“I bet,” Jones said with a straight face.
“Suzie Q there,” Rags said offhandedly, “is only gonna be here overnight until we pull out for the Reno show, first thing in the morning. She’s an exhibition rider, stands up in the saddle at full gallop and that sort of thing. Came along with me because she says she needs a refreshing whiff of country air.”
Jones actually laughed. “Is that what it’s called these days?”
“Don’t have such a dirty mind, Jonesie,” Rags drawled. Herman’s expression said he wished he’d kept me in the man talk in the bunkhouse. “Saw on the way in you’re managing to put up some hay,” we heard Rags turn businesslike in his casual way. “How’d you make out on the hiring?”
“Old hands from the jungle, same as ever, except for”—Jones swept a hand toward where we were standing stock-still as doorposts in the shop doorway—“our Quiz Kid stacker driver and his one-eyed grandpa from the Alps.”
“That’s different. Gives the place a little foreign flavor.” Rags cocked a look across the yard at Herman and me. “Let me take a wild guess,” he said as he came over to shake hands, “which of you is the Alpine one-eyed jack.”
“Hah! I fit that description, right up to the glass peeper,” Herman proclaimed, delivering him a handshake that made him wince.
“Hey, be careful,” Rags protested good-naturedly enough, “that’s the hand I dance with.”
Pumped up as I was in other ways, I took care to shake with him almost soft as Indian style, blurting, “We saw you ride at Crow Fair!”
“Did you now.” Rags showed a long-jawed grin. “You had to look quick, the way that hoss had me coming and going.”
“Buzzard Head!” Herman exclaimed. “You rided him until the whistler.”
“I’m a fortunate old kid,” the best bronc rider on earth said modestly. “Old Buzzard could have piled me half a dozen times in that ride, but I could feel every move he was gonna make just a hair ahead of when he’d do it. It’s all in the timing, you know, making the right move at the right time.”
? ? ?
HOLY WOW. Hearing the inside skinny from Rags Rasmussen on a winning ride had both Herman and me listening open-mouthed.
“Well, glad to have you on the crew,” Rags said by way of excusing himself as he turned to head for the house. “Got company waiting.”
“Tell you what,” Herman said under his breath when Rags was just out of earshot. “Ask for making the phone call, before he goes in.”
I was flustered. “Ask Rags? Right now?”
“He is like Winnetou, a knight of the West,” Herman whispered into my ear, as if this were a sure thing, like Fingerspitzengefühl. “Hurry, ask.”
“Uhm, can I please ask sort of a favor?” My voice was so loud and shrill it halted Rags halfway across the yard. “I need to make a phone call real bad. I mean, I won’t get in your way with the company or anything, honest.”
Jones had been heading for his own quarters, but my request whirled him back toward us. “Hey, you, anybody who’s ever been on a ranch ought to know better,” he put me in my place with a warning finger and simultaneously accused Herman with a scowl. “We can’t run the damn outfit with every yayhoo in the bunkhouse trotting up here whenever he wants and tying up the phone and costing us—”
“Simmer down, Jonesie.” Rags held up a hand to quell the outburst and asked me curiously, “What’s all the hurry-up on a phone call?”
“To my sick grandma.” Seeing Jones look suspiciously at Herman, supposedly my only relative, I hastily inserted, “On the other side of my family. She’s in the hospital in Great Falls, from an awful operation she had to have. It’s a way long story.”
Rags rubbed his jaw, a gesture I have always associated with sharpening what comes out the mouth next, as smart guys seem to do it. “Sounds like you have reason enough to get on that phone. Come on in.” He held up a soothing hand to stop Jones’s sputtering protest. “It’s all right, Jonesie. The exception proves the rule, or something like that.”
On our way to the house, Rags limped more than a little, which alarmed me no end. Manners flung to hell, I outright asked the worst: “Did a bronc bust you up, there in Helena?”
“Naw, I drew a sidewinder hoss called Snow Snake that gave me a bad time and sort of banged my knee against the chute gate coming out, is all.” He grimaced in a way that had nothing to do with the knee as we climbed the porch steps. “What’s worse, I rode the crowbait, but only placed.” He raised his eyebrows to indicate upstairs, where a certain somebody was getting herself comfortable. “Luckily a consolation prize was waiting.”