“A kid kicking around on a ranch is a tricky proposition,” Rags came right to the point, looking at me the frank, open way he’d done when it was the two of us in the stall with Queen, the crucial listener this time Herman. “I know firsthand—I was one, and I could be a champion nuisance sometimes.” That description gripped me so squarely I couldn’t even swallow.
“But that comes with ranch life, I suppose”—Rags looked around the office as if reminding himself he was sitting in the owner’s seat of the Diamond Buckle—“sorting out which nuisances to put up with or not.” He straightened up while I slumped to my fate. “What I started to tell you back there in the barn, before all the commotion,” I heard him say, as if we were taking this ride into the unknown together, “is I don’t see why it wouldn’t work for you to stay on here with Gramps, if he’ll be responsible for you. If he can stand the nuisance, I suppose I can,” he said half humorously, then studied me soberly. “That’s if you make up your mind to stay on here.”
Fate or not, my mind leaped, in one direction and then the other. My choice was wide open now, Herman or Gram, heart against conscience, if it is ever that evenly divided. I heard my decision the same instant the two of them did.
“I—I want to stay.”
I shall see the two of them forever in that moment, Herman looking like he was trying to catch his breath, Rags awarding himself a little grin before turning serious again.
“Since you’re gonna stick around with us,” he started, as if just making talk with me, “that opens up something else.” He grimaced toward the kitchen, where Mrs. Costello had the radio blaring away and was making a racket with pots and pans as she clattered together the semblance of a meal. “A cook, did you say your sainted granny is?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As ever, through sixteen books and fifty years of marriage, Carol Doig has been my incomparable companion, cheerleader, and keen-eyed first reader. As I say every time a book is born in this household, I couldn’t have done it without you, darling.
This novel and I have had the great good fortune to enlist the skills and enthusiastic backing of our longtime Montana friend, Marcella Sherfy Walter. Marcella worked research magic in reconstituting 1951 Manitowoc, Greyhound bus travel of the era, historic features of Crow Fair, and many other details that enrich a work of the imagination such as this. She’s also served as a first-rate commentator on the manuscript-in-progress, saving me from errors large and small many a time.
Katharina Maloof wonderfully fulfilled the big job of keeping me straight, insofar as an author intent on lingual mischief can be steered, on the capricious lingo of Herman the German. John Maloof was a terrific bonus as an early reader, encouraging me with his own boyhood experience of being put on a bus to he knew not what.
Once again, Ann McCartney, trusted friend and eagle-eyed reader, lent her savvy to the manuscript. The further priceless loan was from her treasure trove of National Geographics, so Donny could peruse faraway places where people wore surprisingly little.
The marvelous poet and friend Linda Bierds kept a straight face and helpful mien as I tried out some of the verses for Donny’s autograph book—I am still sky-high that my line about memory, “Roses in the snow of long ago,” met with her approval.
Ann and Marshall Nelson, fresh from the Pendleton Roundup, lavished rodeo material on me, which went a long way toward Rags Rasmussen’s immortal ride of Buzzard Head.
I’m indebted to my college classmate and friend ever since, Kay Pride, for telling me about her joyous childhood adventure of turning breakfast toast into outlines of countries under the fond tutelage of her geography teacher grandfather. It sounded to me like one of the talents Herman the German had to have.
My fellow enthusiast for lingo and sayings, John W. Grubbs, provided the slang gem “I slipped on a banana peeling and hit the ceiling,” which cried out to be part of a comedic inscription in Donny’s autograph book.
How fortunate to have as a friend Tony Angell, an expert on all things avian through his art, to teach me the eagle screech.
And what a bonus of luck to have a tried-and-true wordmaster, my writing buddy David Laskin, as an enthusiastic early reader.
Once again, a manuscript does not become a finished tome without the skills and wiles of my blessed team of makers of books: Becky Saletan, Liz Darhansoff, and Michelle Koufopoulos.
A few words and confessions about the settings of this novel: