The Cowboy and the Cossack (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) (25 page)

Dixie was awake enough to know what was going on. And he was damn well aware that he’d caused what could have been an ugly time between Shiny and Shad. I squeezed some more water from the cloth into his black left eye and said, “I fell down tryin’ t’ hold him up.”

“That ain’t too funny,” Shad said.

I’d done as much as I could for Dixie medically, so I stood up. “I know, Shad. We had a fight.”

“What over?”

I could see Dixie getting ready to die then, for what he’d done, and he deserved it. “I just don’t like ’im,” I said.

We walked back over toward Shad’s bunk, where he dropped his saddle to the ground, quietly looking around. “Camp got torn up a little.”

“Yeah,” I said, “a little.”

He lay down, his head resting in the seat of his saddle and his hat shading his eyes. “You just don’t like Dixie?”

“That’s right.”

Shad shifted his hat better against the sun. “Levi,” he said, so tired and yet so patient, “I know that fight was because of Shiny.” He took a deep, long breath. “And I appreciate your point of view.”

“That leads up to a ‘but,’” I said, “where a boss tells a dumb roustabout like me what t’ do.”

“Right.” Shad moved his hat a little bit again. “And ya’ ought t’ be more peaceful.” He relaxed now like a cougar I’d seen napping one time, relaxed but ready and powerful all in the same instant. “Don’t waste your time on little fights”—he yawned—“when at any minute there’re so many big ones all ready an’ waitin’ to bust out.”

“Would you have had me do other?”

I’m pretty sure he almost said something like, “I guess not,” but that sort of backing-away statement went against his nature. Instead he said, “Just don’t do it again.”

“Okay, boss.”

And then he was into his first brief sleep in about twenty-four hours.

Looking down at him, still reminded of that cougar who’d been asleep yet ready to move instantly, I had a brief, sudden insight into the meaning of the term “cat nap.”

With both the cougar and Shad there was so much easy, quick power there that either one of them could tear an enemy in half while their eyes were still flicking open.

Spooky if they were against you.

Reassuring if they were on your side.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

W
HEN
I turned to move off, I almost bumped into Slim, who’d come back into camp and was quietly sizing things up. And he’d heard enough of what Shad and I were saying to take it from there.

“You an’ Dixie been playin’ Civil War?”

“Sort of.”

“Hmm. Looks like the South lost again.”

“It was close t’ bein’ Pyrrhic.” It hadn’t been at all close, but that seemed like kind of the right thing to say.

Slim nodded. “While Shad’s gettin’ his forty winks, let’s wander over t’ the cossacks’ playgrounds. Rostov’s over there.”

“Okay. I’ll toss a saddle on Buck.” In turning, Dixie came into my line of sight. His eye and a couple of big bruises were starting to lump up something fierce. I hesitated. “Hey, Dixie?”

“Yeah?”

“Want t’ come along, over t’ the meadow?”

“Sure.” He shrugged. “Why not?”

A couple of minutes later about half a dozen of us rode off over the hill and down into the big meadow where the cossacks were already doing some interesting things. Rostov was on his big black near the rock, and except for two of his men in camp and six on lookout, the rest of them were out galloping around in the meadow, but they weren’t racing.

We all pulled up near him and took a better look at what was going on. All of the men in the meadow had their sabers out. About half of them were going at full speed to where the creek flowed quietly, leaping it, and slashing the water with their sabers as they flew over. The others were near the center of the meadow,
and what they were doing seemed even sillier, if possible. They’d put up six more slender poles in a fairly straight line about fifty feet apart from each other, and on the top of each pole they’d mounted a giant pine cone. The men down there were charging along the line swinging at each pine cone, but never hitting it hard enough to cut it really deep or topple it to the ground.

Slim was watching carefully and not making any quick judgments, but Dixie did, and for once I was inclined to agree with him. “What the hell they doin’, Captain?” He frowned, his tone indicating a kind of puzzled disbelief.

“Practicing and improving their use of the saber.”

“Well, hell,” Crab said, “it sure don’t look like much t’ hit some water an’ a pine cone.”

“Remember,” Slim said easily, “the way they hit them wolves that night?”

His point was damn well taken, and none of us had a quick answer to it.

