Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

“I—I come off my horse in the river. Even in that downpour, Sammy now wet his lips. “I was drownin’, went under. An’ then all of a sudden he was right down there beside me in the water. An’ he got me up an’ got my hands gripped on m’ horse’s tail—an’ I made it.” He took a deep breath. “I thought he was right b’hind me!

Natcho said quietly, “No. I was near you when you came out. You were alone.”

Sammy suddenly just slumped down over the pommel of his saddle, his face buried in his arms so that we wouldn’t be able to see that he was crying.

After a second or so I said to Shad, “I’m goin’ back t’ look for ’im.”

“You can’t hardly sit up, you’re s’ tired,” Slim said.

“I ain’t tired. I’m the one to go.”

“You?” Old Keats asked.

“Me.” It was a dumb answer, but it was all I had.

Sammy raised his head and just barely managed to say, “I’ll go with ya’, Levi.”

“No.”

And Shad understood. “Take Shiloh.”

Igor and Rostov spoke a few words in quiet Russian as I rode over to Shiloh and took his reins to lead him.

I’d only gotten a hundred yards or so back along the way toward the river when Igor rode up on his Blackeye and pulled alongside me.

“What’re you doin’?” I said.

“I’m going with you.”

“I don’t need ya’.”

“I know.”

It’s hard to argue with a statement like that, and I sure didn’t feel much like arguing anyway. I didn’t think there was one chance in hell of finding Dixie. Christ! If worst hadn’t come to worst, in or out of the river, he could have grabbed onto Shiloh or yelled a rebel yell to get somebody’s attention, or maybe even somehow got himself aboard a longhorn just to keep up with the night’s drive. I tried thinking maybe he’d broken a leg or knocked himself out on a tree branch, but those ideas just didn’t ring true.

There were a thousand other thoughts that didn’t work any better. He could have been swept downstream and then swam out. Hell, the river wasn’t moving all that quick. Or maybe he could have simply been thrown by Shiloh, though we hadn’t been moving all that swift and fast.

He just had to be dead.

And he was.

I saw Dixie just one more and last time.

When we pulled up beside the Amur River, we hadn’t yet seen a thing in all that immensity of gray, pelting rain. And then, on one of those sand bars pretty far out in the river, I saw a tree branch that was caught against it. And caught against the tree branch was a piece of cloth. It took a moment for me to see that that piece of cloth was Dixie’s plaid shirt, and it took a little longer to see that Dixie was still in it, sort of floating part up and part down, like a dead fish.

I ran Buck down to the river’s edge, to go and get him. But then, as though God felt like playing a simple, mean trick on me and on the whole world, the tree branch shifted in the tide and Dixie was tugged away by the ebbing, muddy water and disappeared beneath its surface.

And he just never showed up again.

Far up and across the river you could just barely see a little of Khabarovsk—gray buildings with the gray rain against a gray sky.

Last night I’d thought I’d never see Khabarovsk again, and I’d never dreamed that I wouldn’t see Dixie alive again.

Funny as hell, the way the world works.

I must have been looking at the river for a long time, because Igor finally put his hand on my shoulder, gently reminding me that we couldn’t stay there forever.

And we went away.

On the way back Igor rode ahead, leading Shiloh.

Buck just followed behind because I wasn’t pushing him much in the way of instructions or encouragement. The pain and sorrow in my mind kept slamming home the fact that in my own dumb way I’d done a whole lot too much pushing already. I’d pushed Dixie real hard, to the point of knocking him ass over teakettle, to try to show him that men ought to have a certain kind of nobility and a sense of duty toward others.

Somewhere along the line, Dixie had picked up real good on that nobility and that sense of duty toward others.

And it had killed him.

And it was my fault.

Finally, toward the end of that dark, bitter day, Igor and I caught back up to the herd that was now being driven in a north-by-westerly direction.

I was grateful that not much explaining had to be done. Shiloh’s still empty saddle pretty much told the story all by itself.

Purse, Big Yawn and Sammy were with the pack animals and the remuda, behind the herd. Igor went on ahead to join Shad as I led Shiloh over to the remuda and pulled up. I was about to get off and unsaddle the Appaloosa, but Purse spurred back and took a look at me. He swung down before I could. “I’ll do it.”

Sammy rode up silently, the skin under his eyes black from worry and grief.

Big Yawn rode back too, his huge, craggy face hard and thoughtful, and it seemed like about ten minutes between each time that anybody said anything.

Purse pulled slowly at the cinch strap to loosen it. “See ’im?”

I nodded just once. “River got ’im.”

Finally, Sammy said in a whisper, “I shoulda gone back with ya’, Levi.”

I shook my head. “No need.”

“Hadn’t been f’r me—” His voice choked and stopped.

I couldn’t tell him, or ever let him know, Dixie had deliberately followed behind him in the river. “Hell, Sammy, he’d a’ helped me ’r you ’r anybody else who was in a fix back there.”

Sammy glanced at me with a fleeting look of relief in his sorrow-filled eyes. What I’d said helped a little. But right then nothing could help enough, and he rode away again to be by himself.

Big Yawn now reached over and untied the bedroll on Shiloh, then took off the saddlebags. “I’ll put these here possibles a’ his on one a’ the packs.”

Big Yawn could have simply left those things on the saddle, but in his own way he was just trying to be helpful. And then he said, “Too damn bad, Levi.”

“Yeah.” Purse nodded.

“Well, hell,” I said quietly, “he was a friend t’ both a’ you too.”

“Yeah, but—” Big Yawn ran out of words and rode off with the bedroll and saddlebags.

Buck was as ready to fall down as I was, but I spurred him off now as Purse sent Shiloh toward the remuda with a slap on the rump.

I headed on around the herd to catch up with Rostov and take over my normal duties as messenger boy. And all along the way every puncher I passed had something quiet and sympathetic to say, as though Dixie’d been my goddamned brother or something.

Finally I caught up with Rostov, riding far point about a mile ahead of the herd.

He glanced at me. Then, with no mention of Dixie, he said flatly, “Did you see any sign of a pursuit?”

With everyone else feeling so bad about Dixie, this came as kind of a shock. I hesitated and then said harshly, “No! All we saw was a dead man in a muddy river!”

And then he said another thing that threw me also. “I liked that fight you had with him, with fists.”

“Well I’m glad you did, because neither one of us did, because bein’ pounded on ain’t all that much fun!”

And then he really got to me.

“His death was not your responsibility,” he said quietly, his eyes searching the far rain-swept distances ahead.

The best answer I could come up with was “Who said it was?”

“When he helped that young Sammy, he did so of his own free will and volition.”

I had to guess what “volition” meant but it wasn’t too hard, and the talk was reaching down into me where it made my voice unsteady. “He asked me if Sammy was scared. He was watchin’ him all the way in that water.”