The Cowboy and the Cossack (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) (39 page)

Even Shad now said in a kind of relaxed way, “It ain’t exactly time f’r rejoicin’ yet, but a couple a’ you fellas break out some Jack Daniel’s. Hittin’ the top of a mountain pass is always worth a good drink.”

We broke out the bourbon and shared the bottles back and forth.

And that’s the way that ninth quiet day and night was.

And the next of those good days, the tenth since we’d left Bruk buried on the top of that lonely hillside, went just as well. Once or twice I even had the strange, haunting thought that his death had somehow given each and all of us safe passage.

I know for sure he would have wished it that way.

But I should have also known that no man’s death can ever give safe passage to any other man’s life.

At the end of that tenth day, when the sun was gone, yet there was still light in the sky, I could see that Rostov was suddenly disturbed about something. He signaled abruptly for a halt, and we rode quickly back to where the others were now starting to set up camp.

Mushy and Crab had gathered some wood together for a fire, and all it needed now was a match. Rostov dismounted near them and said, “Don’t light that until after dark. And then keep the fire low.”

Mushy and Crab gave each other brief, puzzled glances and Crab said, “Sonofabitch. Shad just tol’ us the same damn thing.”

Mushy shrugged. “That’s how come we ain’t yet lit it.”

Shad walked into camp now, from where he’d tied up Red. He got there in time to hear the last words Mushy had said, and the two big men looked at each other for a silent moment, their eyes level.

Then Rostov said, “You saw it, too.”

Shad nodded. “’Bout thirty minutes ago. Maybe ten, twelve miles b’hind us.”

Some of the other cowboys and cossacks were gathering around, and in Russian Rostov asked a question of Kirdyaga and Yakov, who’d just come in from patrolling far behind the herd. From their short, uncertain answers, they didn’t have any more idea what was going on than I did.

Slim, who almost always saw everything there was to see, said, “Jus’ what’d you two fellas happen t’ spot all that distance b’hind us?”

“A small, unusual wisp of cloud,” Rostov said. “It faded so quickly in the rays of the setting sun that it might possibly have been an optical illusion.”

“Or hell, at that time a’ day,” Slim said agreeably, “maybe y’r eyes was just playin’ tricks on ya’.”

“It was smoke,” Shad said quietly. “From a fire that hadn’t been built long, an’ was then put out fast.”

Rostov nodded. “That’s what I believe it was.”

There was a brief, grim silence among us in the now swiftly darkening camp. Smoke in the distance behind us meant humans were there, but after that it was anyone’s guess.

“Hell,” Purse muttered nervously, putting words to what we were all thinking, “it might just be a couple of trappers—or all the bloody Tartars in the world!”

Rostov swung up onto his black. “I intend to go back and find out.”

“Not by yourself,” Shad said. “I’m as curious as you are.”

Rostov turned toward him in the saddle. “Say three of each of us?”

Shad nodded.

So a few minutes later, in the now complete dark, six of us were riding silently and swiftly back along the route we’d come that day.

The number six had been just about right on Rostov’s part, which Shad had immediately understood and agreed to. We made up a small but pretty fair striking force if some kind of a fight should come to pass. And at the same time, all things equal, there were enough men left back with the herd to move it and, if need be, protect it.

Sergeant Nick and the giant Kirdyaga were riding just behind Rostov. And Slim and I were pacing the two of them right behind Shad. In both cases Rostov and Shad had left damned good men in charge of the herd, men who also spoke the other outfit’s language—Old Keats and Igor.

Just thinking on that subject, and the way both bosses had arranged everything back at camp pretty neatly, almost like leaving a will, sort of tended to add to the uneasiness I was already feeling.

Leaning forward a little, I said in a low voice that I tried to fill with good-natured, devil-may-care humor, “Say, boss, ya’ think we’ll make it back alive?”

Slim was the only one who bothered to answer me. In an equally low voice he said, “Hell, Levi, the only reason we come along at all is t’ make sure these dumb cossacks don’t get lost in the dark.”

And though they didn’t help all that much, those were the last words spoken in a long time.

