They call him
the Barge

Stanley Huntley picked up his nickname during his junior year of football out in the west Texas town of Moo. The Moo High Steers had traveled all the way to Odessa for a game and in the next day's newspaper, after Stanley had run for 268 yards and three touchdowns from scrimmage plus returned two kicks for touchdowns, a local sportswriter rhapsodized about the 5-foot-10, 155-pound running back: "He don't look like much, but all he does is just barge through people."

Thus was born Barge Huntley.

It was in the winter after his junior season that Barge stumbled on what would guide his education and become a career. He was out hunting alone, as he often did, for rabbits with his father's Uzi -- though when he hit one, there wasn't much left to take home. He thought of it as instant stew meat.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted movement in a mesquite bush, turned and fired. He heard a a brittle breaking sound as the bullet hit. A gray bunny hopped away and Barge let it go.

Beyond the mesquite, surrounded by a wall of cacti, Barge found a pile of human skulls, all neatly stacked, at least 30 that he could count.

Scraping at the sandy soil, he found an old arrow head and a couple of old bullet slugs. He stuffed one of the skulls, the arrowhead and the slugs in his game bag, headed home.

Next day at school he looked for his teammate Buck Toulouse, whose uncle was known to have a large arrow collection.

"Your uncle, the one who's into arrows and ... "

"Artifacts, he calls it."

"Arti-what?"

"Artifacts -- old s--- that somebody's willing to pay good money for."

"I found some stuff I'd like to show him, see if he thinks it's worth anything."

"Like what?"

"You'll see."

So after school Barge and Buck headed over to his Uncle Shake's combination taxidermy/pharmacy shop decorated with arrows, steer skulls, horseshoes, old rifles. Buck explained that his friend had found some stuff, and when Barge pulled it out of his bag, Uncle Shake jumped up, started perspiring and shaking, which was his way of showing excitement. Made him a terrible poker player, or artifact broker.

When Barge said there was more, maybe 30 skulls, and he just barely scraped at the sand and found the arrow and slugs, Uncle Shake started hyperventilating.

Next thing Barge knew, Uncle Shake was writing him a check for $10,000 and they were signing a contract that made them partners, Uncle Shake would introduce Barge to artifact collectors, Barge would do his own negotiating, and Shake would get a cut of the action.

Thus was born Barge Huntley, artifact hunter.