The Cowboy and the Cossack (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) (35 page)

Most of us were beginning to figure that hell wasn’t made out of fire and brimstone after all, but was made out of mud and rain.

On the sixth morning, as pitch-black night and gray-black dawn fought against each other vaguely and dimly in the east, all us Slash-Diamonders except for Shad and the men on herd were hunched miserably down in our slickers around a campfire
that had its own special little fight going, spitting and hissing angrily as it struggled to survive against the rain. And most of us grouped silently around it felt pretty much the same bitter way the fire sounded, like plain furiously spitting back at the blinding, unending torrent.

Mushy was pouring himself some coffee and Crab, next to him, held out his cup. “I’ll take some too.”

“Git it y’rself!” Mushy put the pot right back past Crab’s outstretched cup and onto the fire.

“Well fuck you!” Crab reached out and poured his own.

Acting like that wasn’t usually Mushy’s style, but almost everybody there was in a short-tempered, mean mood that was just shy of being downright savage.

It seemed to me that Slim and Old Keats gave each other a brief, expressionless glance, and then Slim said easily, “By God, I swear we coulda made it this far, in all this water, without ever gittin’ offa that goddamned big boat we was on.”

Old Keats took a sip of coffee. “I’m reminded of forty days and forty nights of rain. All of you remember that, of course, being conscientious students of the Bible.”

Several of the men gave him darkly annoyed glances, and Rufe said gruffly, “I ain’t no conscientious student a’ nothin’!”

“Anybody brought out a Bible right now,” Mushy snarled, “and I’d shove it up his ass!”

“Now hold on, you fellas,” Slim said very quietly and seriously. “A man c’n learn from damnere anythin’, if he just puts ’is mind to it. Even the Bible. An’ I just got me a hunch that Ol’ Keats is thinkin’ on the very same notion as me.” He paused. “An’ it just well might be goddamned important t’ all of us.”

“Thinkin’ on what?” Big Yawn had been one of the rescuers of the speckled cow and her calf, and he still had small bits of hard-caked mud on him here and there to prove it. He was so fed up with everything that I don’t think he knew how harsh and tough his voice was coming out.
“Well?”

Deadly serious and thoughtful, Slim said, “It just might be the answer t’ all our problems. An’ it sure beats the hell outta all a’ you sittin’ around here, gradually workin’ yourselves up t’ward tearin’ each other limb from limb. What d’ you think, Keats?”

Keats frowned in deep concentration. “I think you’re right, Slim. It’d take a little work, but at least it would get us and the cows comfortable and dry and out of all this rain and misery.”

“Us
and
the cows?” Rufe frowned. “
Nothin’
can keep us an’ all them dumb beasts outta the rain!”

“Frankly, Keats,” Slim said, a little miffed, “I ain’t sure it’s even worth tellin’ these dumb bastards what we can do.”

“What in
hell can
we do?” Crab demanded. And by now the rest of us were all staring at them, curious and hopeful as we waited.

“
Well
?” Mushy half shouted. “F’r
Christ’s
sakes,
what
?”

“It’s just as simple as hell,” Keats explained. “All we have t’ do is build us an ark.”

While everyone else slowly reacted, staring with vacant disbelief at Keats, Slim now plunged ahead. “By
God
, Keats, ya’ got right t’ their simple hearts. Just look at all them grateful, water-soaked eyes.”

Big Yawn finally almost yelled, “
Goddamn, sonofabitch
!”

“See?” Slim said to Keats. “Big Yawn’s already gettin’ excited about it!”

“You dirty
bastards
!” Crab snarled, but for the first time in days he was holding back a grin rather than an inner anger.

“I take it that that’s our first negative vote,” Keats said to Slim.

“Hell, Crab,” Slim argued, “try t’ be reasonable f’r once. Ol’ Noah got two a’ every livin’ animal on his ark, so us gittin’ that Slash-D herd aboard ours ain’t gonna pose no problem at all.”

Rufe was shaking his head slowly. “You misleadin’
pricks
!” he grumbled. But like everybody else, his whole outlook was changing for the better.

“Misleading?” Keats looked wounded. “We said right up front it’d be a little work.”

“That’s right.” Slim nodded gravely. “All we need for starts is one a’ you fellas t’ volunteer t’ run out an’ chop down a couple thousand trees.”

