Last Bus to Wisdom (46 page)

“Uh-huh, when I'm not Scotty,” I broke out of being tongue-tied. “You know how the ho—the crew—does with names.”

“A little of that got on me ever since I dressed up to ride.” Rodeo's leading fashion plate acknowledged the way of such things with an amused nod. He murmured something as he scratched behind the mare's ear that made her nicker and try to nudge him gently with her nose, an intelligent blue eye seeing into us, I swear. Casual but to the point, Rags glanced down at me standing at his side as if I were glued there. “Better let it out. What's got you talking to the Queen here?”

•   •   •

H
OW MANY CHANCES
in a lifetime does a person have to bare his soul to a Rags Rasmussen? If confession was good for the soul, mine was being reformed with every word that tumbled out of me. “I'm sort of caught between things. See, I'm supposed to go back to my grandmother, she's better after her operation and can be a cook again like she's always been, except it'd be in dumb Glasgow, and we'd live together with Letty, she's a waitress but a lady, too, and you'd really like her, everybody does, Harv especially, and I thought that's what I wanted most in the world. But I'm a handful for her, Gram I mean, she'd be the first to tell you, and I haven't exactly done what she thinks I was doing, all summer. She'll think I got too redheaded, as she calls it.”

I faltered, but had to put the next part together to my intent listener.

“What happened was, I met up with, uh, Gramps I call him, although he's a sort of uncle.” I sent a despairing look out the line of barn windows to where Herman could be seen joining the horseshoe players, still receiving slaps on the back for his triumph over Waltzing Matilda. “And now I don't want to leave him, he needs me too much.”

“The new choreboy, while Smiley follows other pursuits.” Rags made sure he was tracking the dramas of the ranch correctly. “What makes you think this gramps of yours needs you more than your granny does?”

There was a whole list of that all the way back to
Fingerspitzengehfühl
, but I made myself stick to the simple sum. “Bad stuff happens to him when he's on his own. And to me when I am, too. But when it's both of us, we sort of think our way out of things.”

Not in a wiseguy way but just prodding me a little, he pursued that with “That's a pretty good trick. The two of you together amount to more than one and one, you figure? Like Queen and Brandy here?”

“Yeah, that's it! Something like that.”

“And you need to stay on here for that to keep happening.”

“Right.” My hopes rose to the rafters of the barn.

Only to be dashed again as he contemplated Herman out there jawing happily with the horseshoe players, and then me dippily telling my troubles to a horse. “Nothing against being redheaded, understand,” he began. “But we're running a ranch, not a charitable institution, and Jones is a bearcat about everyone on the place pulling his own weight. I don't see—”

The thunderous
whump
of a car on the livestock crossing took care of whatever he was going to say. Even Queen sharpened her ears at the telltale sound. Rags and I watched wordlessly as the Wisdom deputy sheriff's car, the star on the door a blaze of white, pulled into the yard.

My mouth went dry and Rags whistled silently through his teeth as the arriving car drew us out of the barn toward what could amount to trouble. “You happen to know anything about why we're being honored by this visit?”

Reluctantly I enlightened him that the crew had been in a little bit of a fight at the Watering Hole with the Tumbling T outfit. He frowned, saying that was simply Saturday night behavior and for as long as he had known her, Babs always wrote off fights as the cost of doing business. “This must be some other can of worms.”

“Excuse me,” I threw over my shoulder, already on the run, “I have to get over there to Gramps.”

By the time I dashed across the yard to where Herman stood, caught motionless beside the horseshoe players, the deputy sheriff from Wisdom was climbing out of the patrol car and giving a sickly smile all around.

“Sorry to disturb you, gents.” Which every one of us there knew meant disturbance of some sort was about to reach into our number. But I in particular should have seen what was coming when, on the passenger side, a big crow-black hat barely appeared above the top of the car.

•   •   •

H
IS FIRST STEP
out of the patrol car, the mean little sheriff from the first dog bus of all, back at the start of summer, spotted Harv taking life easy in the shade of the bunkhouse.

“Well, if it isn't the object of my affection.” Sheriff Kinnick made a mock simper. “Harv the Houdini of the stony loneseome. Took me a while to run you down, but here we both are, just like old times.”

