“You are not making joke like I thought, hah?” he finally more or less conceded. “And maybe your finger is on the nose about where we must git to,” he went even further, after I’d insisted that the arrowhead in its pouch under my shirt was showing it was big medicine.
“Powerful sure about spot on map, you are.” Eyeing me in my most rambunctious red-in-the-head state of mind, Herman spoke very carefully. “Big question is, Donny, how to git anywheres.” He glanced over his shoulder at the busloads of tour groups coming and going as free as the four winds. “Can’t talk sweet to a driver, don’t we wish it was easy as pies, and go on dog bus like seeing the sights, tra la la,” he said with a deep and helpless longing for our old days as comparatively innocent cross-country passengers.
? ? ?
WHO KNOWS how these things happen, what whiz of a trick the mind will pull when you’re least expecting it. Suddenly my thinking apparatus was jogged, the teasing smidgen about Yellowstone standing out clear as purple ink on the white paper of the autograph book. “Herman, I’ve got it! What you just said! Idea!”
Misunderstanding me, he shook his head so hard it was a wonder his hat didn’t fall off. “Donny, no! We cannot go begging drivers for tickets or sneaking on bus or such. They will report us, snap like that”—he snapped his fingers like a shot—“to rangers and rangers to sheriff and sheriff to FBI and I will be locked up until cows trot home and you, you will be put in—” He hesitated to even speak my jail word, orphanage.
“Huh-uh, that’s not what I meant,” I feverishly shook off his concern in turn. “I just finally got reminded of something. Listen up, okay?”
Duly hanging on my every word as I explained my brainstorm, he couldn’t help still being dubious.
“It better work right. Or ptfft—” He nodded an inch, plenty indicative, to a passing pair of park rangers looking as seriously loaded with authority in their flat hats and badges as any Crow cops.
? ? ?
WITH NO OTHER real choice, he accompanied me to the park headquarters, and in we went to the WONDERS OF YELLOWSTONE exhibit, and up to the information counter manned by a gray-headed ranger who no doubt had heard every possible tourist tale of mishap, including the one we were about to try on him. It didn’t help, either, that despite my coaching, Herman pronounced what we needed as the infirmary.
Maybe his sympathy was simply feigned, but the ranger did peer over the counter as I made myself look miserable as possible, and accorded me, “Oh, the poor kid.” Poor, yeah, little did he know. Anyway, he directed us to the infirmary, and down a couple of hallways and around enough corners, we came to a door with that sign on it.
As he found a place to sit and wait outside the office, Herman had some last jitters about me doing this alone, but I pointed out that we didn’t want the enemy alien matter to crop up somehow due to a mess of paperwork, did we, and he had to agree he’d better stay absent. “Be brave as anything, like Winnetou and Red Chief,” he resorted to again. I fished the necessary item out of the duffel and into my jacket pocket, and with heart pounding, bravely I hoped, stepped into where they treated the infirm.
In the waiting room, a full-lipped and generously lipsticked young woman who reminded me strongly of Letty, except her crisp uniform was a nurse’s and I could not spot her name stitched on in the best place, was busy opening up for the day. Probably figuring I had taken a wrong turn in seeking the restroom, she smiled at me in a seasoned way. “Hello there, can I help you find something?”
“Fishbone,” I croaked, pointing to my throat.
“My goodness”—her manner changed that quick—“we need to take care of that, don’t we.” Plucking up an admittance form and sitting right down to administer it, she peeked past me, beginning to look perturbed. “Isn’t there anyone with you?”
“They’re at the geyser.” I gagged some more. “I was supposed to catch up. Slept late, breakfast was slow.”
The perturbed expression did not leave her, but she dropped the form. “We’ll have to get you on paper afterward, it sounds like. Right this way.” Her uniform swishing, she escorted me to the office off the waiting room and stuck her head in. “Throat case, Doc, the rainbow trout special strikes again. Give a shout if I’m needed, I’m still catching up at the desk.”
The doctor was slipping on his starchy-clean white office coat as I entered the medical inner sanctum trying to keep my chin up like the bravest Indian who ever walked in moccasins. Not anything like I expected, with a surprising amount of gray in his crew cut and a twinkle in his eye, he greeted me with a smile as professional as the nurse’s even though I was a surprise patient.