Swords From the Sea (35 page)

"With those things!" he sneered. "A gentlemen is not a dog of a farmer."

"True, my little Count," I nodded. "A Cossack would think it disgraceful to draw steel on such a man as you. Choose!"

He glared at the prongs, at me, and at Edwards, who was beginning to be amused. Then he stepped back with an oath, and felt in his saddle holster for a firearm.

"Take them!" he shouted to his men. "Draw pistols!"

For the second time Borol had made a mistake. His men obeyed, it is true, but when they had their weapons resting on their hips, with muzzles in the air, Edwards had caught up a double-barreled horse pistol from his saddle bags and the American had in hand the two light, silver-mounted French pistols that he carried in his belt.

It was clear even to Borol that we would not be taken alive, by force; but before he could give an order to the troopers to fire, a voice came out of the darkness behind the fire-

"Withdraw! "

And they did so, taking with them the woman, lest we question her, but leaving the tarantass-which I regretted. The trap had been sprung, but the panthers were not caught. Aye, from that hour we were hunted like beasts, we who were men.

Then the American showed that he had had men to his command before now. I had seen that he could ride and face an adversary; now it was clear he thought of those under him. Through Edwards he reminded me that I had had no dinner and bade me to the inn to seek what I could find and to return to talk with them.

When I wiped my hands on the tavern dog and came forth again, the two officers were casting dice on a saddle cloth, laughing like boys, though there was gray in the hair of John Paul. After I saluted, Edwards asked me to sit with them and light my pipe, and they put away the dice.

"Old raven," said he, "there is more in your noodle than comes out your mouth. The rear admiral would like to ride back to Tsarkoe-seloe and clear his name before the Empress. Knowing a little of the Russian court, I advise him to ride as far from it as his horse will carry him; a victory or two will do more for his cause than a dozen petitions, which might get no farther than the servants of the minister of state. What is your word?"

They were quick of wit, those two, and they saw how old Ivak had uncovered a fine snare, all the more deadly because it was sprung by a silken cord.

"If your Honor pleases," I responded after thought, "what is in your heart toward the American? Good or ill?"

"The deuce!" Edwards frowned. "Would I have come as his aide if not honestly? Pirate he may have been, but that chapter is written. Take care what you say, Cossack!"

"Lieutenant," I made answer, "we be three men, and the road before us is fifteen hundred versts. Wolves track us, and they be two-legged wolves. If we do not speak openly together now, how shall we make a plan? Without a plan, how shall we arrive at the end of the road?"

He glanced at me, and the flush left his keen young face.

"As had as that? I wondered why an escort was denied us, on one pretext or another." He stooped to draw a coal from the fire for his long clay pipe. "Hm. Would these two-legged wolves shed the blood of our officer?"

"Aye."

"Ha! The stakes are high, then. But I do not think the Empress would stoop to plotting."

ay.

"Who then?"

That was a knotty question, and I shook my head. Later I had reason to curse my stupidity, that I did not tell them about the prince of the silver coat. Yet it did not come into my mind that Edwards might know him. Besides, I was not sure of John Paul's loyalty. My orders were only to guide him to Kherson, our headquarters on the Black Sea.

Edwards explained to the American what I had said, and when he had finished I made bold to offer advice.

"By your Honor's leave, what authorization has the admiral to take command when he arrives at Kherson?"

They told me there was a letter signed by Catherine herself that he should take over the fleet at Kherson. That was good though it might have been better.

"Then," I said slowly, "if I were John Paul I should ride to the utmost, not sparing the horses, until he sets foot on his flagship."

It surprised them that a Cossack should know what a flagship was, but we fellows of the borderland have taken oars in hand and gone out in skiffs against the fleet of the Turks, and we have smelled powder mixed with salt water.

"But this plot with the wretched girl has failed," Edwards pointed out. "His enemies are behind him, and the road is clear ahead."

"His enemies, Lieutenant, are powerful, and Muscovite spies are whelped even in the forests of Muscovy. Avoid the cities, and use spur and whip. If you will trust me I can lead you safe to Kherson."

