Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

“As the son of a wealthy landowner, he was educated in many schools in Europe and England. He speaks seven languages.”

“Jesus Christ!” Dixie muttered, making some headway at opening the bottle. “I didn’t know there was seven languages!”

Some more customers had been drifting into the big room, two or three at a time, every now and then. And now, for whatever reasons, the Imperial Cossacks suddenly started swarming into The Far East.

“My God,” Dixie mumbled. “They’re showin’ up faster an’ thicker than flies around a fat ol’ hog gittin’ slaughtered.”

Within a couple of minutes the big room was packed with those loud-talking, boisterous bastards, and half a dozen girls, including Irenia, were running all over the place to serve them.

And once again my nostrils could almost sense that acrid smell of intense hostility. Those Imperials weren’t going to come right out and declare war on us, but they sure as hell weren’t about to go out of their way to avoid it. And if they could maybe push it a little, they wouldn’t mind that either. One of them, a gigantic moose of a fella with a voice like a cannon, was sitting at the table right behind me, and he kept leaning back hard in his chair, deliberately slamming into the back of my chair.

“Shad,” I said, “ya’ think we oughtta bust outta here?”

“We’ll wait.”

Then Rostov and Yuri entered and made their way through the crowded room to sit back down with us.

Pouring them both drinks, Shad said quietly, “What the hell is all this?”

“That gray mare just brought back the man Verushki had punished this morning—dead.” Rostov downed his drink calmly. “The ropes came partly loose while the gray was running, and with his head dragging on the ground the man’s neck was broken.”

“Then why don’t they go out an’ hang Verushki?”

“They consider us responsible.”

Looking around with an easy, level gaze, Shad said, “Tell ya’ the truth, Rostov, that ain’t too staggerin’ a surprise.”

Gradually realizing the spot we were in, even Dixie’s head was starting to clear up, and Natcho said, “Perhaps it would be wise to leave, now.”

Rostov said, “We will when, without hurrying, we’ve finished all the vodka on the table.”

But we were doomed to a different kind of time schedule than that. And it was my fault, but I couldn’t help it.

Irenia, carrying a tray of drinks raised high over her head so that she could squeeze through the crowd, hurried to the table behind me, where the cannon-voiced moose was thundering harsh words at her and leaning backward against me and my chair hard enough to damnere crush both it and me.

I’d spent a lot of my spare time in there trying to watch Irenia without seeming to. And it ain’t easy to somehow look at a girl and yet not look at her at exactly the same time. But now, moving the tilt of my head just enough to cheat a little, I saw out of the corner of my eye what happened.

As she was leaning over to serve the drinks, that big bastard reached out behind her and actually grabbed her with his oversized hand, right on the butt. I never was sure whether I was more mad or more stunned at such an unspeakable action, but things happened so fast afterward that it really didn’t matter.

She let out a little, breathless “Eek!” and jumped in surprise, accidentally tipping a few of the drinks on the moose. He reared up furiously, his cannon voice roaring, and shoved her away so hard that both she and her tray went flying to the floor.

And boy, that was that.

I was up while Irenia’s tray was still clattering, and I pushed that giant sonofabitch on his mammoth chest with a strength that nobody, including me, ever dreamed I had. Even so, as a matter of fact, it’s a good thing he was standing up. Because I could never have budged him if all that monstrous weight had been sitting down.

But as it happened to work out, he went sailing across the table, scattering drinks right and left, and finally, taking two friends on the far side down with him, he crashed thunderously to the floor.

About that time, both Shad and Rostov were beside me, each taking one of my elbows and almost lifting me off the ground. Right then I felt like a picture hanging on the wall. There wasn’t one goddamned move I had any chance to make, except possibly to fall down.

The moose came bellowing up to his feet, totally prepared and ready, and even anxious, to tear me in half, with absolutely no sportsmanlike regard for the fact that I was being held helpless.

He was about to walk right through that massive table at me when five or six of his men got ahold of him and managed to slow him down.

Rostov roared something in Russian, and the angry noise and confusion stopped as though somebody had pulled some kind of a magic cord. But the ominous silence wasn’t too cheerful, either. Later on I found out that Rostov had simply asked, a little harshly, how many of them wanted to die for the moose, though he evidently didn’t use that exact phrase of mine.

Old Anna did us some good at this moment. Helping Irenia to her feet, she shattered that grim silence with a few no doubt well-chosen screams directed furiously at the moose. Whatever she yelled made some of the men recognize their shame in siding with the man who had mistreated Irenia.

Rostov growled a few more words, and for a touchy, short while, it began to feel like the time of outright killing was beginning to ease off. The giant snorted angrily, and then looked around and saw that he wasn’t the most popular man in the house. In a deep, rumbling voice he said something to Rostov.

Rostov now let go of my elbow. “That big one just agreed not to kill you, Levi.”

Shad released my other elbow and said flatly, “Damn nice of ’im.

“But he’s challenged you. And you may get your right hand cut up.”

I didn’t yet understand, and I sure as hell didn’t mean it to be funny, but I guess it sort of was, as I raised my already cut and bandaged left hand and said, “I ain’t sure I can afford it.”

Dixie chuckled, but nobody else did.

And then, as a couple of Tzar cossacks brought over a smaller, regular-sized table, I remembered about the arm-rassling and the broken glasses. “Oh—that.” It was easy to see I was in trouble.

Rostov said, “I might persuade him to accept a substitute, in your place.”

I just looked at him and didn’t say anything, and I think he kind of liked that answer. “This is for blood, not drinks,” he went on. “It’s only over when the loser finally cries out or when the winner decides to be merciful and let go.”

With the moose laughing and saying loud, patently dumb things in Russian, they brought up two chairs and put two full glasses of vodka on the table.

“Drink it and then break the glass,” Rostov said.

The moose and I, still standing, downed the vodka and then smashed the tops of our glasses on the table. Trouble was, I hit mine too hard and the whole damn glass broke in my hand, cutting one finger slightly. This struck the moose and his friends crowded around as being hilarious as hell. They did everything but double up with laughter. And as Rostov handed me another glass, it seemed to me that this was turning out to be the pattern of my life. Not only forever getting somewhat mangled, but forever being highly embarrassed in the goddamned painful process.

My second glass broke all right and we placed the two jagged, vicious-looking broken glasses on the table. Then we sat down facing each other, our elbows on the table, and when we clasped hands mine went damnere out of sight, lost inside the moose’s huge grip.

The minute we started putting pressure against each other, his ugly grin got as wide as a barn door and I began to wish even more than before that I was someplace, anyplace, else.