The Cowboy and the Cossack (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) (21 page)

Appalled, I said to Rostov, “What was all that?”

Rostov was still too angry to answer, but Bruk did. “She let those two big men pay for everything.”

Shad spoke to Rostov, his eyes harder than any voice could ever try to match.

“The broken glasses?”

“Yes,” Rostov said angrily. “Those too.”

And then the tough older lady came hurrying up to the table to talk to Rostov. As they spoke, Bruk translated, with Old Keats nodding in agreement whenever he got the gist of it.

“She says this is a matter of honor,” Bruk said, having a hard time listening and talking at the same time. “And the captain just told her the honor belonged here at this table. She says no, the honor belonged at both tables. And”—Bruk hesitated—“she says both of those men have spoken out against the Tzar already, and with no free cossacks around to help them speak out.”

The tough-looking lady suddenly put her hand over her eyes as if she were holding back quick tears of her own, and then she too rushed away.

Rostov was touched by her. “Our bill seems to have been paid in full,” he said quietly.

Shad had already taken a big handful of silver dollars out of his pocket. “How ’bout payin’ it twice?”

“No,” Rostov said. “Let’s just let it go.”

Shad studied Rostov and then said, “All right. Let’s get back and move the herd.” He put the coins back in his pocket, and we all started for the front door.

The tablecloth girl came out of the kitchen just then, and I couldn’t help but notice her and slow down in following the others. She was standing there, not too far away, looking unhappy as hell, and I said to her, “Thank you, Irenia.”

She only understood the word “Irenia” and my tone of voice. But that was enough. She knew the way I felt and she smiled, so there was a good feeling between us.

Then I turned and went on out through the door.

Outside, we all mounted up and followed Shad and Rostov out of the dimming lights of the town into the ink-black darkness beyond.

That big group of Imperial Cossacks followed us, which was kind of silly. About a half mile out of town we just pulled off and sat our horses quietly. They rode on by, bits and spurs jingling in the dark stillness and the leather of their saddles creaking, and pretty quick they had gone on their noisy way. If you don’t happen to want to make all that racket, you simply take off your spurs, reach up and hold the bit gentle, and don’t shift the weight of your butt around in the saddle. We did that until we reached the herd. And then, as the others gathered around in the pitch-black night, Shad said, “We’re drivin’ the herd over t’ them broke-up flats. As of now, make all the noise ya’ want. Matter a’ fact, it’d help some if each one of ya’ sounded like five or ten.”

So with that encouragement there was a lot of whoopin’ and hollerin’ and yah-hooin’ as we woke up the sleepy, resentful herd and started driving it up over the sloping mountain and down the far side.

We got the herd to the breaks two miles outside of Khabarovsk and had it bedded down long before sunrise.

There were two problems that came with sunup that morning. One was trying to explain to the Slash-Diamond outfit and to Rostov’s cossacks about how it would be an advantage for one and all to wear each other’s clothes once in a while. This plan met with quite a bit of disapproval.

The second, and killing, problem had to do with the two fellas who’d befriended us and paid our tariff in Khabarovsk the night before.

That morning those two big men were both hanged by the neck until dead. And finding out about that hit us like a sledgehammer.

One thing came on top of another pretty fast.

Just about to a man, our fellas hated the idea of wearing any kind of cossack clothes and therefore refused.

“It—it ain’t American!” Rufe said.

“Fuck it,” Mushy said simply.

“A nigger cossack?” Shiny demanded.

“Shit, boss!” Dixie grumbled. “Ain’t there some better way t’ protect them dumb bastards?”

“I ain’t gonna be no clown f’r nobody,” Crab said, and Chakko grunted “Uhh!” in a way that meant something more negative than all the “no’s” ever said.

Big Yawn stood up to his full height. “I like them fellas enough t’ fight for ’em! But pretend t’
be
one, never!”

I got the feeling that Rostov was having somewhat the same sort of hard time with his men, who’d camped right next to us in the dark. But his cossacks were better disciplined than our bunch, so he seemed to have the situation more in hand.

And then Lieutenant Bruk, who’d been on lookout with Old Keats, came galloping over a twenty-foot slanting bluff and rode quickly down to us.

Bruk, who’d been watching Khabarovsk through Rostov’s telescope, handed it slowly back to him and said something in a choked, twisted voice.