“Notice the way they slash the water,” Rostov explained. “Of course anyone can hit it. But try doing it in mid-leap with the cutting edge of the blade entering so perfectly that the water is not disturbed.”

“My God!” Natcho said, watching more closely. “That’s impossible!”

And that sure as hell was right. Between the next three cossacks leaping the stream I doubt if their blades caused more than two drops of water. And Natcho was the best one of us to remark on it, too. I remembered one time when some of us had gone for a kind of a halfway bath and halfway swim in a pond on the Slash-D Ranch. When most of us had leaped in, we’d damnere splashed the pond dry. But when Natcho had jumped in, his hands were held out together in front of him and his legs were straight out behind him, so that altogether he was shaped like an arrow, and he hadn’t made hardly more than a ripple.

“What about them big pine cones?” Slim asked.

“They’re the best natural duplication, with a similar resilience, that we have on hand to represent a man’s head, which is the best place to hit him with a saber.”

Rufe spoke for a number of us when he said, “
Yuck.
”

Rostov glanced at him, then looked at me and saw that I felt the same way. There was a tiny flicker of dark but somehow warm humor deep within his eyes. “It requires a powerful cut or thrust to make a body wound fatal, and it takes a moment to get your saber back into use. The neck and the throat are the most vulnerable to a relatively light, fatal slash.” Rostov gave me and Rufe another brief look. “It’s not difficult to decapitate a man, but in a battle it takes too much time and effort.”

“So them fellas out there,” Slim said, “are just cuttin’ deep enough into their pine cones, without loppin’ ’em off.”

Rostov nodded. “These are just a small part of
Dzhigitovkas
, our war games on horseback.”

“Of Diggy—” Crab started, but then gave up on the word. “Well, anyhow, when ya’ explain it like that, it’s kind of interestin’.”

Rostov put his thumb and little finger in his mouth and gave a sharp, blasting whistle that brought his cossacks up short. Their sabers held out at an angle before them, they all rode back to where we were sitting our horses near the big rock.

When they’d pulled up near us, Ilya asked Rostov something in a respectful, quiet voice. It was so respectful and quiet that both Slim and I knew right off what he’d said.

“Captain,” Slim said, “is that expert on various-sized horseshoes askin’ whether or not we’d care t’ try?”

“Yes,” Rostov said.

“Well”—Slim rubbed his jaw—“tell ’im when he can lasso a flea at full gallop, we’ll take up with them Mexican toothpicks.”

While Rostov was translating, as best as anyone could, what Slim had said, the rest of us looked around at each other and wordlessly agreed to go against Slim.

“Fuck that!” Rufe said.

“Right!” Crab agreed, and Dixie added, “
Damn
right!”

Natcho and Purse were nodding, and Chakko hadn’t silently ridden away, which was as close to his saying “Yes” as was needed.

“You’re outvoted,” I told Slim, but he’d known that was going to happen all along.

“I was afraid of that,” he grumbled. “Just don’t break them pigstickers, especially on yourselves.”

At a word from Rostov, the cossacks offered us their sabers, handle first.

I took Igor’s, and he almost winced as he let it out of his hand.

Rostov said in a quiet voice, “This is a challenge. But it’s a compliment too.”

We understood how it was about their letting us use their blades, and in case we didn’t, Slim had already just told us.

There were five of us now holding those unfamiliar weapons, getting the feel and balance of them. Chakko, though his presence showed he agreed in principle with what we were doing, hadn’t accepted a saber. As for Slim, the question never even came up, any more than it would have with Shad or Old Keats if they’d been there. Sort of realizing that this meant they were smarter, I said, “Well, it’s just us fearless dumbbells against all that water an’ all them pine cones.”

Two cossacks still held their sabers, and they now cut their wrists slightly before putting them back in their scabbards.

“Just exactly what the hell we gonna do?” Crab asked.

“Leap the stream and slash the water without disturbing it,” Rostov said. “Then, both going and coming back, strike each pine cone so that you cut it without taking it off. To cut it off is the worst thing you can do on the ride. Then cross the stream one more time and come back here.”

“Wait!” Rufe said. “Shouldn’t we be racin’ some a’ these cossacks?”

“I suspect you’ll have your hands full,” Slim said, “racin’ yourselves. Get ready!”

