Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

Rostov breathed deeply, impatiently. “I’m pleased that you’re well equipped, mister. But one thing you don’t know is that those cattle are immeasurably more important to me and my people than they are to you. Another thing is that you haven’t any idea how deep or swift the Ussuri and Amur rivers are at this time of year. You don’t even know exactly where they or their tributaries are. Thirdly, you probably never heard of a Tartar warrior. And most important, you certainly never heard of a man named Genghis Kharlagawl, who has an entire army of Tartar warriors somewhere between here and our destination.”

There was a long moment of silence, because we sure as hell did not know any of those things he was talking about.

Finally Old Keats handed the papers back to Rostov. “That’s a legitimate copy, Shad. Listen, there’s just no doubt in my mind we’ll be able to use any help we can get along the way.”

Slim nodded. “I don’t like the idea a’ outside help anymore’n you do, Shad, but I second that motion. But a’ course whatever you say goes, boss.”

Shad thought about their opinions for a moment, then he grunted. “Okay. We’ll try it a while. But if you Russians cause any trouble the arrangement’ll come to a screeching halt.”

Rostov ignored this. “We’ll ride ahead of you and around you to scout the way. I want one of your men to ride with me.”

I expected Shad, in his tough frame of mind, to refuse, or maybe to volunteer Old Keats. But instead he looked at me. “You go, Levi.”

“Me?”

“You.”

So while the rest of the hands were working at packing and breaking up camp, I saddled Buck up with shaking hands and started ahead with the cossacks.

I didn’t know quite what to think as I rode up to the cossacks. It came out kind of a nervousness and fear and excitement and even fascination, all mingled together. For the first part of the ride I knew they were just waiting for me to fall off old Buck or do something else stupid. But I managed to keep up with their swift pace and not look too silly, I think.

At the top of a hill, after moving like bats out of hell, Rostov suddenly stopped us and we looked far back down at the beach. Most of the Slash-D men were asaddle by now, and yelling and twirling lariats to start the herd moving up toward us. Old Fooler, who always seemed to know the right way to go anyway, was following Shad riding point on Red, leading the cattle off in our direction. The Russians on the beach, who’d skinned the coyote-dun bull, were still busy dressing the meat, and a couple of them waved as cowboys rode by.

Beyond them, the blue-gray waters of the sea stretched forever.

Rostov glanced down at the scene and then at me, with hard eyes that seemed to go right through me and out the back of my head. “You gave them that entire bull.”

Remembering what he’d said about how important the herd was to him and his people, I hesitated a little bit before I answered. “Yeah.”

“Good.”

He turned and rode on north, and I spurred after him.

IF I’D had any suspicion that getting out of riding herd was going to make life easier for me, that first day with the cossacks changed my mind.

Keeping up with Rostov was like trying to race full tilt with a deer, outguessing what direction it was going to veer off to at any instant. When Rostov said he was going to scout ahead, he surely meant just that. The cossacks leading the spare mounts and packhorses didn’t have it too bad. They just walked their mounts at an easy pace in the lowlands, usually staying about half a mile ahead of the first longhorns. But the others, and especially me and Rostov, had been all over every foot of every mountain in sight long before Old Fooler and the first cattle ever stuck their noses into a valley below. Yet with all his hard riding, Rostov always somehow saw to it that his horse never got winded or tired, and I never once saw a drop of lather on that big black stallion.

A couple of times, when Rostov and I were alone near the top of a ridge, the ride got downright terrifying, too. Rostov, without hesitation, went barreling over a narrow, broken ledge that would have made a mountain goat stop and consider. Even though he hadn’t said a word since morning, and never even seemed to look at me, I still had the impression he was testing me every minute. So with the reputation of the good old Slash-Diamond at stake, I barreled along right after him. I was still trying to get my heart back in place a minute later, when we came to the second ledge, which was even higher and trickier to cross. He galloped over it as smooth as though his horse was a big, black bird, and thinking fatal thoughts I stuck right behind him. Mostly the path was the width of a skinny ironing board, and if we’d gone over the side it was at least two hundred feet to jagged rocks below.

And after maybe a minute, and aging ten years, I made it.

Rostov still didn’t look back or say anything.

But a while later, when we’d stopped and dismounted, he took a little meat out of his fancy, soft leather saddlebags and wordlessly offered me a bite of it. All in all, that wordless gesture of his seemed to me to be one hell of a compliment. I honestly didn’t know quite what to do. So I shook my head. But I compromised the refusal by giving him a very slight, brief grin.

Finally, around sunset, when my butt and the saddle under it felt like they were both about to shove themselves right up through the top of my head, Rostov pulled up on a bluff overlooking a beautiful and wide green flat with a creek running through it.

“I would suggest this as our camping place.”

Not wanting to agree with him too much, I said, “It’s not bad.”

“Ride back and tell Northshield.”

“Well, I’ll say it like you said first—about ‘suggestin’ it.”

He gave me a brief, piercing look in which there just might have been a glint of humor and then put his horse down the steep slope before us at breakneck speed.

Well, at least I’d now found out why he wanted me with him, and why Shad had agreed. I patted Buck on the shoulder and told him, “You should be proud of me, old horse. At last I’ve come to my great calling in the world—I’m a goddamn messenger boy.”

Then I turned Buck and we headed back for the herd.

Shad was still riding point, and when I told him about Rostov’s suggestion, all he said was “Place look okay t’ you?”

“God never invented a nicer one. We just veer left up ahead, around that buffalo-backed hill.”

While we were camping down, Mushy and Crab tried to make some sport of the fact that I’d been off “sight-seein’” while the others had been doing an honest day’s work. But I was too dead beat-up to bother trying to explain the error of their ways. I was asleep, literally, before my head ever came close to the saddle. All I remembered was sitting on my bedroll and starting to take off my boots.

The next morning I decided to take it easy on Buck and left him with the remuda, saddling Blackeye instead. Blackeye was a sturdy, feisty little pinto with an all-white face except for that one eye.

The cossacks were camped about five hundred feet away on the flat, and I rode over to them as Rostov was mounting up.

He looked at me and Blackeye and said, “You’re sparing the other horse because of yesterday.”

“Yeah.”

I got the feeling he approved of that. “You yourself managed to ride along with me fairly well.”

I shrugged. “Hell, I’m the worst horseman in the outfit.”

He called some orders in Russian to his men, and then we took off again.

After a few more miles of rough mountains, the terrain gradually started getting a little easier, which was a blessing even though it was still another hard-riding, wordless day.