The Cowboy and the Cossack (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) (34 page)

Rufe looked off to one side. “His ’paloosa’s over there, under the same tree as mine.”

I followed Rufe’s look, and Dixie’s Appaloosa, Shiloh, was standing next to Rufe’s Bobtail, but I got a hard, cold feeling inside me when I saw that Shiloh wasn’t tied or even ground-reined. His reins were still strung up around the back of his neck.

“Who saw Dixie last?” Shad said, his voice now quiet and flat.

“I saw ’im when he went ahead a’ me into the river,” Crab said. “But Christ! In that dark ya’ couldn’t see more’n a few feet. An’ that’s the last I know.”

“Oh my God!” Sammy murmured.

And I suddenly knew that I knew the answer.

“Your God what?” Shad demanded.

“I—I come off my horse in the river. Even in that downpour, Sammy now wet his lips. “I was drownin’, went under. An’ then all of a sudden he was right down there beside me in the water. An’ he got me up an’ got my hands gripped on m’ horse’s tail—an’ I made it.” He took a deep breath. “I thought he was right b’hind me!

Natcho said quietly, “No. I was near you when you came out. You were alone.”

Sammy suddenly just slumped down over the pommel of his saddle, his face buried in his arms so that we wouldn’t be able to see that he was crying.

After a second or so I said to Shad, “I’m goin’ back t’ look for ’im.”

“You can’t hardly sit up, you’re s’ tired,” Slim said.

“I ain’t tired. I’m the one to go.”

“You?” Old Keats asked.

“Me.” It was a dumb answer, but it was all I had.

Sammy raised his head and just barely managed to say, “I’ll go with ya’, Levi.”

“No.”

And Shad understood. “Take Shiloh.”

Igor and Rostov spoke a few words in quiet Russian as I rode over to Shiloh and took his reins to lead him.

I’d only gotten a hundred yards or so back along the way toward the river when Igor rode up on his Blackeye and pulled alongside me.

“What’re you doin’?” I said.

“I’m going with you.”

“I don’t need ya’.”

“I know.”

It’s hard to argue with a statement like that, and I sure didn’t feel much like arguing anyway. I didn’t think there was one chance in hell of finding Dixie. Christ! If worst hadn’t come to worst, in or out of the river, he could have grabbed onto Shiloh or yelled a rebel yell to get somebody’s attention, or maybe even somehow got himself aboard a longhorn just to keep up with the night’s drive. I tried thinking maybe he’d broken a leg or knocked himself out on a tree branch, but those ideas just didn’t ring true.

There were a thousand other thoughts that didn’t work any better. He could have been swept downstream and then swam out. Hell, the river wasn’t moving all that quick. Or maybe he could have simply been thrown by Shiloh, though we hadn’t been moving all that swift and fast.

He just had to be dead.

And he was.

I saw Dixie just one more and last time.

When we pulled up beside the Amur River, we hadn’t yet seen a thing in all that immensity of gray, pelting rain. And then, on one of those sand bars pretty far out in the river, I saw a tree branch that was caught against it. And caught against the tree branch was a piece of cloth. It took a moment for me to see that that piece of cloth was Dixie’s plaid shirt, and it took a little longer to see that Dixie was still in it, sort of floating part up and part down, like a dead fish.

I ran Buck down to the river’s edge, to go and get him. But then, as though God felt like playing a simple, mean trick on me and on the whole world, the tree branch shifted in the tide and Dixie was tugged away by the ebbing, muddy water and disappeared beneath its surface.

And he just never showed up again.

Far up and across the river you could just barely see a little of Khabarovsk—gray buildings with the gray rain against a gray sky.

Last night I’d thought I’d never see Khabarovsk again, and I’d never dreamed that I wouldn’t see Dixie alive again.

Funny as hell, the way the world works.

I must have been looking at the river for a long time, because Igor finally put his hand on my shoulder, gently reminding me that we couldn’t stay there forever.

And we went away.

On the way back Igor rode ahead, leading Shiloh.

Buck just followed behind because I wasn’t pushing him much in the way of instructions or encouragement. The pain and sorrow in my mind kept slamming home the fact that in my own dumb way I’d done a whole lot too much pushing already. I’d pushed Dixie real hard, to the point of knocking him ass over teakettle, to try to show him that men ought to have a certain kind of nobility and a sense of duty toward others.