Edwards laughed.

"Even odds, for a hundred rubles, I beat you into Kherson."

"Done!" I nodded.

They gave me leave to depart and I went to the stables where the straw was cleaner than the inn beds. I was not asleep when one of the Tatars touched me, and I began to listen, for he did nothing more than to hiss warningly. The hoofbeats of a horse sounded faintly from the highway, and soon disappeared to the south without pausing at the inn.

The only Russian who would pass a tavern after dark would be carrying an urgent dispatch. Moreover, he had not halted for a change of mounts at this post station, and surely there was a reason for that. I swore at my oversight in not placing sentries on the highroad, and then I remembered that we had no men to post as sentries.

III

A raft upon the river is made of many logs fastened together; so long as the logs hold together the raft is safe. If they drift apart there is no longer a raft.

Have you, my brothers, ever slain a bear with a dirk? If you know how to go about it, the task is easy. In winter, go to a berlog-a winter sleeping place of a bear, down under the snow, where a round air hole shows, rimmed with yellow. Thrust a long stick into the hollow under the breathing hole until the bear springs up, whuff-throwing the snow all about him. Then step in and stab with the knife before his eyes grow fully accustomed to the light.

If you are a little slow, the bear will go back to sleep again with a full belly.

So it was with us. Before we had grown suspicious our enemies had their way with us; but now that we had our eyes open it was otherwise. Before long we left the swamps and the mud and passed by the last of the Muscovite water-towns, Novgorod, on the bank of a small river in flood.

Like a flash the oaks and the pine forest closed around us as we pounded south toward Moscow. Probably when Strelsky made out our permit for post horses he never thought we would go far enough to claim the yam- shiks, the picked horses that his paper allowed us.

But at each zamora I combed over the nags for the best ones, keeping only the Kabarda of mine that ran loose beside us for three days until I gave it into the keeping of an honest Armenian who would bring the horse to Kherson by slow stages. For we were covering then nearly a hundred versts, which Edwards said was eighty English miles, a day.

The postilions of the carriage complained, and finally became useless. So we were not sorry to leave them at one of the huts. The two Tatars did their work more to my liking, and the postilions may have been in the plot against us. Even the tarantass proved itself a friend now, because John Paul and Edwards took turns about sleeping in it, as well as they could for the jolts. Hai, they could not sleep as well as I in the saddle, but they made no protest and we made no stop.

Several times we heard the wolf packs howling, and once the wolves were at our heels for ten verst posts. We had to burn much powder and my horse was slashed by their teeth when we pulled up at the next post station. Still, we saw nothing of the two-legged wolf that had passed us in the first night. I scanned each rider we turned out of the narrow way between the trees, without coming upon one who might have been a Muscovite spy.

The officers cared little for the rider that was ahead of us, and looked on our ride as a new game.

"Stuppai, Ivak!" Paul Jones would shout.

And forward we went, Edwards jesting with me that I would taste his dust into Kherson and lose a half-year's pay thereby. Only when we sighted the domes and spires of Moscow in its great plain did we halt, for six hours, so that the American might dine with the governor of the city.

On the sixth day out we had to halt for three hours to repair a wheel of the carriage. In the stables of the post station I asked for news of a rider from Petersburg who was bearing dispatches a few hours ahead of us, knowing that any man who wished to make the utmost speed along the highway would claim that he carried dispatches. The men of the zamora told me that an officer had passed south at sunrise, which was twelve hours before. Dried mud was still on his boots and his permit had read from Petersburg to Kherson. Thinking of Borol, I asked if he spoke with a German accent and looked to be about my size.

They said it was not so. The officer had cursed them in good Russian for delaying him. So, after all, we had no real reason to suspect that a spy had gone ahead.

But when a man hunts wolves he does not lie down under a tree to doze because no wolves are in sight. I pushed the horses that night, keeping awake to do so, and promising the Tatars half a flask of corn brandy to stir them up a bit. We put a hundred and twenty versts behind us, from sunset to sunset, and changed horses six times, and it was my two officers who were stirred up finally.

