Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

Rostov’s eyes were still searching far ahead. “Anyone who could see knew that Dixie was following in your footsteps.”

My voice had been unsteady before, but it was ready to crack now. “There ain’t no footsteps t’ follow in a goddamn big bunch a’ water.”

And then Rostov hit me hardest of all. “As you are following in Shad’s.”

That voice of mine just wasn’t working at all by then, so I didn’t, and couldn’t, say a thing.

Rostov’s eyes never left the far distances ahead. “Shad has made you know that you are responsible for others. And in turn, you gave that gift to Dixie.” He paused. “Would you or Shad have ignored Sammy or done anything other than Dixie did last night?”

I couldn’t talk, but neither could I help but think of how Rostov and his cossacks were ready to die for the people, and for the spirit, of Bakaskaya.

And then he went on. “The gift Shad has given you and you gave Dixie, of caring for others, is sometimes hard to live with and always hard to die with.” He paused again. “But it is, and forever will be, the most treasured gift in the world.”

We rode on in silence, and a little later the night’s black darkness started to close in, seeming to squeeze away the now slowing rain, until finally the night was full upon us and the rain had stopped.

There was a broad meadow before us, and we camped there, our fires close to each other. I must have been starved, but I didn’t feel like eating, so I just took off my boots and climbed into my bedroll.

Before I’d passed out completely, Slim kneeled beside me. “Hey, Levi?”

“Yeah?”

“Shad an’ Old Keats’re out on the herd now, an’ I’m workin’ out a schedule. You feel up t’ takin’ the late graveyard?”

“Sure.”

And it seemed like I’d just leaned my head back when Slim was pushing me again and it was dead black night and time to go.

I pulled on my boots and saddled Buck, who felt about the same as I did, and rode out to relieve Natcho.

But even through all my exhaustion, the hammering, relentless sorrow I felt about Dixie just wouldn’t go away. That damned lifeless plaid shirt, and the lifeless body inside it, and that terrible gray, muddy water.

In a way, then, it reminded me of that poor, sad cow when we went off the boat at Vladivostok. And I couldn’t help but wonder how many lives are taken mercilessly by the cold, unfeeling waters of the world.

With all those grim thoughts, the wrong I’d done seemed more and more unforgivable. If I’d just minded my own goddamned business. If I just hadn’t told Dixie that Sammy was scared of the river. And the craziest part of it all was that I didn’t know whether to feel worse about the Dixie who was or the Dixie who was starting to be.

Given time, instead of death, that simple sonofabitch could have been great.

About then, while I was blaming myself all over again for Dixie, Rostov’s words came to mind. And I knew that anything that brilliant bastard had ever said was undoubtedly right.

But just being right, even having all the rightness there is on earth, couldn’t do much to make me feel any better. Life and death isn’t right and wrong. They’re both part of a giant, natural right, but that doesn’t make death any easier to take.

I was surely grateful to Rostov for having given me at least some kind of an edge against the terrible way I felt. But out here in the black night, and by myself, I suddenly felt as lonely and broken as I guess Dixie must have felt in those dark waters, being pulled and twisted, lifelessly and endlessly.

It was then that a strange, wordless and wonderful thing happened.

There were hoofbeats from behind and off to one side, and a moment later Shad reined his big Red up beside me, pulling to a stop.

He didn’t do or say anything, and I wasn’t in any great shape to talk. He just sat there beside me quietly, looking out over the shadowed, sleeping herd. He’d already been up most of this second sleepless night in a row, and should have been in his bedroll and out like a rock by now. But he knew the rough feelings I’d be having, so he’d put off sleep to ride out this one last time. And somehow, just by his silent presence, he was sharing the pain of those deep feelings within me, and wordlessly giving me part of his own inner strength.

It was a sad, rich, warm time.

And then, finally, he rode away into the dark.

Being a man, I sure as hell could never let on to Shad how deeply I was moved. So at last I told it softly to Buck instead. “I’ll tell you somethin’.” I looked off, where Shad was safely gone, and Buck twisted one ear back, wondering who I was talking to. “I love you most, Shad, for the things you never said to me.”

A LONG toward morning the rain started to come down heavy again, and it lasted six more days and six nights without stopping for one minute or even slowing down enough for us to get at least slightly dried out. And in its own cruel way, there is nothing that is finally more brutally depressing than a forever hostile sky flooding down constant, battering waves of chilling raindrops that go on and on without end.

We must have made about seventy miles through that everlasting sea of shallow water and mud, but every drenched, exhausting mile was damn hard won. The mud was like glue, and often as not the horses and cattle were plowing along nearly knee-deep in it. On the fourth day one speckled, lop-horned cow and her yearling calf came within an eyelash of being buried altogether in the thick, oozing stuff. Rufe happened to spot her as she was bawling helplessly, stuck, more than shoulder-deep in the soft, shifting, deep muck at the bottom of an arroyo. Her calf was in worse shape, with only its small muzzle sticking desperately up out of the rain-driven mire. Four men slid down there with ropes to tie around them and managed to finally haul them out to firmer ground. But by the time they’d rescued the cow and calf, every inch of the men, from head to toe, was covered with a thick layer of sticky mud, which didn’t add much to their general cheerfulness.

Most of us were beginning to figure that hell wasn’t made out of fire and brimstone after all, but was made out of mud and rain.

On the sixth morning, as pitch-black night and gray-black dawn fought against each other vaguely and dimly in the east, all us Slash-Diamonders except for Shad and the men on herd were hunched miserably down in our slickers around a campfire that had its own special little fight going, spitting and hissing angrily as it struggled to survive against the rain. And most of us grouped silently around it felt pretty much the same bitter way the fire sounded, like plain furiously spitting back at the blinding, unending torrent.

Mushy was pouring himself some coffee and Crab, next to him, held out his cup. “I’ll take some too.”

“Git it y’rself!” Mushy put the pot right back past Crab’s outstretched cup and onto the fire.

“Well fuck you!” Crab reached out and poured his own.

Acting like that wasn’t usually Mushy’s style, but almost everybody there was in a short-tempered, mean mood that was just shy of being downright savage.

It seemed to me that Slim and Old Keats gave each other a brief, expressionless glance, and then Slim said easily, “By God, I swear we coulda made it this far, in all this water, without ever gittin’ offa that goddamned big boat we was on.”

Old Keats took a sip of coffee. “I’m reminded of forty days and forty nights of rain. All of you remember that, of course, being conscientious students of the Bible.”

Several of the men gave him darkly annoyed glances, and Rufe said gruffly, “I ain’t no conscientious student a’ nothin’!”