The Cowboy and the Cossack (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) (22 page)

“My
God
!” Crab snarled. “This goddamn shirt buttons up the
back
!”

But Ilya, who owned the silken-looking shirt, saw the problem and started to give Crab a hand with buttoning it. I lucked out, because Igor had a complete second uniform that fit me like it had been made to order. The fur hat felt funniest of all, not having any brim to take hold of, but I was soon to find out that
the good feeling of the cape more than made up for that. It felt kind of good and free when you were just wearing it normally, but mounted, when you opened your horse up a little, it went whipping out behind and around you like a huge bird’s wings flapping, giving you the feeling of damnere halfway flying.

Struggling into one of those blood-red vests that Nick had given him, Slim said to Shad and Rostov, “You ain’t leavin’ nobody at all in camp?”

“Nope.” Shad swung one of Rostov’s capes around his shoulders. “We ain’t gonna be gone but a few minutes.”

Rostov nodded. “This way, they’ll see the greatest show of force we can mount.”

“I still ain’t sure about me an’ Link,” Shiny said, pulling on a pair of Yuri’s britches. “Our complexions’re awful dark.”

“Pull your hats down,” Dixie said dryly.

“We won’t give ’em much time t’ study on us,” Shad told them. “Let’s get t’ horse.”

And a moment later we were mounting up and moving out.

Poor old Purse Mayhew, standing lookout, almost collapsed from sheer shock as all those cossacks came galloping up toward him, but then he saw Shad up front, and some of us others, and realized what was going on.

We rode past the still-openmouthed Purse, over the crest of the rise, and started down the far side. From here we could see Khabarovsk far off and below in the distance.

There were still a lot of people gathered around that big oak tree on the edge of town, so far away that even the huge tree itself looked small. I could just barely make out the two tiny figures hanging motionlessly from one large limb, and I swallowed hard.

“Pull up!” Shad ordered. “And line out!”

Rostov repeated the order in Russian, and within a few seconds there were thirty of us sitting our horses side by side, facing the distant crowd around the grim, terrible oak tree with its two hanging bodies.

Even from that far away we’d already been noticed by Verushki’s cossacks and the rest of the people there. Verushki’s men, staring off and up at us, must have had the same feeling I did. As I looked from one side to the other, at all of our fellas lined up, we sure didn’t appear to be a bunch to mess around with lightly.

Shad and Rostov were next to each other in the center of the long line, and they said something back and forth.

“Take out your rifles!” Shad ordered. “We’re gonna give them two fellas a three-gun salute!”

Rostov was calling out the same instructions to his men.

“Aim your rifles up!” Shad told us. “And shoot when I yell
fire
!”

We all cocked our rifles and raised them toward the sky.

Shad now called out, “Ready!—
Fire
!”

A slightly ragged, but damned impressive volley roared out and echoed across the wide, sloping meadows toward Khabarovsk.

Before the sound of the first volley had faded out of the air, Shad yelled “Fire!” again and the second thunder boomed out from our assembled guns. A few cossacks had single-shot rifles and couldn’t fire again, but with all the smoke and noise it was impossible to tell the difference. Buck started to rear under me a little, thinking we were overdoing the whole thing, and a couple of other horses weren’t all too happy, but by that time the third command came and the third roar of rifles rolled boomingly out across the meadow.

“Put your guns back, and let’s go!” Shad called. He and Rostov led off, and we followed the two of them back up over the rise and out of sight of Khabarovsk. I doubt if all told we’d actually been in sight of the town for as much as one full minute.

“
Jesus
!” Purse yelled as we rode back past him. “I sure am glad I’m on
your
side!”

He might have been sort of trying to kid us a little, what with our uniforms and all, but his voice came out sounding flat dead on the level.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A
T CAMP
we finally got our clothes situation straightened back around without too much confusion.

Rostov sent some of his cossacks out to stand guard at high, strategic points, and Shad put half a dozen of our men on the herd, which was gathered in a wide, grassy depression in the broken flats. A stream ran by near our camp, and widened out into a small lake not far beyond, so there was plenty of grass and water handy to keep the herd in good shape.

We’d got a fire going and put some water on to boil coffee. And now, not much more than spitting distance away, some of the cossacks were starting to build their own fire.

