The Cowboy and the Cossack (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) (13 page)

Nobody wanted to, which was kind of natural under those circumstances.

He went on. “Nobody’s gonna make any fun of anybody’s name from here on out. Not the Russian names. Not our own. And it’s time t’ get some sleep.”

My bedroll wasn’t far from his, so we wound up facing each other a little away by ourselves while we pulled off our boots.

“You sure are good at savin’ me from fearful fights,” I said, pulling off one boot.

“Hate t’ get my messenger killed.” He pulled his first boot off.

I tugged on the second boot. My left foot’s always been bigger than the right one, for some reason. “I didn’t know your official given name was Shadrack.”

He pulled his second boot off. “It ain’t.”

“Well, then—”

“I didn’t like the way that talk was goin’, because it wasn’t fair.” He took off his hat and hung it over his saddle horn. “A name ain’t never nothin’, good or bad, until the man behind that name makes it so.” And then he laid his head down in the seat of the saddle and was asleep.

I thought about what he’d said for a while, feeling real good about it, and then before I knew it, I was asleep too.

In the days that came, Rostov kept teaching me things, and maybe just in general conversation learning a little bit, too. For example, he asked me about the leather chaps that most of us cowboys wore, and I told him they were mostly for protecting your legs in rough brush country where, if you were riding hard, scrub oak and snagging low branches and such could cut you all to hell without them.

Rostov said they didn’t have that kind of country over there. Mostly just grass and thick stands of trees going on forever, and sometimes willows where there were creeks or water naturally laid up for long times. But he still liked the look and the idea of chaps and thought mine were kind of artistic because of the brass studs I’d lined the edges with. I also had a hunch he thought they might be useful in protecting a man’s legs in battle.

Another time, he took an interest in the hard leather cuffs around my wrists. I told him that they were partly for fancy and partly to keep my wrists from being chewed up and rope-burned when I was working cattle and using the lariat on my saddle. He nodded politely at my answer, but there was no way for him to know exactly what I was talking about because he’d never seen anybody do any roping. I was tempted to lasso a tree
branch or a rock or something, but it seemed kind of foolish so I just let it go that it was a way of throwing a rope and catching a cow, presuming you threw the rope right in the first place. Then he told me about the closest thing he knew of for that purpose. It was called an “
urga
” and it was used by herders in Mongolia and Siberia. It was a thirty-foot-long pole that was light and strong, and there was a loop hooked to the end of it. If you wanted to catch something, you just rode up near it, held out the long pole, and dropped the noose around the animal’s neck.

The very idea of lugging a thirty-foot-long pole all over the place struck me as being funny as hell.

But there were other things that weren’t so funny, like why the cossacks all wore those scarlet-red vests. That was so that if they got their bodies chopped up badly in a battle, the bleeding wouldn’t show so much. The vest would be the same color as the flowing blood it was soaking up.

Therefore, if a bleeding cossack rode on through a battle half dead, he’d look unbloody and unbeaten. And if he was just barely strong enough to stay in the saddle and sit up straight, he’d still look like the toughest horseman who ever bore down on you.

And then one day Rostov told me about the swans.

It was late in the afternoon, and we were crossing a wide plain, riding at an easy walk for a change.

Two huge, beautiful birds flew high over us, crossing gracefully under the lowering sun and then finally dipping and turning and at last disappearing far away in the northern sky. I’d never seen a sight quite like those big, white, lovely birds. It seemed as though they were almost softly playing together, and even teasing each other a little, while they were taking their own kind of a friendly, casual stroll a thousand feet up in the clear blue air. It was just too pretty not to watch, even though I was supposed to be searching the horizon, and I felt Rostov glancing at me before they flew out of my sight.

“Swans,” he said.

“Well—sure. Anybody knows that.” The only swan I’d ever seen before in my life was in a picture book.

“Male and female.”

“How could ya’ tell, from so far?”

“They always travel in couples, rather as man and wife, if you will. Do you have many swans in Montana?”

“Well—not too many.”

