The Cowboy and the Cossack (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) (46 page)

It was the damnedest thing how nobody had to say one word, in the silence of all that earth and all that sky.

We knew that he should be buried right there, and some of us dug a good, deep grave with straight sides. Then, still silently, we wrapped him gently in a warm blanket and lowered him down.

There was one more small thing that had to be done. So I got down beside him and pulled the blanket a little away from his eyes and his face. He just had to be able to see.

And there was one more thing I didn’t know about, that was even more important, that had yet to be done.

Looking down at Shad, Rostov slowly took out his great saber. He drew the blade’s sharp edge across his arm so that the last blood on it would be his own.

Then he put the saber back in its scabbard, and I thought there would be nothing more.

But there was.

Rostov now unbuckled the belt that held his saber. Then slowly and very gently, he put both the belt and saber down beside Shad.

Then we started slowly to fill the grave, and still not one word had been spoken.

But much had been said.

Final Notes

FROM THE DIARY OF LEVI DOUGHERTY

L
OOKING BACK
at the way we finally got home to Montana, I guess the most unusual thing about it is that we did it sort of backwards.

We spent a week or so in Bakaskaya, and the two or three thousand men, women and children who made up that small fortress of free cossacks took us in and treated us as their own.

But when it came time to go, they were afraid for us to head back by way of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. Both Tartars and the Tzar’s men might be laying for us back there. And even if we weren’t killed or thrown in jail, but just delayed, winter was coming on and the port of Vladivostok was often froze up solid for months.

So, all in all, it was agreed that we’d just keep heading more or less west. Thinking about it for the first time, that struck me as a funny kind of a thing. A fella leaves home and he doesn’t necessarily ever have to turn around and retrace his steps to go back. If he goes in one straight line far enough, why there he’ll be one day right smack back home.

If a man anyplace in the world holds up two fingers, then they’re as close together as, say, two fingers. But if you move outward from one finger and keep going that way, then the most faraway thing in the world, finally, is that other finger that’s been right next to it all the time.

A second thing that should have surprised me, but somehow didn’t, was the fact that Old Keats decided not to go with us, but to stay. They’d told us all that Bakaskaya was our home, and they’d meant it. They’d put Keats up in Lieutenant Bruk’s room, and that room was a lot like Bruk himself, open and spacious, yet somehow warm and comfortable at the same time, with a fireplace and a couple of big chairs and one whole wall full of books that Keats was just starting to be able to read.

When Old Keats told Slim and me and the others about his decision to stay, his voice was low and a little gruff. And then he said, “Hell, what’d I do back there anyway, except waste away m’ last years associatin’ with the likes a’ you. Here I c’n spend some time teachin’. An’ I c’n help them look after the herd an’ gradually build it up.” He hesitated. “So don’t argue.”

Finally, just as quietly, Slim said a thing that was already fairly apparent by our silence. “Nobody’s arguin’, Keats.” And then, even more quietly, he added, “But that sure don’t mean that ya’ won’t be sorely missed.”

When it came time to go, and Old Keats and I faced each other alone for the last time, we were both hard put for words.

Finally, choosing from among a thousand hours of things I wanted to tell him, I said, “I like your poem.”

After a moment he said, “Each man is his own poem, Levi. Keep yours a good one.”

And that’s about all we could manage, except for a hard hug, and then I went away.

But in leaving Bakaskaya, there was one argument we flat out lost. Rostov said that he, Igor, Nick and every other cossack who’d been with us before were going to take us safe out of Russia. We were going clear to Odessa, on the Black Sea, and on the map it looked like about a million miles. And also, being outlaws from the Tzar, they would be in real danger.

We tried to stop them from coming with us, but we had about as much chance as the night stopping the sun from coming up.

Being free, well-mounted horsemen, with spare mounts and nothing to hold us up, we made good, fast time every day and every week and finally every month. But that was one long haul. Somebody later figured out that from Bakaskaya to Odessa was one hell of a lot further than a trip clear across the whole United States.

