Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

“After bein’ cooped up so long, a lot of them’ll likely dive for the first openin’ they get a chance at.”

“An’ the ones that don’t make that choice?” Old Keats asked.

“We’ll use gentle persuasion—and fire.”

Forty minutes later we were down in the main hold about ready to go.

Following Shad’s orders, half a dozen of Captain Barum’s crew were now forcing open an old, unused sea door on this lower deck where we could drive the cattle out from where they were milling and bawling in the big hold. It was only about a five-foot drop from this sea door to the pitching waterline below, so they wouldn’t bang each other up too much jumping out. That is, if Shad was right about us getting them to jump in the first place.

We’d lighted enough lamps to be able to see a little bit in this big, swaying place, and with the cattle now getting nervous, grumbling throatily and bumping each other around restlessly on the heavy plank floor, there were all kinds of funny, deep noises and wild, flickering shadows wherever you looked. Our thirty-horse remuda and the pack mules had made the trip at one end of the hold, separated from the longhorns by a rough partition of nailed-up two-by-fours. All of us, except for Sammy the Kid, who had stood pat about taking a boat, had saddled our best horses and led them through the cattle up to near the sea door. Even Big Yawn had decided to ride ashore. It was the first time I’d ever known him to change his mind. He still looked pretty grim, but I guess most everyone else deciding to go had kind of shamed him into it.

Crab Smith, wetting his own lips uneasily, said to Big Yawn, “You look as edgy as a whore in church.”

Upon occasion Big Yawn did manage to have a way with words. On this occasion he said shortly, “Fuck you and the horse you rode up on.”

The sailors, working with sledges and crowbars, and swearing a lot, now got the rusted sea door sliding with an agonized sound, and it slid all the way it would go, making an opening about twelve feet wide.

And, as the door grated open, looking out at that black, surging ocean just below gave a man one damn fearful feeling. I’d once swam across a twenty-foot-wide pond. But those ugly, dark waters pitching around in that inky night looked like their only use was for men to drown in.

Big Yawn swallowed hard. “How—how deep ya’ think it is?”

“Hell,” Slim said, trying without too much success to be cheerful, “maybe a mile. Maybe only half a mile. Who knows?”

“There’s one thing for sure,” Old Keats said gloomily, “it’s too damn deep t’ wade across.”

A couple of lights farther out from the town could be dimly seen on the shore, but right now they looked about a hundred miles away.

“Bring up Old Fooler,” Shad said.

Old Fooler was one of the great lead steers ever born. If those longhorns would follow anything it would be that huge black ox with one four-foot-long horn raised up normally and the other dipped down. There seemed to be something irresistible about that gigantic butt of his that usually made the others just plain follow it regardless of wherever he went.

Mushy and Rufe put a lead halter on Old Fooler and he came up to the sea door easy enough. But once he took his first look out, Old Fooler decided that was as far as he was going.

Shad was looking across the water. The first of the Queen ’s small boats carrying out supplies was already being rowed toward the shore, about two hundred feet from the ship. There was a lantern raised on the boat that gave us a closer light to steer by.

“Get ready t’ push ’im overboard,” Shad said. Then he swung up aboard Red, his big strawberry-roan stallion. After two months at sea, Red shied under the unfamiliar weight on the shifting deck, but finally got all his legs under him. Shad put the noose of his lariat around Old Fooler’s neck, leaving plenty of slack in the rope. Then he spurred Red forward. But Red wasn’t at all interested in going either, and he did a little bucking dance instead, rearing back away from the sea door. Shad, who knew horses better than they knew themselves, let Red get away with this. He not only let him back off, but turned Red around as though they were in agreement and were now going to ride in the other direction. Then, still holding the reins in his left hand, he put his right hand over Red’s eyes so the big stallion couldn’t see, and he kept turning Red until they were again aimed at the sea door. Then Shad spurred the turned-around stallion fiercely and let go with a deafening cowboy yell that must have rocked the buildings in Vladivostok.

“ Ahhhhhhh-hawwwww-YIGH !” he bellowed, and Red flew forward. That big roan must have sailed twenty feet out of the sea door before gravity took its natural course and Red realized he’d been double-crossed. But by then it was too late. They both damnere went under in a spray of white foam against the black water, and then they were bobbing up, Red swimming frantically and the rope around spraddle-legged, defiant Old Fooler’s neck tight as a bowstring.

But tight as the rope was, not one ounce of Old Fooler’s two thousand pounds was planning on going anyplace.

“Push the bastard!” Slim yelled, and seven or eight of us crowded around Old Fooler, heaving with all our weight. I think what turned the tables was Slim’s pocketknife. Along with pushing, Slim stabbed Old Fooler in the rear. Not where it would do him permanent damage, but it still must have hurt like hell. The big black bull let out a bellow that damnere matched Shad’s cowboy yell and leaped high into the air in the general direction Slim wanted him to go. And when he came down, he was in the Gulf of Peter the Great, complaining loudly and splashing all over the place.

And, as Shad had thought it would, that kind of broke the ice with the others.

“Look out!” Slim yelled, and we jumped back from the sea door as probably the only stampede of longhorns on a ship ever recorded in naval history began. There must have been three hundred cows and bulls that suddenly realized, after two months of imprisonment, that there was at last a way out. Once Old Fooler had unintentionally led the way, they couldn’t have cared less if they were jumping off Pikes Peak, as long as they were getting out of that hold.

We were lucky not to get crushed in the wild mass exit.

And then suddenly, like a snap of the fingers, the stampede stopped in midstream. Longhorns are sort of like people, I guess. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing either most of the time. A big spotted cow with a yearling calf gave a terrified bawl and skidded to a halt at the sea door.

Evidently taking her word about something being wrong up front, the two hundred or so head behind her slammed on their brakes and now wouldn’t be budged.

So this is when we used Shad’s “fire.”

“Levi!” Slim yelled. “Link, Rufe! Crab! Stay with me and light those torches. The rest of you hit the water!” Old Keats and Mushy were the first two mounted and out. The horses didn’t really like the idea, but so many cattle had dived out by then that it must have started to seem like the natural thing to do. Natcho’s big black didn’t argue at all. Chakko, Dixie and Purse went next. And finally Shiny Joe and Big Yawn. Big Yawn was so scared his hands were shaking even before he got aboard his horse.

“Shiny,” Slim said, “stick close t’ Big Yawn!” And then they were both gone, in almost one gigantic splash.

I’d already lighted a torch, and we were now lighting others from it. When we all had one or two torches apiece, we ran to the far side of the hold and started yelling our lungs out and scaring the hell out of the cattle with the flaming torches. Slim was up by the spotted cow who’d stopped the first stampede. He picked up her calf and threw it overboard. She must have been mad about it, but this was no time to argue. Bawling wildly, she went after her baby like a shot. And, terrified by our yells and waving torches, the others started to follow. One mean-looking dun bull lowered his head five feet away to charge right at me, so without thinking about it I burned him a quick, good one on the nose with the torch and, luckily, he changed his mind and charged the other direction instead.