The cossacks knew first, and then we finally learned.

The two big men, recognizable by their size and their clothes, had just been hanged from an oak tree on the outskirts of Khabarovsk. Being big and strong, they’d struggled quite a lot, and Old Keats and Bruk had watched them through those long, long moments of death.

We all knew it was because of last night, because of them taking up for us, and someone, some terrible little person there, who had told about it.

And looking at Shad, I could see that all he was thinking of was the toast he’d made.

“
Vostrovia
!” his powerful voice echoed in my mind.

“
Vostrovia
!” both big men had roared back, meaning so much more than simple good health.

And now, with all the good, strong things they’d intended, those giant-hearted, generous, free-spirited Russians were dead.

Rostov and Shad now looked at each other for a long, quiet moment, their eyes meeting and locking in silent thought. And
the way their look was, even the other men who hadn’t been with us the night before could see how hard and deeply both of them were hit.

Finally Shad turned a little and said in a low voice, “Purse, go up an’ relieve Old Keats.”

Purse said huskily, “Yes, sir, boss.” And he mounted and rode off.

Rostov stepped over to stand near Shad now, though still neither of them said anything. They both looked down thoughtfully at the ground about halfway between them, as though that little patch of dirt was worth a lot of quiet study.

Igor and Bruk and some of the other cossacks came over now, sort of following behind Rostov so that we were all standing pretty close together.

It was Slim who finally spoke, his low, quiet voice just barely breaking the silence, like a pebble dropped gently into a quiet pond. And his words were as easy and soft as the ripples spreading out. “Darnest thing. None of us never ever said but that there one word t’ them, an’ them t’ us. But somehow it’s just like they was one of us. And, sort of, always was.”

My voice wasn’t that low or controlled, but I tried my best to at least keep it level. “Verushki did that outta pure, crazy
meanness.
Just f’r
nothin’
. What’re
we
gonna do
back
?” That was as far as I could make it without my voice going out on me altogether.

Shad gave me a quiet, hard look that managed to hide the pain he was feeling inside. “Not one goddamn thing.”

Even though I knew he had to be right, my face must have showed something else. Anger maybe, or disappointment, or both.

Old Keats now rode back and joined us, touching Bruk’s shoulder with brief warmth because of the grim sorrow they’d just shared.

Slim said grimly, “Shad’s right, f’r hard-rock sure. We don’t do nothin’.”

Rostov looked at Old Keats and Bruk, who were still standing near each other, silently seeming to think and even look a little bit like each other. “Do you think it was meant as a lesson to us, or the people of Khabarovsk?”

Old Keats, his narrowed eyes still filled with what he’d seen, said bitterly, “Both.”

Bruk nodded. “Most of the Imperial Cossacks were there, and they’d gathered many, many people to watch.”

“Captain?” Igor said, and I could see he felt the same hopeless frustration that I did. “Two good men have been deliberately murdered!”

Rostov said quietly, “That’s exactly right. So then, in the interest of justice, what would you suggest we do?” He glanced from Igor to me. “Or you?”

Igor and I looked at each other, and we both knew that between us we couldn’t come up with a decent answer.

“Well—maybe,” I said lamely, “at least if they had families, maybe we could—”

“No.” Rostov cut me short. “If we helped their families, they would be the next to suffer.” Off to one side, in a low voice, Sergeant Nick translated to the other cossacks what Rostov was saying. “There’s nothing we can do for those two men.” He paused briefly, filled with his thoughts, and then went on, speaking as movingly for the first time to all of us as he had once spoken to me alone about swans. “Nor is there anything we can do for the millions, beyond counting, who have died in Mother Russia over the years in the name of the Tzar.

“What we can do, and will do, is what we started out to do. We’ll get these cattle to Bakaskaya, so that that town, and the movement toward freedom that it stands for, will have a chance to survive.” It’s just possible that Rostov felt even more deeply about the deaths of those two men than Shad and us others. Because in his voice and his eyes, as well as what he was saying, he was sure sending chills up a
lot of spines, including mine. “There is an ancient philosophy that gives us the choice of weeping in the darkness or lighting a candle. Bakaskaya is our candle. And to keep it lighted against the day when there will no longer be a Tzar is everything.” He paused, and when he went on, his voice was almost harsh. “We will survive here until we can cross the Amur. Some of us will make daily visits into Khabarovsk for supplies and relaxation, and while we’re there we will not only show the Imperial Cossacks no fear, but to the contrary, rather superior and casual disdain.