“Say, Captain Rostov,” Slim said, “we’ll have a big pot a’ coffee ready pretty quick.”

The cossacks looked at us, and Old Keats said, “There’ll be more’n enough.”

Rostov didn’t exactly turn the offer down, but he didn’t exactly accept it either. “My men drink tea.”

“It would be interesting, sir,” Igor said. “I’ve never drank coffee.”

“Never?” I asked, stunned at such an unbelievable thing.

“No.” He shook his head. “Never.”

“Then,” Shad said, quietly making the invitation official, “maybe it’s time ya’ did.”

Igor looked at Rostov, ready to go along with whatever he decided.

“All right,” Rostov said finally. “Coffee.”

As the cossacks gathered around our fire with us, Slim got out a bag of Acme Prime Grade Coffee Beans and started to grind them.

It was kind of a strange feeling just then, because after all the weeks we’d more or less been together, it was the first time we’d ever really been together in a friendly, easygoing way of everybody sitting around one fire.

The cossacks gradually settled in next to the rest of us around the burning, crackling wood, and there was a long silence, but it wasn’t a bad silence.

Taking note of our general, warm feeling, Rostov was the first to quietly speak. “Ordering those two men hanged may have been a serious mistake on Verushki’s part.”

In a low voice, Igor told the others what Rostov had said.

Shad was staring into the fire with a small frown, and while he’d been the first one to want to help this independent bunch, and at the same time to get his herd through, I knew the stubborn bastard would be the last one, if ever, to admit anything in terms of being friends.

“Well, after all,” I said, “we did at least do one thing for the two of ’em. That three-gun salute.”

“Bein’ fatally dead,” Shad said flatly, “I doubt they enjoyed that little show a whole lot.”

“Boss!” I countered. “It was you who—”

He cut me off sharply. “What we
really
did was
this
! We showed that half-ass colonel thirty armed cossacks who were madder’n hell and who couldn’t care less about him an’ his—whores on horseback!” He shot a look at Rostov to acknowledge this last phrase
.
“That three-gun salute scared the shit outta Verushki an’ he’s in one hell of a lot worse shape than he was before!”

I couldn’t put words to it just then, but that damned Shad could go out and risk his neck for a good reason one minute and the next minute turn right around and act like he hadn’t really done a thing. Or if he had, it was for some totally impersonal and other reason that nobody had ever known about, or even suspected, in the first place.

His words had sounded so hard that there was a touchy kind of uncertainness among all of us as Igor, in a low voice, put into Russian what Shad had said.

Old Keats, God bless him, now spoke in a thoughtful way. “We’ve all of us just been through a sad time. I saw them hang. But I was also there with those two men last night. And I don’t think they’d want for it to go on too long, being a sad time.”

There was no question but that he was right. The question was, what to do about it. Sure as hell, not one person there was about to try to end that sadness by going into a song or leaping up to dance.

The water was boiling real good now, and Slim started pouring the Acme Prime Grade Coffee Beans into it. Clearing his throat, he said, “The second-best cowboy coffee in the world is coffee that’s strong enough t’ float a horseshoe in.” He poured out all of the ground beans and then dropped the empty bag into the fire to burn. “But the first best, which is the kind a’ coffee I make, is strong enough t’ dissolve the goddamn horseshoe.” He picked up a nearby ladle to stir it with. “I just thought you Russians might be grateful f’r that little piece a’ information.”

Bruk translated to the Russians what Slim had just said, and in the whole group there wasn’t as much as a raised eyebrow among them. Several of them nodded thoughtfully, and Ilya and Yakov both said a few quiet words.

Equally without expression, Bruk now said to us, “They are grateful for the information and they are pleased that you always tell the truth and would not exaggerate.”

“Absolutely.” Slim stirred the darkening coffee. “T’ me, any small exaggeration’s almost as heinous a crime as an outright lie. An’ anybody knows that lyin’ is a mortal sin.”

This time Nick translated, and the cossacks nodded in thoughtful agreement as Ilya got up and walked slowly off.

A little later the coffee was getting even darker. “Good,” Slim muttered. “Has t’ be black as a landlord’s heart.” He dropped in some eggshells to settle the grains to the bottom.

About this time Ilya walked back up and, saying a few innocent-sounding words, held out a horseshoe to Slim.

