Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

At last, on the ninth day, near the top of the mountain range, we came upon some really tricky ground to cover. There was a dangerous pass that was actually only a ledge about forty feet wide, with a three- or four-hundred-foot drop off one side and a straight-up wall of rock on the other side. It ran for about two miles, sometimes narrowing down to around twenty feet, and if for any reason the herd had gotten spooked or panicked, we could have lost the whole bunch in about half a minute.

But we took it real slow and easy, and that beautiful Old Fooler led the cattle like they were philosophers taking a thoughtful stroll down main street. So we not only made it easily across that hellish pass, but went on to make a good seven or eight more miles through a slowly rising green valley surrounded by pine trees before quitting for the night. And when we did finally stop, the ground was level, with high peaks to each side.

That night, with our campfires right next to each other, Rostov stepped over and said in a very quiet voice, “That pass was the last hard ground we had to cover.”

After a moment Shad said, “Now that we’ve topped these mountains, your home shouldn’t be more than two or three weeks away.”

“It’s mostly downhill—and less than two hundred miles.”

The cossacks were quietly mingling in with us now, a lot of them with bottles of vodka that they were offering around. It was a silent, easy time. Not a time for getting drunk, but more of a time to simply celebrate being glad and thankful about something important.

Even Shad now said in a kind of relaxed way, “It ain’t exactly time f’r rejoicin’ yet, but a couple a’ you fellas break out some Jack Daniel’s. Hittin’ the top of a mountain pass is always worth a good drink.”

We broke out the bourbon and shared the bottles back and forth.

And that’s the way that ninth quiet day and night was.

And the next of those good days, the tenth since we’d left Bruk buried on the top of that lonely hillside, went just as well. Once or twice I even had the strange, haunting thought that his death had somehow given each and all of us safe passage.

I know for sure he would have wished it that way.

But I should have also known that no man’s death can ever give safe passage to any other man’s life.

At the end of that tenth day, when the sun was gone, yet there was still light in the sky, I could see that Rostov was suddenly disturbed about something. He signaled abruptly for a halt, and we rode quickly back to where the others were now starting to set up camp.

Mushy and Crab had gathered some wood together for a fire, and all it needed now was a match. Rostov dismounted near them and said, “Don’t light that until after dark. And then keep the fire low.”

Mushy and Crab gave each other brief, puzzled glances and Crab said, “Sonofabitch. Shad just tol’ us the same damn thing.”

Mushy shrugged. “That’s how come we ain’t yet lit it.”

Shad walked into camp now, from where he’d tied up Red. He got there in time to hear the last words Mushy had said, and the two big men looked at each other for a silent moment, their eyes level.

Then Rostov said, “You saw it, too.”

Shad nodded. “’Bout thirty minutes ago. Maybe ten, twelve miles b’hind us.”

Some of the other cowboys and cossacks were gathering around, and in Russian Rostov asked a question of Kirdyaga and Yakov, who’d just come in from patrolling far behind the herd. From their short, uncertain answers, they didn’t have any more idea what was going on than I did.

Slim, who almost always saw everything there was to see, said, “Jus’ what’d you two fellas happen t’ spot all that distance b’hind us?”

“A small, unusual wisp of cloud,” Rostov said. “It faded so quickly in the rays of the setting sun that it might possibly have been an optical illusion.”

“Or hell, at that time a’ day,” Slim said agreeably, “maybe y’r eyes was just playin’ tricks on ya’.”

“It was smoke,” Shad said quietly. “From a fire that hadn’t been built long, an’ was then put out fast.”

Rostov nodded. “That’s what I believe it was.”

There was a brief, grim silence among us in the now swiftly darkening camp. Smoke in the distance behind us meant humans were there, but after that it was anyone’s guess.

“Hell,” Purse muttered nervously, putting words to what we were all thinking, “it might just be a couple of trappers—or all the bloody Tartars in the world!”

Rostov swung up onto his black. “I intend to go back and find out.”

“Not by yourself,” Shad said. “I’m as curious as you are.”

Rostov turned toward him in the saddle. “Say three of each of us?”

Shad nodded.

So a few minutes later, in the now complete dark, six of us were riding silently and swiftly back along the route we’d come that day.

The number six had been just about right on Rostov’s part, which Shad had immediately understood and agreed to. We made up a small but pretty fair striking force if some kind of a fight should come to pass. And at the same time, all things equal, there were enough men left back with the herd to move it and, if need be, protect it.

Sergeant Nick and the giant Kirdyaga were riding just behind Rostov. And Slim and I were pacing the two of them right behind Shad. In both cases Rostov and Shad had left damned good men in charge of the herd, men who also spoke the other outfit’s language—Old Keats and Igor.

Just thinking on that subject, and the way both bosses had arranged everything back at camp pretty neatly, almost like leaving a will, sort of tended to add to the uneasiness I was already feeling.

Leaning forward a little, I said in a low voice that I tried to fill with good-natured, devil-may-care humor, “Say, boss, ya’ think we’ll make it back alive?”

Slim was the only one who bothered to answer me. In an equally low voice he said, “Hell, Levi, the only reason we come along at all is t’ make sure these dumb cossacks don’t get lost in the dark.”

And though they didn’t help all that much, those were the last words spoken in a long time.

After another hour or so, the huge three-quarter Siberian moon appeared slowly over the horizon, seeming to nearly fill that part of the sky and spilling its bleak, cool light all over the world around us.

A mile or two later, moving at an easy, soundless lope in the soft ground, Shad and Rostov suddenly both pulled up almost as though they were one single rider.

At the exact and same moment the two of them had heard or sensed something that none of the rest of us had. But then, in the absolutely total, almost deafening silence, there was a tiny, dry click of sound far ahead. It must have been a mile away, but it was the unmistakable sound of an unshod pony’s hoof hitting a small rock.

And the way it turned out, that slight sound was a terribly costly mistake.

Shad and Rostov instantly turned to the right, up toward a nearby mile-long line of thick pines, each of them walking their horses as gently as if each hoof was coming down on an eggshell that musn’t be broken. And the other four of us followed as quietly as possible. Buck’s left forehoof struck lightly against a clump of earth with a faint whisper of a thud, and I would have rebuked him with a slight hit between his ears, except that I suddenly realized that even that gentle touch would make more noise than Buck had made in our deathly silent ride up the hill.

It still might be peaceful hunters or trappers ahead of us up there. But I had one nifty thought as we moved into the hidden protection of the pines and sat silently on our horses. We hadn’t made one damn sound louder than hands barely rubbing together might make, so if those bastards were Tartars, and moved like ghosts, they were up against some vastly superior ghosts.