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ALTHOUGH HERMAN was furrowing his brow again after the encounter with Smiley, it took more than a used-up rodeo clown to dent my spirits, and I nearly trod on the foreman’s heels into the bunkhouse. The one long single room was the ranch standard in those days, never any bargain, with discolored tan beaverboard walls and bare wooden floor and iron-frame cots in two rows and a potbellied stove and a battered table with chairs that had rungs missing. Merely quarters for drifting laborers who came and went with the seasons, the bunkhouse for me was a palace where I’d be in with grown men, actual haymakers, a full-fledged member of the crew. Beat that, at eleven going on twelve.
Gab stopped as the foreman stepped in, the hoboes apparently not short of conversation anytime and anywhere. As Herman and I closely followed Jones in, I looked around real quick in concern about the bunk situation, and saw there were two empty ones off in a corner. Highpockets told me with a simple shift of his eyes in that direction that he had saved those for us, and we lost no time in unrolling our bedrolls and chucking the duffel out of the way.
“We’ll get going on the machinery pretty quick, the mowers and stacker can be greased up and the rakes can have new teeth put in, any fix-up you see that needs doing,” the foreman was addressing us all. “First order of business, though, is right here.” Reaching into his hip pocket, he began handing out small leather belts of a kind Herman and I alone recognized.
“What’s these for?” Peerless asked suspiciously, turning his over like it was a snare of some sort.
“Those beat-up lids of yours,” Jones made plain with a tap to his own trim Stetson. “Diamond Buckle hatbands. The owner thinks these’ll add a bit of style, he’s big on that. Give you the feeling of working on a first-class place.”
There was a general moment of uncertainty, going back to the rants in the hobo jungle about the rich with their heel in the face of the poor. This was a step up from that, for sure, but even so it took some thinking about wearing another man’s brand on yourself.
“Might as well tell you the rest now that you’re signed on,” the foreman said into the general silence. “It’s Rags Rasmussen that owns this spread. World champion bronc rider, got the diamond belt buckle to prove it. Heard of him, haven’t you?” he appealed to Highpockets.
“More or less,” Highpockets squared himself up as the Big Ole for the hobo contingent. “We don’t exactly ride in the same fashion, boxcars instead of broncoes.”
Peerless couldn’t keep from harping. “If I had any kind of a diamond and this Rasmussen had a feather up his butt, we’d both be tickled.”
“You’re bellyaching over nothing,” Highpockets shut him down. “If you’d ridden as many killer horses as that man must’ve, you might have something to show for it, too.” He returned his attention to Jones. “We can maybe stand a little fancying up, if that’s all there is to it,” he decided for the hobo group after a glance around at how the hatbands were being received. Midnight Frankie was scratching the back of the clasp of his with a jackknife to see if it was real silver. “Imagine, the head that wears the crown sharing a touch of it,” Shakespeare said, installing his band on a hat that had seen thousands of suns and the grime of countless fields. Pooch watched to see that it was all right to put his on. Harv pondered his, taking no account of what anyone else was doing, then shined the buckle up on his sleeve and fitted the band on. Herman and I had no qualms about dressing up our battered Stetsons, proud to share the Diamond Buckle, even it was the size of a locket. All we lacked now was the owner of that championship brand, and of the hay land that would give us work and wages and withdrawal from the treacherous world for the rest of the summer.
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“ALL RIGHT, let’s get to work.” Jones led the way out of the bunkhouse, the crew so various in so many other ways in hatbanded unison as we followed him across the yard toward the machine shed, a structure open on one side so the workhorses could be backed in to the tongues of the mowers and dump rakes and buckrakes and hooked up right there under shelter, a perfect setup most ranches were too lazy to do and left the haying equipment scattered around to rust in the weather. Let’s hear it for the Diamond Buckle, my head sang with the help of my hatband. I had to stop myself from skipping, everything in me going pitty-pat about this haymaking dream come true.
Until Herman once again dropped back, motioning me to come close enough for a whisper. When I did, he made my heart stop by asking:
“Donny? What are sickles?”
27.