Buck Johnson: Dragon Wrangler

nson: Dragon Wrangler

  Wyatt McLaren

  Copyright 2012 Wyatt McLaren

  This is a work of fiction. The characters and situations are nothing more than inventions of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or institutions on Earth is purely coincidental.

  Buck Johnson: Dragon Wrangler

  When Buck Johnson finally managed to breathe a little again and knew he wasn’t dead, he propped himself up on one elbow. He spat dirt out of his mouth—pthit, pthit. Worse yet, the “dirt” was at least half dragon dung.

  Commiserating, Skeeter Evans called across the football field-sized round pen, “You okay, Buck?” He was pretty sure Buck was uninjured—he was the best hand at breaking dragons Skeeter had ever seen—but the claims of friendship drew the question out of him anyway. “Buck, is anything broke?”

  Finally managing to stand, but with hands on knees and head down, Buck worked hard at re-inflating his lungs, getting as much air into them as he could with each gasp. But the sulfur-tainted air of Terul didn’t give him much help in getting his wind back. Eventually, he answered: “Yeah, I’m okay. Too far from the heart to kill me. Did you see what that bitch did, Skeet?”

  “Yeah, I seen it. Treacherous, ain’t she?” What had happened was this.

  Dragon wranglers have to break a dragon twice—once to ride and then, about six to eight months later, once to flight. So a top-notch dragon wrangler has to be not only knowledgeable in all the techniques of dragon breaking, as well as being a top hand at keeping his forked end down, but he also has to be an outstanding judge of a dragon’s age. And that’s where it gets tricky, especially on Terul.

  A top hand like Buck will take a young dragon into the big round pen just at the critical age when she’s old enough to learn, strong enough to rough handle, and still unable to fly. Then he ties her up short to the snubbing pillar with a thick rope braided from strips of dragon hide (the only rope strong enough to hold a dragon calf) attached to the dragon halter. Then the dragon wrangler gets the dragon to accept the dragon-hide saddle. And when she finally accepts the saddle, he starts riding the rough off of her and teaching her to mouth rein. Of course, all this has to happen before the dragon’s age of flight.

  But Fourth Quadrant dragons, and especially Terullian dragons, are a small breed—seldom, if ever, weighing more than five or six thousand pounds when full grown. This particular dragon was a smallish Red Kraken, not even green broke yet. And Buck had misjudged her age by several months. It turned out that she was capable of short flights after all—not very high and not very far, but flight nevertheless, much like a fat laying hen flying several feet into the low-hanging branches of a tree to roost. Anyhow, Buck had allowed that she was younger than she really was.

  This day, Buck had cut the small reddish dragon—he really liked her looks and was itching to work her to see what she could do—out of the bunch first and saddled her. Skeeter took off his jacket and, reaching high, wrapped it over the dragon’s eyes. When Buck put his left foot in stirrup with extendable and retractable stirrup leathers to allow mounting so high, Skeeter commenced a distracting and soothing murmur: “Easy, girl . . . whoa, take it easy, girl . . . it’s all right . . . he ain’t gonna hurt ya . . . easy.”

  Buck got his right stirrup and settled himself in the saddle. He lifted on the reins and said, a little thickly, “Okay, Skeet, let ’er go. Outside!” Skeeter took the blind off and scrambled out of the way.

  The red girl flapped her immature wings a couple of times, crow hopped a few times, and then settled into an easy trot around the pen. Buck grinned—he sure did like her easy gait and impressive conformation. So he started working with her to teach her to mouth rein, pulling first on one and then the other rein attached to a ring through each side of the dragon’s lower lip and spurring her with his dragon-scale spurs on the off side to help her get the message. She was a fast learner, and both Buck and Skeeter were impressed.

  But Buck’s miscalculation soon reared its head.

  Just as Buck was putting the dragon through another loping figure eight, she balked, nearly throwing him over her head. But he dug in his spurs, squeezed with his knees, and managed to keep his seat. Then she really did the unexpected.

  Getting one rein in her mouth, the dragon took off at dead run flapping her wings for all she was worth, battering Buck about the ears and knocking his hat off. Thirty yards later she was airborne. When she was about ten feet high, she rolled. And just when Buck’s head was pointed at the ground, she slung her tail and launched him straight toward the hard-packed round-pen dirt. He hit the ground hard, and the air whooshed out of his lungs.

