by Ivan Doig
AND
WHITE FRIENDS
CROW FAIR
A PROUD TRADITION
SINCE 1904
CROW FAIR PRINCESS 1951
VALENTINA BUFFALO CHILD
SPONSORED BY THE WIGWAM CAFE
And so on. The genuine thing for us, though, was the Crow nation saddled up in its glory, the horses’ hooves stirring up little eddies of dust as the spectacular column of riders approached. The Crows were dressed top to bottom in powwow regalia, men in beaded leather vests that caught the sun in brilliant dazzles and women in red velvet dresses decorated with elk teeth. Even the Appaloosas and dappled ponies the riders were mounted on glinted with finery, dazzling beadwork on saddlebags and rifle scabbards.
“Whoo,” I let out in awe as the long, long horseback procession continued, while drums kept up a constant beat we could almost feel in the ground, and the air vibrated with the chant of “Hey-ya-ya-ya, hey-ya-ya-ya” from every side. Herman was simply speechless, taking in the Indian world like a dream come true.
We watched until the last decorated pony and lordly rider of the cavalcade passed. Such is fascination, the spellbinding moment of imagination coming true. I can only speak for myself, but surely Herman, too, felt like a spectator into a world beyond any dreaming that day. Back then, the term “Native Americans” had not come into common usage, but definitely the traditions of the people who were here before Columbus, like the first owner of my precious arrowhead, were on living display beyond anything museums could capture. As far as we were concerned, “Indian” was word enough to carry the magic of the past, and here it was on full show, as if just for us.
• • •
“OH MAN, that was as good as it gets!” I still was giddy afterward. “Did you see those saddle blankets, even? They use Pendletons!”
I rattled on until Herman said, “Ja, I telled you Fingerspitzengefühl works like charm,” as if the bus ride all the way from Milwaukee had been merely a matter of giving it a little think.
Already feeling like we’d had one of the great days of our lives, after the parade the two of us followed the flow of the crowd to the ticket booth at the fairground entrance, where the rest of the day’s events were chalked on a slab of blackboard.
“Fancy dancing, Donny.”
“Rodeo, Herman.”
I was impatient to get in and start to see everything worth seeing, but he took his time peeling off money for our entrance fee, asking the ticket seller, an Indian of indeterminate age with a single feather sticking straight up out of his hair, if we could stow the duffel bag and suitcase in the booth since we hadn’t had time to find a place to stay. “Hokay, I’ll keep an eye on ’em.” He jerked a thumb to the corner of the booth and I dragged our luggage there and turned to go.
“Donny, wait.” Herman was grinning nearly back to his ears. “One thing more. Put moccasins on, hah?”
Why hadn’t I thought of that? With my purple rodeo shirt with the sky-blue yoke trimming and now my pearl-gray cowboy hat, my outfit lacked only the moccasins. Swiftly I swapped out of my shoes, my feet grateful in the softness of the buckskin, and in an inspiration of my own, I tucked the autograph book under my belt like a hunter’s pouch. Then off Herman and I went as if the beadwork fancy-dancers on my feet were leading us to the real thing.
We still were on the same earth as Manitowoc, but the world changed as we headed for the fenced-in area of grandstand and corrals and chutes and arena where the rodeo would be held. Tepees by the hundreds populated the encampment bordering the fairground, white cones sharp against the blue sky like a snowy mountain range, all the same precise height. Drummers and chanters there kept up the “Hey-ya-ya-ya, hey-ya-ya-ya” beat as if it was the pulse of the seasons of the strawberry moon and the buck moon. Herman and I tried not to rubberneck amidst it all, but failed laughably. Fully half of the rodeo-going crowd around us was Indian families, the fathers wearing braids and the mothers sometimes not, excited children dribbling after in colorful shirts while trying to look as swayve and debonure as I felt. Herman was like a keyed-up kid, too, asking this person and that if they happened to be Apaches and not discouraged by the steady answer “They’re not from around here.”
