Clair Huffaker: The Cowboy and the Cossack

The big, bearded man leading them strode toward Yakolev and Shad. It struck me as strange that he walked with that same cougar’s grace and controlled strength that was in all of Shad’s movements.

“Christ!” Slim muttered. “It looks like we’re gonna have t’ swim back to Seattle!”

The big cossack said something to Yakolev in a voice that sounded like a bear growling when he hasn’t decided whether he’s mad or not. They started talking, with the cossack asking short questions and Yakolev answering a little uncertainly. A couple of us looked at Old Keats, wondering what they were talking about, but he wasn’t able to keep up with them and just shrugged his shoulders.

As they spoke, Shad reached over to a box of cooking matches on a pile of gear and took one, striking it on his thumbnail to light his now-built cigarette. Yakolev was startled by the sudden spurt of flame from Shad’s hand and stopped halfway through some answer or another.

“Whatever you two fellas are talkin’ about,” Shad told Yakolev, lighting up his smoke and tossing away the match, “tell your fancy friend that come hell or high water, we’re movin’ out right after breakfast.”

“You’re moving out before breakfast,” the big cossack said.

Shad’s reaction was a difficult thing to paint. The rest of us damnere fell down. But Shad looked, for a moment, like he had the night before when he drank the glass of white whiskey. In both cases he’d bitten off quite a bit, but he sure as hell was going to chew it.

He frowned slightly. “You talk American.”

“Probably better than you do,” the big cossack growled.

Shad’s voice got harder. “In that case, you know what ‘fuck you’ means.”

There was a silence as the two men stared at each other, both of them looking like something over six feet of solid granite.

“Now wait,” Yakolev finally said with nervous anger. “I am Harbor Master here! First there are matters of import duties, taxes and other expenses!”

The cossack glared at Yakolev. “You have been paid.”

Some of us glanced at each other, wondering who was on whose side.

“No!” Yakolev struggled to take a small brown cigar from one of his pockets. “And remember, I have forty soldiers here who represent the Tzar!”

“Ah?” the cossack growled thoughtfully. “Forty soldiers? And we are only sixteen cossacks?” He smiled, his powerful white teeth flashing briefly. “Perhaps, then—you have really not been paid in full.”

Yakolev nodded, gaining courage from these words, and put the cigar in his mouth so that it jutted out arrogantly. The cossack reached for the box of cooking matches, obviously intending to light the cigar, and Yakolev now said confidently, “I must to have three dollars per each one of the beasts.”

“Like hell,” Shad said in a dangerous tone.

The cossack lifted the box of matches and struck one of them on the side of the box. With the box in one hand and the flaming match in the other, he extended his hands toward Yakolev’s cigar. He lighted the cigar as Yakolev puffed contentedly, and then he touched the still-burning match into the box, which was just under Yakolev’s chin.

That one burning match suddenly ignited all the others and searing flames hissed up against and around his face as Yakolev screamed and dropped to his knees, frantically slapping whatever beard he’d had and his thick, burning eyebrows and hair.

Then, as Yakolev was crouched down with shaking hands clasped over his singed face, the big cossack growled, “Now you have been paid in full.”

Then he turned and thundered something in Russian to his men and they roared with laughter as they whipped out their swords and started forward.

But by that time Yakolev’s forty men weren’t taking anything too funny. Every one of them suddenly looked even more scared than I felt. Two of them came up in a big hurry and grabbed the whimpering Yakolev and boosted him onto his horse. Then they all rode away, making a lot better time going than when they’d come.

“All them soldiers runnin’ away from them few cossacks?” Sammy the Kid said in disbelief.

“They was scared shitless!” Slim glanced at Old Keats. “What the hell did he say?”

“I—I think him and his cossacks were gonna burn all the hair off any survivors, includin’ the hair around their balls.”

“Jesus,” Big Yawn rumbled. “That even hurts t’ think about.”

We all started to drift closer in to where Shad and the big cossack were watching Yakolev and his men disappear down the beach toward Vladivostok in the distance. The other cossacks, every one of them some kind of a tough-looking man, were gathering around too, so that we wound up facing each other in a rough circle around Shad and the cossack boss.

Without thinking, I said to Shad, “That was pretty slick, what he did. Really drove those bastards off.”

Shad gave me a look so stern it would have stripped the bark off an oak tree. “Hate t’ waste good matches.”

The big cossack turned from looking off at the distant, retreating soldiers and gave an order to his men in a brusque, low voice.

He’d obviously told them it was okay to put back their swords. And they obeyed his order.

But the way they did it was, in its own silent way, truly spectacular to us cowboys.

Every single one of them, hardly thinking about it and just out of sheer habit, drew his razor-sharp four-foot sword blade across his other arm enough to draw blood. Some of them just got a few drops, and some of them got a couple of lines of dripping red clear down into their hands.

And then they shoved their swords back into their sheaths, each one making a tiny, sliding, hissing sound.

You didn’t have to be too bright, right then, to pretty much figure out their point of view. It looked like they never pulled those swords without drawing blood, and it was getting more and more apparent why those forty soldiers were long gone by now.

And, for whatever reasons, we were facing those cossacks in much the same situation.

The rest of the hands, at least counting me, had mixed emotions, but Shad looked quietly at the big cossack and spoke in a flat voice. “My men and me are moving out like I said, right after breakfast.”

The big cossack’s jaw went tight and Slim spoke quickly. “We thought you was here t’ give us a hard time along with them others. In a outta-the-way place like this, it’s nice t’ meet some friends.”

“We are not your friends.” The cossack’s hard, penetrating eyes briefly studied each of us, one after the other. “I am Captain Mikhail Ivanovitch Rostov of the Kuban-Siberian Cossacks. My men and I are here under orders. We’re to protect you and the cattle on your trip.”

This brought all of us up a little short, since nothing had ever been said about anything like that. Shad couldn’t believe what he’d heard. With mixed irritation and amusement he said, “To what ?”

“You’re Northshield, I presume.” There was iron in his voice. “As I said, to protect you.”

And there was now iron times ten in Shad’s voice. “This outfit don’t hardly need any help, mister.”

As the two big men looked hard at each other, there was a grim, hollow stillness in the air, like the feeling in a thunderstorm just before lightning cracks.

Old Keats, God bless him, broke in and said quietly, “After all, Shad, they have their orders. And they know the country, and what to expect.”

Captain Rostov glanced briefly, piercingly at Old Keats. “Your man has common sense.”

“He ain’t my man,” Shad said flatly, meaning something stronger than what his words were saying. “Every man with me is his own man.”

“Well, what the hell”—Slim shrugged in a peaceful way—“these fellas oughtn’t t’ get in the way too goddamned much, Shad.”