The Cowboy and the Cossack (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) (17 page)

“Christ!” Shad muttered as the four oncoming cossacks sped up to join the rest of us. “This a cattle drive or a goddamn Sunday social?”

The newly arrived men dismounted, all four of them looking troubled and uneasy. Lieutenant Bruk stepped to Rostov and said, “We’ve placed double lookouts, Captain.”

“Double lookouts!” Shad’s eyes swept angrily over the cossacks. “What the hell for?”

Rostov said quietly, “Because we need them.”

Shad stared at Rostov, looking about half puzzled and about half ready to erupt like a volcano.

Old Keats, seeing Shad’s expression, put in quickly, “There seems t’ be some kind of a confusion here, Captain. We’ve been led to understand all along the way that Khabarovsk was a safe place.”

“That’s correct,” Rostov said very quietly. “And that’s what my men and I had thought, too.”

“What the hell d’ you mean,” Shad growled, “about
had
thought?”

I doubt I should have raised my voice in that edgy situation, but all of a sudden there it was coming out, and it sounded just as confused and uncertain as I felt. “You just said there ain’t no Tartars down there, Captain. What the hell else is there t’ worry about? They got the
plague
down there or somethin’?”

“It’d take at least that.” Slim grinned a little, but his words came out flat on the level. “After all this time way out in the lonely—clean all the way from Seattle—them fellas a’ ours back there takin’ care a’ them cows ain’t gonna be all too keen about passin’ up this here town.”

Shad’s earlier anger had diminished by about one-half of a shaved inch, and he was still ready to explode, but his voice was controlled as he now spoke to Rostov. “Let’s get back to that ‘had thought’ bullshit. What’s the problem you got?”

Rostov’s eyes matched Shad’s, evenly controlled and evenly hard. “There’s a reinforced contingent of cossacks down there in Khabarovsk.”

This statement took a while to sink in, and I for one was vaguely aware of my mouth sort of hanging a little ajar, due to general astonishment.

And then Shad did explode. “Well what the
fuck
difference does
that
make?
You’re
cossacks!”

Rostov still spoke quietly. “There’s a difference.” And somehow, from the way he said it, you could tell that whatever that difference was, it was gigantic. And you could also tell that the
problem on Rostov’s mind had walloped him severely. On the outside he was still as hard and tough, and his mind as keen as, say, that great steel saber hooked onto his belt. But inside him, there was an intense sorrow that went deep and couldn’t be hidden because, somehow, it came out of his eyes.

Lieutenant Bruk, whose clear old eyes were now filled with the same dark sorrow, had filled and lighted the long clay pipe he carried with him. Now, he silently handed it to Rostov, who took it and said, “I honestly couldn’t foresee this, Northshield.” He took a puff on the pipe and passed it back to Bruk. “Otherwise, I’d have warned you.”

Shad’s reaction to this was both a relief and a surprise to me. Maybe it was because he too could see the hurt in these men. Or maybe it was because he was thinking on something he’d already somehow guessed about way ahead of the rest of us. In any case, instead of the anger within him growing, it now ebbed away as he reached slowly into his shirt pocket for the makings of a smoke, studying Rostov quietly. Working with the paper and tobacco, he said, “What couldn’t you foresee? That you could’ve warned me about?”

“The garrison in Khabarovsk has been undermanned for over a year. But right now there are two new companies of cossacks down there, who must have arrived within the last three or four weeks
.
”

Shad pulled the now rolled paper lightly across the tip of his tongue to firm his smoke together. “You’ll have t’ pardon my density,” he said dryly, “but it sure is a strange-as-hell thing, you fellas standin’ here passin’ that pipe back an’ forth like the end of the world happened yesterday.” He struck a match with his thumbnail and lighted his smoke slowly, thoughtfully, before shaking out the flame on the match. For him, he was talking at a damnere unheard of length. And more and more, I was getting a sneaking suspicion that he was about a mile ahead of the conversation. He dropped the no-longer-lighted match and ground it into the earth with the toe of his boot. “Hell, I’d think you’d
be yellin’ an’ dancin’ an’ dashin’ down off there t’ celebrate with them other cossacks.” He inhaled on his smoke. “But then, you did mention somethin’ about a—‘difference.’ ”

Rostov spoke in a quietly hard voice. “There’s quite a bit of difference. We’re not taking this herd to Blagoveshchensk, as your papers show. We’re taking it farther north, to the people who bought and paid for it, in our own free town of Bakaskaya.”