“And to successfully manage these things, we must keep the military in Khabarovsk convinced that our force is much larger than it actually is.”

He now stopped, but the way he’d ended his talk brought the whole thing right smack-dab back in a circle to where it had been, up front, in the first place. It was still a question of whether or not the Slash-Diamonders would put on cossack clothes every now and then.

For a time, no one moved or spoke.

And then Shad moved and spoke. He took off his old beaten-up, front-pointed black cowboy hat, which was normally an object that couldn’t even be touched by anyone else without serious risk to both life and limb, and he handed it over to Rostov. “
Vostrovia
,” he said quietly.

Rostov handled the hat carefully, with the respect and dignity it deserved, and after a moment he took off his fur cossack hat and held it out to Shad.

Shad took it and looked it over curiously
.

Then, finally, as if they were both wondering whether their heads could stand this radical kind of a change, they very slowly put on each other’s hat.

And when they’d done this, and started frowning around at the rest of us, trying to see some kind of a reaction, there wasn’t a man among us brave enough to tell them the truth.

They both looked great!

Rostov growled something in Russian to his men, and Shad at last said, “Well, goddamnit! Can ya’
recognize
me, at least?”

Slim was the first one who got up the nerve to grin a little and say something to Shad. “Ya’ look downright gorgeous, Captain Rostov.”

Shad glared at Slim, and Old Keats said with some impatience, “You look exactly like Shad Northshield wearing a fur hat! What the hell did ya’ expect?”

Still a little uncomfortable, Shad shrugged. “Wasn’t quite sure.”

Ilya now said something in Russian to Rostov which caused some laughter among the cossacks. Igor told me later that Ilya had promised to write a song about an American cowboy named Rostov.

But between the two of them, and their simple exchange of hats, the whole idea about clothes was getting easier now.

Sammy the Kid said, “That cossack stuff ain’t all that bad. I’d look outstandin’ as hell in one a’ them black cloaks with the red linin’!”

“You wouldn’t be outstandin’,” Crab muttered, “in the bottom of a hole under an outhouse.”

Natcho’s white teeth flashed in a wide smile. “I’ve been wanting t’ try on one of those swords!”

“Sabers,” someone corrected him.

The cossacks now laughed a little bit at something else, and the whole feeling about clothes was rapidly improving.

I pulled off my leather jacket and handed it to Igor. He grinned and nodded and untied a little cord around his neck so that he could hand me his cape.

Within a few minutes, just exchanging things around in a friendly and curious way, we wound up being about as mixed-up an outfit as anybody ever saw.

But it was just that. Friendly and curious. Once in a while there’d be a little laughter here or there because some of our
half-and-half outfits were downright absurd, but it still wasn’t a happy time, or even anything like that.

Those two hanged men were too much on all of our minds for any of us to want to, or be able to, just haul off and get a kick out of anything.

As a matter of pure fact, there wasn’t one man there who didn’t know just exactly what direction Shad and Rostov were pushing us in. Even Big Yawn, who was generally as thick as a brick wall, and who had been maybe the hardest-set against cossack clothes, was examining a big, baggy pair of flaming-red britches that belonged to Kirdyaga, who was about his same size. And Big Yawn had already made his mind up what he was going to do when he looked up from those red britches as Shad spoke out in a hard voice.

“In about ten minutes,” he said, “I want thirty cossacks t’ ride over that hill t’ pay homage t’ them two fellas.”

And about ten minutes later, that’s exactly what happened.

It wasn’t all that easy for the whole bunch of us to hurry up and look like cossacks, but we managed. Boots and hats were the scarcest items because a lot of Rostov’s men weren’t carrying spares. But there were plenty of capes and britches to go around, and those were what would be most easily seen and recognized at a distance anyway. For most of those ten minutes, us cowboys in that camp looked too ridiculous to even try to describe. Picking out fellas about their same size, the cossacks were bringing over their spare stuff, while we were getting down to our long Johns and starting, with a good deal of cussing and growling, to get into those unfamiliar things.