Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

And then, maybe best of all, he reached down and helped the moose back to his feet.

Old Keats had once remarked to me, “It’s generally hard t’ lose. But if ya’ lose t’ a certain kind of a man, who ya’ know t’ be one hell of a man, then ya’ can take a certain kind a’ proud joy in the pure pleasure a’ havin’ done your best against ’im.”

It seemed to me that maybe that was the way the moose felt about Rostov just then. After having had that saber at his throat, he knew as well as, or better than, the rest of us that he was a dead man who’d been given a second chance at life. He looked at Rostov for a long, silent moment, and then finally moved off, most of the Imperial Cossacks following him out of The Far East.

Igor came up and said, “Come with me,” and I did, as the others sat down to finish their vodka the way Rostov had said, without hurrying.

With Igor leading, we went through the door to the kitchen, which I wouldn’t ever have done without him, because it looked to me like it was being kind of pushy.

But just behind the door, standing there beside a basin of water and some clean pieces of cloth, with tears running down her cheeks, was Irenia.

“She wants to take care of your hand,” Igor said.

He was feeling more than he let his voice show, and so was I. “Ah, heck,” I said, somehow switching to softer words in her presence, even though she couldn’t understand them. “Tell ’er I’m just fine.”

He told her what I’d said, but she only shook her head in an impatient way that meant absolutely not. So he just kind of pushed me toward her and went back out the door, and there we stood.

She reached toward my hurt right hand and I didn’t move it fast enough to suit her so she took it and raised it toward the basin of water and started to bathe it.

Her hands were so gentle that it was hard to be equally gentle back. But it seemed to me there was something that had to be done, and with that damned bandaged, roughed-up and weather-beaten left hand of mine, I reached out as soft as I could and brushed those tears of hers away.

She stopped bathing my hand and looked up at me.

And I swear sincerely, by all the gods that ever may be, past, present or future, that our eyes said more to each other in that fleeting little moment than most two people can ever say to each other in their whole, entire lifetimes.

And then she lowered her eyes, but that shouldn’t have been the end of the conversation, because we still felt each other so much.

She was tying the bandage when Igor came back in. “We’re going now.”

“Igor,” I said, “will you tell her—”

“What?”

How can you say a lifetime of words, especially through another fella, in the time it takes to walk from a basin of water to a door? So I just gave up and looked at her and said, “Nothin’.”

But she understood.

And then we were gone.

THE NEXT day three of our fellas and three cossacks, with Sergeant Nick in charge of them, went into town. None of our men, Mushy, Sammy the Kid and Chakko, had been in before, and it was the same with the cossacks, so except for Nick they were all new faces.

Before they left, Shad told the Slash-Diamonders not to mess around with the Imperials in any way, shape or form, and particularly not to do any arm-rassling. But after that bout between Rostov and the Imperial moose, it just never came up again anyway, as though everybody on both sides realized that any further contest would just have to be plain silly by comparison.

Later that afternoon, a bunch of mounted Imperials were doing some sort of a toy-soldier drill just outside of Khabarovsk on that huge meadow, so Rostov and Shad decided it was time to show them a reversal of our first all-cossack performance, just for the hell of it. Us cowboys outfitted the cossacks as best we could. Shad and me gave Rostov and Igor each spare jackets and pants and boots and bandannas. The thing we were shyest of was hats, because most of us had only one. But Big Yawn was a help there. He always wore a kind of a hunting cap with a visor in front of it and ear flaps on the sides that you could pull down if you wanted to against the cold. And for some reason he was packing half a dozen spares that he passed out among the cossacks.

So it came to pass that over twenty cowboys rode up against the skyline, just briefly, to watch the Imperials drilling far off on the meadow. And then, as though we were almost immediately bored by what we were watching, we soon drifted back away and out of sight again.

Our men came back from Khabarovsk just after nightfall, and the most exciting thing they had to report was that Mushy had caused a mild sensation by finishing his last drink at The Far East, and then eating the glass. Mushy did that every now and then, especially after a few too many. Damnedest thing, he’d chomp down and bite off a chunk from the rim, chew it slowly and thoughtfully, and then swallow it. And he’d just keep that up until the whole goddamn glass was gone, except that he usually left the bottom of the glass because it was thicker there, and he also claimed it didn’t taste as good.

I kept waiting for one of them to pass on some word to me from Irenia, but nobody said anything.

I did let my pride go down a peg by saying offhandedly to Mushy and Sammy, “Ya’ talk t’ anybody in town?”

“How the hell could we?” Sammy said. “Ain’t nobody in there can talk American.”

“That’s right.” Mushy nodded. “Nick did all our talkin’ for us.”

At supper, Slim and I wound up sitting beside Nick, and I finally couldn’t stand it any longer. “Did ya’ see that girl, Irenia?” I asked Nick casually.

He nodded, and kept on eating.

After a long time, I said, “She—say anything?”

Between mouthfuls he said, “She ask how your hand. I say fine.”

“Well, goddamnit, why didn’t ya’ say so?”

He finished eating and turned his massive face toward me with a hurt expression. “I say so. Just now.” And then he got up and walked away.

“Stupid goddamn cossack,” I muttered.

“You been slightly an’ subtly had by that stupid goddamn cossack.” Slim grinned. “He told me all about that more’n an hour ago.”

“Oh.”

The following day I rode the morning stretch on the herd, and the sun was a little past high noon when Crab relieved me. I swung around by the big rock on the war-games meadow to see if anything might be going on, and on this day my timing wasn’t too good because I got stuck in a race that was about to begin around that tough damn course.

The good part was that it was a relay, with four men on each team, so we’d each have only about half a mile to go, instead of the whole rugged two miles.

The bad part was that instead of each racer passing on a baton, or something light like that, to the next fella, what we were supposed to carry and pass on was a large, rounded rock weighing over twenty pounds. And if anybody dropped it, that would probably lose the race for his team because he’d have to go back to get it. And it was easy to drop because just standing there on the ground holding that rounded rock in one hand wasn’t all that simple.

“Jesus,” Dixie said, “whoever invented this idea musta been mad as hell at somebody.”

“Well, Dixie, you can see how it’d help train ya’ for warfare,” I said dryly. “If you ain’t got a cannon, you just ride up carryin’ the cannon ball and throw it.”

“This is child’s play compared to some of the games,” Rostov told us. “Such as racing the entire course with a sharp saber clenched between your teeth.”

“Yuck,” I said.

“However,” he continued, “this race will do. Particularly in deference to Northshield’s common sense, and also the fact that right now we can’t afford to have anyone get his head cut off.”