Ride, Cowboy, Ride!

by Baxter Black

  He was aware that the first saddle bronc rider had burst into the arena.

  “Yer in the hole!” said the chute boss as he passed in front of Cooney.

  Cooney untucked the tail of his rein from the halter and mechanically brought it past the swells, measuring: X plus 2; fist, thumb, and two fingers. Not too long, not too short.

  Straight, who had ridden the night before, steadied Crooked Nose’s head as Cooney swung over the chute and dropped down into the seat. They fitted his feet into the fiberglass oxbow stirrups. Cooney kept his knees bent so his legs did not fall between the horse’s ribs and the sides of the chute. He folded his chaps back at the knees.

  With his free right hand he pulled his black felt hat down until the tops of his ears were flat. He remembered something he’d read about five-time world champion bareback rider Bruce Ford. The writer had said he liked a cowboy “whose hat didn’t blow off in a storm!”

  “Yer up!” said the chute boss.

  One of the arena helpers ran a small rope through the boards, around the horse’s neck, and pulled its head snug against the gate. This steadied him and helped assure that they would break out of the chute in the right direction.

  A second helper ran a piece of cotton rope around the post and the chute gate to keep it from opening while they pulled the latch back. When Cooney called for his horse, both helpers would jerk their ropes free, and a third man would swing the gate wide open.

  At that split second it was theoretically possible to see horse and rider posed against the backdrop, framed by the wide-open chute.

  “Ready?” asked Straight.

  Crooked Nose was beginning to squat and push against the right side of the chute, mashing Cooney’s boot.

  “Pull my foot up!” said Cooney. Straight did.

  Cooney furiously nodded his head.

  Riding a saddle bronc is like launching a rocket into outer space. So many things have to go right: the length of the rein, the set of the bind, the swing of the stirrups, the coordination of the spurring with the rhythm of the bucking, the balance, the grip, the timing, the leverage, and the lift.

  When everything comes together as planned, no matter how hard they buck, it looks smooth and easy. Most bronc riders would agree, certainly when compared with body-punishing events like bull riding or bareback.

  Comparing saddle bronc with bareback is the equivalent of comparing putting a manned shuttle into orbit around the Earth versus firing a monkey out of a cannon!

  The chute gate blew open like a starved caveman stumbling onto a refrigerator in the wilderness! As Crooked Nose pivoted on his hind legs he pushed his rump against the back of the chute for leverage. Cooney lifted on the rein, straight-armed, and snapped his legs forward. The blunt rowels of his spurs pressed into the straining neck muscles of the big paint.

  Cooney pushed his feet into the bottom of the stirrups. The pressure straightened his legs and pushed him an inch above the saddle seat. His hip pockets pressed high upon the cantle.

  Horse and rider rose like a boat climbing a wave, crested, then tipped over into the swell. Crooked Nose’s front feet drove into the soft arena dirt as his hind legs kicked straight out behind him.

  Cooney pushed his right arm straight out over Crooked Nose’s neck and lifted like he was holding up a fish. His rowels swept a long arc from the point of the horse’s shoulders, down past the cinch, and across the ribs and belly that protected the abdomen. At the posterior point of the arc Cooney was forward in the seat, his thighs pressed against the swells.

  Simultaneously, Crooked Nose reached underneath himself, planting his hind feet as his front hooves came out of the dirt. The massive muscles of his rear end pistoned, pushing his body forward and up to begin the second jump.

  As Crooked Nose began to climb again, Cooney’s legs retraced the arc, flank to neck, like cocking a revolver.

  At the confluence of coordinated synapses, commonly called “perfect timing,” Cooney’s rowels were planted in the horse’s neck just as the big white hooves hit the ground. The ensuing concussion reverberated through the centaur bones from coffin to cranium.

