Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

“That makes ya’ break a kid’s neck?”

“Then bill me!” Verushki screamed, suddenly hysterical with fear.

“No such luck.” Shad swung the saber and cut the reins so that Verushki was left holding two pieces of empty leather. Then Shad whacked the horse on the butt with the saber so that it went lunging off into the stormy night. And now, finished with the blade, Shad broke it over the pommel of his saddle and threw the handle half of it down into the muddy ground so that it stuck there.

Then he galloped away and I raced after him.

We got to the point of the herd, where Old Fooler and some of the braver head following close on his heels were already brisket-deep out into the river.

“Move ’em out!” Shad yelled, galloping full speed into the shallows of the Amur. There were a few shots from behind us that didn’t sound too unfriendly, but who can tell, and there was a great, loud whooping and hollering that made itself heard against the crashing rain and the thunder. And pretty quick, with Old Fooler trailing Shad and Red, his nose just above the water, man and beast in one massive group were headed toward the far side.

It was a funny river to cross. Right in the middle of it we were suddenly on top of a high, firm sand bar so that every man, horse and cow there sort of reminded me of Christ walking on the water.

And then we were back in the deeps, and not too much later we were straggling out onto the far side.

But this time, unlike Vladivostok, there was no fire to warm and dry ourselves by, and there was no time to get any sleep or even to sit around and grumble for a little while about all those damned hardships already faced and yet to be faced.

Shad and Rostov had determined that we were going to push on past the river as far north of Khabarovsk as we could get without falling flat on our tired faces.

On a small rise, I turned to take one last look at the tiny, flickering handful of lights that was Khabarovsk, wrapped in that immensity of darkness.

It was such a small handful of lights that even my own hand, held up before me, was bigger.

And yet, somewhere within those pitiful few dim and fading lights trying to hold out against the great darkness filling all the rest of the world as far as my eyes could see, was Irenia. And somehow I could still feel and see there the spirit of those two big men who had been hanged.

Suddenly, I was afraid. Irenia had been friendly to all of us, and especially to me. And I’d given her that Apache Tear. If that pretty, black stone should somehow cause her any trouble or pain, it could really become a tear.—It could cause her to be hanged!

And that one Imperial Cossack had seen us together tonight!

With those silent words that aren’t actually spoken but are so thunderous in the mind, I lowered my head and said to myself, “Oh, God, God, God !”

Shad rode up and sat his big Red beside me for just a moment. I knew he was looking where I’d been looking, and I’m pretty sure he was thinking what I’d been thinking.

Finally he said, “It’s all right. The way she is, Levi, makes it so.”

Then he turned his big Red and rode away into the blackness that was north.

I was only half sure that what he’d said was right. But I was double sure that what he wanted most was just to make me feel easier.

I took one final look at those faint pinpoint lights trembling bravely against the dark in the distance across that wide river.

And then, knowing it was the only thing to do, I turned Buck and spurred him north, catching up with the men and the cows moving that same way.

None of us yet knew in that night of swift black movement and grinding rain that we had already lost our first man.

A good one.

THE MAJORITY of incidents that befall us on our hazardous trek toward Bakaskaya tend to be too grim to contemplate, briefly or easily.

Aside from these harrowing times, there are a couple of pretty amusing things mixed in among them I guess, like when Shad is given a fairly large Siberian kitten. Or when me and a Tartar warrior manage to sneak up on each other one night and damnere give each other heart attacks upon the mutual surprise.

But otherwise, to be perfectly truthful, it’s just too damned heartfelt and too hard for me to simply take pen in hand and make any short or casual notes.

The only thing to do, or at least the only thing I can do, is to try to tell, as faithfully as possible, what happened before those of us who survived finally managed at last to come to that place called Bakaskaya.

WE DROVE straight through the black night and the driving rain until late in the following morning, when the blackness above was at last slowly and angrily giving way to strips of bleak gray so that the sky looked like a never-ending ceiling of lead mixed with streaks of muddy milk.

The hard rain was easing off just a little as Shad signaled for a halt near a scattering of maple trees in the center of a broad plain that was surrounded in the distance by low hills. We didn’t have to do much convincing to get the exhausted cows to stop. We’d been hollering ourselves hoarse all that black night over the noise of the rain and whopping them with our lariats to keep them moving at a good clip. All we had to do was stop yelling and leave them alone, and with the forward momentum gone, most of them sank down into the mud and grass of the plain like wiped-out drunks hitting their bedrolls after a heavy Saturday night. And strong as he was, Old Fooler was one of the first to sag down.

Rostov put a few men on watch, and then he and his cossacks joined the rest of us as Shad broke out two or three bottles of Jack Daniel’s from a pack animal and started them around.

We were all drenched and half frozen, and I for one was so tired I didn’t trust myself to dismount for fear of my legs buckling under me.

Old Keats took a healthy slug of the Daniel’s and handed it to Slim who was standing next to him and Shad. “We must a’ come over fifteen miles.”

Slim took a drink and then held it up to me in the saddle. “I’d guess right close t’ twenty.”

Shiny Joe was drinking from another bottle. “One more night goin’ north like that an’ we oughtta damnere be at the goddamned North Pole.”

I passed my bottle of Daniel’s to Igor, who was next to me, still mounted.

And as I did so, I noticed a funny thing. Rostov had taken out some bottles of vodka, which were making the rounds. And with all of us kind of mingled there around Shad and Rostov, not one of us, cowboy or cossack, was paying a hell of a lot of attention to whether he was drinking bourbon or vodka. On second thought, I guess it wasn’t so funny after all, but just a kind of a good and natural thing.

Shad started to frown, glancing around at us through the still dim light and heavy rain. “Where’s Dixie?”

Rufe looked off to one side. “His ’paloosa’s over there, under the same tree as mine.”

I followed Rufe’s look, and Dixie’s Appaloosa, Shiloh, was standing next to Rufe’s Bobtail, but I got a hard, cold feeling inside me when I saw that Shiloh wasn’t tied or even ground-reined. His reins were still strung up around the back of his neck.

“Who saw Dixie last?” Shad said, his voice now quiet and flat.

“I saw ’im when he went ahead a’ me into the river,” Crab said. “But Christ! In that dark ya’ couldn’t see more’n a few feet. An’ that’s the last I know.”

“Oh my God!” Sammy murmured.

And I suddenly knew that I knew the answer.

“Your God what?” Shad demanded.