Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

Ilya didn’t need Bruk’s translation. What Slim had done was clear enough, and Ilya knew there was no way to get his nonexistent horseshoe out of Slim’s horseshoe-dissolving coffee. He laughed good-naturedly and slapped Slim on the shoulder, and while the rest of us were grinning and chuckling with each other, we got coffee served around.

From their reactions upon drinking, some of those cossacks must have suddenly thought there was some truth in what Slim had claimed. In all honesty he did make strongish coffee, and there was a great deal of almost gagging and almost choking among a number of them that was just barely held back.

Rostov raised his cup toward Slim. “They compliment you on making such a drink, so quickly, out of simple water.”

“Tell ’em,” Slim said, “that dissolved ’r not, horseshoes ain’t too easy t’ swalla’.”

But despite the hardship of getting used to Slim’s coffee, the idea of them sitting with us, and drinking what we normally drank, was a good thing. In a still friendly, natural way, with just a hint of the possible death and destruction behind it, the conversation now veered into another direction.

A few of his men now spoke to him, and Rostov, without seeming too overjoyed about it, said, “In the time that we will be waiting here, my men who are not on duty will be practicing war games.” He looked at Shad. “My men have invited your men to join with them, if they wish.”

Shad tossed the last few drops of his coffee into the fire, where the wet sputtered briefly on the heat. “With ’em or against ’em?”

“Never against them. But even so, the games are competitive, and sometimes quite rough.”

“Hell, boss,” Sammy the Kid grinned, “we’d take it easy on ’em.”

Shad said, “Okay, when you’re not workin’ you can join in. But don’t run any far-out risks. I don’t want anybody gettin’ laid up.”

Rostov translated to his men, adding what I guessed to be his own words of caution.

Grinning and nodding with pleased expressions, the cossacks finished their coffee and started over toward where their own gear was stacked nearby. And Shad and Rostov got into a quiet conversation between themselves.

“Heck,” Mushy said, “them cossacks’re as tickled as little kids about the idea a’ us joinin’ their games with ’em.”

“Just make sure it stays on a gamin’ level,” Old Keats told us. “Get yourself injured in some foolish way, and I got a hunch Shad’ll be just about mad enough t’ finish the job, includin’ a free burial service.”

“Hell,” Dixie said, “after all, they ain’t nothin’ but games.”

“ War games,” Slim corrected him, “which has a different an’ somewhat more serious sound to it.”

That afternoon a bunch of us who weren’t on any kind of duty rode over a low hill near the camp and down to a broken part of the wide meadow where a bunch of the cossacks were doing something. The camp was only a minute away, but you couldn’t see it from here.

Shad and Old Keats were talking to Rostov and Bruk and didn’t take much notice of our going. I had the impression that Shad had a kind of a disdain for any sort of a war game, probably based on an instinctive feeling that everybody, like he was, ought to be a first-class natural-born warrior in the first place.

Slim and me and six or seven others rode toward where Igor was sitting on Blackeye near a big rock, and he grinned and waved. Some of the other cossacks were riding far out across the broken meadow, stopping once in a while to dismount and jab tall, thin poles into the ground so they stuck up about six feet.

“What they doin’?” I asked, as we pulled up near Igor.

“Laying out a racing course,” Igor said.

“Goddamn,” Slim grunted, studying the men out on the meadow. “That shapes up t’ be some kind of a rough track.”

“Ahh!” Dixie said with an edge of contempt. “It sure ain’t what I’d call rough.”

Igor glanced at Dixie without expression, and then went on explaining to the rest of us. “Right here, at this rock, is where the course will begin and end.” He pointed off, in a wide, sweeping gesture. “It goes in a rough circle of about three kilometers.”

“What the hell’s that?” Dixie asked, almost suspiciously.

A little annoyed at his general attitude, I said, “It’s a distance, stupid.”

Annoyed back at me, he gave me a hard look, and I suddenly realized I’d gotten myself out on a limb. Either Dixie or someone else was going to have to ask me the next question, which had to be, how the hell long a distance? And now, after calling Dixie stupid, I was going to be stuck with absolutely no answer. So I gave the track a swift glance and took a quick, hopeful guess before anybody could nail me down. “Three kilometers is—about two miles.”

“Yeah?” Dixie frowned.

“That’s right,” Igor said, backing me up so neatly that it looked like I’d known what I was talking about all along. “Three kilometers is one-point-eight-six miles.”

“Huh?” Link muttered.

Figuring fast as hell, I said casually, “Just a shade under two miles,” thereby ending my brief but enjoyable career as a genius.

“Just watch who you’re callin’ stupid,” Dixie muttered.

“I do, I do.”

Slim said to us, “Cut it out.” Then he looked off across the meadow again, where the cossacks had just finished placing what added up to twenty poles. “Goddamn,” he said to Igor, “that’s a mean couple a’ miles. You ain’t missed one rough spot in that whole busted-up field.”

“In a race a rider can take any route he wants,” Igor told him, “as long as he goes outside of every one of the poles.”

“Sure makes it more interestin’ than a regular race track,” Link said.

Igor grinned. “Wars aren’t fought on race tracks.”

Slim snorted with faint humor. “There ain’t even no good cavalry charges on ’em. ’Specially the horses I bet on.”

The poles all set now, the cossacks were riding back toward us. And the way they’d placed the poles did make a lot of sense for a hard, broken-country run. Going down the slight slope from the big rock near us, the first obstacle was the stream in the meadow, about a hundred yards away. The pole was stuck at the widest place to jump the stream. It was about a ten-foot leap from bank to bank, with a four-foot drop to the water below. You could circle fifty feet to the left of the pole and have no trouble splashing through the shallows there. But in taking that longer way, you’d lose time. And every one of those poles had been placed in a similar, tricky fashion. Wherever there were patches of rocky ground or thick stands of trees or steep gulleys, you were always given your choice. Racing just outside the pole was the fastest and most dangerous. The safer you wanted to play it, riding farther around outside the poles, the longer it would take.

And toward the end of the course, coming back in full circle, the last obstacle was once again the stream. If you wanted to take the long, safe way around, you had to go about three or four hundred feet downstream. Again, where that last pole was placed, it was about a ten-foot leap across, but the ground was higher there, with the stream cutting deeper, so if you were trying to make the best time, and jumped and missed, it was about a twenty-foot drop to where the swift, foaming water below had a whole lot of large, unfriendly rocks jutting up out of it.

“Jesus!” Slim finally said. “T’ take that run rightly, an’ fast as possible, is goddamn near out-an’-out suicide!”

“Ah, fuck,” Dixie grumbled. “It more’n likely takes them cossacks two hours t’ make a run like that.”

Igor said simply, “No.”