I ran Buck down to the river’s edge, to go and get him. But then, as though God felt like playing a simple, mean trick on me and on the whole world, the tree branch shifted in the tide and Dixie was tugged away by the ebbing, muddy water and disappeared beneath its surface.
And he just never showed up again.
Far up and across the river you could just barely see a little of Khabarovsk—gray buildings with the gray rain against a gray sky.
Last night I’d thought I’d never see Khabarovsk again, and I’d never dreamed that I wouldn’t see Dixie alive again.
Funny as hell, the way the world works.
I must have been looking at the river for a long time, because Igor finally put his hand on my shoulder, gently reminding me that we couldn’t stay there forever.
And we went away.
On the way back Igor rode ahead, leading Shiloh.
Buck just followed behind because I wasn’t pushing him much in the way of instructions or encouragement. The pain and sorrow in my mind kept slamming home the fact that in my own dumb way I’d done a whole lot too much pushing already. I’d pushed Dixie real hard, to the point of knocking him ass over teakettle, to try to show him that men ought to have a certain kind of nobility and a sense of duty toward others.
Somewhere along the line, Dixie had picked up real good on that nobility and that sense of duty toward others.
And it had killed him.
And it was my fault.
Finally, toward the end of that dark, bitter day, Igor and I caught back up to the herd that was now being driven in a north-by-westerly direction.
I was grateful that not much explaining had to be done. Shiloh’s still empty saddle pretty much told the story all by itself.
Purse, Big Yawn and Sammy were with the pack animals and the remuda, behind the herd. Igor went on ahead to join Shad as I led Shiloh over to the remuda and pulled up. I was about to get off and unsaddle the Appaloosa, but Purse spurred back and took a look at me. He swung down before I could. “I’ll do it.”
Sammy rode up silently, the skin under his eyes black from worry and grief.
Big Yawn rode back too, his huge, craggy face hard and thoughtful, and it seemed like about ten minutes between each time that anybody said anything.
Purse pulled slowly at the cinch strap to loosen it. “See ’im?”
I nodded just once. “River got ’im.”
Finally, Sammy said in a whisper, “I shoulda gone back with ya’, Levi.”
I shook my head. “No need.”
“Hadn’t been f’r me—” His voice choked and stopped.
I couldn’t tell him, or ever let him know, Dixie had deliberately followed behind him in the river. “Hell, Sammy, he’d a’ helped me ’r you ’r anybody else who was in a fix back there.”
Sammy glanced at me with a fleeting look of relief in his sorrow-filled eyes. What I’d said helped a little. But right then nothing could help enough, and he rode away again to be by himself.
Big Yawn now reached over and untied the bedroll on Shiloh, then took off the saddlebags. “I’ll put these here possibles a’ his on one a’ the packs.”
Big Yawn could have simply left those things on the saddle, but in his own way he was just trying to be helpful. And then he said, “Too damn bad, Levi.”
“Yeah.” Purse nodded.
“Well, hell,” I said quietly, “he was a friend t’ both a’ you too.”
“Yeah, but—” Big Yawn ran out of words and rode off with the bedroll and saddlebags.
Buck was as ready to fall down as I was, but I spurred him off now as Purse sent Shiloh toward the remuda with a slap on the rump.
I headed on around the herd to catch up with Rostov and take over my normal duties as messenger boy. And all along the way every puncher I passed had something quiet and sympathetic to say, as though Dixie’d been my goddamned brother or something.
Finally I caught up with Rostov, riding far point about a mile ahead of the herd.
He glanced at me. Then, with no mention of Dixie, he said flatly, “Did you see any sign of a pursuit?”
With everyone else feeling so bad about Dixie, this came as kind of a shock. I hesitated and then said harshly, “No! All we saw was a dead man in a muddy river!”
And then he said another thing that threw me also. “I liked that fight you had with him, with fists.”
“Well I’m glad you did, because neither one of us did, because bein’ pounded on ain’t all that much fun!”
And then he really got to me.
“His death was not your responsibility,” he said quietly, his eyes searching the far rain-swept distances ahead.
The best answer I could come up with was “Who said it was?”
“When he helped that young Sammy, he did so of his own free will and volition.”
I had to guess what “volition” meant but it wasn’t too hard, and the talk was reaching down into me where it made my voice unsteady. “He asked me if Sammy was scared. He was watchin’ him all the way in that water.”
Rostov’s eyes were still searching far ahead. “Anyone who could see knew that Dixie was following in your footsteps.”
My voice had been unsteady before, but it was ready to crack now. “There ain’t no footsteps t’ follow in a goddamn big bunch a’ water.”
And then Rostov hit me hardest of all. “As you are following in Shad’s.”
That voice of mine just wasn’t working at all by then, so I didn’t, and couldn’t, say a thing.