  And to top it off, Buck weighed more than most dragon wranglers—he wasn’t any taller, but he was broader and thicker. (The extra muscle came in pretty handy, though, in throwing the two-hundred-pound dragon saddle up onto the base of the dragon’s neck just in front of the wings, as well as with all the demanding rope work.) So when Buck connected with the ground, it was no small impact.

  Breathing normally once again, Buck leaned against the towering snubbing pillar. (Owing to a dragon’s size and strength, as well as the battering-ram power in its tail, a snubbing post won’t work. It has to be a pillar carved from native rock with deep roots.) He glared at the red bitch for a while and then, seeming to have arrived at some decision, started digging around in his shirt pocket. At length, he pulled out a small pouch and packet of rolling papers. He very deliberately started the process of rolling a cigarette.

  Just then Skeeter came running up. “Damn, Buck, where’d you get tobacco? I haven’t seen any of that since—oh, I guess about twenty-one-aught-three. I sure could use me a smoke now, though.” Buck handed the makings to Skeeter, and he rolled one as well. They smoked meditatively in silence for a while, watching the dragon who was watching them from the far side of the pen.

  Finally, Skeeter, who was quicker of speech than thought—and you’d think that big head atop his long body would have more room for thoughts than it seemed to—broke the silence. “So, Buck, where in the hell did you get some smoke? It’s been outlawed back home on earth for goin’ on seventy years.”

  Buck answered mechanically out of long habit, actually giving his friend only a fraction of his attention. “’Member ol’ Quincy Poindexter? You know he moved his operation to the outpost on Sitka 9? Well, when he sends a load out this way—”

  Before he could get any further into this explanation, though, Skeeter was off reminiscing at a high lope. “Do I remember Quincy? Hell, yeah, I do! ’Member that time we took a load of green-broke dragons down to his place on Lexur and we all got hung up in a jug and they broke down the pen and we spent a week gatherin’ ’em all again? You passed out, and I got so wasted I was gonna have me one of them Lexurian females. I sure wisht I did too—they say they got extra muscles in their—”

  Buck cut him off for his own good. “Whoa, ease up there, Skeet. You’re gonna git yourself all worked up. There ain’t nothin’ you can bed down with within fifteen million miles of here. And I don’t think you want any of Karposh’s girls.” It was a good thing Buck had broken in because Skeeter’s face was a little flushed, and he was shifting his weight from foot to foot in pretty quick succession.

  “Anyhow, as I was sayin’, when ol’ Quince sends a load out this way, he always has his boys drop a little off on Terul for me. And he can afford to, too—he makes way more with bootleg tobacco than he ever did sellin’ anything legal. Good ol’ Quince.” It seemed appropriate, then, to roll another one. So they did and smoked in silence again, with Skeeter gazing appreciatively at his from time to time.

  Buck spoke first this time. “Look at her, Sk
eet. She’s thinkin’ . . . and pleased with herself, too. A man’d have to be on his toes all the time with that treacherous bitch, you know it?” He gazed languorously at the dragon, but you could tell the wheels were turning in his mind, that he was hatching some kind of plan. And the dragon, sitting on her haunches, stared back at him.

  Skeeter’s tenuous thoughts were traveling down different roads, though. “Buck, lemme ast you somethin’. How long you been bustin’ out dracs for ol’ lizard-belly Karposh?”

  “Well, lets’ see . . .” Buck stared vacantly at the stony horizon as he calculated. “About three years now, I reckon.”

  Unaware of the discomfort he was causing his friend, Skeeter pressed on: “And whaddaya got to show for all that? A sky truck that’ll barely fly, a korth past his prime, a wore-out saddle, and maybe, just maybe, a couple hundred Terul credits in your pocket. Ain’t much to show for all that work and all them bruises. I think you need to find a new boss or a new line of work, buckaroo.”

  “Skeet, that’s a hell of thing comin’ from you. You don’t even have your own mount, and your saddle looks like it was patched together by a blind Cohethian. And you’re plumb broke to boot.”

  Unfazed, Skeeter