Early in the trip, about two weeks out, we passed the biggest lake I’d ever seen, called Baykal. It could have been an ocean as
far as I was concerned. And camping along the shore, Rostov told us a staggering thing about it. “They’ve estimated,” he said, “that with its size and depth, when a drop of water enters Lake Baykal at the north, it takes four hundred years before it comes out at the south.”

“Christ,” Crab muttered, “I never even thought of a drop a’ water
lastin’
that long.”

But still, somehow, that one drop of water surely was something to think on.

A couple of months later, the Siberian winter started to thunder down out of the north like a white, cold enemy as big as the whole sky. But by then we were starting to move south and west out of the toughest winter weather. Farther up north and east, Rostov told us, it often hit seventy below, and the sap freezing inside a tree would sometimes break that tree in half with a cracking roar like a cannon going off.

The weather was bad enough where we were though, and if your forehead started to sweat a little from hard riding, it wouldn’t be long before you had icicles on your eyebrows. One time when I was complaining about that very thing, and rubbing ice from around my eyes, Igor shrugged and said, “There is a saying, Levi, that one Siberian summer is worth ten Siberian winters.”

And miserably cold as I was just then, thinking of all the beautiful land and weather we’d gone through with the herd, whoever made up that saying had a point.

Finally we crossed the southern tip of the Ural Mountain range, which is really nothing much more than foothills that somehow got called mountains, and we headed more southerly than before.

In the next little while the weather changed a whole lot for the better, and within two or three weeks we came into sight of the Black Sea. I don’t know who named it, because it wasn’t black or even dark at all, but was as blue as some kind of a sky that God had accidentally made out of water.

Our Sea Papers were still in order, and we got aboard a boat at Odessa. We had to change boats four or five times to get to Philadelphia finally, going through strange-sounding seas like the Marmara and Aegean, and then the Mediterranean, which took us out beyond the Rock of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic. From Philadelphia, we took a train, and that was the end of the trip.

Nobody got killed along that long way, but we still lost some men.

Natcho got enamored of a Spanish lady while we were laying over in Málaga. He decided, with that gleaming smile of his, that he was more Spanish than Mexican anyway, and that’s the last we saw of him.

We lost three more in Philadelphia. Link, whose arm still didn’t work and maybe never would, went to Georgia to see some family. He told Shiny he’d show up later at the Slash-Diamond, but he never did. And Sammy the Kid and Rufus just decided they liked the town and were going to stay on for a while. Though what they ever saw in Philadelphia, I don’t know.

The last one we lost, which came as a shock, was Chakko. We had a layover in Denver, and a couple of promoters got him drunk and signed him up to be part of a traveling show. He was billed as “The Only Living Ogallala Sioux to Ever Completely Encompass the Globe.” For ten dollars a week he was supposed to do some trick shooting with his bow and arrows and say a few lines to the people. From what we later heard, Chakko did fine with the bow and arrows but had a habit of forgetting his lines in front of the audience and filling in with “Fuck it!” instead, which must have been kind of disconcerting.

So the way it was, six of the original fifteen in our greasy-sack outfit got back to the Slash-Diamond Ranch after a good more than a year of being gone. There was Big Yawn, Purse, Crab, Shiny, Slim and me.

But of all that long trip back, the part I remember best is on the hills looking down at Odessa and the Black Sea, where
the cossacks finally took their leave. It was too risky for them to come right down into town with us.

We were all kind of shook up about this final parting, knowing that in those vast distances that would lie between us, none of us would likely ever see or hear about any of the others again. It was one of those times when not one word you say is right, and yet somehow, every word is.

After we’d had a few drinks and made a few quiet toasts, Slim said to the cossacks, “One more thing. We all talked it over, an’ we’re gonna be jugglin’ around on different boats an’ God knows what all.” He paused. “So no matter whether ya’ like it or not, we’re stickin’ you fellas with our string a’ horses.”

There was a dead silence.

That string included Shad’s big Red, my Buck, Slim’s Charlie, Natcho’s Diablo, Purse’s Vixen, even Dixie’s Shiloh, and a bunch more of the best horses that ever put hoof to ground.

