“Hokay, now we need to git Fancy Dan here past the rodeo chief,” he instructed as he set off toward the bucking chutes, motioning us on behind. “Remember now, you’re not Donny the wanted kid, you’re my nephew Marvin.” He cautioned Herman, “Leave the rodeo chief to me. Henry Swift Pony. He’s not a real chief, but he’s a bossy SOB even for a Crow and somebody has to run the show.”
With my outfit jingling and jangling and Herman fretting that he hoped nothing happened to the moccasins in this, we trailed after Louie’s slewfooted gait, both of us unsure how this was going, especially when he did not turn aside at all as the biggest Crow policeman imaginable, black braids down to his shiny badge, appeared from the back of the chutes and beside him, complaining loudly about the lack of arrest of a certain thieving runt of a kid, Wendell Williamson.
The shaking of my feathers and ankle bells had nothing to do with dance steps. I was convinced my life was going to end then and there, amid horse manure and moccasin tracks. In that big word incarceration, one way or another.
“Th-that’s Sparrowhead,” I quavered to Herman, wanting to turn and run.
“I guessed so,” he grunted back, keeping right on toward Louie and the oncoming lethal pair. “Don’t be horrorfied,” he bucked me up, as if being scared to death was that easy to be rid of. “This is where you are Red Chief, brave as anything.” I swear he sounded straight off a page of Karl May. “Big medicine in your pouch, remember.” His words made me feel the presence of the arrowhead resting against my chest. “Walk like Winnetou and Manitou are with you, the earth is your hunting ground.” I couldn’t match his steady stride, but I did square my shoulders beneath the epaulets and skin shirt and work my eagle wing rig as if flying on the ground and marched to the jingle of my bells.
Still, as Louie barreled along on his collision course with Sparrowhead and the Crow version of a harness bull, I said tremulously out the side of my mouth, “Is he gonna turn us in?”
“We find out. Keep walking like you got no business but dancing fancy, Red Chief.”
Of all things, Louie planted himself in the path of the oncoming two men. Hunched like a bear spotting prey, he gave the Crow policeman a wicked grin and said:
“Howdy, Constable. Glad to see you keeping the peace. No ghosts of Custer around or anything.”
The big Crow cop glared, snapped, “I don’t have time for fool talk,” and stepped around him. Giving the Indians an exasperated look, Wendell Williamson sidestepped along with the cop while Herman and I swept past, unnoticed.
? ? ?
“THAT WAS SORT of close,” Louie Slewfoot remarked when he caught up with us at the bucking chutes. “Hokay, next act. Git in back of the green elephant there and stay out of sight until I tell you.” He pointed me to a big trash bin, and as for Herman, “You can make yourself useful by standing at one end and sort of blocking the view. Pretend like you’re watching the rodeo and you don’t know him or me from Sitting Bull.”
We took our places, and Louie clomped around to face the platform above the bucking chutes, cupping his hands to his mouth. “See you about something, Henry?” he hollered up to the man in charge. “Won’t take time at all.”
Peeking past the edge of the trash bin, I could see the rodeo chief turn to him, stone-faced behind the dark sunglasses, his braids more than ever like whips of authority down over his shoulders. “You again, is it, Slewfoot. I gave you the booth spot you pestered the crap out of me for. What’s eating you now? If you weren’t so frigging good at the squaw work, I wouldn’t let your blanket-ass butt in here.”
“Big frigging if, Henry, and you know it,” Louie gave no ground. “Don’t be giving me a bad time when I’m trying to perk up your rodeo with something special, huh? My nephew, Marvin here. Brung him to show you spazzes how dancing’s done at Heart Butte.”
Henry Swift Pony laughed without any humor whatsoever. “Pull my other one, Louie. Nothing doing, we have all the entrants we need.” Herman, nearly toppling over in their direction to hear this, looked as anguished as I felt.
Louie ignored the turndown and called out to me, “Marvin! Come show Mr. Swift Pony what a fancy-dancer looks like.”
I stepped out from behind the green elephant.
From his platform perch, the head Crow looked me over for half a minute, whipping off his dark glasses to see if the feathered rig on my back was truly the bald eagle wing outfit, and stopping at my moccasins. My heart thumping a mighty rhythm, I jigged enough to make the eagle feathers shimmer and the anklet bells ring-a-ling-ling. Helpfully or not, Herman abandoned his fixed casualness of staring into the arena to turn around and exclaim, “Some outfit!”
With a dip of his head, Henry Swift Pony had to agree, conceding to Louie: “He’s got it all on, for sure. Fine, chuck him in with the other kids. But at the tail end.”