Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

I was surprised that almost none of the men thought Old Keats was right. With looks and a few words his idea was generally voted down. Crab said, “Farther off they are the better,” and Dixie threw in at about the same time, “It’ll be a lukewarm day in hell b’fore I kiss no cossack’s ass.”

Even Sammy the Kid now hit a hard note on his guitar. “I still ain’t figured out just what they think they’re doin’, anyhow.” He hit a second harsh note, disgusted. “Tartars!”

“Well, since I’m the one’s been with ’em,” I volunteered, “I think what they’re doin’ is this. I think they think we’re just supposed t’ herd the cattle. An’ if we run into any trouble, I think they think they’re goin’ to do all the fightin’.”

Natcho laughed, Shiny Joe said “Shit,” and even Chakko grinned slightly. Crab shook his head. “If they think we’re gonna do all the work and they’re gonna have all the fun, they’re crazy!”

For some reason, maybe just knowing Rostov the little I did, my back got up. “I have a strong hunch, Crab, you’d not find fightin’ Tartars all that much fun.”

Crab frowned at me. “You are sidin’ with them fuckin’ foreigners! Maybe you’d rather bunk down over at their fire!”

I stood up angrily. And damned if I didn’t accidentally come out with exactly the same thing I’d said earlier. “Take that back or fight!” But I felt a lot safer with Crab than I’d felt with Rostov.

Crab started up and I moved toward him but Shad said quietly, “Hold it.” He didn’t have to raise his voice to stop us. He got up and walked slowly between us and threw the little bit of coffee he had left onto the fire, where it made a brief, sizzling sound. “Levi?”

“Yeah?”

“That Igor, who knows our language.”

“Yeah?”

“Tell Rostov I want him ridin’ with me startin’ tomorrow.”

“Couldn’t I just suggest it to him?”

“Tell him any way you want.”

Crab and I were still standing there, sort of facing each other down. At Shad’s order to hold it, we’d held it, but we were both still feeling pretty unfriendly. Shad looked at us mildly and said, “It’s sure a hardship, havin’ two such grouchy sonsabitches on your hands.”

He wasn’t making fun of us, yet something about the way he said it made us both want to laugh somehow.

“He’s grouchier than I am,” Crab finally said.

“That’s impossible,” I told him.

“Well”—Shad shrugged—“you two go ahead and fight all night, if you really want to. But just don’t make one damn sound doin’ it because the rest of us sensible fellas are goin’ to sleep.”

He’d left no way for a fight. He’d given us both room to back off gracefully from a fight neither one of us actually wanted. And it crossed my mind that he’d stopped that potential battle with the same kind of instinctive, tough humor that Rostov had used with me earlier that day, when he’d gotten me out of the “puppy and wolf” situation.

Crab grimaced in a half grin and hit me on the shoulder just hard enough to let me know he was pretty strong but not mad anymore. I hit him back in the same way, and that was the end of that.

And we all went to sleep.

Until those giant lobo wolves showed up just before sunrise.

THERE WAS a sudden, wild bellowing from a cow that sounded like it was being murdered, and three or four gunshots banged out on top of each other.

That greasy-sack outfit came to life like lightning. I’d jumped up and was jerking on my second boot when a voice yelled out from the other side of the herd, “ Wolves ! A million of ’em!” The watch had changed and it was Slim’s voice.

“Don’t shoot into the herd!” Shad roared. He’d gotten up early and was already dressed and saddled. He jumped aboard Red and tore off toward where there was now more scattered firing, and that section of the herd was starting to mill around in wild panic, the other cows quickly picking up the feeling of fear.

From the cossack camp I heard Rostov give a loud, brief order in Russian.

And then the rest of us were getting aboard horses, and if it hadn’t been so serious it would have been kind of funny. Most of us were in various states of undress, and about half of the hands were still in red or white long johns, a couple with the rear-end flaps still flopping open. I always slept with my shirt and pants on, so that was no problem for me. But in the whole group there were only three things every man had on without exception—his boots, his gun and his hat.

I threw a bridle on Buck and jumped on his back, not taking the time to saddle him, and galloped off at about the same time Natcho and Chakko did.

There was enough gray morning light to see fairly well as we forced our way through the milling herd toward the center of trouble.

The first Siberian wolf I saw scared me and Buck so much we almost went down in a heap together. It was bigger than any timber wolf I’d ever seen, with a mottled gray body and a black stripe running all the way down its back, from the top of its huge head to the tip of its tail. It flashed across our path almost under Buck’s front legs and Buck reared up, nearly over backward.

“Jesus Christ!” Slim was yelling. “ These crazy wolves are outta their minds !”

By any of our standards he was certainly right. Those first shots should have sent any normal pack hightailing it. But these fierce bastards weren’t afraid of the gunfire or of our loud shouting. Come to think of it, they didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. Unlike our wolves they didn’t make, and hadn’t made, a sound, no howling or growling or snarling. They also hadn’t bided their time to sooner or later pick off a stray, but had boldly hit the whole herd, probably to cut one cow and kill it. And while any normal wolf will retreat in an instant once the pack is broken up, these didn’t feel that way. With yelling, sometimes shooting cowboys on their tails, and badly split up within the wildly milling cattle, every damned wolf seemed to be making his own individual fight of it. Shad charged Red a few feet up a hill out of the herd and a big gray monster lunged for Red’s hind legs. Shad swung around in the saddle and shot him through the head so that he went sprawling away down the hill. “Look t’ your horses !” Shad roared. “They’re goin’ after them too !”

It was a chaotic, deafening, rough situation. In those close, swirling quarters a shot might hit a beef, a horse or even another rider.

And if one wolf bit through the hock tendon of any animal’s back leg, that animal would be gone.

It was about then that the cossacks, who’d had a little longer way to come, charged into the melee. They were mostly bareback, and mostly half-dressed too, though even their underwear was fancier than our long johns, a lot of it shiny and colorful cloth.

But they had something we sure as hell didn’t have, and I suddenly knew what command Rostov had yelled to them in their camp before. He’d heard what Shad had called out, about not shooting into the herd, and so he and every man with him had his sword out and held up high.

And, in that massive, churning whirlpool of men and animals, the way they used their swords was plain and simple aweinspiring. With us and our guns it’d just been a confusing mess. Now, with them, it was still a confusing mess but it was a battleground too. Leaning half off their saddleless horses with some of their blindingly swift, incredibly accurate swings, they sliced and cut at the wolves they came upon as they slashed their way among the bawling, desperate cattle.

One cossack and his more or less pinto suddenly went down not far from me, and I slammed Buck through the bellowing longhorns toward him. A wolf had severed his horse’s rear left tendon. As I closed on him, the wolf, with hooves thudding all around them, leaped toward the man’s throat. The cossack, one elbow on the ground, swung with his sword and cut the wolf’s entire head completely off, where it lay still snapping blindly at the air.