Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

Whether he thought we were bluffing or not, Verushki was losing ground and he knew it. He said gruffly, “Fine words, from a traitor cossack!”

“From a free cossack,” Rostov growled, glaring darkly at the colonel. “Not from one of the Tzar’s whores on horseback!”

There was a deathly still, damnere fighting moment there, but then Shad broke it up with a flat, hard voice. “We ain’t got all night,” he said to Verushki, who was smoldering with anger. “So let’s get back t’ simple economics. You electin’ for the previously discussed trouble t’ start right here an’ now? Or ya’ want t’ consider some other, more amicable arrangement?”

Verushki still didn’t back down, even though he knew every man in that room might be dead in no time flat. With an icy calm, he said, “I agreed before to listen to what you had to say.”

“Us an’ some a’ these free cossacks’re takin’ some cattle north. We’ll only be here a week or so and we’ll be peaceful as hell, as long as you are.”

“If such a peace were established, and then broken, do you really think you could win against me?”

“Jesus Christ !” Shad said. “I just know that there’d be pure hell t’ pay! That’s the whole reason for my goddamned lecture on economics!”

“If you did win, Colonel,” Rostov said levelly, “it would be a Pyrrhic victory.” He must have guessed that he’d lost some of the rest of us there. “A victory in which the winner is hurt so badly that he, himself, also dies.” He added grimly, “The word ‘Pyrrhic’ has a certain similarity to ‘funeral pyre.’”

Verushki studied all of us for a long, quiet moment before he finally reached a decision. “Perhaps it may be possible for us to reach an honorable understanding among ourselves.” He spoke a brief, low order in Russian and his men, puzzled but obedient, now uncocked and lowered their guns. Then Verushki gave Shad a hard, bitter look. “But this is in no way amicable. I’d like nothing more than to cut off that damned finger of yours and keep it as a souvenir of this meeting.”

Shad said, “We ain’t expectin’ a parade. Just a workable agreement.”

It took about an hour for the colonel and us to agree on what our agreement was. And shortly after that the eight of us walked back out onto the square. There were still a number of Imperial Cossacks standing around who stared at us with hate-filled eyes but did nothing to interfere with us.

For our part, we did our best to seem like we were casually ignoring them, but I for one still felt as tight in my chest as a stretched rawhide drum. “God damn! ” Slim muttered so that only we could hear him. “I was sure mainly convinced we’d never git outta there in upright positions!”

As he untied his black, Rostov said, “In chess, Northshield, we’d call you a Grand Master.”

“Huh?”

“At playing that game of yours—showdown.”

Shad swung up aboard Red. “You didn’t do too bad yourself.”

Slim glanced from one of them to the other, as surprised as the rest of us that they’d actually said something pleasant to each other. “Well, unless you two plan on spendin’ all night congratulatin’ yourselves, how ’bout us findin’ the nearest saloon?”

Rostov said, “I think that’s an excellent idea. Right now it would be an even further indication of how secure we feel.” He glanced at Shad, not asking his opinion, but ready to hear it.

“I doubt we’ll ever again agree on anything twice in a row”—Shad turned Red from the hitching rail—“so let’s go drink t’ that rare occurrence while we got the chance.”

ROSTOV KNEW where to go, and he and Shad led us off at an easy walk across the square and down one of the wider, better lighted streets.

As we rode slowly, quietly along, my head was kind of divided. The part of it that belonged to my eyes was fascinated by the people on the street and on the boardwalks. There sure was every kind, and most of them were looking at us with interest and curiosity. Young and old, tall and short, they were usually on the heavy side, but not always. The thick, rough clothes most of them wore added to that feeling of heaviness, the men in rugged homespun jackets and coats, the women in long, generally black, wool dresses. Most of the men wore fur hats, but some of them were made out of thick cloth or felt, and I even saw one top hat on a man in a black suit. Almost all of the women had white handkerchiefs on their heads, folded in the shape of a triangle and tied under their chins.

Aside from those who looked like farmers and laborers, and a few businessmen, there were some men who I judged by their worn fringed buckskins to be the equivalent of our mountain men, trappers and hunters and the like. Ranging the street, aside from the normal riding horses and pack mules, there were some dogs and pigs that looked for all the world like they owned the place, and they’d move out of the way resentfully when an occasional wagon or carriage drove by. Along the sides of the street or on the boardwalks, there were quite a few noisy vendors, fellas shouting out from near their little stands to call attention to whatever it was they had for sale.

But as I mentioned before, despite all these fascinating things, my head was divided, and the back of it wouldn’t let go of a kind of throbbing fear that was sort of like a dull headache. It had a whole lot to do with what we’d agreed on with Verushki, which seemed to me to be a shaky enough agreement in the first place. But in the second place, even that shaky deal was based on there being sixty of us. And such a count was ridiculous, because no matter how hard you added us all up, there were only thirty-one of us.

Rostov pulled in to the hitching rail before a well-lighted two-story building that had a hand-printed sign on it and half a dozen big windows facing the street on the ground floor. Inside you could see people eating and drinking at large, heavy tables, and all in all seeming to be having a pretty good time. We dismounted to tie up, and Slim, studying the place, said, “It ain’t exactly the Silver Slipper, but it don’t look half bad neither.”

And then a nice thing happened. From not far away, a band struck up and started playing. We all turned to look, and about a half a block farther down the street there was a small round building that was built about six or eight feet up off the ground. It didn’t have any sides at all, but just some beams holding up the roof over it. So that way, from any angle, you could see the band sitting inside and now playing away with a lot of pep and vigor as another fella waved a little stick in front of them. They were all in real fancy uniforms, blue pants and jackets with considerable strands of gold braid on their shoulders and around their waists, and ribbons and medals across their chests.

“Cossacks?” I said.

“Hell, no, Levi,” Slim told me. “What them fellas’re wearin’ is musicians’ outfits. Anybody tried t’ fight in them uniforms, he’d strangle hisself on his own gold braid.”

The street widened out where the little round building was, and a lot of people were walking up in a circle around it now, just to stand there and listen to those men playing their music.

“That’s a real goddamn fine thing,” I said, but the others were already going around the hitching rail and starting across the crowded boardwalk.

As I stepped onto the boardwalk, Igor suddenly grabbed my arm, holding me protectively back. Since the only person walking in front of me was a feeble old lady with a bucket, I couldn’t imagine what he was protecting me from, and gave him a puzzled look.

When she’d moved on a few slow steps, he let go of my arm. “Never pass a woman carrying an empty pail,” he said. “It’s bad luck.”