Clair Huffaker: The Cowboy and the Cossack

And two other things I knew. One, that toothless, one-eyed killer I’d run into had been scouting far flank to make sure that the men in the valley wouldn’t be trapped. Two, that the men in the valley sure didn’t think they were trapped, with only four men bearing down upon them and only two more of us charging along behind to back them up.

It had to be less than one fast minute between the time that Tartar and I first scared the hell out of each other to the time the general battle was engaged in the valley below.

For whatever reasons, the Tartars were certain they had us whipped. They shied away a bit at first, and then seeing there were only six of us, with one kind of sloping in his saddle, they changed direction and charged back at us, outnumbering us more than two to one.

And that’s when the costly mistake before mentioned really came to pass. Without the click of the hoof before, or without this charge, they might have hung around the edges and killed a few of us and then gotten away in the night, moonlit or not.

As it was, it was a brief, swift massacre. Four of them had single-shots and fired along the way toward us. One man made his shot, and the giant Kirdyaga was knocked half out of his saddle. And then we all cut loose with our repeaters and five of them were down before we were a hundred feet from each other. It’s harder than hell to make a shot from a moving horse, and I don’t know if I hit any of them or not, but just thinking of the damage they’d already done us, I sure as hell was aiming as best I could.

And then we slammed together, still outnumbered, and were in a swirling, close-up fight. My damned Winchester was suddenly out of bullets, and there was no time to try to get that Navy Remington out of its holster, so I reversed the rifle and slammed a Tartar alongside the head as he went by and ripped a hole in my jacket with his lance.

In almost that same instant Kirdyaga galloped up and leaped from his horse taking that Tartar down with him, and there was a cracking sound as they hit the ground that meant the Tartar’s back was gone.

It seemed, all of a sudden, that everybody was out of bullets. And the last Tartar swung his horse at Shad, slashing toward him with a curved sword.

He didn’t make it because Rostov was suddenly there and cut the man damnere in half, his saber held in his still strong left hand.

And that was the end of the fight.

Shad had never learned how to say thanks, and still couldn’t say it, so instead he frowned and started to reload his Colt revolver.

“There’s this difference between a gun and a saber,” Rostov said.

Shad glanced at him. “Yeah?”

“A gun has a limited number of deaths within it. A saber has a thousand, and then still more.”

And having made his point with quiet dignity, Rostov swayed far out of the saddle and, still with that same dignity, fell off of his horse.

SHAD AND I both swung down quickly and knelt beside the unconscious Rostov, raising him to a sitting position. His right sleeve was soaked with fresh blood from his wound, and Shad swiftly cut the sleeve to get a look at the arm.

“He was run through with a kind of a spear. I broke it off an’ pulled it on out.” And then I added huskily, “Oughtta’ve been me.”

Shad glanced at me briefly. “That so?”

Slim and Sergeant Nick had dismounted and gotten Kirdyaga off of the dead Tartar beneath him. He was lying on his back as they unbuttoned his vest to see how bad he was hit. They were close enough that I could see Kirdyaga was still breathing, but just barely, each breath shallow and labored.

“How is Captain Rostov?” Nick called over anxiously.

“He’ll be all right,” Shad said, examining the two holes where the blood was almost coagulated now. “Just lost too much blood.—Kirdyaga?”

“We’ll know better in a minute,” Slim muttered.

Shad got a flask of bourbon and a clean red bandanna from his saddlebags, then knelt back down where I was holding Rostov up in a sitting position.

Shad deliberately squeezed the hurt arm hard, making blood start to flow from the two open wounds once more. Then he poured bourbon over them freely.

The pain of Shad’s rough squeeze, plus the added fiery shock of the alcohol, forced Rostov’s eyes open. He looked down at his hurt arm and then said darkly, “Goddamnit, you ruined my shirt.”

Shad held the flask to Rostov’s lips and the captain took a long drink. Then Shad started to bandage his arm with the clean bandanna. “Lucky you’re not one a’ Verushki’s Imperial Cossacks, fallin’ off your horse that way.”

The bourbon was getting to Rostov, and he was feeling a little stronger already. “I did not fall off my horse.” With his free hand he took another drink of the Jack Daniel’s. “That was just an original way of dismounting.”

Shad was nearly finished with the bandage. “Guess it would save time,” he now knotted the ends of the bandanna tightly, “if a fella was in a real hurry t’ git off ’is horse an’ go t’ sleep.”

If the average man had lost as much blood as Rostov, he’d still have been flat on his back. But Rostov, suddenly frowning over toward where the two men were kneeling near Kirdyaga, now shrugged away from my supporting grip and lurched weakly up onto his feet. And though he almost tipped over a couple of times on his way to the giant wounded cossack, we knew better than to try to help him.

Slim and Nick had bared Kirdyaga’s huge chest and stomach, and there was a wicked bluish hole about six inches below and to the right of his belly button. Nick was dabbing at the ugly wound gently with a wet cloth.

Looking up at us grimly, Slim said, “Can’t locate the bullet by touch. Just ain’t no way t’ figure where it’s got to inside ’im or t’ try t’ git it out.”

Rostov, though still weaving very slightly, said with finality, “We will make no attempt to remove it.”

“No?” That shook me up because I’d heard somewhere or other that you always had to take the bullet out of a shot man.

“He’s right,” Shad said flatly.

Rostov now felt he had enough strength to kneel down without falling down, and he did so, resting his weight on one knee and gently exploring Kirdyaga’s abdomen with the fingertips of his better hand.

And with Rostov there, Nick now stood slowly up and pulled out the enormous revolver he carried, which somehow managed to look both clumsy and lethal as hell at the same time. He checked to see that it was fully loaded and then walked off in the moonlight. I knew instinctively that he was going to make sure there was no more possible threat to us from any of the Tartars.

I hunched down on my heels near Kirdyaga and finally said helplessly, “Well, will the big sonofabitch live with that goddamned bullet in ’im?”

Rostov glanced at me, seeing how deeply I cared. Then, as he started to bandage Kirdyaga, already beginning to use his hurt arm and that hand a little, he said, “I have one inside me that’s been there about fifteen years.”

“Oh.”

“As to whether he’ll live, that will depend on the location of the bullet, his constitution, and God.”

Rostov now had the damp bandage folded and in place over the wound, but he needed some way to hold it there securely. Shad took off the wide, strong cotton mesh belt he wore and kneeled down, handing it to Rostov. “God’s already done his part. Gave this big bastard the strength of an ox.”

One on each side, Shad and Slim lifted Kirdyaga’s huge torso gently so that Rostov could slip the belt underneath and around him. Then Rostov tightened the belt, which locked automatically in place at any point, until the bandage was held very firmly over the wound.