Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

“Now,” Slim said dryly, still looking at Kirdyaga with grim concern, “how ya’ gonna hold y’r britches up?”

Those worn old Levi’s fit him like a glove, so Shad wasn’t in any trouble. “Hell,” he shrugged, “got another belt back t’ camp.”

About then, Kirdyaga started to come around. His face and neck muscles moved, twitching slightly, and then his eyes blinked open and started to clear. Shad brought his flask of Jack Daniel’s, and Rostov raised the big cossack’s head enough to give him one or two small sips. Kirdyaga gagged briefly, but the bourbon warmed him and brought some color back to his face.

Then, finally, he murmured a few broken words in Russian to Rostov. I was pretty sure he was asking if he was going to live.

And I was damn sure about it when Rostov now grinned easily down at the hurt man and answered him with a quiet, rough humor in his voice that made his reply cheerful and encouraging. And speaking in those easy, almost joshing terms, he pointed to Kirdyaga’s freshly bandaged wound and then at his own stomach.

Kirdyaga wasn’t strong enough to talk anymore, but he did manage a small grin as he realized that he and Rostov were now both packing a bullet somewhere in their gut.

There was the sound of someone approaching and we stood up, looking off.

It was Nick, who was striding toward us through the moonlight, effortlessly dragging behind him the body of a Tartar that he was holding by one foot.

When he got near us, he let go of the roughly sandaled foot, dropping the Tartar sprawled on his back behind him. “This one’s still alive, Captain.”

We stepped over to look down at the wounded man. Even unconscious, his lips were curled back in a silent half snarl. He was wearing a crudely made wolfskin jacket with the fur outside, which made his shoulders seem broader than they were. And after that, except for some leather knee-length pantaloons and those beat-up old sandals, he was as naked as the wolf he’d gotten the jacket from. There was a kind of a scabbard sewed into the waist of his leather pantaloons, and in that scabbard was a curved dagger with a handle that was inlaid with some fancy stones and what I guessed to be strips of ivory.

He had been shot high up on the left side of his chest. That part of his body, and some of his long, dark hair, was covered with hardening blood that looked black in the moonlight.

Nick leaned down and took the dagger from the nearly dead Tartar, and as he stood back up Kirdyaga suddenly went into convulsions behind us.

Lying a few feet away, every muscle in the giant cossack’s body began to jerk and throb so fast and hard that he was almost rolling around on the ground.

All five of us were with him in an instant, trying from both sides to hold his powerful, twisting body down. And even though his eyes were getting glassy and he was only barely conscious, it still took all five of us to do it. There was just no doubt that the huge cossack was dying, his body thrusting and surging for life violently and senselessly.

Once we got him halfway nailed down on his back, Rostov gave a command to Nick and the sergeant leaped over toward his horse. The rest of us fought like hell to keep Kirdyaga down, and a moment later Nick hurried back with what Rostov had told him to get.

All he’d brought was a little tin cup and a small bottle of vodka, which in those deadly circumstances sure didn’t look like any great help to me.

But Nick took over Kirdyaga’s thrashing left arm that Rostov had been holding down, and Rostov went swiftly to work. He took a rifle cartridge out of his belt and bit fiercely down on the lead slug. Then, with his teeth and his good left hand, he pulled and twisted fiercely, jerking the lead bullet out of the brass cartridge.

Doing the best I could to hold Kirdyaga’s massive, kicking right leg down, and watching Rostov working feverishly, I thought for sure he’d gone crazy. But glancing at Shad’s grim eyes, I could see that he had a strong hunch that something right, whatever it was, was happening.

Rostov poured a huge slug of vodka into the tin cup. Then he poured all of the black powder from the brass rifle cartridge into the vodka, stirring the awful mess up swiftly with the cartridge case that was still in his hand.

Then Rostov leaned forward over Kirdyaga, who was twisting and wrenching at our holding hands with all his might. His face only inches from Kirdyaga’s, Rostov roared a command in Russian with such explosive fury that for one brief instant Kirdyaga just barely managed to force himself to hold still and open his mouth. And in that instant Rostov didn’t pour but damnere threw the mixed vodka and gunpowder down his throat.

Kirdyaga strangled, gasping frantically for breath, and in that desperate gasping he accidentally swallowed the whole goddamned ghastly drink.

A few seconds later he went out like a small lamp in a high wind, and every powerful, straining muscle in him suddenly was as limp as an old wet piece of cloth. For one awful minute, I was sure he’d died of a heart attack from that horrible mixture he’d drank. But he was staying warm and breathing a little, even though his heart was beating like the wings of a moth trapped inside his enormous chest.

There was no longer any point in our holding him against somehow hurting himself. So we all released our grips on his arms and legs and quietly stood up, and Slim and Nick went to get some blankets to tuck around him.

“Jesus,” I finally whispered, “I’d think that cure’d kill ’im quicker than the bullet.”

Rostov said grimly, “Vodka and gunpowder is an ancient cossack remedy for internal wounds when a man is next to death. Kirdyaga will not go into shock again and there will be no infection internally. But right now—” Rostov left the rest unsaid.

Shad finished those unsaid words. “Right now it’s a matter a’ whether his heart c’n keep goin’.”

Rostov nodded.

As we stared quietly down at the giant Kirdyaga, silently holding on to what small edge he still had on life, there was a faint sound from nearby.

The Tartar, still unconscious, had moved slightly.

“Try to wake him,” Rostov told Nick.

Nick stood up and strode the few feet to the Tartar. He leaned down and slapped the man damnere hard enough to break his jaw, but the only reaction he got was a low murmur. He slapped him twice more, even harder, and it looked to me like he was going to kill him instead of revive him. But he was a better judge of how tough the Tartar was, and at the third mighty slap the man started to come around. He gasped slightly, shaking his head, and a moment later his eyes blinked open. His first move was to reach feebly for the knife Nick had taken. Then, with tremendous effort, he raised himself slightly. But even weak as he was, his slightly shifting head and darting tongue reminded me of a big diamondback about to strike.

Rostov stepped to him and asked him a question in a strange-sounding language. The Tartar thought about it for a glaring moment, and a blind man could see there’d be no way on earth to force an answer out of him.

But then, in a hissing voice that made him seem even more like a rattlesnake, he whispered a few words.

“He asks,” Rostov said, “to die by his own hand, and knife.”

Shad frowned at Rostov. “Your judgment, Captain.”

Rostov and the Tartar spoke in that language a little more, and I somehow had a feeling that the dying man was enjoying whatever he was saying. Then, choking feebly, the Tartar laid back flat on the ground.

Rostov took the fancy knife from Nick. Then, pulling his revolver with his right hand, he leaned down to hand the Tartar the knife. This was evidently Rostov’s part of the bargain. But the Tartar was so far gone he could barely hold the knife, let alone use it on himself.