Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

He looked at me as he finished the legend, and I could see that he was trying to tell me two things at once. “Well, he sure was one stubborn bastard,” I said. “A hell of a lot more stubborn than my Shad.”

He was pleased at my jumping the gun on his story that way, but he was still serious. “For the sake of all of us, I hope you’re right.”

“Another thing,” I said with as much innocence as I could, “if the Russians made up that legend, they musta had some pretty stubborn fellas themselves.”

He gave me a quick, hard look. “Meaning?”

I kind of chickened out. “Oh, nothin” Then I added, “But you were sayin’ before about the difference between thinkin’ an’ talkin’, an’ actually doin’. He actually did turn the cattle.”

There was another quick, iron-hard look. “His message about ‘heads rolling’ was arrogant and hostile.”

I’d already gone about far enough, but I managed to build up enough courage to say quietly, “An’ your reply, sir?”

He studied me for a long moment with those piercing eyes.

And then he spurred on ahead.

That night we camped closer to the cossacks than ever before. There was just one small spring for water, so the two fires, with the spring shared in the middle, were only about fifty feet away from each other.

“Christ!” Dixie muttered later, as we were sitting around our fire. “Every time ya’ wanna git a goddamn cup a’ water, ya’ have t’ rub elbows with some goddamn cossack!”

“Shoot,” Slim snorted. “Think how worried they must be for fear a’ catchin’ some excruciatin’ an’ fatal disease from a scabrous rebel like you.”

Sammy the Kid said, “Why don’t they go camp by their own spring? I say fuck ’em!”

Some of the others nodded and grunted in agreement.

“All of ya’ just relax.” Shad stood up. “Slim, let’s go take a look at the herd an’ night riders.”

A moment later the two of them rode off.

I’d already told Shad the reason we’d made the detour earlier that day, and he knew right off that it made sense. All he’d done was to say gruffly, “Rostov shoulda sent you back t’ tell me. We’d a’ made an even wider circle.”

All along, of course, I’d kept Shad up on most of the things that were said and that happened to me while I was with the cossacks. I’d mentioned the line about the puppy barking and the wolf biting, though I didn’t include the fact that I was the butt of it. And I’d told the story of the swans, and things like that. However, that night I hadn’t brought up the legend of Uporaskaya because it just didn’t seem like too good of an idea right then.

Now, with Shad and Slim gone to check out the herd and the men that were on duty, the rest of us were just sitting quietly.

Then, from over at the Russian camp, there came the soft sounds of that musical instrument of theirs. For the first time, at this nearer distance, I could see that it was Ilya who was playing it. A few of the cossacks around the fire started humming with deep, quiet voices along with the tune that he was strumming gently on the strings.

“Goddamnit!” Dixie grumbled. “Now they’re gonna keep us awake all night with that infernal racket!”

“I think it’s kinda nice,” I said.

“We can fix ’em!” Sammy the Kid reached for his guitar and hit a couple of loud chords. Then he started a fast, noisy version of “De Camptown Races,” and Dixie and some of the others went to singing that peppy song with a whole lot more enthusiasm than talent.

It was clear as hell that our camp was dead set on drowning out their camp.

Disgusted, Old Keats called out, “That’s stupid! Why don’t ya’ all just shut up!”

But he didn’t have enough authority to make it stick.

And then, from the Russian camp, where damnere all of them had now joined in their song to drown us out in turn, I heard Rostov’s voice giving a short command.

Their music stopped abruptly, and Sammy and our singers were suddenly left out on a musical limb that was loud and unmelodious as hell.

“De Camptown Races” sort of stumbled to a stop about where somebody was puttin’ their “money on the bobtailed nag,” and Sammy gave up playing.

“Well,” Dixie said, “I guess we showed them.”

Shad and Slim rode back up and dismounted, and Shad walked closer in toward the fire. We could see he was mad, and Sammy put his guitar away quickly.

“If we ever do run into any Tartars,” Shad said, “there’ll be no need of guns. You dumb bastards can sing ’em t’ death!”

Everybody went to bed pretty fast about then, but within most of them there was still a general feeling of resentment and downright hostility toward those nearby cossacks. And it wasn’t too difficult to figure out that the cossacks were feeling the same way toward us.

It exploded just after breakfast the next morning.

Dixie had gone over to the spring where Shiny Joe and Link were filling their canteens, and at the same time three or four cossacks came up to their side of the spring to fill some water bags.

One of the cossacks, Yuri, looked at the two black brothers and said something to his friend Vody, and they both laughed.

It may have been an innocent remark or otherwise, but Dixie took it as being otherwise. “What the hell’re you laughin’ about?” he growled.

“Aww, take it easy,” Link said. “They dunno what you’re sayin’ anyway.”

“Nobody,” Dixie snarled, “makes fun a’ my friends just b’cause through no fault a’ their own they happen t’ to be niggers!”

That was kind of funny because Dixie was the most prejudiced fella who ever walked. And, in an unfortunate way, it got even funnier. Sergeant Razin, Nick, was one of the cossacks there. He looked at Dixie and said as quietly as he could in his rasping accent, “No one is making fun of you niggers.”

Not even knowing what the word meant, he’d accidentally cut Dixie to the quick by calling him a nigger too, and from there on it started getting unfunny real fast.

“Nigger!” Dixie roared. “Me?” And he put one foot forward into the shallows of the spring to swing his fist across and hit Nick on the jaw. That was sort of like hitting an oak tree, and it probably hurt Dixie’s fist more than Nick’s jaw, but Yuri and Vody were already lunging across the spring at Dixie. He went down beneath them and Shiny Joe and Link jumped in to help Dixie. Nick and the other cossacks splashed through the spring to join in, and in about three seconds, with cossacks and cowboys hurtling in from both directions, it was a full-scale riot that was getting closer to killing with each flying second.

Some of the participants were really getting hurt, and aside from the furious, swirling mass of fistfighting and rassling, cowboys were suddenly starting to grab for their guns and cossacks for their sabers .

Yuri, with his head lowered so all he could see was a pair of chaps, hit me in the stomach as I came running up, and an instant later Natcho, Big Yawn and Chakko charged by me like a three-man battering ram, knocking him to the ground as they joined the main battle. Yuri leaped up and was the first cossack to get his saber out.

Shad appeared beside him, revolver in hand, and knocked the saber out of his hand with the gun, then swung the gun in a backhanded blow that knocked Yuri flat again. Then Shad raised his gun and fired three times into the air.

At those three roaring blasts everyone was brought up short and the fighting suddenly stopped.

Even Nick, who’d been busy strangling Dixie in the spring, now let go and stood up, soaking wet. Dixie, choking and gasping for breath, sat up half in and half out of the spring.

Rostov, who’d been out of camp a little ways, galloped up now and dismounted.