The Cowboy and the Cossack (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) (30 page)

But as it happened to work out, he went sailing across the table, scattering drinks right and left, and finally, taking two friends on the far side down with him, he crashed thunderously to the floor.

About that time, both Shad and Rostov were beside me, each taking one of my elbows and almost lifting me off the ground. Right then I felt like a picture hanging on the wall. There wasn’t one goddamned move I had any chance to make, except possibly to fall down.

The moose came bellowing up to his feet, totally prepared and ready, and even anxious, to tear me in half, with absolutely no sportsmanlike regard for the fact that I was being held helpless.

He was about to walk right through that massive table at me when five or six of his men got ahold of him and managed to slow him down.

Rostov roared something in Russian, and the angry noise and confusion stopped as though somebody had pulled some kind of a magic cord. But the ominous silence wasn’t too cheerful, either. Later on I found out that Rostov had simply asked, a little harshly, how many of them wanted to die for the moose, though he evidently didn’t use that exact phrase of mine.

Old Anna did us some good at this moment. Helping Irenia to her feet, she shattered that grim silence with a few no doubt well-chosen screams directed furiously at the moose. Whatever she yelled made some of the men recognize their shame in siding with the man who had mistreated Irenia.

Rostov growled a few more words, and for a touchy, short while, it began to feel like the time of outright killing was beginning to ease off. The giant snorted angrily, and then looked around and saw that he wasn’t the most popular man in the house. In a deep, rumbling voice he said something to Rostov.

Rostov now let go of my elbow. “That big one just agreed not to kill you, Levi.”

Shad released my other elbow and said flatly, “Damn nice of ’im.

“But he’s challenged you. And you may get your right hand cut up.”

I didn’t yet understand, and I sure as hell didn’t mean it to be funny, but I guess it sort of was, as I raised my already cut and bandaged left hand and said, “I ain’t sure I can afford it.”

Dixie chuckled, but nobody else did.

And then, as a couple of Tzar cossacks brought over a smaller, regular-sized table, I remembered about the arm-rassling and the broken glasses. “Oh—that.” It was easy to see I was in trouble.

Rostov said, “I might persuade him to accept a substitute, in your place.”

I just looked at him and didn’t say anything, and I think he kind of liked that answer. “This is for blood, not drinks,” he went on. “It’s only over when the loser finally cries out or when the winner decides to be merciful and let go.”

With the moose laughing and saying loud, patently dumb things in Russian, they brought up two chairs and put two full glasses of vodka on the table.

“Drink it and then break the glass,” Rostov said.

The moose and I, still standing, downed the vodka and then smashed the tops of our glasses on the table. Trouble was, I hit mine too hard and the whole damn glass broke in my hand, cutting one finger slightly. This struck the moose and his friends crowded around as being hilarious as hell. They did everything but double up with laughter. And as Rostov handed me another glass, it seemed to me that this was turning out to be the pattern of my life. Not only forever getting somewhat mangled, but forever being highly embarrassed in the goddamned painful process.

My second glass broke all right and we placed the two jagged, vicious-looking broken glasses on the table. Then we sat down facing each other, our elbows on the table, and when we clasped hands mine went damnere out of sight, lost inside the moose’s huge grip.

The minute we started putting pressure against each other, his ugly grin got as wide as a barn door and I began to wish even more than before that I was someplace, anyplace, else.

With every damn bit of strength I had, and even with the added inspiration of that jagged glass waiting for the back of my hand to be forced down on it, I just couldn’t hold him back. Very slowly, with salty sweat now starting to come down into my eyes from the immense effort I was making, I could see my hand, as though it belonged to someone else, going gradually over and down.

From what seemed a mile or so off, I heard Shad’s low voice. “Levi ain’t gonna yell, an’ that mean bastard’s out t’ go through bones an’ everything else an’ cripple ’im.”

From equally far away Rostov said grimly, “We’ll soon know.”

“I ain’t about t’ let that happen.”

“Nor am I, Northshield.”

And then the back of my hand went slowly down onto the jagged glass, and though I didn’t feel anything, blood began to appear on the table and within the glass.