Crab stood up and poured the last drops of his coffee into the fire. “Just one nice thing ’bout you two bastards,” he muttered. “Y’r sense a’ humor’s the only dry thing f’r miles around.”

“Watch it,” Mushy told Crab. “Wouldn’t want t’ dampen their spirits.”

“Well, hell, Slim.” Old Keats shrugged his shoulders. “Small-minded men have always made fun of us geniuses.”

“Fuck ’em.” Slim grunted. “I wouldn’t build ’em no ark now if they begged me.”

“One blessin’ about all this goddamned rain,” Rufe put in. “Every one of us gits t’ have a wet dream every night.”

And that’s the good, relaxed way it now started to be.

A little later, when Shad rode up and said, “Time t’ move out,” there was a little easy horseplay among some of the men as they walked off. And Purse, looking at the untended fire quickly dying in the rain, called after them, “Hey! Somebody bring me some water t’ put this out!”

It wasn’t exactly that our whole greasy-sack outfit was miraculously and instantly overjoyed about everything in life. But the sullen resentment and anger that had been silently building up just wasn’t there anymore.

Keats and Slim were near me, and as I tossed away what was left of my coffee, Keats said, “Slim, we ought t’ go into that new thing they’re startin’ up, vaudeville.”

“Huh?” Slim said as he and I both frowned, not knowing the word.

“All ya’ do is make jokes that make people feel better, an’ damn if ya’ don’t get paid for it.”

“Christ,” Slim said as they started away, “I’m ready right now.”

A minute later, swinging up into Buck’s saddle, I was thinking that if anybody ever got paid for making somebody else feel better, Slim and Old Keats sure as hell deserved an extra month’s bonus salary. The men mounting around me were no longer grimly silent, but were just naturally cussing out their horses, the rain or each other, and sometimes all three at once. And now and then you could hear some equally natural, low laughter among them.

As I reined Buck out and away from the others, Shad rode up beside me. He spoke quietly, glancing keenly at the others. “Encouraging them gettin’ t’ like the rain s’ much.”

“With much more of it, boss, we figure we c’n build an ark.” He looked at me and I added, “Slim an’ Keats’s idea.”

“Sounds like.” Shad squinted briefly up against the rain and the sky. “If this was Montana, it’d quit t’day. In five, six hours.”

He rode away, and before spurring on to join Rostov I looked up where he’d been looking. The sky was a million ugly miles of gray-streaked, rain-swept blackness, and it hadn’t changed one damn little bit since yesterday or any of the days before.

Five or six hours later, the rain stopped.

Rostov and I had been mounting a low rise about two miles ahead of the herd, which was still out of our sight beyond some rounded hills behind us.

And then, as though an invisible giant had suddenly put a protective hand over us, the torrent of falling rain was instantly gone. It happened so fast I didn’t quite believe it, especially with water still dripping off the front of my hat, and tending to fool me.

But the noise and the darkness were gone. The abrupt silence was so complete that I thought for a moment I’d gone deaf. And the sudden light of the sun was blinding in its brightness. Rostov pointed off, and I turned, blinking, to see the damndest sight. There was an immense, solid wall of dark, almost impenetrable rain that stretched and roared as far as the eye could see, and it
was rushing away from us more swiftly than any horse could ever gallop. One instant an entire plain would be drenched and nearly invisible and in the next moment, as that final, black curtain of rain swept over and beyond it, the plain would be a soggy, muddy field of grass that was now, suddenly, basking in the sun.

“An interesting phenomenon,” Rostov said.

All I could think of to add was “
Jesus.
”

And by then the great black wall of rain, with occasional bolts of lightning flashing briefly within it, was already a mile or so away as it receded swiftly in the distance.

The huge, burning sun went to work quickly in the now clear blue sky, and by nightfall most of the world around us was just about dry again. At supper our spirits were way up, and Old Keats and Slim had to take a lot of criticism about the idea they’d had that morning. Crab pretty much summed it up over a serving of beans that had stayed steaming hot in the plate for the first time in a week. “All right, you dumb bastards. If we’d gone ahead an’ built us that goddamned ark this mornin’, what the hell’d we do with it now?”

“Christ, that’s simple,” Slim said. “We’d make the world’s biggest outhouse outta it. At least a thousand-seater.”

Old Keats nodded. “Of course if we put in different levels, it’d be better to be sittin’ t’ward the top than t’ward the bottom.”

I turned in early, my bedroll warm and comfortable around me. For about two seconds I considered the beautiful difference between wet and dry, and then I was out.

