The Cowboy and the Cossack (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) (28 page)

Even after they’d slowed their mounts and come back, they were both still too mad to say anything. Bruk said flatly, not talking down to them, “You both did well.”

“Bullshit,” Sammy said.

“He’s right.” Slim’s voice was quietly hard. “Idea is t’ git there fast as ya’ can, but
git
there. If you’d tried t’ bust through them thick trees at a run, you’d both still be back there lookin’ around f’r your heads.”

Bruk said something to his men, and five of them went galloping out toward the center of the meadow. Then he told us, “This is a cossack way of making a rider and horse one and the same. I imagine you’d call it trick riding.”

“Hell.” Slim frowned. “Ridin’ a horse ain’t no trick; it’s a way a’ makin’ a livin’.”

But when those cossacks got out in the meadow, they started doing things that are in total honesty almost impossible to relate.

They were up and over and under their full galloping horses. They dropped little handkerchiefs out there in the meadow, and charged back by and picked them up with their teeth, nine-tenths out of the saddle. Two of them even raced in together, and one fella, Pietre, leaped full speed onto the back of the other fella’s horse. The other fella happened to be Dmitri. I’d actually
never gotten to know them too well, and therefore never had a really great opinion of either one of them, and I was a lot more than a little startled at how graceful they were when Pietre now somehow got his feet on Dmitri’s shoulders and stood full up.

There is just no way to ride a horse like that, with one man standing on top of another man’s shoulders.

But they did it, for about three or four agonizing, long seconds, and then Pietre lost his balance, though he pretended not to, and did a neat flip off of Dmitri’s shoulders and landed, kind of skidding, but still on his feet.

Without my even thinking about it, an enthusiastic yell of approval busted out of me, but it was just part of the general whooping from all of us. About the only one who didn’t yell was Slim, who simply muttered, “Well I’ll be
goddamned.
”

Around that time, Crab rode up and said, “Hey, Levi, Shad wants ya’. An’ you too, Natcho.”

“Now?” Natcho asked.

“Well what d’ya’ think?”

“Damn,” Natcho said, seeming disappointed. “I wanted to show them what we can do in trick riding.”

“
We
?” Sammy said incredulously.

“Sure,” I told him casually. “Damn pity Natcho an’ me can’t stay an’ put them fellas in their places, due t’ the boss’s orders.”

“Come off it,” Purse said. “The only trick riding I’ve seen you do is when you fell off your horse with your foot caught in the stirrup.”

“He’s also our local expert,” Slim said, “at harpoonin’ pine cones.”

“Well,” I turned Buck to go, “Natcho an’ me’ll just have t’ leave the honor a’ the Slash-Diamond in you fellas’ hands. Let us know how ya’ do.”

Nobody ever mentioned just what happened after that, so I have my doubts if things went too well, if at all.

On the way back to camp I asked Natcho, “Can you
really
do trick ridin’?”

“Of course.” He was surprised at the question. “It’s part of the curriculum at the Military Academy in Mexico City.”

“Oh.” That part of Natcho’s past had simply never before come up, but then another thought struck me. “That’s where you learned to use a saber.”

He nodded, but his mind was still dwelling thoughtfully on the first subject. “The pyramid would impress our cossack friends. Two riders stand on horses galloping side by side, and a third rider then stands on their shoulders. But we’d need a third rider.”

He was smarter than all hell, and loved life and laughter as much or maybe more than anyone. But sometimes, as indicated by the lines he’d just missed back at the big rock, he had to be pounded rather severely on the head to get his sense of humor jarred loose.

“Natcho?”

“Yes?”

“I was exaggeratin’ a little bit back there.” I grinned. “If you’re plannin’ on tryin’ one a’ them pyramids, I wouldn’t count too much on me f’r any one a’ them three crucial positions.”

“Oh. Too bad.” He was sincerely disappointed again. “But then,” he shrugged, “we’d have still had to get a third man.”

I let it go at that and we rode on up over the hill.

Back in camp, we dismounted and went over to see Shad. He was discussing something quietly with Old Keats, so we stood a little away and a moment later Dixie joined us. Then Keats walked away and Shad turned around. “You three’re comin’ into town with me,” he said.

All three of us felt a kind of a good, chilly excitement about going with him, but on top of that I was curious. “How come me again, boss? I already been.”

