Clair Huffaker: The Cowboy and the Cossack

“I dunno. I just know that somehow ya’ know if you’re a’ talkin’ t’ somebody an’ ya’ both know it’s friendly.” Slim started helping me with the bottles. “Some a’ them fishermen’ve made purty good hauls in the last two, three weeks. They tell me fish’ve been runnin’ real good out there.”

Shad now came striding back into the light of the fire. He said tersely, “Some of those cows’re lyin’ down t’ die.”

“They ain’t in real good shape, boss,” Slim agreed. “Their leg muscles’re startin’ t’ stiffen up.”

“All right!’ Shad’s powerful voice carried to all of us over the sound of the fire and the wind. “We got some more of this white whiskey comin’, but we’re gonna start now! We’ll fill these containers with grain and wet it down with that whiskey! Fast!”

“How much whiskey for how much grain?” Crab asked.

“A little bit goes a long way!” Shad said. “Taste it and pretend you’re a cow!” He wasn’t fooling, for that was about as accurate a way to judge as any. Then he added, “Let’s go!” and we all jumped to it.

The rest of the night was kind of funny, in a way.

Old Keats and Shiny showed up half an hour later with the rest of the “white whiskey,” just at about the time we were running short. All in all, we fed nearly a hundred bottles mixed with more than a ton of grain to our five-hundred-odd head of cattle. As we figured it, that was roughly half a bottle to every ten pounds of feed. Depending on how you looked at it, that was either a pretty dry mash or awful wet.

Some of the stronger bulls started at the Russian white-whiskey mash first, as we all started lugging it out to feed them. On my third trip out, carrying a washtub with Mushy, I noticed Old Fooler sniff the air like a deeply damaged cowboy on Saturday night. He raised his right foreleg like he was waving an uncertain hello to no one in particular and headed vaguely but enthusiastically for the next refreshments he could find.

And what with all the mooing and calling and bellowing and snorting of the first ones to try this new recipe, it brought the sick and the lame, the halt and the mostly damnere frozen to their feet, even if it was just out of pure curiosity. On my fourth trip out, hauling half a big barrel with Big Yawn and Natcho, I saw that spotted cow with the yearling calf who’d stopped the stampede aboard ship. She’d had a bit out of a washtub herself and was insistently nudging her bawling youngster toward it.

Along toward daylight, they were the drunkest, healthiest, most relaxed bunch of longhorns anyone could ever hope to see. Most of them were out there on the frozen ground sleeping, but it was a deep, comfortable sleep, with easy, regular breathing and relaxed leg muscles.

“Them cows could all be takin’ their forty winks on a block a’ ice an’ not know any different,” Slim said as the first glimmer of sun began to break dimly in the east.

Shad looked off toward the dim gray dawn. “The herd’ll be ready t’ move in about four hours. I’ll take two volunteers t’ stay up with me an’ watch ’em. The rest of ya’ get a little sleep before we bust outta here.”

Thank God Slim and Big Yawn volunteered because by that time I was too tired to hardly raise my arm or even speak. Along with the others I laid out my bedroll by the fire and almost died in it.

And when I woke up, a bright sun was shining and burning in my eyes. It was like a clear, brisk spring day anywhere in the world, except somebody was yelling that some goddamned cossacks were riding down the hill toward us.

I STAGGERED up into a sitting position and started pulling on my boots, looking off up the far rise, the corners of my eyes still sand-filled with sleep.

Chakko, who never said anything, muttered, “Jumpin’ Jesus Christ, Goddamn hell!” It was the longest sentence I’d ever heard him say.

And then, as my eyes focused better, I began to see why Chakko had made up such a long sentence.

Old Keats told me one time there was a fictitious thing called a centaur. Half man and half horse. Those men coming down the hill surely looked like a group of those fictitious characters. There were about fifteen or twenty of them loping swiftly down, and you just knew that if any one of those horses flicked its tail at a fly biting its ass, its rider would have known all about it and, without looking, reached back and down and grabbed that fly and thrown it away onto the ground, all in stride.

Those men and their horses were that much together.

But on top of that they were an even more spooky bunch because there was, somehow, an invincibility about them that scared the hell out of you from a mile away. It was like nothing on earth could stop them from getting where they were going.

They wore uniforms no one ever heard of since the Napoleonic Wars. They had on trim black-fur hats and black capes that flowed behind them as they rode. But the inside of their capes and their thick laced vests were bright scarlet. They wore roomy black trousers tucked into very high, shiny black boots. They all carried handsome swords at their sides and had rifles strapped across their shoulders. Their leader, a black-bearded giant of a man, wore a huge sword that glinted silver and gold in the distance. Big Yawn, with his occasional grasp of description, muttered, “Fuck! Are they fancy!”

“I hope t’ hell they’re not after us,” Slim said. And then he added grimly, “But they sure seem t’ be headed this way.”

“Both sides,” Natcho said quietly, and Shad, who already knew about it, nodded.

I looked in the other direction and saw Yakolev barreling up along the beach on a little pony that looked too small to carry him, the bottom of his long brown coat flapping clear back and down against the hocks of the overworked pony’s back legs. Riding behind him, on equally miserable mounts, were thirty or forty men in long coats and scrubby fur hats like the three men we’d seen in the bar.

“Looks like Yakolev’s mad about somethin’ an’ he’s called out all the marines in the whole damn country,” Slim said.

“I want every man to have a gun in easy reach.” Shad slowly took out his pack of Bull Durham.

Most of the men who were up already had revolvers on. I stood and quickly buckled on my old Navy Remington .44. A couple of others just moved closer to their saddles and the rifles they now had near at hand in their scabbards.

Yakolev jerked his undersized pony to a halt and swung down, slightly tripping in his fury, and stalked toward Shad. The men behind him dismounted and followed, looking ready for trouble.

“You came here ashore!” Yakolev snarled in his thick, muddy accent.

Shad was now pouring tobacco into the cigarette paper, but he knew exactly how much to put in, so he was looking right at Yakolev while he did it. “Want t’ check our Sea Papers again?”

“I have brought these many soldiers to enforce our port laws! There are large import duties, many taxes that I must have to collect!”

Shad rolled the paper around the tobacco and licked it, then started to gently and slowly firm it together with his fingers. “We’re all paid up front, mister. And you know it.”

It was then that the cossacks rode up from the other side. Scared as I was, I couldn’t help noticing the great difference between the two bunches of men. Yakolev and his soldiers were grubby hunks of dirt compared to the cossacks. Even their shabby little horses couldn’t begin to compare with the cossacks’ handsome, finely groomed mounts. The cossacks came up twice as fast and with half as much noise, and when they dismounted, swiftly and surely, every man’s foot seemed to touch the ground within the same split second.