well, i'm not scared of a little rain.
might as well brave it.
someday.  if that sissy hankshaw ever shows up here, i'm gonna teach her how to hypnotize a chicken. chickens are the easiest critters on earth to hypnotize. if you can look a chicken in the eyes for tens seconds, it's yours forever.
just that in heaven all business is conducted this way.
welcome, podner. by god, it's great to have you here. it's an honor. sorry i took so long getting to you, but we've had a mess of hard work these past few days -- and a heap of planning to do.
oh, i know about sissy hankshaw, all right. i've done a little hitchhiking myself. ah shucks, that's like telling annie oakley you're a sharpshooter because you once knocked a tomato can off a stump with a fieldstone. i'd heard tales about you from people i'd meet in jail cells and truckstops. i heard about your, uh, your, ah, your wonderful thumbs, and i heard how you were jack kerouac's girl friend.
well, that doesn't matter; that part never interested me anyway. the beatnicks were before my time, and i never got anything outta the hippies but bad dope, clichs and the clap. but the example of your life helped me in my struggle to be a cowgirl.
about.
cowgirls exist as an image. a fairly common image. the idea of cowgirls especially for little girls prevails in our culture. therefore, it seems to me, the existence of cowgirls should prevail. otherwise, they're being fooled. in the rodeo hall of fame in oklahoma city there are just two cowgirls. two. and both of 'em are trick-riders. trick-riding is what cowgirls have almost always done in rodeos. our society sure likes to see its unconventional women do tricks. that's what prostitutes call it, you know: 'tricking.'
no, ma'am. no way. there's girls on the rubber rose who are political, but i don't share their views. i got no cowgirl ideology to expound. "politics is for people who have a passion for changing life but lack a passion for living it."
did that last comment sound too profound to be coming outta my mouth? it's not original. it's something i picked up from the chink.
learned from the chink? oh my. ha ha. that's hard to say. we mostly.  uh, a lot of his talk is pretty goofy.
oh yeah, now that i think of it, the chink taught me something about cowgirls. did you realize that cowgirls have been around for many centuries? long before america. in ancient india the care of the cattle was always left up to young women they called gopis. being alone with the cows all the time, the gopis got awfully horny, just like we do here. every gopi was in love with krishna, a good-looking young god who played the flute like it was going out of style when the moon was full, this krishna would play his flute by a river and call the gopis to him. then he would multiply himself sixteen thousand times -- one for each gopi -- and make love to each one the way she most desired. there they were, sixteen thousand gopis balling krishna on the river bank, and the energy of their merging was so great that it created a huge oneness, a total union of love, and it was god. wow! quite a picture, huh?
that couldn't be krishna, could it? a bit shrill for a flute. just our rotten luck.
gotta run now. delores says i'm needed. somebody's here. maybe it's the countess.
sissy, cowgirl history is about to be made. i'm damn glad you're here to witness it.
more and more people are discovering that cow's milk isn't fit for human consumption. billy west says if we can produce enough goat's milk on the ranch to make it worth his while, he'll run it into fargo regularly.
delores zonks out on peyote at least once a week, but so far her third vision hasn't happened. niwetükame, the mother goddess has not gotten back in touch with her. meanwhile she and debbie are rivaling each other like a couple of crosstown high schools. tension. cowgirl tension! what a drag.
debbie says that if women are to take charge again, they must do it in the feminine way; they mustn't resort to aggressive and violent masculine methods. she says it is up to women to show themselves better than men, to love men, set good examples for them and guide them tenderly toward the new age. she's a real dreamer, that debbie-dear.
i wouldn't say that. i expect she's right, ultimately. but i'm with delores when it comes to fighting for what's mine. i can't understand why delores is so uptight about the chink; he could probably teach her a thing or two. ee! that grass tickles, doesn't it? god knows i love women, but nothing can take the place of a man that fits. still this is cowgirl territory and i'll stand with delores and fight any bastards who might deny it. i guess i've always been a scrapper. look. this scar. only twelve years old and i was felled by a silver bullet.
get the girls. he's gonna see me right now.
any of you ladies who would like to join us, you're welcome to stay on as a full working podner at the rubber rose. rest of you get packed -- and i mean now. you've got fifteen minutes to move your lard asses off this ranch.
you owe us this here ranch, as a token payment for your disgusting exploitations
go for it, girls!
not one of these pussies has been washed in a week!
yep, the whooping cranes are here all right. they're in fine shape, and as you musta saw from your fucking whirly machine, unrestrained, free to go as they please. but this is private property and you aren't laying a foot on it. none of you.
just come back with a couple of people who know what they're doing and we'll let'em in for a nice close look at the birds.
from men, the whooping crane has
obviously, a paternalistic society
let's celebrate!
looks like every time we get together things are in a mess.
hell no, the cranes are wonderful, okay, but i'm not in this for whooping cranes. i'm in it for cowgirls. if we cowgirls give in to authority on this crane issue, then cowgirls become just another compromise. i want a finer fate than that -- for me and for every other cowgirl. better no cowgirls at all than cowgirls compromised.
aw, come off it, sissy. what do you mean, 'drugged'? every living thing is a chemical composition and anything that is added to it changes that composition. when you eat a cheeseburger or a three musketeers bar, it changes your body chemistry. the kind of food you eat, the kind of air you breathe, can change your mental state. does that mean you're 'drugged'?
'drugged' is a stupid word.
this here discussion is destined to become academic. because we've got less than half a bag of peyote buttons left and delores's run ended up in the mottburg jail. so any day now we'll get a chance to see how the whoopers behave when they come down, to see if the peyote experience really changed them or not. but in the meantime, i want to say this about fear.
every time i tell you that i love you, you flinch. but that's your problem.
well, what we got to do is one of us has got to go up that hill and tell them boys that america can have its whooping cranes back. since i'm the boss here, and since i'm responsible for a lot of you choosing to be cowgirls in the first place, it's gonna be me that goes.
no buts about it. it's getting lighter by the second. you podners keep your heads down. ta ta.
better get rid of these. might give those greenhorn dudes a fright.
right in the scar where i fell on a wooden horse when i was twelve. haw, i wasn't really shot with a silver bullet.
or was i?