Diana hurried past the trailer with its stamping load of horseflesh. In the kitchen, she found George Deeson and her mother chatting over coffee, just as she’d expected. What she hadn’t expected was the sudden silence occasioned by her arrival.
“There you are,” Iona said eagerly. “We’ve been waiting for you to come home. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“What kind of surprise?”
“Out front. I thought you’d want to unload him yourself.”
For a moment, Diana wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “Unload him?” she repeated. “You mean the horse? That’s the surprise?”
“Your Granddaddy Dale did me a favor once way back when,” George Deeson drawled. “I never did quite get around to paying him back once I got on my feet. My brother gave me this here horse out yonder, and Waldo-that’s his name by the way-was just standing around in my pasture, taking up room and eating my hay.
“The girl who had him before, my niece, I’m sorry to say, didn’t do justice by him a’tall. All she ever did was race barrels. Take him out, run him around those barrels hell-bent-for-election, and then lock him right back up in his stall. A good horse needs more than that, needs some companionship, needs some time off. Know what I mean?”
Diana nodded, but she didn’t understand, not really. George Deeson continued on as though she did.
“It occurred to me that maybe you folks could make good use of him. What do you think, girl? Would you like a horse?”
Diana staggered to the table and put down her load of books. She had long ago shed the childish dream of ever having a horse of her own. The Coopers simply didn’t have the money. Not only was there the initial purchase price, there was also the ongoing expense of feed and upkeep and tack. In addition, Max Cooper had told his daughter over and over again that he didn’t like horses and wouldn’t ever have one on his place.
“We can’t afford it, can we, Mother?”
“I already told you, girl, that there horse is free,” George put in. “You don’t have to pay a dime for him. I’ve got the papers right here in my pocket, all ready to sign over to you.”
“We’ll manage,” Iona told her daughter firmly. “You just sign the papers and don’t worry about it.”
“But what’ll Daddy do? He always said. .”
“Never mind what your father said,” Iona countered. “I’ll handle him. You go ahead and sign the papers.”
Within minutes, the bill of sale was signed, and Waldo, a registered quarter-horse gelding, belonged to Diana Lee Cooper.
“I reckon we’d otta go unload him now,” George Deeson said. “He’ll ride in a trailer all right as long as it’s movin’, but he don’t much like standin’ around being cooped up in ’em for very long afterward. Me neither, if you know what I mean, missus.”
George Deeson picked up his battered straw hat from the floor next to his chair and led the way out to the pickup and trailer. Waldo came complete with a whole set of tack-horse blankets, two saddles, and several bridles, all of which George Deeson unloaded in a heap on the Coopers’ front porch.
“Are you sure all this comes with the horse?” Diana asked.
“Sure, I’m sure,” he told her. “Now your mama said we should take Waldo and all his stuff out to the old barn. She says she’s fixed him up a stall.”
George eased the horse out of the trailer and handed the reins over to Diana. “You’d better try leadin’ him. He’ll need to be gettin’ used to you, and you’d better plan on spendin’ plenty of time with him, too.”
Diana led the way around to the old barn where a newly cleaned stall was waiting. When had her mother had time to do so much extra work along with all the other things that demanded her attention?
“Know anything about takin’ care of horses?” George Deeson asked.
“Not very much. I’ve never owned one before. Some of my friends have horses, but I don’t get to ride very often.”
“Reckon I’ll be over of a Saturday mornin’ to give you a lesson or two as long as your mama throws in some of her coffee and homemade biscuits.”
“How come, Mr. Deeson? I don’t understand.”
“How come? Why, girl, hasn’t your mama told you yet? Me and her’s gonna turn you into a rodeo queen.”
“Me?” Diana asked in stunned disbelief.
“Yup, you. You’re how old now? Thirteen?”
Diana nodded.
“It’ll take around four years, I reckon, give or take.” He leaned over and studied Diana’s face.
“Yup,” he said, “this girl’s got good bones. She’ll do just fine, but take it from me, missus, them braids gotta go. Braids don’t win no prizes these days, although they used to. They sure enough did, and not so very far back, neither.”
That evening, after supper, Iona cut off Diana’s braid. The following day, when school got out, Iona drove Diana to the drugstore in La Grande and bought her rollers, hair spray, combs and brushes, and makeup. When Diana came downstairs the next morning wearing her first tentative attempt at makeup, she waited for her father to say something, but he was strangely silent on the subject, almost as though he didn’t notice.
The next Saturday morning and for almost every Saturday morning that followed during the next four years, George Deeson appeared at the Coopers’ house bright and early to spend hours working with Diana and Waldo. When it was too cold to be outside, they worked in the barn. He taught her saddling and bridling and grooming. Together, Waldo and George Deeson taught Diana barrel racing. George taught her how to sit astride the horse so girl and horse were a single, symbiotic unit. He taught her how to read Waldo’s moods, how to calm him down during rumbling thunderstorms and barrages of exploding firecrackers, how to coax him in and out of unfamiliar horse trailers.
George Deeson taught Diana self-reliance, encouraged her to take Waldo off on long, solitary trail rides to one of the fifty-two alpine lakes in the Willowa Mountains surrounding Joseph, Oregon. There, with only her horse and her books, alone sometimes for days at a time, Diana could read and fish and care for her horse far away from Iona and Max Cooper’s day-to-day conflicts. And those trips weren’t good only for Diana, either. Starved for human companionship by his previous owner, Waldo thrived on the generous doses of attention Diana lavished on him.
But more than all that, George Deeson educated Diana Lee Cooper in something she never could have learned from her own mother. George Deeson taught Diana presence, schooled her in how to carry herself. He tutored her in the art of smiling and helped her master the rodeo-queen wave. Most of all, he infected her with his unshakable belief that one day she really would be queen of the Chief Joseph Days Rodeo.
George Deeson taught Diana all that and more. It didn’t dawn on her until years later that he never told her why.
And she didn’t ask.
Chapter 9
Looks at nothing rode in the truck without saying a word, offering no explanation and asking for none. Fat Crack did the same.
Halfway back to Sells, a call came in from Law and Order on the truck’s two-way radio. The tribal-police dispatcher told Fat Crack that he was needed near the Quijotoa Trading Post, where an Anglo lady’s Winnebago had broken down on her way to Rocky Point. She wanted a tow back home to Casa Grande.
Fat Crack was disappointed. He had wanted to go along to the hospital and watch the old medicine man strut his stuff. Now, that would be impossible.
In the early afternoon, Fat Crack came through the low pass outside Wedged Turtle Village, which Anglos call Sells. As the truck slowed for the cattle guard marking the village boundary, Looks At Nothing held out his hand. “Stop here,” he said.