I could see in his eyes it was a stupid question, but he wasn’t too hard on me. “We ain’t got sixty faces t’ show off. So dependin’ on how long that river stays high, we’re gonna be stuck with some repeat performances.”

By the same token, Rostov brought Igor along again, plus Ilya and Yuri. Two known cossack faces and two unknown, same as us.

Just before we mounted up, Shiny came over and said to Dixie, “Looks like t’day’s the day f’r gettin’ rid a’ our no-good misfits.”

“Hell.” Dixie snorted. “You dumb black nigger sonofabitch. We’ll bring ya’ that whole goddamned town back on a big silver platter.”

But even if they’d really tried to ignore it, or go against it, that quiet, good feeling between them was still there.

And then the eight of us for this day rode out of camp.

Ilya had that triangular Russian guitar of his, the balalaika, strung over one shoulder, and I somehow wound up leading our captured cossack gray, his saddle still on him, as we went over the hill past the cossack lookout and started down that long, open meadow toward Khabarovsk.

It came almost like a violent physical slap against my face as I saw that they hadn’t yet cut those two big men down. Maybe I hadn’t heard, maybe it hadn’t been mentioned, or maybe I’d just somehow made myself not hear it. But seeing them even at this distance, the sudden, unexpected sight of them still hanging motionless from that faraway oak tree gagged me.

Some of the others weren’t prepared for it either, but Shad and Rostov knew.

All three of the cossacks behind Rostov reacted, and Dixie, his voice way down in his gut, said, “Oh,
God.
”

Rostov and Shad both glanced around at us, and Shad said, “There’s one last thing we can do for ’em.”

That cleared up one small mystery. I knew then, for the first time, why Shad and Rostov had both strapped two shovels onto their saddle gear.

No point in going into how grotesquely long a human neck gets stretched, or how hideous a faint blue against pale, empty white can make a face, or how terribly and unforgivingly stiff
and unyielding a man’s body can get. As though he’s suddenly mad about every injustice ever done to him in his life, and even madder and more unbending because he can no longer do or say one damn final thing about it.

All that matters of that time is that we got there and we cut them down and we buried them at the foot of the oak.

Rostov said a short, husky-voiced prayer over them in Russian, and then we went on into town, so that finally somewhere around midafternoon, we pulled up in front of that same bar.

After those grim burials, it had taken me all this time before I could now finally speak. “Igor,” I said, “what’s this place called?”

He was having pretty much the same problem, and he wet his lips. “The Far East.”

“Thanks,” I managed to say.

He swallowed and said, “You’re welcome.”

“Come on, Levi,” Shad called.

“You others,” Rostov said, “go in and wait for us.”

Leading the mare, I followed the two of them until we came to the square where the Imperial Cossacks’ headquarters was, and we crossed again toward the main building.

As we came into sight, the guards there held their rifles in a tense, ready manner, and some fella went rushing into the building. By the time we got there, Colonel Verushki, in a fine uniform, came out of the door with about a dozen armed cossacks following him.

His angry men were burning up inside as they faced us, so much so that there was almost an acrid smell in the air. They wanted nothing more than to start shooting at us right then and there. Verushki must have felt the same way, but he didn’t show it. Instead, he looked at us in kind of a haughty, superior way and said flatly, “You men are beginning to tax my patience.”

Rostov shrugged slightly, as easy and relaxed as a cat on a warm wooden roof. “We must insist, Colonel, that you request your men to keep away from our camp. Particularly when
we’re inconvenienced by having to go out of our way to return their horses.”

That last line got under Verushki’s skin, and his eyes and voice both suddenly became harder. “I understand you buried two criminals I recently had executed. I was leaving them where they were as an object lesson.”

Shad said, “Tie up the gray, Levi.” And as I got off and did so, he turned back to Colonel Verushki. “Consider well what I’m sayin’. We’re tradin’ you this one riderless horse f’r the privilege a’ diggin’ them two graves.” He paused. “If you want t’ try for a whole lot more riderless horses an’ a whole lot more graves, then just keep fuckin’ around.”

That was a deadly hammer-hard statement, and I could now see why Shad and Rostov had looked forward to bringing the gray back. Whether he showed it or not it was embarrassing as hell to Verushki, and they were both taking grim pleasure in pushing him on it.

