I headed to the gas station/restaurant and joined a throng of folks for breakfast. Laura, Tanya, Ray, Amelia, and Jeanette were there although she was just leaving as I came in. She was wearing jeans, a somewhat frilly blue sleeveless cotton blouse which showed off her lovely arms, and cowgirl boots. She also had her hair down which is the way I like it, not that she cares. “Did you get the vendors squared away?” she asked as I held the door open for her.
“Sure did.”
“More will be coming this morning. Go up there and make sure they get set up.”
“OK, boss. Do I have time for breakfast?”
“Yes, if you make it fast. And Mike? I want you to look after those fossil hunters today. Especially Pick. There are people around here who might try to play tricks on him. You know what I mean.”
“OK, boss,” I said, mentally tacking one more thing on my work list. Look after Pick. Great.
Jeanette left and I went inside, nodded to the Blackie Butte crew, which I realized was missing our intrepid dinosaur hunter. Once I loaded my plate with eggs and biscuits, I sat down with Ray and Amelia, there being room at their booth, and looked over my shoulder where Laura and Tanya were sitting. “Where’s Pick?” I asked them.
“He won’t be up until noon,” Laura said. “He loves his air conditioning.”
I was tired enough I didn’t filter my next question. “Where is he sleeping?”
“With us,” Laura said.
“In the other bed,” Tanya added.
This made Amelia giggle. “And where did you sleep, young lady?” I asked, recalling she was supposed to bunk with the dino gals.
“With Ray,” she answered, sweetly. “In the other bed,” Ray said, shooting eye darts at Amelia. “Mom stayed with Aunt Ophelia.”
I was aware that Jeanette had relatives in town, specifically an aunt. But that was a never mind. “Did she know you and Amelia were sleeping in the same room?”
Ray didn’t say anything, which was an answer. “Come here, young man,” I said and stood up and went over by the ice maker.
He joined me. “Yeah?”
“Listen, did anything happen?”
“Yeah. She beat me at Monopoly.”
“You’ll call me sir and don’t give me that. You know what I mean.”
“Nothing happened, Mike, I swear. Sir.”
I looked Ray in the eye and could tell he was telling the truth. “Look, pardner,” I said, “a thing like this could get out and hurt Amelia’s reputation. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
“No sir, but—”
“There’s no but. Tonight, she sleeps somewhere else. I don’t care where but not with you. OK?”
Ray nodded. “OK.”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Hurry up and eat. We’ve got work to do.”
We went back to our breakfast, choked it down, and headed out for the fairgrounds, running into the Marsh brothers going inside. “Can we help?” they asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Stay out of trouble. And don’t say a damn thing that might be perceived as environmental to one of these cowboys. You got that?”
“Can we talk about the dinosaurs?” Brian asked.
“No! Don’t say anything at all.”
Ray and I took off, arriving at the rodeo grounds to find not a Chinese fire drill but a full-blown Chinese disaster, not that the Chinese had anything to do with it. Vendors were squabbling over their locations, there was an impromptu roundup going on since a couple of bucking bulls had escaped, and the sun was already beating down. As soon as everyone spotted me, they lined up in a polite queue, each telling me their problems and allowing me to sort it all out. Actually, we were ignored but Ray and I charged in, anyway, and did our best to help.
We worked until we were sweaty messes and we didn’t make the parade although I understand it was pretty grand. There was the volunteer fire department fire truck, two floats, one featuring the girls basketball team at the high school and the other sponsored by the mortuary, which had, appropriately enough, the owner and his family members dressed up like Montana pioneers (they’re all dead, you see). There were also some rodeo contestants riding their fancy horses, and a red convertible containing a local beauty queen, a Brescoe, of course, her sash reading miss walleye, which referred to, I believe, the fish and not any imperfection of the young lady. I also heard Pick was part of the parade, not because he was supposed to, but because he got lost going to the gas station/restaurant for breakfast and found himself in the middle of main street between the two floats. When people started to cheer, he started waving. That’s our Pick.