By now the immaculate lanky figure was nearing the chutes and being greeted by fellow contestants. A calf roper looping out his lariat called out, “How’s it hanging, Rags?”
“Long as a bull snake,” the champion bronc rider of the world said back, loose and easy. “Got to be careful I don’t step on it.”
Now, that was man talk. Imagine how my vocabulary would increase around somebody like him. Swamped with hero worship, I could think of only one thing to do, and I did it—a little frantically, but I did it. “I’ll be right back,” I yipped to Herman, and charged over to the most famous cowboy there was, yanking the album out from my belt as I ran.
“Rags? I mean, Mr. Rasmussen. Can I get your autograph, huh, can I?”
He broke stride enough to give me a curious glance.
“I’m helluva sorry to bother you,” I bleated, the pitch of my voice all over the place. “I know you’re getting ready to ride and everything, but this is maybe the only chance to put you in my book and I’m trying to get really famous people in it and you’re right here and—please?”
Amused at my prattling, he smiled and offered up in the same easy drawl as before, “Guess I don’t see why not, if it’s gonna put me in such highfalutin’ company.”
He handed me his chaps to hold, taking the autograph book in return, a swap so momentous it nearly made me keel over. A kid in Cleveland with the pitcher’s glove of Bob Feller bestowed on him, an eleven-year-old New Yorker gripping Joe DiMaggio’s bat—it was that kind of dizzying moment of experience, unexpected and unforgettable, a touch of greatness tingling all through the lucky recipient. Resting the autograph book on the front fender of the Cadillac, Rags Rasmussen started writing. Not merely his signature, I saw with a thrill. An inscription, from the way he was going at it! World championship words, right in there with the observations on life by the night writer Kerouac and the sage old Senator Ridpath. At this rate, the autograph album was headed for Believe It or Not! fame in no time.
“Hey, Rags,” a hazer at the nearest bucking chute hollered to him, “better come look over your rigging. You’re up in this first go-round.”
“Great literature takes time, Charlie. Be right there.”
When you lift your hat,
to ladies and that,
make sure you have something upstairs
besides a collection of hairs.
“There you go,” he said, his signature and all the rest on the page in Kwik-Klik purple ink magically matching his riding chaps—clear as anything, a sign to me this was meant to happen. Lucky arrowhead, happy coincidence, the spitzen finger that had put Herman and me in this place at this time, something finally was working in my favor this loco summer. Sky-high about my newly found good fortune, I heard, as in a haze, Rags Rasmussen talking to me almost as an equal. “Seen that little ditty on the bunkhouse wall at the old Circle X ranch down in the Big Hole country, a time ago. Wasn’t much older than you when I started breakin’ horses for outfits like that.” He gave me a look up and down and a long-jawed grin. “Figured it was worth passing along to somebody who knows how to wear a rodeo shirt.”
“Wow, yeah! I mean, thanks a million,” I fumbled out my appreciation for his supremely generous contribution to the autograph book, hugging it to myelf as though it might get away. Unwilling to let go of these moments of glory with him, I blurted, “Can I ask, what horse did you draw today?”
He shifted from one long leg to the other. “Aw, sort of a crowbait—” He broke off into a rueful laugh and scratched an ear. “Guess I hadn’t ought to use that word around here. Anyway, I pulled out of the hat a little something called Buzzard Head.”
Hearing that just about bowled me over. Talk about a Believe It or Not! moment. Buzzard Head was famous—the notorious kind of famous—as the most wicked bucking horse on the rodeo circuit, the bronc that had never been ridden. Through the years, contestants at Cheyenne, Pendleton, Great Falls, Cody, Calgary, all the big rodeos, had done their best to stay in the saddle for ten seconds aboard Buzzard Head, and had eaten arena dirt for their trouble. Here was the matchup that people would talk about ever after, the bronc that threw them all and the rider who was never thrown, and Herman and I, as fate and luck and blind coincidence would have it, were on hand to see history made.
When I had my breath back, I said with more fervor than diplomacy, “Good luck in riding to the whistle.”
“Might need it,” Rags Rasmussen said agreeably. “Get yourself a good seat and enjoy the doings.” Flopping his chaps over a shoulder, he strolled off to meet the meanest horse imaginable as if he hadn’t a worry in the world.
Herman had come up behind me and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Some man, he is. Like Old Shatterhand, cool custard, hah?”
“Cool customer,” I fixed that, still idolizing the strolling figure in his riding finery. “Look at him, not worried at all about that cayuse in the chute.”