Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

Rostov didn’t answer for a long moment. He slowly shifted the blade of grass in his mouth and then said in a low voice, “Because I’m afraid of that town.”

Those words got to Shad. And they sure as hell made Igor and me stop and think. Because if there was one thing in this world we were all damn sure of, it was that Rostov wasn’t afraid of anything that either this world or even a Holy Christian Hell had to offer.

For a long time, no one said anything.

Then, finally, Shad spoke, both his frown and his voice still hard as ever. “That’s one of your own goddamn Russian towns! What the hell you got t’ be afraid of?”

Rostov stood up quickly, so that the two of them were now suddenly facing each other, which was a thing that always tended to make me, and anyone else who happened to be present, somewhat ill at ease.

But Rostov was still thoughtful, more than angry. “I suspect my men and I won’t be overly welcome there.”

Shad stared at Rostov, his frown deepening, and then Slim and Old Keats rode up to us through the trees.

Slim said, “Just wanted t’ let ya’ know, boss, them cows’re temporarily circled an’ settled.” He glanced back and forth from Shad to Rostov. “Well, boss, we goin’ on down there t’ that town over yonder ’r not?”

Shad turned toward Slim, but before he could make an answer there were the sudden sounds of still other horsemen coming quickly through the trees. Lieutenant Bruk and the big sergeant, Nick, rode toward us, Yuri and Vody following hard behind them.

“Christ!” Shad muttered as the four oncoming cossacks sped up to join the rest of us. “This a cattle drive or a goddamn Sunday social?”

The newly arrived men dismounted, all four of them looking troubled and uneasy. Lieutenant Bruk stepped to Rostov and said, “We’ve placed double lookouts, Captain.”

“Double lookouts!” Shad’s eyes swept angrily over the cossacks. “What the hell for?”

Rostov said quietly, “Because we need them.”

Shad stared at Rostov, looking about half puzzled and about half ready to erupt like a volcano.

Old Keats, seeing Shad’s expression, put in quickly, “There seems t’ be some kind of a confusion here, Captain. We’ve been led to understand all along the way that Khabarovsk was a safe place.”

“That’s correct,” Rostov said very quietly. “And that’s what my men and I had thought, too.”

“What the hell d’ you mean,” Shad growled, “about had thought?”

I doubt I should have raised my voice in that edgy situation, but all of a sudden there it was coming out, and it sounded just as confused and uncertain as I felt. “You just said there ain’t no Tartars down there, Captain. What the hell else is there t’ worry about? They got the plague down there or somethin’?”

“It’d take at least that.” Slim grinned a little, but his words came out flat on the level. “After all this time way out in the lonely—clean all the way from Seattle—them fellas a’ ours back there takin’ care a’ them cows ain’t gonna be all too keen about passin’ up this here town.”

Shad’s earlier anger had diminished by about one-half of a shaved inch, and he was still ready to explode, but his voice was controlled as he now spoke to Rostov. “Let’s get back to that ‘had thought’ bullshit. What’s the problem you got?”

Rostov’s eyes matched Shad’s, evenly controlled and evenly hard. “There’s a reinforced contingent of cossacks down there in Khabarovsk.”

This statement took a while to sink in, and I for one was vaguely aware of my mouth sort of hanging a little ajar, due to general astonishment.

And then Shad did explode. “Well what the fuck difference does that make? You’re cossacks!”

Rostov still spoke quietly. “There’s a difference.” And somehow, from the way he said it, you could tell that whatever that difference was, it was gigantic. And you could also tell that the problem on Rostov’s mind had walloped him severely. On the outside he was still as hard and tough, and his mind as keen as, say, that great steel saber hooked onto his belt. But inside him, there was an intense sorrow that went deep and couldn’t be hidden because, somehow, it came out of his eyes.

Lieutenant Bruk, whose clear old eyes were now filled with the same dark sorrow, had filled and lighted the long clay pipe he carried with him. Now, he silently handed it to Rostov, who took it and said, “I honestly couldn’t foresee this, Northshield.” He took a puff on the pipe and passed it back to Bruk. “Otherwise, I’d have warned you.”

Shad’s reaction to this was both a relief and a surprise to me. Maybe it was because he too could see the hurt in these men. Or maybe it was because he was thinking on something he’d already somehow guessed about way ahead of the rest of us. In any case, instead of the anger within him growing, it now ebbed away as he reached slowly into his shirt pocket for the makings of a smoke, studying Rostov quietly. Working with the paper and tobacco, he said, “What couldn’t you foresee? That you could’ve warned me about?”

“The garrison in Khabarovsk has been undermanned for over a year. But right now there are two new companies of cossacks down there, who must have arrived within the last three or four weeks .”

Shad pulled the now rolled paper lightly across the tip of his tongue to firm his smoke together. “You’ll have t’ pardon my density,” he said dryly, “but it sure is a strange-as-hell thing, you fellas standin’ here passin’ that pipe back an’ forth like the end of the world happened yesterday.” He struck a match with his thumbnail and lighted his smoke slowly, thoughtfully, before shaking out the flame on the match. For him, he was talking at a damnere unheard of length. And more and more, I was getting a sneaking suspicion that he was about a mile ahead of the conversation. He dropped the no-longer-lighted match and ground it into the earth with the toe of his boot. “Hell, I’d think you’d be yellin’ an’ dancin’ an’ dashin’ down off there t’ celebrate with them other cossacks.” He inhaled on his smoke. “But then, you did mention somethin’ about a—‘difference.’”

Rostov spoke in a quietly hard voice. “There’s quite a bit of difference. We’re not taking this herd to Blagoveshchensk, as your papers show. We’re taking it farther north, to the people who bought and paid for it, in our own free town of Bakaskaya.”

“Well,” Shad shrugged. “The name a’ your town sure as hell is a lot easier t’ pronounce than that other one.”

I think Rostov was as surprised as I was at Shad’s calmness. But now, still quietly, he went on. “Those men down there are Imperial Cossacks. They belong to the Tzar.”

Slim’s face twisted into an almost painfully puzzled frown. “Well, Christ Jesus!” he finally said. “There ain’t nothin’ in all a’ Russia that don’t b’long t’ the Tzar!” He glanced toward Old Keats, looking for some kind of confirmation. “Or am I crazy ?”

Keats was still frowning, too. “That’s sure as hell what we always been told.”

“Captain Rostov, sir?” I asked hesitantly, partly guessing about and partly hoping for the answer I wanted to hear. “If you fellas don’t belong t’ the Tzar, then who do ya’ b’long to?”

Rostov’s eyes, though they were still full of deep sorrow, bored into me. “If you still have to ask me such a question, Levi, then you’re not worthy of a reply.”

In his own way he’d given me the answer I was hoping for, but his own way sure was a killer. Blood rushed suddenly and hotly to my face, and right then I both felt like and wished I was the tiniest little pissant on earth so I could just shrink into practically nothing and disappear.