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—”