explosively got underway almost beneath where we sat, with an Indian contestant named Joe Earthboy sailing out of the chute on a nasty high-kicking horse called Dynamite Keg. Earthboy and airborne animal became a swirl of dust and leather and mane and tail as the crowd cheered and the announcer chanted encouragement. A full few seconds before the timer’s whistle, the rider flew up and away from the bronc as if dynamite had gone off under him, all right. “Ow,” Herman sympathized as Earthboy met the dirt, gingerly picked himself up, and limped out of the arena.
Which set the tone for that go-round, contestant after contestant getting piled without coming close to completing the ride. By now it was obvious Crow Fair did not fool around in staging bucking contests. Deserving of their blood-and-guts names, these clearly were the biggest, meanest, most treacherous horses available on the professional circuit, as veteran in their way as the career rodeo cowboys who tried to master them. Watching these hoofed terrors with Herman swaying next to me as if he felt every jolt in the saddle himself, I couldn’t stop my nerves from twanging about Rags Rasmussen’s chances on the monarch of them all, Buzzard Head.
• • •
ALL THE WHILE, I also was having the time of my life. Beside me, Herman was entranced in a Karl May knights-of-the-prairie way as he ohhed and ahhed at the spectacle of cowboys and broncos whirling like tornadoes in the arena. We were sitting pretty in the shade in the best seats in the rodeo grounds, comfy as mattress testers, while an acre of sunburn was occurring in the sweltering grandstand across the way. The announcer’s steady patter overhead was as soothing to my ears as a cat’s purr, filling time between bucking contestants by joking with the rodeo clown down in the arena as he went through his antics in overalls six sizes too large and a floppy orange wig. Like committing poetry to memory, I took in every word of their beloved old corny routines, as when the clown hollered up to the booth that he hated to leave such a good job as dodging broncs and Brahma bulls but he needed to move to Arizona for his seenus trouble. “Hey, Curly, don’t you mean ‘sinus’ trouble?” I could have recited the deep-voiced announcer’s line right along with him. “Nope.” The clown made the most dejected face ever seen, and I knew this part by heart, too: “The trouble is, I was out with another fellow’s wife, and he seen us.”
Hooting and hollering, the crowd reliably responded as if that were the height of humor, while Herman slapped me on the back and nearly fell off his gunnysack seat guffawing and I laughed as hard as if I hadn’t heard that mossy joke at every rodeo I had ever been to. Life can tickle you in the ribs surprisingly when it’s not digging its thumb in.
• • •
ALL OF WHICH is a way of saying, what an emotion came over me in that precious space of time at Crow Fair. For the first time that unhinged summer, I felt like I was where I belonged. Around horses and cattle and men of the ranches and reservations, and the smell of hay in the fields and the ripple of a willowed creek where magpies chattered. Most of all, I suppose, because he was the author of this turnaround of our lives, in the company of halfway wizardly Herman, the pair of us blest with freedom of the road wherever the dog bus ran, enjoying ourselves to the limit at this peaceable grown-up game of cowboys and Indians. This is not the prettiest description of a perfect moment, but it was a king hell bastard of a feeling, filling me almost to bursting.
• • •
EVEN THE INTRODUCTION of danger as the next rider was announced—“Here’s the matchup we’ve all been waiting for,” the announcer’s voice hushed as if on the brink of something colossal, “down in chute number six, the reigning world champion in this event, Rags Rasmussen, on a pony that has never been ridden, Buzzard Head!”—felt like it fit with the fullness of the day. Secretly, I would have given anything to be in those Diamond Buckle boots snugging into the stirrups down there on the notorious horse that the riding champ of all mankind was easing onto. A fantasy like that knows no logic and common sense, of course, because the most treacherous hazard in all of rodeo was hanging up a foot in a stirrup while being thrown and getting dragged by a saddled bronc determined to kick the life out of its trapped victim. While my imagination naturally pasted me into Rags Rasmussen’s place as he rode to the top of his profession, I nonetheless fervently fingered the arrowhead in my pocket for whatever luck it might bring in his matchup against the killer horse.
Herman looked as breathless as I felt, on the edge of his seat as we craned to see into the chute below, watching Rags make his preparations, his purple chaps vivid against the buckskin flanks of the waiting horse. Buzzard Head plainly deserved its name, with a big Roman nose and cold, mean eyes at the end of a droopy neck. Rags took his own sweet time getting ready, joking to the chute crew that they might at least have dabbed some chewing gum in the saddle to help him stick on, casually pocketing his world championship diamond ring so it wouldn’t catch in the rigging and yank his finger off, tugging his hat down tight, flexing his boots into the stirrups until it felt right. Then, every motion easy but practiced, one hand gripping the hackamore rope and the other high in the air according to the rules, spurs poised over the point of the bronc’s shoulders, he leaned back almost sleepily in the saddle, balanced against the catapult release he knew was coming. Throughout this, the glassy-eyed horse stayed deathly still, according to reputation saving itself up to attempt murder in the arena.
The tense chute crew stood ready until the man in the saddle said, cool as can be, “Open.”
Then the gate was flung wide, and the bronc erupted out of the chute, twisting its hindquarters in midair that initial breathtaking jump. Buzzard Head alit into the arena practically turned around and facing us, as if to convey, You wanted to see what a real horse can do, here it is. Instantly the buckskin bronc went airborne again, throwing itself full circle in the opposite direction from the first maneuver, snapping Rags from one side to the other like cracking a whip.
“Damn, it’s a sunfisher,” my fear found words.
Herman needed no translation of that, the crazily bucking creature contorting in its leaps as if to show its belly to the sun. He worried in return, “The picker-ups, they can’t get to Rags neither if he don’t fall.”
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
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.”
• • •
THEN 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.
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“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.”