Then we were funneled into the rodeo grounds—surrounded by a horse-high hog-tight woven-wire fence with the gate conspicuously manned by sharp-eyed tribal police; rodeo crowds are not exactly church congregations, and the Crows were taking no chances on drunks and other unwelcome sorts sneaking in—and the pair of us virtually walking on air filled with the aromas of fry bread and sizzling steak amid the lane of food booths and craft displays of jewelry and woven blankets and wearables set up next to the arena.
“Karl May would not believe his eyes, hah?” Herman chuckled to me when we passed by a homemade camper, SLEWFOOT ENTERPRIZES painted on the driver’s door, where a bearlike Indian man seated on the running board was driving belt holes into some piece of paraphernalia with a leather punch and chanting, “Made to order, folks, best dancing rigs this side of the happy hunting ground, same price as they was a minute ago, git ’em right here and now.” And as if he had conjured them, suddenly ahead of us at a refreshment stand were fancy-dancers everywhere, costumed as if they were under a spell that made them halfway to birds.
• • •
THE SIGHT CAST me into a spell of my own. The day’s fancy-dance exhibition, according to the printed program we had picked up at the gate, would take place between the bronc-riding events, and this batch of selected dancers—many of them not a day older than me, I noticed enviously—were waiting around, drinking pop and eating candy bars until called on to perform. I hung back and gaped at their costumes, which covered them almost entirely, from beaded moccasins to a feather or two sprouting out of equally beaded headbands. I mean, fancy only began to say it. Fuzzy Angora goat hide step-ins were wrapped around the bottoms of their legs, and fringed vests long as aprons draped down that far. Anklets of sleigh bells jingled with their every step. The upper part of the body was the real story, though. Strapped on each dancer’s back was a great big spray of feathers, like a turkey’s tail in full display. What lucky kids they were in all that getup, I thought with a pang, ready to dance their hearts out. It may have been my imagination, but my moccasins seemed to twitch as we passed the dancers by.
Coming out of my trance as everyone but us was flocking to the grandstand on the far side of the arena, I had the presence of mind to say the next magic word to Herman.
“Cowboys.”
“Ja? Where abouts?”
He gawked all around, as if expecting pistoleer angels wearing Stetsons and boots to materialize. Here I was on familiar ground, steering us to the area behind the bucking chutes, knowing that was where anything interesting happened until events in the arena got underway.
• • •
BACK THERE in the gathering place between where horse trailers and other vehicles were parked and the pole corral of the arena, it was as busy as could be wished, big-hatted Indian contestants and those from the professional rodeo circuit clustered behind the chutes, working on their riding rigging, fastening their chaps on, joshing one another about how high the bronc they’d drawn would make them fly. Calf ropers were building their loops and making little tosses at nothing. Teenage girl barrel racers exercised their horses, leaving behind increasing islands of manure. In the background, Brahma bulls bawled in the holding pens and saddle broncs snorted and whinnied as they were hazed into the bucking chutes.
Herman and I meandered through, taking in the whole scene as if we were old hands at this, our Green Stamp Stetsons blending right in with the cloud of rodeo hats. This was the best yet, hanging around the “choots,” as Herman called the chutes.
Then I saw it. If I were telling this story from long enough ago, I suppose it would have been the chariot of a god touched golden by the fire of the sun. As it was, the gleaming purp
le Cadillac convertible parked at the very end of a row of horse trailers and pickups stopped me in my tracks.
“Herman, look at that!” Recovering, I rushed over to the chrome-heavy car with upswept tail fins and peeked in. The seamless leather seat covers were the same deep purple as the exterior. Likewise the floor mats and door panels. And the crowning touch—on the inlaid-wood steering wheel, even the necker knob was that color. I was so excited I was forgetting to breathe. All but certain who had to be the owner of this modern heavenly chariot, I checked the hood ornament.
And yes, wonder of wonders, there it was, exactly according to reputation. The shiny replica of a livestock brand replacing the Cadillac’s stylized flying figure.
• • •
“SEE, IT IS!” I gushed to Herman as he came up behind me. “It’s his!”
