The tense chute crew stood ready until the man in the saddle said, cool as can be, “Open.”
Then the gate was flung wide, and the bronc erupted out of the chute, twisting its hindquarters in midair that initial breathtaking jump. Buzzard Head alit into the arena practically turned around and facing us, as if to convey, You wanted to see what a real horse can do, here it is. Instantly the buckskin bronc went airborne again, throwing itself full circle in the opposite direction from the first maneuver, snapping Rags from one side to the other like cracking a whip.
“Damn, it’s a sunfisher,” my fear found words.
Herman needed no translation of that, the crazily bucking creature contorting in its leaps as if to show its belly to the sun. He worried in return, “The picker-ups, they can’t get to Rags neither if he don’t fall.”
I saw what he meant. The pair of Indian pickup men, whose job it was to trail the action at a little distance and swoop in on their spotted horses to pluck the rider off after the whistle blew, were driven away by the bronc’s hind hooves cutting the air wickedly at every unpredictable twist and turn. Buzzard Head plainly hated everything on four legs as well as two. Now even if Rags survived atop the murderous horse for the full ride, he would have to get out of the trap of stirrups by himself. “Meat wagon,” the gray-braided Crow in back of us issued flatly, sending one of the other Indians swiftly down the steps to the arena gate where the ambulance and its crew waited outside.
An Oooh ran through the crowd as the bronc levitated as high as a horse can go, the ugly head ducking from side to side, trying to yank the rope from Rags’s grasp. Possibly the only person there on that never-to-be-forgotten day who thought the rider stood a chance as Buzzard Head writhed and twisted and plunged through its bag of tricks was Rags himself, athletically matching split-second reactions to those of the bronc, his long form rebounding from every dodge and dive as if he was made of rubber. I suppose a question for the ages is, What is so spellbinding about watching a man ride an uncooperative horse? Probably something that goes far, far back, the contest between human will and what it finds to match itself against. At least that is the justification for the sport of rodeo, if it needs any. I was rubbing the obsidian arrowhead so hard my fingers went numb as we watched the sunfishing horse do its best and worst, but Rags stayed in the saddle, even as his hat flew off, bouncing onto the horse’s rump, then to the ground as if Buzzard Head meant to throw the man off his back piece by piece.
Time never passed so slowly. But at last, after the ten-second eternity of Rags Rasmussen’s immortal ride, the whistle blew.
“Jump, right quick!” Herman shouted, as carried away as I was, watching the pickup men futilely trying to spur in on the furiously kicking bronc.
Then, in a feat as unlikely as sticking in the saddle the way he had, Rags shed the stirrups in a lightning backward kick and simultaneously vaulted off in a running dismount. Before Buzzard Head could locate and trample him, the pickup men forced their horses in between, letting Rags saunter to the safety of the chutes, picking up his hat on the way and sailing it up to the pretty woman whistle judge in the announcer’s booth.
That great ride, I knew even then, was the legendary kind that would have people saying for years after, I was there that day, and by the luck of the arrowhead or some other working of fate, now I was one of them, forever. It was left to Herman to put the moment into words.
“That was bee-yoot-iffle.”
? ? ?
THEN CAME THIS, all because I had to use the rodeo version of a convenience, one of the outhouses behind the corrals.