Edwards, who was suffering from saddle sores, cursed my beard and my soul and my father's grave and other things, yet I took no offense, knowing that weariness had gripped him and there was no meaning in the curses.

"take you, Ivak," he promised. "I will give orders to slow down to a hand pace. You are rubbing the bones out of my buttocks."

"I hope your Honor is well," I replied, knowing how to handle him. "Because if not, I will have to wait for you in Kherson, to spend the hundred rubles."

"Blast you, Ivak-sink you for a lying rogue!"

And he leaped from the tarantass and ran to a horse, jumping into saddle and plying whip and spur until I was tasting his dust, as his beast was fresher.

"I'll lead you into Kherson even if your Tatars have to carry me on a door."

And his words were near to the truth, as will be seen presently. Meanwhile, however much we pressed the horses we did not gain sight of the officer who was ahead of us. If we rode like the wind, he went like a witch on a broomstick on All-Hallow's Eve-or like a man with his neck in a noose. We came out on the vast level that lies south of Moscow, where the sun was warm on the dense foliage of the trees. In the black soil the wheat stood high and rippled under the breath of the wind like a great pool of water. Dust hung behind us like a giant's plume, and the moujiks we met stood aside and doffed their wool caps, bowing as low as their sashes, astonished at the pace of our horses. Eh, it was good to be under a clear sky again!

Before long we knew that the rider ahead of us had sighted us, although we had not set eye on him.

At a zamora we were told that all the horses were out. Never before this had such a thing happened! Not a nag in the stables!

Edwards was for waiting until fresh beasts could be rounded up, but John Paul said we would press forward on the best animals to the next station. We did so, but here also the keepers of the station bowed and prayed forgiveness because all the horses were out.

I said nothing, riding instead in a circle about the hut and stables, while the two officers made use of the delay in eating dinner. Aye, there were few tracks leading away from the zamora along the highway, but a round dozen traces went from the stable yard into the fields, and they were fresh tracks.

Calling my Tatars, I sent them off to follow the tracks for a few versts and bring back what they found. Then I spurred my tired nag into the group of Moskyas who were watching with covert interest. I pulled out a pistol and cocked it, then primed the pan.

"What are you doing, Uncle?" asked the one who had said there were no horses. "And why did you send the Tatars away?"

"God keep you, brother," I made answer, "or the Devil will get you. I sent the Tatars for a priest."

"Why a priest?" He made shift to laugh and invite me down for a nuggin of mead. "Eh, what would a Cossack do with a priest?"

"Several things. Nay, I would have the last rites administered to you by the batko, the little father, so when your soul stands in the company of the holy angels you will not smell rank of a bribe."

This I said, knowing that his palm had been crossed with silver by the rider who raced us to Kherson, and that was why the horses were missing.

"But, worthy sotnik-noble handsome Captain-there is no priest in the village."

There were half a dozen of the Moskyas, with knives and clubs, but when they looked at the pistol they all began to praise me and say that they were my slaves.

"Then tell me where you have hidden the horses, if there is no priest."

They exchanged glances uneasily, and I added a word, for I did not know if the Tatars were on the right trail and time pressed.

"You will have a gift-" I looked at the first speaker-"worth many times the ruble the officer gave you, if the horses are brought back."

His eyes began to glisten with greed and he made great show of bravado, and after a moment another spoke up, saying that the horses had been put out to pasture only half a verst away. I waited, keeping them under the muzzle of the pistol, until the Tatars galloped back with a score of horses, many of them good and not all, judging by the looks of them, from the post station.

Then the Moskyas jumped to harness a team to the tarantass, and I picked out five ponies with Arab blood just as my officers came out. When I was changing my saddle the chief keeper came up and asked for his gift.

"Your life," I said. "I give it you."

Before we were out of hearing that keeper shouted after us that the ensign who had come before us had said we were chiefs of the pirates from the Dnieper, and that we would steal all the horses.