Verushki was squinting slightly at Shad’s last few words, and Rostov said quietly, “By ‘fucking around,’ Colonel, he means meddling, or interfering.”

Verushki got the basic idea of the word, and finally said curtly, “I will not fuck about with you if you do not fuck about with me!” Then he added, “It’s unavoidable that some of my patrols may occasionally approach your camp. Should this happen in the future and you do not use more restraint, you will regret it.”

With this he spoke one harsh word to his cossacks, then turned abruptly and stalked back into the building. The dozen or so men stayed where they were, and one of them yelled something toward a big stable at the end of the square.

As I stepped back to Buck to remount, there were shouted orders from inside the stable, and almost immediately a huge bunch of Imperial Cossacks came galloping out of the wide double doors. For a spooky minute I thought we were about to be massacred, but from the way they were riding, in order, Shad
seemed to know that something else was going on, and Rostov’s face was a little sad underneath its outside hardness.

As I swung aboard Buck there were other shouted commands and the Imperial Cossacks lined up around the square, all of them facing in toward the center. Then one last rider came barreling through the door with a rope stretched tightly out behind him. At the end of the rope, dragging and bouncing along the ground like a damnere shapeless bundle of bloody, torn old rags, was a man. He was conscious but could just barely move. Judging from the hideously ripped skin on his back he must have been whipped half to death.

“Let’s go,” Rostov said quietly.

We went across the square at an angle, walking our horses.

Neither Shad nor Rostov did, but I couldn’t help glancing back. Despite the blood already caked on his face, I could see that that shapeless bundle of a man was the young officer who’d first spoken to Rostov on the first night we’d come into town. In the center of the square, four men now lifted him face up under the gray mare. Then, with the same rope they’d been dragging him with, they started lashing him into place underneath the horse.

As we finally rode out of the square, one of the four men let go of the gray’s reins and whacked it on the butt, giving a loud yell so that it galloped away, frightened by all that had happened, and even more terrified by the strange load it was carrying under its stomach.

It got to me. Just now, especially right on top of burying those two men, the whole damn world suddenly seemed to be nothing but plain downright horrible.

From Shad’s and Rostov’s expressions when I spurred ahead to catch up with them, they both knew what had happened.

“Jesus!” I muttered, hardly believing what I’d seen. “All
that
f’r fallin’ off a goddamned
horse
?”

“Evidently,” Rostov said dryly, “Verushki is an unusually strict disciplinarian.” Then, seeing the way I looked, he added,
“The gray will finally come back to the stable, and they’ll cut him down. He’ll probably survive. Don’t let what happened disturb you too much, Levi. In his own warped way, that’s certainly one of the things Verushki was hoping for.”

Shad looked at me, knowing that the brutal punishment had gotten to me. He grinned slightly and said, “Every damn thing that poor bastard does t’ show us how rough he is somehow backfires an’ winds up makin’ us rougher instead. Right, Levi?”

They were both kind of coddling me and I resented it and appreciated it, but damn well had to make myself be worth a lot more. So I forced that bloody bundle of human agony back in my thoughts and worked up my own grin. “I’ll drink t’ that, boss.”

“Drink all ya’ want, but just watch out f’r that girl.”

I knew he was pulling me up even farther by getting on to something breezy and light. “Why?” I asked him.

“Because you’re a goddamn virgin.”

“The hell I am! And besides, that can’t last forever!”

Rostov now grinned faintly too. “With that girl, in this town, Levi may lose his virginity or his life. Or perhaps both at the same time, which would be interesting.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

T
HE THREE
of us dismounted and tied up in front of The Far East next to the other five horses belonging to our men. A step or so behind, I clumped across the wooden walk after Shad and Rostov and we went into the place.

There was almost no one in the whole big room. Our five men were at that same big table toward the rear where we’d sat before. They were just waiting, with no drinks before them yet. As they saw us, Ilya stopped playing a soft little tune on his Russian guitar. There were three or four men sitting quietly around closer to the door and the front windows. Other than that, the only person in the room was that older woman who looked tough but really wasn’t. As we started back toward our group I couldn’t help but feel a pang of disappointment somewhere inside. I hadn’t realized how much I’d hoped Irenia would be here, just so I could maybe at least look at her once in a while.