Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

Rostov’s four cossacks were mounted and waiting, and it was easy for them to see that we had some kind of problem, so Shad cut it short. He twisted the bit in his hand just slightly, so that Shiny’s mare was damned ready and willing to back away and sit down. “I told ya’ t’ get off, Shiny, and I’ll send somebody else.”

“Easy, boss, ya’ might hurt her.”

“I won’t hurt her. I’ll just get on the saddle when you finally get off.”

And then, with Shiny’s mare Ginger about to be forced down on her haunches, Shiny said the damnedest thing to Shad. “Did you ever say I was a dumb, black nigger sonofabitch?”

“No! But I’ll say it right now, you dumb, nigger sonofabitch!”

Somehow that suddenly turned things around. Shiny said “Okay” in such an easy way that Shad damnere let go of Ginger’s bit, and she reared back up to a full standing position.

Knowing Shad the way I did, I couldn’t see any reason for it, but Shiny repeated the question. “You never said that?”

“I just now did !” Shad told him flatly, still holding the bit and controlling the mare.

I looked at Shiny, who knew that Shad couldn’t tell him anything but the truth. And for maybe the first and the last time I had a brief, fleeting look then into Shiny’s mind, which was both at once so smart and yet so innocent, and even more, so terribly hardened, that it would be the first to collapse under a gentle pressure of kindness.

And Shad, not trying to be kind, was so. “If you an’ me don’t know what the hell we’re talkin’ about,” he said gruffly, “then there ain’t no goddamn sense in the whole world. So what are you talkin’ about a dumb, nigger sonofabitch for?”

Shiny had a hard time asking. “Am I goin’ into that town as a nigger or as a man?”

“That’s up t’ you.” Shad’s quiet voice still cut hard as an ax. “And don’t never question me on that again. Because if ya’ have t’ ask about bein’ a man, then you already said the answer.”

Shiny took this in, and understood. “Boss,” he said, “if you don’t let go a’ that bit, it’ll be harder’n hell for me t’ ever make it t’ town with them fellas.”

Our other three men now moved off to join the cossacks, who were starting up over the hill toward Khabarovsk.

Shad released the bit and stepped back.

Shiny fingered the reins briefly, gently regaining control of Ginger, and calming her. He said, “I’ll tell ya’ one thing, boss. Bein’ picked as a man sure does make a difference.” And then he spurred off at a dead run.

We watched as he raced his pony to catch up to the other seven men, and then together they mounted the hills between us and Khabarovsk .Finally they disappeared, topping the last high crest and going out of our sight down those far, sloping meadows stretching toward the town.

“That can turn out t’ be a kind of a rough detail,” I said, feeling a lot, but not talking to anybody in particular.

“They’ll be okay,” Slim said in the same general way, “if they just remember t’ handle themselves like they ought.”

“Eight good men there.” Shad stepped over and swung up aboard his big Red. “They’ll bluff that town out, like we did, an’ be back in good shape.”

He put his spurs to Red and loped on over to the meadow to take stock of the herd and the men riding it. About the same time, Slim went off to do something or other, and the rest of us were free for a little while to do whatever we wanted.

For myself, I got some neat’s-foot oil and sat by my bedroll to put some of it on my bridle. The leather had been hardening up, and that oil would sink right into it, making it softer and stronger, so it wouldn’t brittle up and crack. Neat’s-foot oil was the best cure in the world for bad-off leather. And the funny thing about that sticky yellow stuff was that like the very leather it was saving, it came from a cow, too. It was made from the crushed bones of cattle, and along with being a cure-all for leather, it was also a first-class medicine for saddle sores or for cuts or tick infections or whatever cattle might get. Old Keats had first brought that fact to my attention a few years back. “It’s as though, in a strange way, everything in the world starts an’ stops with one ol’ cow.” We’d been fixing a beaten-up harness with neat’s-foot. “Yep,” Keats had gone on thoughtfully. “As though God never gave us a problem without the answer being right next to it.”

Maybe what’s made me go on like this was the problem of Shiny Jackson. And I was about to find out that the answer was sitting right next to me.

A small card game had started up nearby, and I wound up both working with the bridle and at the same time sort of halfway listening to Crab and Rufe and Dixie playing blackjack for beans and arguing quietly among themselves about the game.

Dixie spoke a word that somehow jarred my ear. He said “misfit,” which sure as hell didn’t seem to me to be a word that’s used all that much. And also, sure as hell, I’d heard that unoften word used not long before.

I looked over at their game at about the same time that the ace of spades came up in front of Dixie. It was his first card face up and it gave him blackjack, and he said to that ace of spades in a real pleased way, “You black nigger sonofabitch!” as he started to gather his beans in from the pot.

I put down the bridle and stood up and faced him, just looking at him without saying anything.

He glanced at me once or twice, just standing there before him. Then he finally glared at me and said, “What the fuck are you starin’ at?”

“It was you,” I said.

He’d gone over twenty-one in this hand anyway, so he tossed his cards back in with a violent, angry gesture. “Yeah?— What was me?”

I still couldn’t think of any better words, so I said simply, once again, “It was you.”

He reared halfway up, onto one knee, madder than one of them Indian cobras coming up out of a basket, and damned if his tongue wasn’t flicking around in that same kind of a spooky way. “I told Shiny the way it would be!” He reared even higher, the tongue still going, with the threat of fangs somewhere behind it. “Them too niggers’ll be the first t’ go!”

“Maybe.” I was too filled up with feeling to say anymore.

“Then what are ya’ starin’ at?”

Crab and Rufe didn’t know quite what was going on, but they knew Dixie was ignoring the cards he’d just been dealt. And they knew there was something rough in the air. “Levi,” Crab said to my silence, “you ain’t bein’ your normal quick an’ witty self.”

That broke me loose enough to finally at least say more than a couple of words at a time. “Just who told Shiny that Shad said that he was a dumb, black nigger sonofabitch?”

“Anybody knows that he is!” Dixie stood full up, ready to fight.

But, oh, God, was he going to lose, judging from the hard power and fury raging up inside me.

And he did lose.

But I got slightly whacked around in the process.

The way that now came about was that Dixie said, “Just fuck off, nigger lover!”

I replied to that, “Shiny Jackson is worth ten thousand of you, lined up side by side.”

And then we went into the battle, which I had the advantage of because I was so mad that while he was swinging at me, I’d already knocked him ass over teakettle in the first place.

It happened to, actually in truth, be an ass over a teakettle.

We were so close to the cossacks that Dixie’s butt, with him attached to it, went sailing across a small fire with some tea boiling on it.

He leaped up out of that overturned boiling tea and scattered fire with a great deal of alacrity and charged back upon me, and with the cowboys and cossacks not interfering on either side, we went to it. Since it was between two Slash-Diamonders, even Rostov stayed out of it.