  This bronco ballet, this rock-and-fire rough stock rumba, this tumultuous, tender two-step in 8-second time is as complicated as the combustion engine in Dale Junior’s sprint car. Intake, ignition, explosion, exhaust; rockers rocking, valves hissing, oxygen sucking, plugs firing, and gas igniting. Lifting off, ejecting boosters, clearing the surly bonds of Earth, achieving trajectory, mission accomplished! . . . Unless a sunfish, side step, slipped stirrup, or shifting seat intervenes, and we then have, “Houston, this is Apollo 13 . . . we have a problem.”

  But not tonight. Cooney Bedlam, sore butt and all, rode Crooked Nose like pinstripes on a Yankee. They scored an 84 and top money in the second go. It paid $2,023.

  CHAPTER 8

  March 27, Easter Morning

  Somewhere on the Road

  After Cooney’s ride on Crooked Nose and his bull ride later in the performance, for the weekend they drove back to Houston, where Straight had qualified for the final round.

  The next week they stayed in Texas and hit rodeos in Nacogdoches and Huntsville. And this morning they were driving down Interstate 10 West, headed for the Laughlin River Stampede in Nevada. They were somewhere between San Antonio and Fort Stockton when Cooney finally decided to respond to pica.dt@nk.ca. It hadn’t been easy. He’d actually gotten chest palpitations trying to think of something to say, which scared him a little. Something was happening to him.

  Cooney always had a soft heart. Regarding girls, he was shy. He was not a smooth talker, even though he did well in English composition class. But girls found him attractive, so any girlfriends or dates he had were usually the result of his being in the right place at the right time or were initiated by the girls themselves. They taught him what little he knew about women. His knowledge was superficial. He knew how to put gas in the tank and check the oil but very little about female maintenance, air pressure, and warning lights!

  Thus, this attack of infatuation for Pica D’TroiT was a new feeling for him—disorienting. He hardly knew her. He had spent less than thirty seconds in her company, and that was accumulated over two occasions! It was like obsessing over a poster or a picture in a magazine.

  Now she was e-mailing him. He had delayed almost two weeks in responding. He was unsure, self-conscious, and experiencing the same jitters of anticipation that had plagued him in speech class.

  He got out his smartphone.

  “Dear Pica,” he began. Then deleted it. “Pica,” no, “Miss D’TroiT.” No! What would Shakespeare say? The words flowed out of him:

  To my Alberta rose . . . I know it’s too soon to speak of marriage and children, but you linger in my memory like a footprint seared into the tar of La Brea, a handprint painted on a cave wall in France, like a lip print pressed on a hotel mirror at South Point in Las Vegas!

  Oh, that I could once more drink in your ravishness, even through a frosted window pane, my feet freezing, my tongue frozen to the glass, merely stealing a glimpse as you pass by from salon to ballroom, my life should be compleat!

  No more shall I say, lest I be construed forward,

  Signed your humble . . .

  Humble what? Servant? Horseman? Lecher? Ghoul? Salacious cad?

  Cooney read it over and was stunned by what he had written. He felt his face turn red. He reached for the “delete” button to erase it all.

  Straight had been absentmindedly listening to a preacher on the radio. Because it was Easter morning, the sermon centered on the resurrection of Christ. The cruise control was locked on 79 mph. West Texas was rolling by.

  Out from the road streaked a scraggly coyote still shedding his winter coat. Startled from his comfortable cocoon, Straight swung to the left and hit the brake!

  The c
oyote corrected course. The pickup swerved, the dash trash slid to starboard, and Cooney’s smartphone shot out of his hand. He grabbed for it, and his fingers touched the device in intimate places as it flew beneath his hand.

  In seconds all was well, as if nothing had ever happened. Except for the pile of sunglasses, receipts, pens, Skoal can lids, and expense book that now lay like a snowdrift on the right side of the dashboard. Oh, and the phone displaying “sent” on its innocent screen display.

  “Oh, no!” moaned Cooney.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Straight.

  “I just sent a horrible e-mail to . . .” He stopped.

  “Who?”

  “Uh, nobody,” muttered Cooney.

  “Come on, man, who? You’ve never sent a horrible e-mail to anybody! I’ve never heard you say a bad word about anyone! You’re Mister Nice Guy.”

  “Well, it wasn’t horrible, just inappropriate.”