He looked at me briefly with those eyes of his, and I got the definite feeling that I not only couldn’t ever get away with lying to him, but that I’d have a hard time even ever exaggerating to him. It was as though the back of my mind was saying loud and clear to the back of his mind, “This dumb little bastard never saw a swan before in his life.”

I said out loud, “They sure are beautiful.”

He said thoughtfully, “They are beautiful. In more ways than one.

He stopped for a drink, taking the water bag from his saddle. He offered it to me first, and without hardly thinking about it because by then it seemed a natural thing to do, I took it. Unplugging the top, I said, “I ain’t really too up on swans. What d’ya’ mean, more ways than one?”

“They choose a mate when they’re very young. And they stay together for all the rest of their lives.”

“Well, that is a kind of a nice, friendly thing.”

“We could learn much from them in terms of loyalty, steadfastness, love.”

I handed him back the water bag.

He drank just enough to wet his mouth and throat. “When I first came out east to Siberia, I was just a youngster, about your age. That’s when I saw my first pair of them.”

His thinking was so far away, and he was going back so quietly to some gentle memory, that it never even occurred to me to take any exception to his describing me with the word “youngster.”

“We’d been out hunting, and we’d made camp near the end of the day, when two swans flew overhead. The other men were also new to the country, and one of them grabbed his gun and shot the female of the swans. It fell almost at our feet, dead.” He took a long breath, hooking the water bag back onto his saddle. “All that night the male swan flew overhead, circling the camp in the dark, never landing anywhere to rest, and crying pitifully in its low, keening way for some answer from its mate. I’ve never heard cries more pleading, more terribly sad.” He paused a moment. “The next morning, it continued to circle high over us, still in its own soft, searching way, making those tragic, weeping sounds.” Rostov looked up at the sky above, but he was still really looking into the past. “Then at noon, with the sun nearly directly above us, the swan finally lost all hope. It gave up and stopped crying for an answer from her. It flew up and up, as high and as far as its weakened wings would take it into the sky. And then that great bird simply folded its wings and plummeted down like a stone to smash itself to death on the earth far below.” He paused and then said huskily, “It had done the one thing it possibly could do to rejoin its mate.”

We were both silent for a long moment.

As for me, I was so moved by that story, and by the way Rostov had told it and had felt it, that I couldn’t have trusted myself to say anything I might have said, in any case.

He led off at an easy walk again.

We were heading across a wide plain of golden, knee-deep grass that bowed slightly as the wind touched it, and in the far distance there were some low tree-covered hills.

There were three words he’d used that stuck hard in my mind. They were “loyalty,” “steadfastness” and “love.”

Finally, still touched about the whole damn thing, I spurred closer abreast of Rostov and managed a small half grin. “Guess you’re right, about what a fella could learn about from them swans. About loyalty an’ all that.”

He nodded briefly. “The story applies to many things—in many ways.”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t really figure out what all he meant by that, at the moment. So just trying to say something, anything, I said, “It’d sure be nice if while they’re at it swans could teach us how t’ fly, too.”

He glanced at me, his expression quiet and serious. “If you think of what I just told you enough, you’ll find that that swan, and the absolute loyalty it was capable of, does indeed teach you how to fly in the most important possible way.”

“Yeah?”

He could see he’d lost me, but he was patient about it. He said gently, “Don’t you understand the simple thing I mean? Just the very awareness alone of one such magnificent and complete sacrifice should be an inspiration for every man’s spirit to fly, and soar forever within his heart. And, so inspired, he should want to be able to hopefully emulate that life-and-death devotion.”

Good God, I thought. And we call Old Keats the Poet.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “But—that’s kinda philosophic, for me.”

“Simply thinking and speaking of action is philosophy, of course. Taking action is something else. And, as with the swan, the greatest and ultimate test of a man taking action must also be his willingness, while loving life, to give his life for something he loves.”

“Yeah.” He’d never talked to me like that before, and I couldn’t think of much else to say.

And then there were the sounds of hoofbeats coming closer from behind. It was Nick, moving at an easy run to catch up with us. He pulled down to a walk and tried out his American in his deep, rasping voice. “In the small mountains up ahead, we have seen two wolves.”