After another hour or so, the huge three-quarter Siberian moon appeared slowly over the horizon, seeming to nearly fill that part of the sky and spilling its bleak, cool light all over the world around us.

A mile or two later, moving at an easy, soundless lope in the soft ground, Shad and Rostov suddenly both pulled up almost as though they were one single rider.

At the exact and same moment the two of them had heard or sensed something that none of the rest of us had. But then, in
the absolutely total, almost deafening silence, there was a tiny, dry click of sound far ahead. It must have been a mile away, but it was the unmistakable sound of an unshod pony’s hoof hitting a small rock.

And the way it turned out, that slight sound was a terribly costly mistake.

Shad and Rostov instantly turned to the right, up toward a nearby mile-long line of thick pines, each of them walking their horses as gently as if each hoof was coming down on an eggshell that musn’t be broken. And the other four of us followed as quietly as possible. Buck’s left forehoof struck lightly against a clump of earth with a faint whisper of a thud, and I would have rebuked him with a slight hit between his ears, except that I suddenly realized that even that gentle touch would make more noise than Buck had made in our deathly silent ride up the hill.

It still might be peaceful hunters or trappers ahead of us up there. But I had one nifty thought as we moved into the hidden protection of the pines and sat silently on our horses. We hadn’t made one damn sound louder than hands barely rubbing together might make, so if those bastards were Tartars, and moved like ghosts, they were up against some vastly superior ghosts.

Because we knew about them and they didn’t know about us.

And they were Tartars.

Thirteen of them.

They first appeared as silent black specks moving slowly over a hill in that cold, crystal moonlight more than a mile away. I couldn’t understand why they were moving so slowly, because you could follow that vast, trampled trail of our cows at a full gallop in jet-black hell. And it even occurred to me that you could follow it pretty damn fast if you were blind as a bat just by following the plain old smell of cowshit leading you along your way.

But still they came on slow.

They were so slow that there was plenty of time to watch them.

In utter silence, Rostov took out his telescope and studied them. Then he handed it to Shad, who looked briefly and passed it in turn to Slim. I was the last one to look through it, and by the time it finally got to me, the Tartars were less than a quarter of a mile away.

Still keeping one hand on Buck’s nose, so he wouldn’t snort or come up with a foolish whinny, I raised the glass and stared at the oncoming Tartars. It took a minute to get them in view, but when I did it was as though they were about spitting distance away in the silvery light.

And Christ! Like the ones I’d seen a long time ago, before Khabarovsk, that half-dressed, long-haired bunch gave me that same feeling again of wolves on horseback. What Bruk had told me came strongly back to mind. About them being descendants of a great blue wolf. And about that handful of rice and blood for their daily ration. And about him respecting them.

I sure as hell agreed with the respect he felt, but not having his wisdom, I was feeling that respect out of pure fear. Yet I’d have rather died than show that fear to Shad or Rostov or any of the others. So I just looked, and tried to keep down any slight noise that my hard-pressed gut might start to make.

They were, like the earlier ones I’d seen, armed with every kind of a mean weapon that had ever been invented. Some of them had spears or lances, or whatever makes the difference between them, and all of them had bows and arrows and viciously curved and jagged daggers and swords of one kind or another. And with their strangely painted horses, and the feeling of deadliness and death about them, that was about all I wanted to know. But for just a second longer my eye stayed to see that some had guns, others what I took to be crossbows and wicked-looking wide-bladed hatchets. And with all those images of tools made just for the one purpose of killing, I handed Rostov back his telescope. If there had been one thing I could mention just then, it would have been the fact that a riderless horse was being led down below. I was convinced that that was the horse who’d
kicked the rock a while back, and those other Tartars had killed the dumb rider who was on him when he did it.

But everything was still too silent to hardly even breathe easy, let alone say anything.

Taking the scope, Rostov gestured with his hand so that I could figure out what he meant. I was at the far end of our line of horsemen, on Rostov’s right. And a few yards still farther to the right there was an eight-foot-high steep rise of ground. I was supposed to get off Buck and go up on that rise to see what was beyond it, for whatever reason.