Rostov’s eyes never left the far distances ahead. “Shad has made you know that you are responsible for others. And in turn, you gave that gift to Dixie.” He paused. “Would you or Shad have ignored Sammy or done anything other than Dixie did last night?”
I couldn’t talk, but neither could I help but think of how Rostov and his cossacks were ready to die for the people, and for the spirit, of Bakaskaya.
And then he went on. “The gift Shad has given you and you gave Dixie, of caring for others, is sometimes hard to live with and always hard to die with.” He paused again. “But it is, and forever will be, the most treasured gift in the world.”
We rode on in silence, and a little later the night’s black darkness started to close in, seeming to squeeze away the now slowing rain, until finally the night was full upon us and the rain had stopped.
There was a broad meadow before us, and we camped there, our fires close to each other. I must have been starved, but I didn’t feel like eating, so I just took off my boots and climbed into my bedroll.
Before I’d passed out completely, Slim kneeled beside me. “Hey, Levi?”
“Yeah?”
“Shad an’ Old Keats’re out on the herd now, an’ I’m workin’ out a schedule. You feel up t’ takin’ the late graveyard?”
“Sure.”
And it seemed like I’d just leaned my head back when Slim was pushing me again and it was dead black night and time to go.
I pulled on my boots and saddled Buck, who felt about the same as I did, and rode out to relieve Natcho.
But even through all my exhaustion, the hammering, relentless sorrow I felt about Dixie just wouldn’t go away. That damned lifeless plaid shirt, and the lifeless body inside it, and that terrible gray, muddy water.
In a way, then, it reminded me of that poor, sad cow when we went off the boat at Vladivostok. And I couldn’t help but wonder how many lives are taken mercilessly by the cold, unfeeling waters of the world.
With all those grim thoughts, the wrong I’d done seemed more and more unforgivable. If I’d just minded my own goddamned business. If I just hadn’t told Dixie that Sammy was scared of the river. And the craziest part of it all was that I didn’t know whether to feel worse about the Dixie who was or the Dixie who was starting to be.
Given time, instead of death, that simple sonofabitch could have been great.
About then, while I was blaming myself all over again for Dixie, Rostov’s words came to mind. A
nd I knew that anything that brilliant bastard had ever said was undoubtedly right.
But just being right, even having all the rightness there is on earth, couldn’t do much to make me feel any better. Life and death isn’t right and wrong. They’re both part of a giant, natural right, but that doesn’t make death any easier to take.
I was surely grateful to Rostov for having given me at least some kind of an edge against the terrible way I felt. But out here in the black night, and by myself, I suddenly felt as lonely and broken as I guess Dixie must have felt in those dark waters, being pulled and twisted, lifelessly and endlessly.
It was then that a strange, wordless and wonderful thing happened.
There were hoofbeats from behind and off to one side, and a moment later Shad reined his big Red up beside me, pulling to a stop.
He didn’t do or say anything, and I wasn’t in any great shape to talk. He just sat there beside me quietly, looking out over the shadowed, sleeping herd. He’d already been up most of this second sleepless night in a row, and should have been in his bedroll and out like a rock by now. But he knew the rough feelings I’d be having, so he’d put off sleep to ride out this one last time. And somehow, just by his silent presence, he was sharing the pain of those deep feelings within me, and wordlessly giving me part of his own inner strength.
It was a sad, rich, warm time.
And then, finally, he rode away into the dark.
Being a man, I sure as hell could never let on to Shad how deeply I was moved. So at last I told it softly to Buck instead. “I’ll tell you somethin’.” I looked off, where Shad was safely gone, and Buck twisted one ear back, wondering who I was talking to. “I love you most, Shad, for the things you never said to me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A LONG toward morning the rain started to come down heavy again, and it lasted six more days and six nights without stopping for one minute or even slowing down enough for us to get at least slightly dried out. And in its own cruel way, there is nothing that is finally more brutally depressing than a forever hostile sky flooding down constant, battering waves of chilling raindrops that go on and on without end.
We must have made about seventy miles through that everlasting sea of shallow water and mud, but every drenched, exhausting mile was damn hard won. The mud was like glue, and often as not the horses and cattle were plowing along nearly knee-deep in it. On the fourth day one speckled, lop-horned cow and her yearling calf came within an eyelash of being buried altogether in the thick, oozing stuff. Rufe happened to spot her as she was bawling helplessly, stuck, more than shoulder-deep in the soft, shifting, deep muck at the bottom of an arroyo. Her calf was in worse shape, with only its small muzzle sticking desperately up out of the rain-driven mire. Four men slid down there with ropes to tie around them and managed to finally haul them out to firmer ground. But by the time they’d rescued the cow and calf, every inch of the men, from head to toe, was covered with a thick layer of sticky mud, which didn’t add much to their general cheerfulness.
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.”
“Fuc
k ’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.”
The Cowboy and the Cossack (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) Page 27