Somewhere along the line, Dixie had picked up real good on that nobility and that sense of duty toward others.

And it had killed him.

And it was my fault.

Finally, toward the end of that dark, bitter day, Igor and I caught back up to the herd that was now being driven in a north-by-westerly direction.

I was grateful that not much explaining had to be done. Shiloh’s still empty saddle pretty much told the story all by itself.

Purse, Big Yawn and Sammy were with the pack animals and the remuda, behind the herd. Igor went on ahead to join Shad as I led Shiloh over to the remuda and pulled up. I was about to get off and unsaddle the Appaloosa, but Purse spurred back and took a look at me. He swung down before I could. “I’ll do it.”

Sammy rode up silently, the skin under his eyes black from worry and grief.

Big Yawn rode back too, his huge, craggy face hard and thoughtful, and it seemed like about ten minutes between each time that anybody said anything.

Purse pulled slowly at the cinch strap to loosen it. “See ’im?”

I nodded just once. “River got ’im.”

Finally, Sammy said in a whisper, “I shoulda gone back with ya’, Levi.”

I shook my head. “No need.”

“Hadn’t been f’r me—” His voice choked and stopped.

I couldn’t tell him, or ever let him know, Dixie had deliberately followed behind him in the river. “Hell, Sammy, he’d a’ helped me ’r you ’r anybody else who was in a fix back there.”

Sammy glanced at me with a fleeting look of relief in his sorrow-filled eyes. What I’d said helped a little. But right then nothing could help enough, and he rode away again to be by himself.

Big Yawn now reached over and untied the bedroll on Shiloh, then took off the saddlebags. “I’ll put these here possibles a’ his on one a’ the packs.”

Big Yawn could have simply left those things on the saddle, but in his own way he was just trying to be helpful. And then he said, “Too damn bad, Levi.”

“Yeah.” Purse nodded.

“Well, hell,” I said quietly, “he was a friend t’ both a’ you too.”

“Yeah, but—” Big Yawn ran out of words and rode off with the bedroll and saddlebags.

Buck was as ready to fall down as I was, but I spurred him off now as Purse sent Shiloh toward the remuda with a slap on the rump.

I headed on around the herd to catch up with Rostov and take over my normal duties as messenger boy. And all along the way every puncher I passed had something quiet and sympathetic to say, as though Dixie’d been my goddamned brother or something.

Finally I caught up with Rostov, riding far point about a mile ahead of the herd.

He glanced at me. Then, with no mention of Dixie, he said flatly, “Did you see any sign of a pursuit?”

With everyone else feeling so bad about Dixie, this came as kind of a shock. I hesitated and then said harshly, “No! All we saw was a dead man in a muddy river!”

And then he said another thing that threw me also. “I liked that fight you had with him, with fists.”

“Well I’m glad you did, because neither one of us did, because bein’ pounded on ain’t all that much fun!”

And then he really got to me.

“His death was not your responsibility,” he said quietly, his eyes searching the far rain-swept distances ahead.

The best answer I could come up with was “Who said it was?”

“When he helped that young Sammy, he did so of his own free will and volition.”

I had to guess what “volition” meant but it wasn’t too hard, and the talk was reaching down into me where it made my voice unsteady. “He asked me if Sammy was scared. He was watchin’ him all the way in that water.”

Rostov’s eyes were still searching far ahead. “Anyone who could see knew that Dixie was following in your footsteps.”

My voice had been unsteady before, but it was ready to crack now. “There ain’t no footsteps t’ follow in a goddamn big bunch a’ water.”

And then Rostov hit me hardest of all. “As you are following in Shad’s.”

That voice of mine just wasn’t working at all by then, so I didn’t, and couldn’t, say a thing.

Rostov’s eyes never left the far distances ahead. “Shad has made you know that you are responsible for others. And in turn, you gave that gift to Dixie.” He paused. “Would you or Shad have ignored Sammy or done anything other than Dixie did last night?”

I couldn’t talk, but neither could I help but think of how Rostov and his cossacks were ready to die for the people, and for the spirit, of Bakaskaya.

And then he went on. “The gift Shad has given you and you gave Dixie, of caring for others, is sometimes hard to live with and always hard to die with.” He paused again. “But it is, and forever will be, the most treasured gift in the world.”

