Gertie the Queen of the Storyland Stampede's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Gertie had ridden a bull once every year for thirty years, and this year she nearly missed the chance. She stood at the empty rodeo grounds at dawn, boots sunk in cold dust. The gates hung shut. The rail pens sat quiet. No crowd, no dust cloud, no announcer calling her name. She had shown up to compete, and the whole arena was silent. She pushed her pink hat back and stared at the locked gate. "Well, where in blazes is everybody?" Her voice cracked across the empty ring. A wrangler leaned on the fence, packing up rope. He told her the Stampede had wrapped two days ago. She'd read the wrong week off a torn flyer. Gertie chewed on that. She meant to ride every single Stampede in Storyland Canada this season. Not one. Not most. Every one. But the Stampedes moved from town to town, and nobody posted the dates in any place she could find. She'd been guessing, and guessing had just cost her a whole event. The wrangler shrugged. "You want dates, you want the almanac." He jerked his thumb at a weathered book sitting on a fence rail. Its cover showed horseshoes and a bucking horse, tooled in brown leather. The spine read Rodeo Circuit Almanac. He said it listed every Stampede in the region, town by town, week by week. Gertie snatched it up. She flipped the pages with thick fingers. There they all were. Dates. Towns. Arena names. Twenty Stampedes, laid out clean from spring through fall. She ran her thumb down the column and found the next one. Three days out, one town over. She could still make it. "How much?" she asked. The wrangler waved her off. Said he had two. Said a rider chasing the whole circuit needed it more than he did. Gertie clutched the almanac to her purple shirt. For the first time all morning, she grinned wide. She had the map now. She knew where every gate would open and when. No more torn flyers. No more empty arenas at dawn. Then a snort pulled her around. Past the rail pens, a bull stood alone in a holding stall. Broad chest, heavy neck, horns that swept wide. He watched her with a flat, steady eye. The wrangler followed her look and whistled low. "That one's the draw for the next three towns," he said. "Nobody's stayed on him yet." Gertie tucked the almanac into her belt. She had solved the first problem. She knew the schedule cold. But knowing when to show up was one thing. The animal in that stall was another. She stepped closer to the rail and met the bull's eye, and the bull did not blink.