The five of us put our horses into a rough line.

“Go!” Slim yelled, and we charged toward the quiet part of the stream.

When I jumped it and slashed, my saber sent up enough water for an average-sized man to take a bath in. Out of the corner of my eye it looked like Natcho and Dixie both did a lot better than me. But Crab and Rufe, it turned out in later conversations, both fell upon evil times. Crab went so deep he brought up some mud. And Rufe swung wild and missed altogether. The only thing he did hit, toward the end of his swing, was Bobtail’s ear. Luckily, he just nicked the tip of it, though Bobtail didn’t consider it particularly lucky, and shied off to one side, breaking his stride and obviously wondering who the hell, and for what possible reason, was attacking his ear.

Natcho went into the lead with Dixie a little behind him and me and Crab neck and neck for third and fourth. By the time Rufe got Bobtail straightened out he was about three lengths to the rear.

We didn’t do as bad as I thought we would on the pine cones. That had to do with a little bit of instinctive skill and a whole lot of instinctive cheating. After using the sabers on the water, it was clearly true that they weren’t all that simple to handle at a full gallop. So, for myself, I took what I hoped seemed to be genuine swings at the first three pine cones, but I was trying my level damnedest to just tap them as lightly as Queen Victoria might do upon knighting some old fella.

If there was one honest rider among us, it was Natcho. From fairly close range, I could see that he was sending chips out of the pine cones without even coming close to knocking them off the poles they were stuck on. Right then I’d have bet Buck and myself both against a plugged nickel that that smooth Mexican bastard had handled sabers before, while in my whole life I’d never had anything but a pocketknife.

He was already halfway back along the pine cones on Diablo, while Buck and me, stretched full out, were halfway into them.

“
Cuidado
!” he yelled, which was sometimes his way of saying “Look out!” as he almost ran me and Buck down. And before I had a chance to yell anything fitting back at him, he was long gone.

Then Dixie, who was about a hundred feet ahead of me, made an unforgivable mistake that I cherished a lot. He got carried away and cut the last pine cone and slashed right through it, sending the pine cone itself flying three or four feet into the air. A little later, looking madder than thunder, he sped back past me.

I felt much better. Rufe and Crab were a little behind me, and Dixie’d just chopped off a head, which kind of disqualified him. Things were looking up.

So, continuing at full speed, I knighted the last standing pine cone as gently as possible and whirled Buck to charge back the way we’d come.

I roared back past Rufe and Crab and could see that except for Natcho I could win. And Buck was just as fast as Diablo, so if Natcho made a mistake, I could even beat him too.

Also going as fast as I was, I was picking up time on both Dixie and Natcho.

I really did saber the next pine cone neatly, sending a few chips flying, and then there was only one more pine cone between me and Buck and the stream, and we were going like greased lightning.

Old Keats told me once about a Greek word called “
hubris,
” which he said meant false pride. Or a sort of stupid confidence that gets turned inside out and comes out arrogance.

Anyway, I really whacked at that last pine cone and damnere got jerked out of the saddle as I realized how tough a two- or three-pound pine cone can be. My blade had gone about halfway through the cone, and between the sudden pressures being exerted, my arm almost came out of its socket, and would have except that the goddamn pole came out of the ground instead.

I guess that was better than me being ripped off old Buck, but not much better. He went into a circle, and I was left leaning
about parallel to the ground, with my arm stretched out, and the saber after that, and then the pine cone, and then the trailing pole. I grabbed for the saber with my other hand too and cut it trying to get free.

Then, about the time I struggled back to a sitting-up position, Rufe and Crab hurtled by me on their way back, but I still had that awful problem.

Finally, with both hands, I pulled the saber loose from that heavy, sticky pine cone.

Humiliated as hell, I still made the best ride I could on the way back.

The others were there before I jumped Buck over the stream, but I didn’t pick up too much water with the saber this time and I at least got back in while everybody else was still breathing heavy.

I gave Igor his saber, handle first. As he took it, I said, “You can put it back. It’s not only drawn blood, but pine-cone sap.” As I started to hold my other hand to stop the bleeding, Igor grinned slightly and put his saber in its scabbard. Then he handed me a handkerchief to hold against the flowing blood.