We rode on in silence, and a little later the night’s black darkness started to close in, seeming to squeeze away the now slowing rain, until finally the night was full upon us and the rain had stopped.

There was a broad meadow before us, and we camped there, our fires close to each other. I must have been starved, but I didn’t feel like eating, so I just took off my boots and climbed into my bedroll.

Before I’d passed out completely, Slim kneeled beside me. “Hey, Levi?”

“Yeah?”

“Shad an’ Old Keats’re out on the herd now, an’ I’m workin’ out a schedule. You feel up t’ takin’ the late graveyard?”

“Sure.”

And it seemed like I’d just leaned my head back when Slim was pushing me again and it was dead black night and time to go.

I pulled on my boots and saddled Buck, who felt about the same as I did, and rode out to relieve Natcho.

But even through all my exhaustion, the hammering, relentless sorrow I felt about Dixie just wouldn’t go away. That damned lifeless plaid shirt, and the lifeless body inside it, and that terrible gray, muddy water.

In a way, then, it reminded me of that poor, sad cow when we went off the boat at Vladivostok. And I couldn’t help but wonder how many lives are taken mercilessly by the cold, unfeeling waters of the world.

With all those grim thoughts, the wrong I’d done seemed more and more unforgivable. If I’d just minded my own goddamned business. If I just hadn’t told Dixie that Sammy was scared of the river. And the craziest part of it all was that I didn’t know whether to feel worse about the Dixie who was or the Dixie who was starting to be.

Given time, instead of death, that simple sonofabitch could have been great.

About then, while I was blaming myself all over again for Dixie, Rostov’s words came to mind. And I knew that anything that brilliant bastard had ever said was undoubtedly right.

But just being right, even having all the rightness there is on earth, couldn’t do much to make me feel any better. Life and death isn’t right and wrong. They’re both part of a giant, natural right, but that doesn’t make death any easier to take.

I was surely grateful to Rostov for having given me at least some kind of an edge against the terrible way I felt. But out here in the black night, and by myself, I suddenly felt as lonely and broken as I guess Dixie must have felt in those dark waters, being pulled and twisted, lifelessly and endlessly.

It was then that a strange, wordless and wonderful thing happened.

There were hoofbeats from behind and off to one side, and a moment later Shad reined his big Red up beside me, pulling to a stop.

He didn’t do or say anything, and I wasn’t in any great shape to talk. He just sat there beside me quietly, looking out over the shadowed, sleeping herd. He’d already been up most of this second sleepless night in a row, and should have been in his bedroll and out like a rock by now. But he knew the rough feelings I’d be having, so he’d put off sleep to ride out this one last time. And somehow, just by his silent presence, he was sharing the pain of those deep feelings within me, and wordlessly giving me part of his own inner strength.

It was a sad, rich, warm time.

And then, finally, he rode away into the dark.

Being a man, I sure as hell could never let on to Shad how deeply I was moved. So at last I told it softly to Buck instead. “I’ll tell you somethin’.” I looked off, where Shad was safely gone, and Buck twisted one ear back, wondering who I was talking to. “I love you most, Shad, for the things you never said to me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

A
LONG
toward morning the rain started to come down heavy again, and it lasted six more days and six nights without stopping for one minute or even slowing down enough for us to get at least slightly dried out. And in its own cruel way, there is nothing that is finally more brutally depressing than a forever hostile sky flooding down constant, battering waves of chilling raindrops that go on and on without end.

We must have made about seventy miles through that everlasting sea of shallow water and mud, but every drenched, exhausting mile was damn hard won. The mud was like glue, and often as not the horses and cattle were plowing along nearly knee-deep in it. On the fourth day one speckled, lop-horned cow and her yearling calf came within an eyelash of being buried altogether in the thick, oozing stuff. Rufe happened to spot her as she was bawling helplessly, stuck, more than shoulder-deep in the soft, shifting, deep muck at the bottom of an arroyo. Her calf was in worse shape, with only its small muzzle sticking desperately up out of the rain-driven mire. Four men slid down there with ropes to tie around them and managed to finally haul them out to firmer ground. But by the time they’d rescued the cow and calf, every inch of the men, from head to toe, was covered with a thick layer of sticky mud, which didn’t add much to their general cheerfulness.