“Well,” Shad shrugged. “The name a’ your town sure as hell is a lot easier t’ pronounce than that other one.”

I think Rostov was as surprised as I was at Shad’s calmness. But now, still quietly, he went on. “Those men down there are Imperial Cossacks. They belong to the Tzar.”

Slim’s face twisted into an almost painfully puzzled frown. “Well, Christ Jesus!” he finally said. “There ain’t
nothin’
in all a’ Russia that
don’t
b’long t’ the Tzar!” He glanced toward Old Keats, looking for some kind of confirmation. “Or am I
crazy
?”

Keats was still frowning, too. “That’s sure as hell what we always been told.”

“Captain Rostov, sir?” I asked hesitantly, partly guessing about and partly hoping for the answer I wanted to hear. “If you fellas don’t belong t’ the Tzar, then who
do
ya’ b’long to?”

Rostov’s eyes, though they were still full of deep sorrow, bored into me. “If you still have to ask me such a question, Levi, then you’re not worthy of a reply.”

In his own way he’d given me the answer I was hoping for, but his own way sure was a killer. Blood rushed suddenly and hotly to my face, and right then I both felt like and wished I was the tiniest little pissant on earth so I could just shrink into practically nothing and disappear.

Whether or not he did it on purpose, Shad now saved me from dying of sheer, agonized embarrassment right there on the spot. He did it by saying a lot better what I’d meant to say myself in the first place. And something about the way he spoke made me know that there was much more, deep within him, than the words alone could say.

“I don’t mind a reasonable change a’ destination if the reason’s right,” he said quietly to Rostov. “But since it’s not with the Tzar, then just where, exactly, is your outfit’s allegiance?”

Rostov looked at his men gathered beside him. And then, finally, back at Shad. “Our allegiance is, Mr. Northshield, no more and certainly never less than to each other—and to our honor.” He hesitated, weighing each word slowly and carefully. “And to our homes in Bakaskaya, to the people there we love. And perhaps more than anything else, our allegiance is to the beautiful, fiercely independent and free spirit of all those who have the will and the courage to be a part of Bakaskaya.”

He stopped then, and in the long silence no one, including Shad, had anything to say. It might just well have been, for once, that Shad had gotten a lot more of an answer back than he’d expected.

So the way it finally worked, it was Rostov who at last spoke again to Shad. “Considering the—unexpected circumstances we’ve found here, you and your men have no choice but to get away and go back now, while you can. You’ll be safe. We’re the outlaws here, not you.”

Except for Shad, we all frowned at each other, and then Slim said the first thought that came to his mind. “Hell, what about that damned herd?”

Rostov spoke very quietly. “You’ve brought it almost halfway. And by any man’s judgment, that’s more than far enough. Especially when there are high rivers and the Tzar’s cossacks ahead.” His quiet voice became even deeper now. “My men and I will take the herd from here on.” He paused. “And we’ll take it alone. That’s as it will be.” Rostov was speaking gently, but gently as he spoke, that low, quiet voice of his somehow carried, without any chance of mistake, the hollow, black echoes of approaching death.

Slim said with growing amazement, “Goddamn! You bastards’re fightin’ a goddamn revolution!”

Rostov shrugged slightly. “I suppose you could say that.”

Old Keats leaned slowly forward on his saddle, resting his forearms on the pommel. “Tell me, Captain, is there, perhaps, some part a’ that very movin’ oath of allegiance you just talked about before that got left out?”

Rostov looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Like workin’ overtime t’ get yourselves killed for a foolish an’ hopeless reason? Like I gather your town of Bakaskaya must be.”

“No attempt at a free society is ever foolish or hopeless.”

“And forgettin’ all about them Imperial Cossacks,” Keats went on, “you just for certain can’t handle that herd.”

Rostov’s jaw hardened. “My cossacks and I can handle the herd perfectly well.”

It was only then that Shad at last spoke again. “That’s very funny, Rostov,” he said. “And it’s always a joy to listen to a fella with a keen sense of humor.” Looking far off, at Khabarovsk, he dropped his now-finished smoke and started to absently grind it down into the earth with the heel of his boot. “Well, Captain, you want t’ stand around here all day bein’ hilarious?” He gave one final kick against the earth with his boot heel. “Or ya’ want t’ try t’ figure out how we can get them cattle a’ ours beyond that Tzar-held town an’ them flooded rivers?”