Some kind of extra strength came from somewhere within me, and I forced the giant’s hand back up two or three inches. But I could see, hazily, that he was still wearing that barn-door smile, and he started crushing my bleeding hand back down once more.

Suddenly a hand swept that jagged, red-stained glass onto the floor and the moose glared furiously up, releasing his grip on me.

It was Rostov who had done it. And he now downed his own glass of vodka, smashed the top of it, and put the broken remainder down in the widening pool of blood where mine had been.

I didn’t know if that was a standard rule, and I suspected he’d just made it up on the spur of the moment, but it sure as hell didn’t need any clarification.

And now seeing that it was Rostov, the giant moose didn’t stay mad. Instead, he seemed happier than ever.

I was the only one who complained. “Goddamn it, Rostov. I was just about t’ take ’im.”

“Get out of the way, Levi.”

I stood up, holding my left hand against the right hand’s bleeding, and Rostov sat down in my place. And whereas the Tzar’s cossacks had been yelling and laughing before, it suddenly became as still and quiet as an empty church.

Shad was standing just behind Rostov, and though there was no way for it to mean that much to Verushki’s men, his right thumb was hooked casually in his belt, just a few short inches away from the worn walnut handle of his revolver.

In the silence, Dixie leaned close to my ear and whispered, “Igor says that big one’s a ringer.” I frowned, not understanding, and he added, still in a whisper, “He ain’t never ever been beat. He wasn’t even here that night Big Yawn an’ Kirdyaga was puttin’ fellas down.”

Igor guessed what Dixie was whispering and nodded grimly at me. And all of our other fellas were looking just as grim as Igor.

But Rostov and the moose were now locking hands, their elbows on the table, and as they started putting pressure against each other, it looked like all the brute strength in the world was being centered right there on that table. Finally, the moose slowly closed the doors of that barndoor grin of his, and still neither man’s hand had budged a fraction of an inch. I half expected the thick oak table itself to split in half under the sheer power of our big man and the giant.

From where I was, behind Rostov, I could tell more what was happening from the moose’s face than from their hands. Rostov’s hand must have given way so slightly that it was impossible to see, and could only be felt by his opponent, because the moose’s barndoor grin opened just a crack. But then it slammed shut again as Rostov evidently got him back to even, or maybe a little more.

About then, my head finally clearing after the rough time I’d just had at that table, I began to realize more fully why Shad’s
hand wasn’t too far from his gun. Any idea of Rostov crying out in defeat or pain was too absurd to even think about. But we sure as hell wouldn’t stand by and let the moose make minced meat out of Rostov’s hand. And by the same token, those phony goddamned Tzar cossacks probably felt the same way about the moose. The single and only possible way not to have an all-out war on our hands was for Rostov to win and for the moose to give a quick yell, so that this stupid, cruel game would be finished for once and for all.

Then, for the first time, their hands moved enough to be seen. And they moved in Rostov’s favor.

“Damn, damn, damn,” I whispered, dumfounded, knowing it had to be raw willpower Rostov was using more than strength.

The giant leaned his head forward and down, as though to gather even more force, and for a backbreaking moment he held Rostov’s hand motionless. But then, as though he were a silently roaring, irresistibly powerful storm bending a huge tree before him, Rostov again moved the massive hand and arm back and back and down.

The giant’s hand went down onto the ugly, broken circle of sharp glass until it had been cut about the same as mine had been, and then Rostov let his bleeding hand back up and away from the glass.

And that damned stubborn moose did not yell. His teeth were tightly clenched against any sound at all.

To one side, Natcho muttered an odd thing in a low voice, “The moment of truth.”

All of a sudden now, it was easy to see that Verushki’s men felt exactly the same way that we did. They weren’t about to stand by and let the moose get his hand maimed, either, and there was a change of feeling in the air, a very slight, but damned ominous shifting of weight and position among them.

There was one rule we’d forgotten, since it hadn’t even come close to showing up between the moose and me. The one about mercy. Rostov now let go of the moose’s big, bleeding hand and
said a few easy words that had to mean he was being merciful, and their game was done.