  “Hey,” said Straight, “I’m yer partner. It couldn’t be that bad. Who was it to?”

  “Pica,” said Cooney.

  “D’TroiT? Lionel Trane’s girl? Wow. What did you say?” asked Straight.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I just sorta was fooling around and said I liked her, I guess,” explained Cooney.

  “Well, that’s not so bad. If ya like her you’re allowed to tell her. Of course, Lionel might not think it’s that cool.”

  “I’m not worried about Lionel. It’s that she might get the wrong impression,” said Cooney.

  “What? That you’d like to dip her in Miracle Whip and nibble pitted olives off the tips of her toes! That’s not the wrong impression; that’s the right impression! You like her . . . don’t you?”

  “A lot, but I . . . hardly know her,” said Cooney.

  “Then just think of your e-mail as a lure in the water. A woolly maggot-fly floating on quiet pool. Maybe you’ll get a bite,” offered Straight.

  More like a tire jack thrown in a six-foot stock tank! thought Cooney. Oh, my, what did I do?

  CHAPTER 9

  May 2, Morning

  In a Motel in Leduc, Alberta

  In the weeks since Houston and Austin, our heroes made rodeos in Laughlin, Nevada; Logandale, Nevada; Oakdale, California; Red Bluff, California; and Clovis, California, and then drove to the Denver airport, where they flew to Edmonton, Alberta, to work Canadian rodeos in Stavely and Leduc.

  Straight was on a hot streak. He had added $15,000 to his total, which put him in fifth place in the national standings in saddle bronc. Cooney held his own and was twelfth in the saddle bronc and thirteenth in the bull riding.

  This brisk, still-wintry morning they had plans to fly back to Denver, then take a leisurely drive to Oklahoma for the Guymon Pioneer Days Rodeo, where they’d be up Friday, May 6.

  “Cooney! You’ll never guess!” Straight was saying as he shook his partner awake.

  “You’re getting married?” guessed Cooney, coming out of a restless sleep. “You’ve been given an honorary degree in sconeology from BYU? You’ve been asked to join the next space shuttle as the primate representative?” Cooney could be quick with the wit even if a bit disoriented when caught unawares.

  “No, no! I just got an e-mail from Nova Skosha, the girl from OVER THE TOP sports stuff! They want to endorse me!” Straight was beside himself.

  “Son of a gun, Cooney, it’s what I’ve been working toward. I set my goal, and it’s coming true. Today OVER THE TOP, tomorrow Wrangler, Justin, Copenhagen . . .”

  “NASA, Good Housekeeping, the Catholic diocese,” injected Cooney.

  “. . . Dodge, Southwest Airlines . . . oh, man, I better get planning. I don’t want to blow it.”

  “Have you finished the Houston-to-Austin goin’-down-the-road poem? It would be cool to do that at my acceptance speech.”

  Cooney was sitting up by now. His clothes were strewn over the floor and the end of his bed. Straight was wearing his Rope and Ride pajamas—the ones Cooney said looked like a bedspread he had when he was in grade school.

  “So,” said Cooney, rubbing his eye, “when will the festivities occur?”

  “My first public appearance will be at the buckin’ horse sale.”

  “In Miles City?” asked Cooney.

  “Exactly. They want to do the weekend. They’ll introduce me as their spokesman. I’ll hang out, do media. They’ve already talked to the committee. OVER THE TOP will be a major sponsor. I’ll present the awards and introduce the new product, do TV, you know, let’s see . . .” Straight paused, “I’ll need some new jeans, Wrangler, of course, but the regular or Twenty X? Twenty X, I think. They are gonna custom make me some shirts with their logo . . . I’ll have to order new chaps . . .” Straight planned on.

  These two men were not necessarily affectionate with one another. They were business partners, but their mutual respect was strong. Straight had taken Cooney as a traveling buddy and was in part responsible for his improvement.

  Straight was the more experienced, having made the finals five times and having won the world championship in bronc riding two years ago. As a young man, he had stuck it out and finished college. Most would agree that he was also the more handsome and photogenic of the two.