So I nodded and got off Buck without using the stirrups. Not wanting to cause a creaking of saddle leather, I pulled my feet out of the stirrups, put my arms around his neck and lowered myself in complete silence to the soft ground.

The moonlight and my eyes were working so well together that I even saw a small leafy branch along the way and stepped well beyond it so there wouldn’t even be the soft murmur of a dry leaf being crushed underfoot.

And with that kind of careful silence, still not knowing what the hell I was supposed to be doing, I at last raised my face over that eight-foot-high rise. The rise was only about two feet across the top before it sloped down again on the other side.

And exactly two feet away from me, raising his face at the same time, was a fourteenth Tartar warrior who’d come up to his side of the rise just as quiet as I had.

I don’t know how ugly he thought I was, but I can triple guarantee how ugly I thought he was. For one thing, the bastard’s astonished lips suddenly drew back and he had no teeth. In one of those dumb things that sometimes flash through your mind, my first thought was that maybe that was why he only ate rice mixed with blood. There was no goddamn way he could eat much else. And on top of that, he was scarred all to hell and was missing one eye. His right eye was just a hollow place with the lids of it sucked back into the hollow and a narrow line of sightless black between them.

But he surely could see good with that other eye. And seeing me, he ducked back down as fast as I did, though our sudden movements even in that soft earth must have made a little noise.

And then, for whatever reasons make scared men the quickest to fight, we both bounded right back up over the two-foot ledge and smack at each other.

When we crashed into each other, he was reaching for a curved knife and I was trying to haul out my Navy Remington. But our head-on collision wasn’t too fair because I must have outweighed him by forty pounds, and he went flying far backward down his side of the rise.

He was littler than me, but quick as a wildcat. Landing on his back about five yards down and away, he flipped around and up onto his feet in one swift motion, a strung bow and an arrow instantly ready to go. He let fly as I dropped to one knee and heard the arrow go whooshing by near my right ear.

Then, as I finally hauled my heavy old .44 out and cocked it, he screamed a warning to the others below. And then the dumb bastard came charging up at me with only his bow in his hands. At the rate he was coming, I guessed it would take him about one and a half seconds to get to me. But a whole lot went in and out of my mind just then. First of all, I’d never ever pulled that old gun in anger, and secondly I’d sure as hell never shot anybody. And at the same instant I couldn’t help but feel sorry for that poor crazy idiot racing up toward me. How can you aim your gun and shoot some poor bastard who’s only got one eye, no teeth at all, and is also underweight? Furthermore, what could he do with that dumb bow he was waving fiercely toward my chest and neck? Tickle me to death?

All of those jumbled thoughts of mine couldn’t have taken more than one second of his swift charge. For in the last half second Rostov leaped over the rise and landed in front of me, his revolver drawn. As the Tartar lunged forward, jabbing out toward him with his bow, Rostov’s gun roared and the Tartar went flying down the sloping earth for the last time.

And it was only then I saw that the Tartar’s bow was also fashioned as a deadly spear at one end. And that sharp spear point was sticking through Rostov’s right arm.

The bow was still strung, so the expanding tension of the rawhide was tearing Rostov’s flesh. “Get this thing out of me!” he snarled.

I was too damn slow to shoot before, but I was fast now. As he took his revolver from his nerveless right fingers with his left hand and jabbed it back into its holster I already had a knife out and had cut the bowstring. Then, though it was a tough sonofabitch, I broke the bow itself, snapping it between hands that had never been so strong before. And finally, I grabbed the wickedly flanged spearhead sticking through Rostov’s arm and jerked on it fiercely, pulling it and what was left of the shaft cleanly out.

This had all happened within seconds. And now instead of sitting, or even falling down, as I expected him to, Rostov rushed back to our horses with me following him.

But even in that short run I more or less sized up what was happening. Rostov, being closer to where I was than Shad, had come over to take care of me. The others were already galloping down to attack the Tartars below. And I suddenly realized that all of them had to be killed or they’d spread the word about us being there to every other Tartar warrior in Siberia.