Without missing a beat, Rostov said, “There were three.”

That got to me quite a bit. We’d been riding along easily and with no trouble, philosophizing and such, and for that time I hadn’t been paying much attention to anything. But that
Rostov, without seeming to pay any attention either, hadn’t missed one goddamn thing. “There are no Tartars on the other side of those hills,” he said. “The wolves crossed over without hesitation.”

I decided that maybe I could learn something from swans, but that I could sure as hell learn a lot more from Rostov himself.

Two mornings later, riding far ahead of the others toward the top of a steep hill, Rostov dismounted and tied his horse to a tree. Wondering, but without question, I followed his example. He took a small spyglass from his saddlebag and we went on up to the crest of the hill on foot, going on all fours the last few feet and finally lying down at the very top. Far off and below there was a wide, slow-running river. On the near side there were a few hovels and shacks scattered along its muddy banks. There were perhaps a dozen people visible in the village, and a handful of small boats in the river.

Studying the area through his small telescope, Rostov said, “The Ussuri River.”

There were also a small number of distant huts on the far bank of the river.

“What’s on the other side?” I asked.

“Manchuria.” He adjusted the scope for another look. “The buildings on this side are a Russian town. Uporaskaya.”

“Upor—what?”

“Uporaskaya. Freely translated, it means ‘the stubborn man.’” He’d seen enough, and we moved back down the slope without ever showing ourselves against the skyline. As we remounted, he said, “We’re going to swing east to avoid Uporaskaya.”

“Yeah?”

He nodded. “There are no Tartar warriors there or across the river. But just one Tartar sympathizer could give us away.”

I frowned and grinned a little at the same time. “Considerin’ we got five hundred longhorns, somebody’s sure as hell bound t’ notice us sooner or later.”

“With luck, we’ll be able to get to Khabarovsk without being seen.” He shrugged slightly. “After that we certainly will be seen—sooner or later.”

Something about the grim way he said it made me hope it would be later.

Rostov waved far back to the nearest cossacks behind us, signaling them to angle eastward behind us.

About the time that the main herd was safely bypassing the town, two or three miles east of it, with high hills in between, Igor came galloping up to us on Blackeye, not looking too happy.

At Shad’s instructions he’d taken to calling Shad Shad, so he said, “Shad would like to know why we have taken this change of direction.”

Rostov was faintly amused. “He’d ‘like’ to know?”

Igor wet his lips. “I am sure that he was joking.” He wasn’t at all sure Shad was joking. “But he said”—Igor concentrated—“that ‘there fucking well better be a damn good reason, or heads will roll.’ ”

Rostov’s faint amusement still remained in his eyes, but his jaw hardened. “Tell him if we hadn’t changed direction, heads
would
have rolled.”

Igor was caught dead center between those two strong men, and was getting nervous as a cat in a dog kennel. “But he very much wants some reason, Captain.”

The last tiny traces of humor were gone from Rostov’s eyes. “That’s all, Corporal.”

“But—”

“Add one more thing.” Rostov’s voice became deadly. “Tell him if he ever disagrees with any decision of mine in the future, I’ll be only too glad to discuss it with him personally, instead of by messenger.”

Rostov swung his horse around and rode off.

Igor and I looked at each other, and I could see how miserable he felt. “Just tell Shad that Rostov was busy but that I told
you everything’s okay. Tell him I want to explain the reason to him myself tonight.”

Igor understood that this would kind of get him off the hook. He nodded, grateful and relieved. Then he rode back, and I galloped ahead to catch up with Rostov.

We rode particularly fast during the rest of that long, hard day. I knew Rostov was concerned about any people who might be out of the town, hunting or whatever, and might see us. So we scoured the mountains and forests on every side, but there wasn’t a living soul in sight.

Finally, toward the end of the day, Rostov slowed down to a walk. I offered him a drink of water from my canteen, and he took it.

As he drank I said, “Funny thing about Upor—Uporaskaya meaning a stubborn man. I never knew any a’ them funny Russian names for towns meant anything.”