Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

Near the center of the clearing between the cabins was a well, which was about the only thing there that hadn’t been destroyed. A small protective wall of rocks was still around it, and the rope and bucket had been left intact.

After a while, the six of us joined each other, still in complete silence, and dismounted near the well, though to tell the truth my mind was still so wobbly I don’t recall riding over to the well or even getting off Buck.

It was Rostov’s low, strong voice that finally brought me back to myself a little, his quiet words starting to nail my staggered, loosened-up mind more firmly in place once again.

“They were a brave group,” he said. “They fought well.”

His eyes grim, Bruk nodded. “At least eight dead Tartars are there among them.”

Old Keats looked at Bruk thoughtfully. “They don’t even bury their own dead?”

“They have a saying,” Bruk said quietly, “that the vultures are their flying gravediggers.”

“One of the Tartars who died here was relatively important,” Rostov said.

Igor, who’d been having his own problems hanging on to himself, now at last managed to say in a husky, strained voice, “How do you know that, sir?”

That was a pretty good question, because sure as hell none of those pathetic piles of bones was wearing any insignia.

“Come.” Rostov stepped toward the partly remaining wall of the nearest cabin.

Igor, Shad and I followed him while Old Keats and Bruk stayed near the horses. And as we moved off, the two older men started to lower the bucket to get some water from the well.

Near the base of the cabin wall there was one skeleton all by itself, but as we approached it I noticed for the first time that there were two skulls there.

Finally finding my own voice, and sounding a lot like Igor had just before, I said, “Tartar leaders’r two-headed?”

I’d said it innocently, hardly even paying attention to my words, but it came out funny, and this wasn’t a time or a place for fun. The other three looked at me, and I had to grit my teeth hard against laughing. Because I knew if I started to laugh, I wouldn’t be able to stop.

Rostov leaned down and picked up the skull that wasn’t attached to the skeleton’s backbone. Handing it to Shad he said, “This man was a high-ranking warrior or they wouldn’t have left this with him.”

Igor and I both stared at the ugly object, and I now saw that this skull was much older than the other bones. The top of it had been neatly cut off and in its place a flat sheet of rawhide had been tightly stretched.

“It’s a damaru ,” Rostov said.

We glanced at him questioningly and he added, “A small ritualistic drum.”

Shad handed it toward Igor and me to examine, but neither one of us wanted to hold it, so he dropped it back on the ground where it had been. “Nice t’ know,” he said grimly, “that they’re music lovers.”

We turned and started back toward Old Keats and Bruk at the well. Bruk, his back to us, had finished drinking from the first bucket. Quite a bit of the water must have spilled, for Keats had leaned over to lower the bucket for a refill, and now he was hauling it up again.

Then, as Keats almost had the bucket, Bruk did an incredible thing. His back still to us, he whipped his saber out and swung the razor-sharp edge swiftly in Keats’s direction. But the deadly blade didn’t touch Keats. It slashed instead through the rope a few inches below where Keats was holding it, severing the thick rope as though it were a thread. As Old Keats looked up in amazement there was the sound of the falling bucket hitting the water below. And then the saber dropped from Bruk’s hand.

“Oh, God, the water !” Rostov said, breaking into a run toward them.

In the brief moment it took us to get there, Old Keats already had Bruk’s shoulders in his hands and was shaking him as hard as he could, calling desperately, “Bruk! Bruk !”

The old cossack’s face was turning black, and he was paralyzed inside, unable to speak or breathe.

Rostov, with Shad instinctively knowing what to do and helping, laid Bruk down on the ground on his face. Rostov knelt over him, pushing down powerfully on his back with both hands. And at the same time, Shad turned the blackening face to one side, forcing Bruk’s mouth open and quickly putting his forefinger in his mouth both to hold the tongue down and to keep the stricken man from swallowing it.

Pushing down on Bruk’s back with all his strength, Rostov muttered, “Watch that he doesn’t bite it off.”

But Old Keats had already foreseen this, and he now hurried back from a nearby birch with a slender branch about eight inches long. He knelt beside Shad and put the branch in to hold down the tongue before Shad withdrew his finger. But Shad continued to hold Bruk’s jaws from the outside, forcing the mouth to stay open.

All of this had happened so quickly that Igor and I were still standing there in helpless shock. But now I stepped to Buck and with slightly trembling fingers untied a blanket. A blanket might not do much good, but it was all I could think of. Igor lent a hand, and we doubled the blanket and put it on the ground next to where they were working on Bruk.

“Maybe keep ’im warm, later,” I mumbled.

But the way it was going, there might not be any “later.” Bruk still hadn’t breathed yet, and the last remaining awareness in his eyes was beginning to fade into unseeing glassiness.

In desperation, Rostov raised both of his open hands up and then slammed them down in a mighty blow on Bruk’s back that must have come close to breaking most of his ribs. And under that crushing impact, Bruk did gasp, seeming to take in one last terribly hard-won bit of air.

But then, as Rostov pushed down fiercely hard on his back again, Bruk’s eyes closed.

And he was dead.

We all knew it within the same instant. Whatever tiny bit of life he had been clinging to somewhere within himself a moment before was now finally and forever gone.

His hands still on Bruk’s back, Rostov let the surging, pushing strength go out of his arms and looked at Shad with hard, level eyes.

Returning Rostov’s look, Shad very slowly released his iron grip on Bruk’s jaw and mouth.

“Igor,” Rostov finally said in a quiet voice, “go back and tell them what’s happened here.” He looked at Shad. “Tell them to make a wide circle around this area.”

Shad nodded, and Igor said in a broken whisper, “Yes, sir.”

As Shad and Rostov now stood up, Igor turned quickly away from us, then mounted Blackeye and rode off swiftly.

Old Keats had remained kneeling beside Bruk, still holding his tongue down with the birch branch as though hopelessly willing some last invisible spark of life to show up in Bruk. And then, in an involuntary movement, the dead man’s teeth clenched powerfully together, biting almost completely through the piece of wood.

“Oh, Christ ,” Keats murmured, and I guess it was then that he at last accepted Bruk’s death. But still not ready to dwell on that death, or face the brutal fact of it head-on, he decided to pay more attention to the birch branch instead.

“Goddamn stick!” he muttered, trying to pull it free.

“Might as well break it off,” Shad said quietly.

“And leave ’im with part of a goddamn stick in ’is mouth?”

For the first time, I was just beginning to realize how close those two older fellas had come to be. And Shad could see it too, for he spoke to Keats even more gently now. “You know as well as I do that you’ve either got t’ break off the stick or break his jaw.”

“Well,” Keats said, close to tears, “that’s just one hell of a goddamn note!” But he knew Shad was right, and holding Bruk’s forehead in place with his left hand, he bent the branch back and forth as easily as possible until the branch broke off. And as it did, Bruk’s teeth at last sprang tightly against each other with a sharp snapping sound.