“Ja?” He eyed the gaudy car as if it was unique, all right. “Whose?”
“Rags Rasmussen’s! The champion bronc rider of the world! He’s the most famous cowboy there is! That’s his brand, he puts it on everything—the Diamond Buckle.” The symbol of his world championships, in other words. “He’s just the greatest,” I attested as Herman puzzled out the hood ornament for himself. “My folks and me saw him ride at the Great Falls fair. I tell you, he turned that horse every way but loose.”
Babbling on like that about what a famous cowboy we were going to be lucky enough to watch in the saddle bronc go-round, I happened to look past Herman and the air sucked out of me as I gasped, “Here he comes!”
Tall and lanky except for squared-off chest and shoulders like the box the rest of him came in, the champ rider was moseying toward us with purple chaps slung over an arm. No one else in the world walks like a real cowboy, a sort of devil-may-care saunter, as if the ground was unfamiliar territory but he was making the best of it. “Would you look at them long legs on Rags,” some admirer over at the chutes remarked. “The Lord took his time when he split him up the middle.”
The object of all attention continued on his way toward the bucking chutes as if cloudwalking, his black boots with the inlaid Diamond Buckle emblem freshly shined, his lavender Stetson spotless, his plum-colored gabardine pants sharply creased. Completing his outfit, I was thrilled to see, was a shirt nearly identical to mine, emphatic purple with a blue yoke and pearl snap buttons. Talk about suave and debonair for real, he carried it on his back in a naturally fitting way that made me wish I was him so hard it hurt.
Blinking along with me at the elegant sight, Herman whispered, “Why is he called Rags?”
“That’s easy. He’s always got his glad rags on when he rides.” Herman still didn’t get it. “Look how dressed up he is.”
“Hah,” he understood and more. “Like a knight, he puts on his best for the tournament, what you mean.”
“The rodeo, you bet,” I confirmed breathlessly. “That makes him the slickest rider there is in every way, see.”
The female population of the rodeo grounds conspicuously thought so, too. Barrel-racing beauties in tight blue jeans and a performing troupe of blond cowgirls astride matching palominos called out flirtatious hellos, no small number of these contingents so-called buckle bunnies, who had an eye for winners. “Later, ladies,” the famous bronc stomper sent them with a lazy smile.
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.
“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.”
“Buzzard Head does not sound like merry-go-round horse.” Herman cocked an inquisitive look at me.
“He’s the worst,” was all I could say. “C’mon”—I still was on fire from the miraculous encounter with my hero Rags—“I know the best place to watch him ride, if they’ll let us.”
• • •
“YOU ARE SURE this is good eye-dea? Dangerous place, if we fall?” Herman shied away as far as he could from the bronc pawing at the bucking chute beside us, as he crept after me on the narrow plank stairs.
“Then don’t fall,” I gave him the cure over my shoulder. “Shhh. Leave this to me,” I cautioned further, keeping on up the midair steps that led to the shaded platform beneath the announcer’s booth.
When we popped our heads through the opening in the floor of the platform, what awaited us was pretty much as I expected from other rodeos I’d been to. Clustered there where the arena director and anyone else who counted in running the events could keep track of things at close hand were several Indian men in snazzy beaded vests and the darkest sunglasses made, beside big-hatted rodeo circuit officials and a few other white guys in gabardine western suits who had to be the livestock contractors supplying bucking horses and Brahma bulls for big shows like this one. As I scrambled onto the perch with Herman stumbling after, the only personage paying any particular attention to our arrival was a Crow elder, lean as a coyote, with braids like gray quirts down over his shoulders, who gave us a freezing stare.
“We’re friends of Rags and he told us to get a good seat to watch him ride,” I said hastily, as if that took care of the matter. “My uncle here is from, uh, out of the country and this is his first rodeo”—Herman wisely only grinned wide as the moon and did not ask if there were any Apaches around—“and it’d be a real treat for him to see it from up here like this and we’ll stay out of the way, honest, and just—”