“Howdy, Carl. You out seeing the country?” Casual as anything, Harv unfolded out of his chair and sauntered toward the lawmen, although not too close. Veterans at knowing trouble when they saw it, the rest of the crew guardedly drifted near enough to follow what was happening, with me doing all I could to steer Herman—looking guilty as sin, the way he did in the Butte depot—to the rear of them in the hope we wouldn't stand out. In the meantime, Skeeter set the tone for hobo attitude toward visits from the constabulary by piping up. “Shouldn't ye be tracking down horse thiefs or somethin' instead of botherin' honest citizens?” He was more or less backed in that by Jones arriving at a high trot and caterwauling, “What the hell's this about?”

“If you have to know, I been on the track of this character”—the sheriff from Glasgow pointed an accusing finger at Harv, standing quietly there looking like the least troublesome man on earth—“every chance I got all summer. Talked to bus drivers until they was running out my ears, but I lost his trail in Butte. Then I got smart and asked myself who else makes regular runs to burgs off the beaten path. Beer truck drivers.” He let out his mean little laugh. “You make sort of a conspicuous hitchhiker, Harv.”

“You're barking up the wrong gum tree, big hat,” Highpockets took that on, bringing no small challenge with his height as he stepped forward and confronted the much shorter wearer of the badge. “Got the wrong man. I'll testify Harv's been with us following the harvests, California fruit to this here hay.”

Hand it to Sheriff Kinnick, he didn't give ground, only chuckled that chilly way. “Nice try,” he said up into Highpockets's face, “but no hearing judge in his right mind is gonna take the testimony of a hobo over the Wolf Point jailers who had Harv for company days on end, when the fool wasn't busting out. Besides”—he looked over the rest of the crew scornfully, with me half tucking out of sight behind Herman, standing so still he barely breathed—“you get in court, and there might be some natural curiosity about this crowd's propensity for law-abiding or not.”

Harv followed that with a warning hand to the angry circle of men. “It's my tough luck, Pockets, Skeets, the whole bunch of you, thanks anyway.”

Jones still was stomping mad at the intrusion, arguing to the deputy sheriff from town, “Goddamn it, Mallory, can't this wait until we're done haying in a few weeks? Harv's the best stack man I'll ever have.” Looking sheepish, the local lawman replied that his colleague from up north seemed to be in more of a hurry than that.

By then Rags had strolled up. Mild as the day is long, he drawled, “What seems to be the difficulty?”

Mallory looked like he wanted to go someplace and hide rather than get into the difficulty, but he did his duty, introducing Rags to the strutty little visitor who barely came up to the shoulder of anyone in the gathering except me.

“Thanks for nothing, Mallory,” the Glasgow sheriff huffed out. “You didn't tell me this is his spread.” He rocked back on his pointy heels, impressed in spite of himself as he took in the most famous cowboy conceivable. “Saw you ride at the Calgary Stampede,” he told Rags, as if that amounted to a private audience. “You do know how to stick on a horse.”

“It's an honest living,” Rags replied, glancing at the tin star on Kinnick's narrow chest as if comparing not that favorably. He turned to the other lawman. “What is this, a badge toters' convention? Should I be charging rent?”

“Sheriff Kinnick says your man here broke out of jail, more than once,” came the reluctant answer.

“We could have told you he's a hard worker,” Rags said. “Harv, what were you in for?”

“Fighting in a bar.”

Harv aside, every man there gave Sheriff Kinnick a sideways look. Rags scratched his head and spoke the common thought. “Something like that means you could arrest just about everybody on the place, starting with me.”

“That's as may be,” the little sheriff muttered, glancing around the hostile ring of faces, “but none of you acted up any in my jurisdiction. I'm only interested in this knothead. Or am I.”

It happened then. He peeked past the men in front, spotting me as I tried to fade behind Herman without appearing to. Parting the onlookers, the sheriff headed straight for me, prissing out, “Who's this I see over here?” with all too much recognition registering in the apple-doll face. “Huh, I thought you was going to visit relatives, punkin. Back east someplace. Doesn't look like that proved out, does it.” He stopped short as Herman put a protective arm around me. “And just where do you fit into this, Horseface?” he asked suspiciously.