“He’s asking,” Bruk said, “if he can help you test your coffee.”

In its own way, this whole thing was getting kind of warm and nice, and we were all equally interested to see if Slim could manage his way out of the trap he’d built for himself.

“Hell,” Slim said easily, “tell ’im I took a sacred vow never t’ waste another horseshoe. Cause t’ waste anything is almost as mortal a sin as lyin’.”

Bruk explained that in Russian.

“Reason I took that vow,” Slim went on, “is one winter when I was just a green kid, I made a lot a’ coffee. An’ come springtime, there wasn’t one horseshoe t’ be found in all Montana.”

After this had been translated, Ilya nodded solemnly and held out his empty other hand, saying a few more words.

“We have the greatest blacksmiths in the world in Siberia,” Bruk explained. “And they do very delicate and fantastic work. What he is offering you is a very special and tiny horseshoe that was made to be worn on the hoof of a flea. It’s so small it’s almost impossible to see.”

It looked to our outfit like Ilya had nailed him, and though they took pains not to show it, the rest of the cossacks felt the same way as we did. But Slim rose to the occasion.

Just as solemnly as Ilya, he slowly reached out and pretended to take something from Ilya’s hand, and then to examine it between his thumb and forefinger very carefully. “Tell ’im that this here is surely one a’ the finest examples a’ blacksmithin’ I ever seen,” he said. “An’ if this here horseshoe dissolves in there, it’ll surely prove, beyond any shadow a’ doubt, that we all been tellin’ God’s absolute truth.” Then he opened his fingers, seeming to drop something very tiny into the boiling coffee.

Ilya didn’t need Bruk’s translation. What Slim had done was clear enough, and Ilya knew there was no way to get his nonexistent horseshoe out of Slim’s horseshoe-dissolving coffee. He laughed good-naturedly and slapped Slim on the shoulder, and while the rest of us were grinning and chuckling with each other, we got coffee served around.

From their reactions upon drinking, some of those cossacks must have suddenly thought there was some truth in what Slim had claimed. In all honesty he did make strongish coffee, and there was a great deal of almost gagging and almost choking among a number of them that was just barely held back.

Rostov raised his cup toward Slim. “They compliment you on making such a drink, so quickly, out of simple water.”

“Tell ’em,” Slim said, “that dissolved ’r not, horseshoes ain’t too easy t’ swalla’.”

But despite the hardship of getting used to Slim’s coffee, the idea of them sitting with us, and drinking what we normally drank, was a good thing. In a still friendly, natural way, with just a hint of the possible death and destruction behind it, the conversation now veered into another direction.

A few of his men now spoke to him, and Rostov, without seeming too overjoyed about it, said, “In the time that we will be waiting here, my men who are not on duty will be practicing war games.” He looked at Shad. “My men have invited your men to join with them, if they wish.”

Shad tossed the last few drops of his coffee into the fire, where the wet sputtered briefly on the heat. “With ’em or against ’em?”

“Never against them. But even so, the games are competitive, and sometimes quite rough.”

“Hell, boss,” Sammy the Kid grinned, “we’d take it easy on ’em.”

Shad said, “Okay, when you’re not workin’ you can join in. But don’t run any far-out risks. I don’t want anybody gettin’ laid up.”

Rostov translated to his men, adding what I guessed to be his own words of caution.

Grinning and nodding with pleased expressions, the cossacks finished their coffee and started over toward where their own gear was stacked nearby. And Shad and Rostov got into a quiet conversation between themselves.

“Heck,” Mushy said, “them cossacks’re as tickled as little kids about the idea a’ us joinin’ their games with ’em.”

“Just make sure it stays on a gamin’ level,” Old Keats told us. “Get yourself injured in some foolish way, and I got a hunch Shad’ll be just about mad enough t’ finish the job, includin’ a free burial service.”

“Hell,” Dixie said, “after all, they ain’t nothin’ but games.”

“
War
games,” Slim corrected him, “which has a different an’ somewhat more serious sound to it.”

That afternoon a bunch of us who weren’t on any kind of duty rode over a low hill near the camp and down to a broken part of the wide meadow where a bunch of the cossacks were doing something. The camp was only a minute away, but you couldn’t see it from here.