Slim woke me for my turn on the herd, the late graveyard. I rode out to relieve Purse, and an hour or so later Shad suddenly appeared alongside me.

Out there in the wide, dark meadow stretching below us, even the cattle were now feeling a hundred percent better, and a few of them were grunting and lowing back and forth in quiet, contented cow talk.

“Couldn’t be more peaceful,” I said to Shad. “Why don’t you go back an’ grab forty winks?”

He was silent for a long moment. Then, leaning forward and rubbing Red between the ears, he said, “No—not yet.”

From the far side of the herd Big Yawn softly sang a couple of choruses of “I’m Leaving Ohio,” which would normally be enough to make anybody leave if they were free to.

But still Shad remained, watching and listening, and seeming to almost be damnere smelling at the clear, unmoving air.

And then, very quietly and without saying anything, Rostov rode his big black out of the night and up to us.

Both of them just sitting there silently was getting kind of spooky. After a long moment I said, “Much as I’m enjoyin’ all this cheerful company, you fellas know somethin’ that I don’t?”

They both ignored me, and Shad spoke in a low voice to Rostov. “I c’n feel somethin’ out there, but it ain’t nothin’ I know about.”

Rostov nodded. “I believe I do. But we’ll both know soon.”

This was getting downright scary. In my mind’s eye I could see an entire army of Tartars sneaking up on us through the dark so stealthily that they made absolutely no sound, but moved along like ghosts.

And then the peaceful silence was suddenly shattered by the fiercest, most horrifying and earth-shaking noise I’d ever heard. It sounded like a thousand cougars lined up side by side and roaring furiously in perfect unison.

Buck reared nervously out of his half sleep, and you could sense the startled herd starting to mill around, instantly spooked.

Holding Buck down as the noise abruptly stopped I said, “What the
Christ
was
that
?”

As I was speaking, the nearly full moon appeared quickly from behind scudding clouds, filling the meadow and surrounding hills with sudden, silvery light. Beyond the herd, on the crest of a hill, I had a brief glimpse of some kind of a huge beast before it streaked out of sight over the far side of the crest, moving with incredible speed.

Rostov said to Shad, “Once you gave me a Montana puppy.” He nodded toward where the beast had disappeared. “In return, I’d like to present you with a Siberian kitten.”

“Thanks,” Shad said dryly. “Who’s gonna put the pink ribbon around its neck?”

“What the hell
is
it?” I asked.

“A Siberian tiger. They’re larger than Bengals or any other species.” Rostov was studying the far moonlit hills keenly. “That one over there will weigh approximately a thousand pounds.”

Shad rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “All these strange smells, an’ then the moon comin’ out bright, maybe scared ’im off.”

Rostov shrugged slightly. “He’s probably hungry from not hunting during the rains. Also, at this time of year he has a mate and possibly some youngsters to take care of.” He hesitated. “And these snow tigers are very brave.”

“Then let’s go check ’im out.”

Shad rode down the moonlit slope with Rostov at his side, and figuring I was somehow included, I spurred after them.

The three of us were pushing our way through the now close-packed, defensively grouped cattle when the tiger hit the herd. Moving silently, but with the speed and impact of a cannon ball, he appeared from nowhere and charged a big bull longhorn standing a few feet out and away from the others. And that particular bull, for whatever personal reasons, felt like standing its ground instead of running, so it whirled swiftly toward the big onrushing cat.

And longhorns, if they feel like fighting, are among the toughest creatures that the Good Lord ever created. With their powerful hooves and sharp, raking horns, they’ve been known to battle grizzly bears to a standoff. And one of them, in a belligerent mood, actually routed and damnere demolished an entire regiment of General Winfield Scott’s army on its way to Mexico.

So that unsuspecting cat was running up against a whole lot more than a simple Guernsey milk cow.

But by the same token, that bull longhorn sure as hell didn’t know what it was facing either.

The whole fight, including everything, lasted maybe as long as one second. The longhorn swung at empty air with its great horns and the flying cat whacked him on the side of his massive head with one huge paw. The longhorn may have been dead, its neck broken, as it hit the ground. But one way or the other it was surely dead an instant later as the tiger whirled and crunched his teeth down into the back of its neck. And then, though it was hard to believe, that big, powerful cat actually started trotting away, half carrying and half dragging the huge, lifeless carcass of the bull.