Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

The outriding cossacks, the herd-riding cowboys and the cattle were strung out on the big plain of grass about a mile behind us. By the time they got up to us on the rising slope, Rostov and I had scouted the top of the mountain and beyond.

Shad and the Slash-Diamond hands started to settle down near a large rock only about seventy feet away. Rostov’s men were building their camp near where he and I were sitting our horses. That was a friendly, near distance, considering there was no water to share, or anything like that.

The day was close to over, and I was about to take off when Rostov said in a low, serious voice, “Will you do me a favor, Levi?”

“Sure.” I turned Buck back a little.

He hesitated thoughtfully. “Will you tell Shad, in your own way, that the blood he shed when he cut himself with Yuri’s saber seems to make excellent cement.”

I looked at him for a quiet moment. “If ya’ don’t mind, I’ll tell him in your way.”

And then I walked Buck the little distance to our camp and got Shad aside to tell him privately. When I repeated Rostov’s kind of poetic line about blood and cement, Shad said in a low, fairly hard voice, “So? Tell me a thing, Levi. Do you think I owe him something back, for him sayin’ such a neat goddamned thing?”

“I don’t think he wants anything back, Shad.”

And it was just at that time that Slim and Old Keats spotted the wolves.

They’d just dismounted twenty feet or so away, where some of the others were bringing up wood for a campfire, and they were staring down at the flat plain sloping off below. “Hey!” Slim hollered over to us. “There’s two wolves way off down there!”

And then Shad did the goddamnedest thing. He did to them exactly what Rostov had done to Nick back along the trail. Without seeming to have even been looking, he said, “Three.”

And damned if he, and Rostov before, weren’t right.

We all looked down across the plain, and there was the pack leader of the wolves that had hit us some time back, that giant black bastard with the last half of his tail chewed off. He was far enough away to feel safe. But he’d evidently been circling us ever since that first disastrous attack. He’d probably picked up a rabbit or two along the way, but what he must have been really hoping for was for one of the cows or bulls, or maybe a calf, to get separated from the main herd so he could nail it and have a big supper for the whole pack.

The whole pack, what was left of it, consisted of one slightly smaller brown bitch and an about one-fourth-grown little wolf cub.

Seeing them out there on the plain, I could understand why most people had seen two wolves, and only Shad and Rostov had seen three. That little cub, lagging timidly behind, could have hidden himself with no trouble at all behind the one-half of a remaining tail that the big black still had on his husky butt.

I don’t know why he’d decided to be so bold, but he sure was, just standing there like a kind of a magnificent half-tailed nobleman among wolves, watching us wisely from a few yards beyond the range of a rifle shot.

Shad studied that tough old wolf on the plain far below for a long moment. Then he said, “You were tellin’ me, one time, that Rostov never actually saw anybody do any ropin’.”

“Yeah, he ain’t.”

“Well, hell, since he just said such a nice thing about my blood bein’ cement, let’s show ’im some Montana ropework.”

“Like what?”

“Like catchin’ that big wolf down there.”

“Jesus Christ, boss!” I said. “Don’t you never think a’ nothin’ easy t’ do?”

But he was already swinging back up onto Red. “Hey, Slim!” he called. “How’s your ropin’ arm?”

“Well, it ain’t broken.”

“Then let’s go snare ourselves that half-tailed lobo down there!”

“Shoot, that’s a good idea!” Slim quickly got back aboard Charlie. “I ain’t lassoed a wolf in a coon’s age!”

“You take the left point! Levi, when we’re ready you bust outta here!”

“Right!” I said with as much phony excitement as I could muster up. That kind of tricky, expert roping wasn’t exactly the strongest card in my deck, and I was frankly sort of concerned about the high possibility of making an ass of myself. I was a little surprised he’d told me to join in with them instead of somebody like Natcho, who could damnere ride out blindfolded and rope a jack rabbit. I guess his decision may have had something to do with me being his more or less official representative with the cossacks.

In any case, Slim to the left and Shad to the right, they spurred out at wide angles from the camp, both of them at a dead run. They both skirted the herd that was much nearer to us on the down-sloping plain, neither one of them seeming to have any interest in the wolves far beyond at all.

This way, when they got into position, there’d be three of us coming in on the wolves from three different directions, sort of like an inside-out triangle. Shad could have had five or six of us go along, but I knew he felt that only three of us would make it more of an impressive and sporting proposition. That is, if we managed to catch the wolf in the first place.

There was a five-dollar bounty on wolves back in Montana, which was nearly a week’s pay, so any wolf was just naturally always fair game for any cowboy. But sometimes instead of just shooting it, which was comparatively easy, we’d make a fairly rough sport out of it by trying to lasso it, and making bets on who’d be the first one, if any, to get a rope around its neck.

That big wolf was pretty smart. He was watching Shad and Slim as they galloped off on both sides of his flanks. But they were far away and not headed in his direction, so that it would seem to him that he was reasonably safe.

And we sure as hell had the attention of the cossacks. They were watching Shad and Slim, slightly puzzled, or possibly even thinking both men had suddenly gone crazy.

They reached their far-off points and turned their horses, so now it was my turn to act. I lunged Buck down the slope before me, straight toward the distant wolves, at the same time letting out a long, fierce yell. I’m not a great lassoer, but I’m a hell of a good yeller, and a lot of the cows I was now galloping by shied off nervously, thinking the end of the world was roaring past them.

The wolf started away in an easy, loping retreat, the bitch and pup following after him. And then for the first time that big black male began to realize he was in deep trouble.

From each of their points Shad and Slim were barreling toward him too, yelling their lungs out. All that hollering was supposed to scare and confuse a wolf, to panic him so he wouldn’t be quite as smart as usual, and it generally worked. But not with that tough, half-tailed big bastard. He stopped dead, seeing that he was kind of surrounded and sizing up the situation calmly.

He didn’t have a whole lot of time to think about it, because we were coming in like bats out of hell. Both Shad and Slim had their lariats out, and Slim was already twirling a loop in his right hand. I got my rope off the saddle and damnere dropped it as Buck leaped over a knee-high outcropping of rocks that appeared in our path.

And then the big wolf made its decision. It seemed to instinctively know that it was him we were after. And he gave some kind of a command to the bitch and the pup in whatever kind of talk wolves talk. Apropos of that wolf talk, I have been known to be wrong, but I do believe that animals do talk, even though they may have a pretty limited choice of words. Then he turned and raced in my general direction like a streak of greased lightning.

I sure as hell had to admire that damn wolf, for two reasons. First, he’d somehow unerringly picked the weakest of the three links, me, for an escape route. Second, and most important, was the fact that the bitch and the pup, following his orders, took off as fast as they could in exactly the opposite direction. That wolf, like any really good man would have done, was pulling us enemies off after him so that the other two weaker ones would have a better chance to live .