But with a swift, furious move, the giant again slapped his hand against Rostov’s, grabbing it to start all over.

As Rostov bent into it again, Shad said to him quietly, “This dumb bastard’s dead set on either cuttin’ your hand off or losin’ his. An’ no matter which way it is, it’ll sure cause a bloody mix-up around here.”

Rostov was too hard put with the giant’s massive hand and arm at that time to make any kind of an answer. And now, for the second time, he started making headway, very slowly moving that great mass of muscle back and down.

“When ya’ cut ’im again,” Shad said, still quietly, “be pr’pared that same instant t’ take on the rest of ’em with us, ’cause that’s sure as hell what’s gonna happen.”

And then, for no reason, Shad did such a strange thing that I could have sworn on a stack of Bibles that those two were reading each other’s minds again. He touched Rostov’s mightily straining shoulder briefly and gently, almost the same way Shiny had touched Dixie’s shoulder before, and said mostly to himself, “Yeah.”

It was a mystery to me, but it was soon solved.

The moose, his lowering hand getting closer and closer to being cut, was putting all the desperate last strength he had within him against Rostov.

And then, just short of those final jagged edges of blood-red glass, Rostov instantly switched every bit of power in his arm full backward into the opposite direction, which was the same direction that the giant’s total strength was aimed at.

The combined result was an extraordinary sight to witness.

The moose, with Rostov’s help, went flying in what would have been a complete somersault except that he hit the floor too fast, primarily on his head. And as he raised his head, shaking it a little, Rostov was already standing over him with the point of his drawn saber pressing against his throat. Rostov said a quiet word or two, and the moose said one strangled word, which was “
Dah.
”

The point of Rostov’s saber now moved in a blindingly swift, short arc that drew what seemed to be exactly one drop of blood from the giant’s throat. In another swift move, his saber flashing almost invisibly, Rostov returned his blade to its sheath.

And then, maybe best of all, he reached down and helped the moose back to his feet.

Old Keats had once remarked to me, “It’s generally hard t’ lose. But if ya’ lose t’ a certain kind of a man, who ya’ know t’ be one hell of a man, then ya’ can take a certain kind a’ proud joy in the pure pleasure a’ havin’ done your best against ’im.”

It seemed to me that maybe that was the way the moose felt about Rostov just then. After having had that saber at his throat, he knew as well as, or better than, the rest of us that he was a dead man who’d been given a second chance at life. He looked at Rostov for a long, silent moment, and then finally moved off, most of the Imperial Cossacks following him out of The Far East.

Igor came up and said, “Come with me,” and I did, as the others sat down to finish their vodka the way Rostov had said, without hurrying.

With Igor leading, we went through the door to the kitchen, which I wouldn’t ever have done without him, because it looked to me like it was being kind of pushy.

But just behind the door, standing there beside a basin of water and some clean pieces of cloth, with tears running down her cheeks, was Irenia.

“She wants to take care of your hand,” Igor said.

He was feeling more than he let his voice show, and so was I. “Ah, heck,” I said, somehow switching to softer words in her presence, even though she couldn’t understand them. “Tell ’er I’m just fine.”

He told her what I’d said, but she only shook her head in an impatient way that meant absolutely not. So he just kind of pushed me toward her and went back out the door, and there we stood.

She reached toward my hurt right hand and I didn’t move it fast enough to suit her so she took it and raised it toward the basin of water and started to bathe it.

Her hands were so gentle that it was hard to be equally gentle back. But it seemed to me there was something that had to be done, and with that damned bandaged, roughed-up and weather-beaten left hand of mine, I reached out as soft as I could and brushed those tears of hers away.

She stopped bathing my hand and looked up at me.

And I swear sincerely, by all the gods that ever may be, past, present or future, that our eyes said more to each other in that fleeting little moment than most two people can ever say to each other in their whole, entire lifetimes.

And then she lowered her eyes, but that shouldn’t have been the end of the conversation, because we still felt each other so much.