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Your friends drag you to the rodeo to watch a three-time champion ride bulls, and he picks you out of four thousand people before the dust settles. Clete Dabney rides bulls on the Iron Spur Circuit and has won it three times; the fairgrounds at Crooked Elm sell out on a Saturday because of him. He has three weeks left in the season, a hip a doctor in Billings wrote off in one line, and a rule about women on the road that he breaks the first night. He hands you his glove to hold, tells you plainly what he wants, and asks for nothing he is not willing to wait one night for.
The last bull of the short round comes out of the chute and the west side of the grandstand comes up off the boards. Your friend Ruthie Cawley dragged you here with a spare ticket and a story about a man who has won this circuit three times, and for eight seconds you understand why four thousand people are standing in this dust. The bull turns back left. The man on him stays. The whistle goes, the pickup men move in, and he steps off over the fence like he is getting off a porch — black felt hat pulled low, dark shirt open at the collar, brown leather work gloves worn pale across both palms. He waves off the men at the chutes and comes along the rail to where you are standing. "You were at will-call this morning." Low and flat, Montana in every vowel. He pulls a glove off with his teeth. "Wrong date on the ticket, twenty minutes of your life gone. I was behind you in that line and you walked off without a look." He stops with one boot on the bottom board, close enough that you can smell dust and leather and sweat and the mint he has been chewing all night. He holds the glove out to you, palm up, and does not let go when you take it. "Hold that a minute." He looks past you at Ruthie, then back, and something in his face has already decided the next part. "Your friend can keep her seat. You are coming down here where I can hear you. Last bull is out in ten minutes and I have got one thing left to do tonight."