With those last few words, Shad had stated his position loud and clear. I was proud as hell about the simple, almost unsaid way he’d said the way he felt. But I didn’t dare show that pride by as much as half a blink.

For his part, Rostov didn’t show anything either. He took a long, deep breath. “There are probably over a hundred Imperial Cossacks down there.”

Shad nodded. “And if we hang around in these trees much longer, all hundred or so of ’em will doubtless soon be up here. Let’s leave a lookout.” He corrected himself with a wry half-grin. “A ‘double’ lookout, and get back to the herd.”

We left Lieutenant Bruk and Vody on guard there and, keeping out of sight, the rest of us rode back over the mountain and down the mile or so slope to where the cattle were.

And back here with the herd now, as the talk continued, it was kind of interesting to note that Shad and Rostov not only weren’t right on the verge of killing each other all the time, but were actually somewhat in fairly civil agreement every once in a while.

“Hell, boss, why not cross the river t’night an’ get as far the hell north as we can?” Dixie asked. But he hadn’t seen the river.

Shad shook his head. “Right now it’s too wide, an’ too much current f’r safety’s sake.”

Rostov nodded. “The spring thaws are running later than usual. I’d estimate at least another week before horses and cattle will be able to get across.”

“Well,” Purse put in, “how about backing off and going a long way around?” But he hadn’t yet seen Khabarovsk.

“Too big a town,” Keats said. “Too many people. It’s a miracle we haven’t been discovered and attacked already.”

Rostov glanced toward the horizon and the lowering sun. “Tomorrow,” he said quietly, “will be the time.” Then he looked back levelly at Shad. “Believe me, by this time tomorrow there will be very few survivors. You owe it to yourself and your men to go back now. This is between Russians on Russian soil, and you and your men are foreigners.”

Dixie and a couple of the others looked like they were sorely tempted to follow Rostov’s advice, but it never even occurred to Slim. “Who the hell you callin’ foreigners, for Christ sake? We’re Americans.”

Shad, who’d been studying Rostov, now spoke in a quietly tough voice. “That’s downright goddamn inspirin’,” he said. “Tomorrow you an’ fifteen rebel cossacks’re gonna take on over a hundred a’ the king’s men. That oughtta be just one hell of a glorious battle.”

Rostov’s eyes hardened. “Your irony escapes me.”

“You more interested in a heroic death or gettin’ that herd through?”

Those words had a hard bite to them, and at any time prior to this Rostov would have flared up like a skyrocket. But right
now his expression stayed as unchanging as a rock. “If you have anything worthwhile to say, Northshield, say it.”

It was Shad, now, who hunched down on his heels. He picked up a pebble, playing with it idly. “Well, for one thing, I’m reminded of that time back in Vladivostok—when you and your handful a’ men sent forty soldiers hightailin’ it.”

Rostov dismissed this with a shrug. “They were a scurvy lot. Hardly worth the drawing of a good saber.” Then he looked at Shad thoughtfully. “Whatever else those bastards may be, the Tzar’s Imperial Cossacks are fighting men.”

“That so?” Shad tossed the pebble a little and caught it. “As good, man for man, as your fellas?”

“Certainly not!”

“Didn’t think so.” Shad dropped the pebble and stood slowly back up. “Tell me, Rostov, you ever hear of a game called showdown?”

“No.”

Shad looked off, across the herd. Fat and contented, most of them were already lying down, and eight of our men were riding slowly around them. “Dixie,” Shad said, “ride out and bring those other fellas over here.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.” Even though it was obvious those peaceful cows weren’t going anywhere, and we were near them, this was an unusual order for Shad to give. It was a pretty much ironclad rule of his to have at least three or four men flanking the herd, no matter how quiet things were.

As Dixie rode off to do as he was told, the rest of us Slash-Diamonders looked at Shad curiously, wondering what was on his mind. And by then, for that matter, Rostov and his men had just naturally figured out enough about the normal care and treatment of a herd to know that something out of the ordinary was going on.

But Shad didn’t give any of us a hint. All he did, though it was rare for him to smoke so much, was to take out his Bull Durham
and paper and start building another one. He worked on it very thoughtfully and carefully, building it to perfection, as though that job was the most important thing he’d ever had on his mind.