Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

Without my even thinking about it, an enthusiastic yell of approval busted out of me, but it was just part of the general whooping from all of us. About the only one who didn’t yell was Slim, who simply muttered, “Well I’ll be goddamned. ”

Around that time, Crab rode up and said, “Hey, Levi, Shad wants ya’. An’ you too, Natcho.”

“Now?” Natcho asked.

“Well what d’ya’ think?”

“Damn,” Natcho said, seeming disappointed. “I wanted to show them what we can do in trick riding.”

“ We ?” Sammy said incredulously.

“Sure,” I told him casually. “Damn pity Natcho an’ me can’t stay an’ put them fellas in their places, due t’ the boss’s orders.”

“Come off it,” Purse said. “The only trick riding I’ve seen you do is when you fell off your horse with your foot caught in the stirrup.”

“He’s also our local expert,” Slim said, “at harpoonin’ pine cones.”

“Well,” I turned Buck to go, “Natcho an’ me’ll just have t’ leave the honor a’ the Slash-Diamond in you fellas’ hands. Let us know how ya’ do.”

Nobody ever mentioned just what happened after that, so I have my doubts if things went too well, if at all.

On the way back to camp I asked Natcho, “Can you really do trick ridin’?”

“Of course.” He was surprised at the question. “It’s part of the curriculum at the Military Academy in Mexico City.”

“Oh.” That part of Natcho’s past had simply never before come up, but then another thought struck me. “That’s where you learned to use a saber.”

He nodded, but his mind was still dwelling thoughtfully on the first subject. “The pyramid would impress our cossack friends. Two riders stand on horses galloping side by side, and a third rider then stands on their shoulders. But we’d need a third rider.”

He was smarter than all hell, and loved life and laughter as much or maybe more than anyone. But sometimes, as indicated by the lines he’d just missed back at the big rock, he had to be pounded rather severely on the head to get his sense of humor jarred loose.

“Natcho?”

“Yes?”

“I was exaggeratin’ a little bit back there.” I grinned. “If you’re plannin’ on tryin’ one a’ them pyramids, I wouldn’t count too much on me f’r any one a’ them three crucial positions.”

“Oh. Too bad.” He was sincerely disappointed again. “But then,” he shrugged, “we’d have still had to get a third man.”

I let it go at that and we rode on up over the hill.

Back in camp, we dismounted and went over to see Shad. He was discussing something quietly with Old Keats, so we stood a little away and a moment later Dixie joined us. Then Keats walked away and Shad turned around. “You three’re comin’ into town with me,” he said.

All three of us felt a kind of a good, chilly excitement about going with him, but on top of that I was curious. “How come me again, boss? I already been.”

I could see in his eyes it was a stupid question, but he wasn’t too hard on me. “We ain’t got sixty faces t’ show off. So dependin’ on how long that river stays high, we’re gonna be stuck with some repeat performances.”

By the same token, Rostov brought Igor along again, plus Ilya and Yuri. Two known cossack faces and two unknown, same as us.

Just before we mounted up, Shiny came over and said to Dixie, “Looks like t’day’s the day f’r gettin’ rid a’ our no-good misfits.”

“Hell.” Dixie snorted. “You dumb black nigger sonofabitch. We’ll bring ya’ that whole goddamned town back on a big silver platter.”

But even if they’d really tried to ignore it, or go against it, that quiet, good feeling between them was still there.

And then the eight of us for this day rode out of camp.

Ilya had that triangular Russian guitar of his, the balalaika, strung over one shoulder, and I somehow wound up leading our captured cossack gray, his saddle still on him, as we went over the hill past the cossack lookout and started down that long, open meadow toward Khabarovsk.

It came almost like a violent physical slap against my face as I saw that they hadn’t yet cut those two big men down. Maybe I hadn’t heard, maybe it hadn’t been mentioned, or maybe I’d just somehow made myself not hear it. But seeing them even at this distance, the sudden, unexpected sight of them still hanging motionless from that faraway oak tree gagged me.

Some of the others weren’t prepared for it either, but Shad and Rostov knew.

All three of the cossacks behind Rostov reacted, and Dixie, his voice way down in his gut, said, “Oh, God. ”

Rostov and Shad both glanced around at us, and Shad said, “There’s one last thing we can do for ’em.”

That cleared up one small mystery. I knew then, for the first time, why Shad and Rostov had both strapped two shovels onto their saddle gear.

No point in going into how grotesquely long a human neck gets stretched, or how hideous a faint blue against pale, empty white can make a face, or how terribly and unforgivingly stiff and unyielding a man’s body can get. As though he’s suddenly mad about every injustice ever done to him in his life, and even madder and more unbending because he can no longer do or say one damn final thing about it.

All that matters of that time is that we got there and we cut them down and we buried them at the foot of the oak.

Rostov said a short, husky-voiced prayer over them in Russian, and then we went on into town, so that finally somewhere around midafternoon, we pulled up in front of that same bar.

After those grim burials, it had taken me all this time before I could now finally speak. “Igor,” I said, “what’s this place called?”

He was having pretty much the same problem, and he wet his lips. “The Far East.”

“Thanks,” I managed to say.

He swallowed and said, “You’re welcome.”

“Come on, Levi,” Shad called.

“You others,” Rostov said, “go in and wait for us.”

Leading the mare, I followed the two of them until we came to the square where the Imperial Cossacks’ headquarters was, and we crossed again toward the main building.

As we came into sight, the guards there held their rifles in a tense, ready manner, and some fella went rushing into the building. By the time we got there, Colonel Verushki, in a fine uniform, came out of the door with about a dozen armed cossacks following him.

His angry men were burning up inside as they faced us, so much so that there was almost an acrid smell in the air. They wanted nothing more than to start shooting at us right then and there. Verushki must have felt the same way, but he didn’t show it. Instead, he looked at us in kind of a haughty, superior way and said flatly, “You men are beginning to tax my patience.”

Rostov shrugged slightly, as easy and relaxed as a cat on a warm wooden roof. “We must insist, Colonel, that you request your men to keep away from our camp. Particularly when we’re inconvenienced by having to go out of our way to return their horses.”

That last line got under Verushki’s skin, and his eyes and voice both suddenly became harder. “I understand you buried two criminals I recently had executed. I was leaving them where they were as an object lesson.”

Shad said, “Tie up the gray, Levi.” And as I got off and did so, he turned back to Colonel Verushki. “Consider well what I’m sayin’. We’re tradin’ you this one riderless horse f’r the privilege a’ diggin’ them two graves.” He paused. “If you want t’ try for a whole lot more riderless horses an’ a whole lot more graves, then just keep fuckin’ around.”

That was a deadly hammer-hard statement, and I could now see why Shad and Rostov had looked forward to bringing the gray back. Whether he showed it or not it was embarrassing as hell to Verushki, and they were both taking grim pleasure in pushing him on it.