Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

“That sweet-lookin’ girl there asked for ya’.”

It had to be Irenia, and my heart gave a kind of a little jump in my throat. “Yeah? How did she happen t’ remember me?” I knew it had to be something like because I was so handsome or charming, or both at once, but all of that ought to come from her, so I manfully held off. “Just how?”

Bruk took over, since he was the one who had talked to her. “She asked about you as the youngest American, the one who couldn’t drink.”

“Oh.”

That was a hard blow. I remembered her because of her pretty face and tablecloth dress, and she remembered me because I was a drunk. I tried to act like I didn’t care in the first place, but it didn’t matter in the second place, because nobody was paying any attention to me anyway, back in the first place.

Supper was about ready in both camps, and the group was starting to break up, even though it was only a few steps back and forth.

But before my brokenhearted supper, that nobody took note of, two things happened.

First, Dixie came over and said in a low voice, but straight out to Shiny, “I lied to you. Nobody never called you nothin’ this mornin’.”

Shiny looked at him with those big, friendly, slightly bleary eyes of his.

“You’re wrong,” Shiny told him. “A man called me a man this mornin’.”

That got to Dixie, and I don’t think Dixie could have taken much more of anything just then. All in all, it hadn’t been too great of a day for him. So what he said was short and to the point. “I just told ya’ I lied to ya’.” He hesitated a moment. “That’s by way a’ sayin’ I’m sorry for the way I felt.”

Shiny did a strange and nice thing then. It reminded me, somehow, of me with the pine cones before, when I’d tried to tap each one like Queen Victoria gently knighting some old fellow. Shiny reached out and touched Dixie just that gently on the shoulder, as if he were forgiving him, or knighting him. And he said, “I’m sorry for the way I felt, too.”

Then they both turned and walked away. But they always seemed close after that, before the first one died. So close that you could almost feel it between them, invisible and warm as a summer breeze in the air.

And then that second thing before supper happened.

Shad said to Rostov, “Are your lookouts good enough to let one a’ them patrols out there get through for a little while t’night?”

“Yes.” Rostov nodded. “Why?”

“Build a couple more fires. And have every man lay out an extra bedroll. From a distance, in the dark, it’ll shape up t’ be a sixty-man camp.”

But Rostov had already started nodding before Shad finished talking. “We’ll let them through just far enough and long enough to give them that impression, and then drive them away.”

Shad said, “Just for the hell of it, think I’ll ride lookout with your men m’self t’night.”

“You take the first half of the watch and I’ll relieve you for the second.”

Shad didn’t disagree with Rostov, which for him was a quiet agreement.

“For Christ’s sake,” Old Keats said, “let’s try t’ not shoot any more of Verushki’s men. He’s all set t’ blow sky-high any minute.”

“We want ’em t’ ride out in one piece,” Shad said, “so they can report what they think they’ve seen.”

Rostov doubled his guard right after supper, and Shad was getting ready to ride off, when Slim said, “Mind if I come along, boss?”

A little later they left camp together, and the rest of us built the extra fires and laid out the added bedrolls. Most of us had only two blankets, so it was kind of cold sleeping in just one, with the other one made up off to one side with an imaginary fella in it. I’d stuffed a few clothes and a couple of rocks into my other blanket to make a sort of a dummy. But that dummy was sure sleeping a hell of a lot better than I was. It was not only cold, but my cut hand was throbbing, so I finally gave up and pulled on my boots and went over to the nearest fire, where four men were gathered.

Natcho and Old Keats were watching Rostov and Igor, who were seated and playing some kind of a game on a checkerboard by the light of the fire.

In the silence, Natcho was the only one who glanced at me as I came up. “Chess,” he said.

It seemed like both he and Old Keats had a fair idea what was going on, and I didn’t want to appear too dumb. “Yeah.” I nodded as though this came as no news to me at all. “Quite a lot like checkers.”

Rostov gave me one of those expressionless looks, which still somehow managed to hold brief, silent laughter deep in his eyes. “You understand the game?”

I’d done it again. “Well, t’ be perfectly honest, Captain, there’s a whole lot I don’t know about it—hardly at all.”

Igor now made a funny kind of a zigzag move with a piece shaped like a horse’s head, and then Rostov made an even funnier move clear across the board at an angle and wound up taking one of Igor’s pieces.

“T’ be real perfectly honest,” I said, sort of hinting for a clue about these strange moves, “I guess I’ve just about forgotten every damn thing I ever did know about it.”

“The word ‘chess’ is a derivation of the Persian word ‘ shah ,’ meaning ‘king,’” Rostov said, waiting for Igor’s next move. “It’s a game of war that’s probably more than four thousand years old.” Then, as they continued playing, he patiently named all the pieces and the different ways they could move, which I immediately forgot.

But then Rostov said something none of us forgot. “It’s not only a game of war. There’s a great deal of philosophy in it. And it represents the way the world has been for thousands of years. Even since the beginning of time.

“The king and the queen, each in its own way, have and wield the ultimate power. In approximately equal proportion, they use religion and their military, the bishops and the knights, to defend whatever positions they may choose to take and to attack the enemies of those positions. The castles at each corner of the board represent their crucial power of wealth in terms of land and possessions.”

He paused, frowning inwardly at the comparison he was making, and moved by it. Then, finally, he continued. “But always and forever, it’s the pawns, the simple people themselves, who are the first to be sacrificed ruthlessly, for whatever reasons seem at the moment to be an advantage to any of the others.”

None of us had ever heard any game defined like that, and it was plain to see that Rostov was thinking of a lot more than just chess.

After a silence, I said, “Sure beats the hell outta checkers.”

Studying Rostov, Old Keats added quietly, “You like the game of ‘king.’ But you sure don’t like livin’ it in real life, here in Russia.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Poor damned pawns.”

“It’s almost impossible,” Rostov said, “but if a pawn can manage to get to the far end of the board, while he’ll be under the heaviest possible attack, he’ll also have a chance of becoming the most important piece there.” He glanced at Igor and at some of his sleeping cossacks. “We are the pawns. And Siberia is our far end of the board.”

Igor nodded at these words, as thoughtful as the rest of us. And then, concentrating, he slowly made his next move.

It was also his last move.

Without hesitation Rostov shifted a piece to another square and said, “Checkmate.”

Under his breath, Igor grumbled a couple of words in Russian that must have translated something like “Sonofabitch!” Then he grinned and shrugged and knocked one of his pieces down in a gesture of defeat.

They turned the board over then and I saw that it was actually a small box that they could put the pieces back in and then snap shut. Putting them away, Rostov said, “Checkmate is from the Persian shah mat , which means ‘the king is dead.’”