  But both knew that Cooney was a natural rider, fearless, and, despite his ranchy habits and demeanor, smarter.

  Cooney was touched by Straight’s childlike joy. He swallowed back a wisecrack as his friend stood there in his goofy, uncool pajamas and fleece-lined bed slippers literally squirming with excitement.

  Cooney reached out and shook Straight’s hand. Their eyes met. Straight had become a puppy beseeching a “good dog.”

  “I’m proud of ya, Straight. You’re the best. Nobody deserves this more than you . . . I mean it.”

  Cooney squeezed his handshake a little firmer. It was as close as these two nonhuggers from nonhugging male families had ever come to a hug.

  They parted grips, and Cooney lay back on the bed and asked, “So, what are you endorsing?”

  “It’s for chapped lips. She said they are calling it LIP LASTER!”

  “Whatever tickles you squeegees my windshield,” said Cooney, smiling.

  Cooney had another reason to be happy that cool Canadian morning. Yesterday he had built up enough nerve to e-mail to Pica D’TroiT. He’d let a month go by, hoping . . . well, he didn’t know what he was hoping, maybe that she’d forgot about his last bizarre communication. Her original reply had mortified him. She had written:

  O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ooooo! You are something else! But hold that thought!

  Pica

  Although Cooney had no way of knowing, Pica had been caught completely off guard. His response to her e-mail was so flowery, naked with emotion, seductive, domineering, nothing like she’d expected. She had him pegged for a man of few words, a bumbling, “Aw, shucks,” kind of cowboy. His boldness made her back off a step and think about it. Proceed with caution, her nerves told her. Like those times she had been on the trail of a wild beast, confident of her skill and her quarry, guiding a hunter deeper into the forest when suddenly . . . the track disappeared!

  Wary, she did not answer his response.

  For his part, Cooney had been too embarrassed to reply. Weeks went by, but finally yesterday his yearning, cerebral lust, hormonal urges, and that inexplicable siren’s song that lures field mice into snakeholes led him once more to attempt communication:

  Pica,

  How are you? I am fine. Straight, my partner, has got an endorsement by OVER THE TOP sports and will be the parade marshal in Miles City for the bucking horse sale May 17.

  I’ll probably go up with him and hang out.

  Sincerely, Cooney Bedlam

  He was not proud of the letter, but if Straight could troll tirelessly to catch his dreams, Co
oney could at least put a lure in the water.

  She had responded last night:

  Cooney,

  Miles City, hey? Not that far!

  Pica

  After Leduc and Stavely our heroes headed south to Texas for two weeks: Stephenville, Beaumont, Jasper, and Mineral Wells. On Friday, May 13, Straight dropped Cooney off at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and drove down to ride in Crockett. Cooney took a plane to Birmingham, Alabama, for a Bullnanza, where bull riding was the only event. Straight was to drive to Denver after he finished in Crockett to meet up with OVER THE TOP people, and they would take a private plane to Miles City. Cooney would fly from Birmingham to Denver, pick up the truck, and drive it up to Miles City and meet Straight over the weekend.

  Following the bucking horse sale, they planned to drive up to the rodeos in Taber, Alberta, and Maple Creek, Saskatchewan.

  CHAPTER 10

  May 10, Monday

  OVER THE TOP ATHLETIC ­COSMETICS Offices, Denver­ Tech Center

  Turk Manniquin, president and founder of OVER THE TOP ATHLETIC COSMETICS, was, according to Business Weekly, “the great black shark in the field of specialty makeup.”

  Or, as Sports Illustrated put it, “the Don King of pancake and hairspray.”

  Once a point guard for the Denver Nuggets, Turk had invested his considerable NBA earnings and star power into his dream of capturing the market for esthetic products that could be worn while sweating.

  He began with the Ladies Professional Golf Association and women’s tennis but soon realized that with the metrosexualization of young men, another huge market beckoned. Thus was born in his mind LIP LASTER, a lip gloss for men! That it was also a lip balm, protective as well as decorative, made it even more salable.