•   •   •

I
KNEW IT.
The arrest-happy little meanie was out to get us, was going to get us. Our life together, our lives separately, was going to fizzle into separation and incarceration, nightmare coming true.

Herman did his best to face down the challenge, looking squarely at the sheriff with his good eye. “Fritz, is the right name. Scotty's grandpa, I am.”

“You sure sound like it, Scotch as all get out,” the sheriff said cynically.

“Rasmussen, I'd bet my boots you're harboring a runaway,” he crowed to Rags, who took that in mutely. “And maybe worse. Seems to me I've laid eyes on this mug before—how about you, Mallory?” the preening lawman spoke over his shoulder to the local deputy.

Herman's clasp of me held firmer than ever as Harv started forward to our aid, but Highpockets stopped him.

“You better think twice about this, Johnny Law,” he warned, stepping in beside Herman and me. The scar at the corner of his mouth was white with anger. “These fellas are with us, they're not causing you any trouble. You can't breeze in here from bare-ass nowhere and start picking us off just because you feel like it. Take a look around you. This isn't some goddamn freight yard and you're the yard bull.” Behind him, Skeeter and Peerless and Fingy and Midnight Frankie and Shakespeare and Pooch ranged around us in support.

“Oh, can't I breeze in here, like you say, and make an arrest?” The sheriff smirked and fingered his star as a pointed reminder. “Who's wearing the badge around here?”

That was the wrong thing to do. Something like a spell came over the hoboes, if a general sense of fury can be called that. I could see it in their eyes, the pent-up rage and hate from years of railyard bulls and Palookaville hick dicks beating them and throwing them into jail and kicking them out of town, the badge of authority the mark of adversity in their lives, Pooch a living reminder among them of the billy clubs of the law.

As the sheriff turned and strutted toward Harv, after warning Herman and me not to move, Highpockets murmured without moving his lips, “Skeeter, pass the toothpicks.” Discreetly the old hobo drifted off to the shop where Herman sharpened things.

“C'mon, Harv, let's arrange some free board and room in lovely Wolf Point for you,” the sheriff busied up. “Get in the patrol car. Front seat. Leave room in the back for other customers.” He glanced back to check on Herman and me. I kept looking to Rags, still standing easy to one side, keeping Jones under control. If things were a matter of timing like he said, wasn't it about time to rein in this busybody lawman who was ready to cart Herman and me off to our doom along with Harv?

Meanwhile Harv folded his arms on his chest. “No.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” The sheriff cocked a look up at the much taller man.

“Just what it sounds like. No.”

“If you do the crime,” the sheriff erupted, “you're supposed to do the time! That's practically in the Bible! Now get in the patrol car!”

“Still no,” Harv declared, not budging. “Not until we work this out. That jurisdiction you talk about so much—it maybe's slipped your mind I busted out of jail in Wolf Point, and that's not in your county, the way I see it.”

The Glasgow sheriff scowled. “You're turning into a regular jailhouse lawyer, are you, all the experience you're building up behind bars.” He poked his hat higher on his head to try to look taller as he faced Harv. “All right, let's get down to the pussy purr here. I'm taking you in for violating my custody, not once but twice when I packed you over there to the Wolf Point stony lonesome. Like I'm gonna do again, damn it.”

Listening hard, the deputy sheriff from Wisdom appeared uneasy but didn't say anything. Harv did, though.

“Carl, I'll go with you, on a couple of conditions. First one is, you leave these other two fellows alone. You don't have to play bloodhound where you don't belong.” The sheriff started to shake his head, but Harv lifted a warning hand. “Hear me out on the rest of this. I serve my sentence, how much was that again—?”

“Forty-five days,” the sheriff answered peevishly.

“That's way to hell and gone too much for fightin' in a bar,” Peerless objected, while others in the hobo circle whistled in disbelief.

“And they're brothers!” I could not hold that in any longer. “I heard them both say so, and I've got their names in my autograph book to prove it!”