Finally, in that silence, I said, “They’re f’r Bakaskaya. Just two horses’re nailed down. Shad’s Red is Rostov’s. An’ my Buck is yours, Igor.”

Igor could hardly talk, but he managed to say, “You gave me a fine horse already.”

Feeling the same way that Igor was, I said, “Can’t ya’ give a good man somethin’ twice?”

Rostov stepped to Red and rubbed his forehead and muzzle gently. Then he came back to us. Reaching down into his shirt, he took off the leather thong he wore there, with the small leather pouch that held a handful of earth from Bakaskaya.

And he handed it to me.

Then the others slowly did the same. Nick gave his to Slim, and Igor handed his to Crab. There were eleven cossacks and eleven cowboys left, so it worked out exactly right. And, sometimes, a handful of earth can be worth more than a good horse.

One last thing that Rostov said to me before we went away. “I spoke to you of chess, and of life, one time before, Levi.”

“Yes, sir?”

“In chess, every piece can be killed and taken from the board, except the king.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “And it is so in life. A man who is truly a king never dies.”

We looked at each other for a long moment.

He was thinking of Shad.

And I was thinking of both of them.

Readers’ Guide for
The Cowboy and the Cossack

Discussion Questions

1. What’s the significance of the title? What would you have called it?
   
2. Did Rostov do the right thing at the end of the book?
   
3. What were the similarities between the Cossacks and the cowboys? How did they differ?
   
4. What does this novel have to say about the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union and the relationship between the countries then and now?
   
5. Why do you suppose that Huffaker chose to include among the Montana cowboys characters like Sammy the Kid and Shiny Joe and Link Jackson?
   

Suggestions for Further Reading

I
F YOU
liked the friendships that develop between the Montana cowboys and the Russian Cossacks in
The Cowboy and the Cossack
, as well as the epic nature of their joint quest, the most obvious read-alike is Larry McMurtry’s
Lonesome Dove
, which takes the camaraderie and long-distance cattle drive of
The Cowboy and the Cossack,
adds two unforgettable retired Texas rangers, and puts them on a journey from Texas to Montana. It’s another epic adventure on a very different frontier than Huffaker’s.

If you liked the coming-of-age aspect of Huffaker’s novel, try Jack Schafer’s
Shane
, with its unforgettable last line: “He was the man who rode into our little valley out of the heart of the great glowing West and when his work was done rode back whence he had come and he was Shane.” There’s also a nice parallel between Levi’s adulation of Shad (and Rostov) and Joey’s admiration for Shane.

If what you enjoyed about
The Cowboy and the Cossack
was how it broadened and deepened your idea of a “Western,” try these:

Paulette Jiles’s
The Color of Lightning
illuminates a morally complex time and place in American history—from the last years of the Civil War until the early 1870s. This was the period when Texas was opening up its land for settlement, and the Kiowa and Comanche Indians, losing their traditional hunting grounds, were kidnapping and/or murdering the settlers. At the same time, the US government was trying to corral (almost literally) the Indians on reservations. (Incidentally, Britt Johnson, the black freed slave and Indian hostage hunter who’s the main character in Jiles’s novel, was the inspiration for Alan Le May’s 1954 novel,
The Searchers
, which was turned into the 1956 John Ford
film of the same name. In it, the character based—very loosely—on Johnson is, through the vagaries of the creative process and Hollywood casting, played by John Wayne.)

Thomas Berger’s
Little Big Man
is a novel that I think should be required reading for every high school or college student. Like Mark Twain’s
Huckleberry Finn
, it addresses important issues of race and identity.

Emma Bull’s
Territory
is set just before the mythic gunfight at the OK Corral in 1881. It’s one of those novels that I characterize as “elastic realism”: alternate history with a little bit of fantasy thrown into the mix. Part of the fun here is having what you thought you knew about all those events undercut. When I finished
Territory
, I was more than halfway convinced that Bull’s version has as much truth in it as the old legends do, fantasy and all.