The third day we started back to the road. It was the next day around 9:00 p.m. when we had the road in sight. We camped again until dark. All day we only saw one rider going south. As soon as it was good and dark, we went out on the road and headed south again. Around midnight we came to a village and the road led right through town, so we just kept going. Soon we were out on the road again on the other side. We didn’t see anyone in town. It had about 50 houses and they were all dark. The moon was out and so we could just see enough to ride through.
Once we got past the village, we rode on until morning. Then we left the road and rested. One of us was always on watch. On my map, there was a junction coming up with a road heading east to the coast. I figured that we had to travel in the daylight soon so we didn’t miss the turnoff. After we all had a good rest, we talked things over and decided to get out on the road and start traveling. We figured that we had more hours of daylight left.
Once we got out on the road, we started trotting and made good time. We had been on the road for about an hour when we heard something from behind. Eight riders materialized behind us and started shooting. We had a large ditch on one side of us and a big bank of rocks on the other side. I told Luke and Miklos to put the two geldings in the back. Once they did this, Miklos started returning fire and one Cossack fell out of his saddle. Luke and I fired and two more fell; a Cossack and the Young Count Rukovsky. I had one more carbine that I pulled from the pack and I shot again with another Cossack falling off his horse. The rest of the men came to a halt and rode back the way they came. I left Luke and Miklos and rode back to the fallen Count; he was dead. Miklos caught three horses. I took the Count’s rings off his fingers and planned on returning them to his family somehow.
I then started to unsaddle the three horses. I told Miklos to try to take off the Count’s jacket and keep it for himself so he could change his appearance. It was a little bloody, but he got it off. He found six pieces of Russian gold in the small inside pocket and he handed it to me. I just handed it back. He then went to look in the other pockets and found some silver. I took the bridles off two of the Cossack horses and turned them loose. They trotted off a ways and then went off the road and started to graze. The Count was riding a fine big bay gelding and I figured Miklos could use it. We put the three saddles over the three Cossack’s faces. Miklos took the Count’s carbine, pistol, and saddlebag and then we rode back to Luke. We only had another hour and a half of daylight, so we started riding.
We could not understand how the count always figured out where we were and why he would come after us just to take our horses.
As darkness fell, we kept on. We found a place where others had rested and we pulled off the road and made camp. We stood watches that night. That next morning when we saddled up, we saw some blood on our pack gelding. I checked him out and found that a bullet had gone through some flesh on his leg. It was not serious at all, but we turned him loose. Miklos put his polish saddle on the Count’s horse and we left.
We got back on the road and started trotting again. At about 10:00 a.m. we found the road going east and turned off heading towards the coast. There were beautiful mountains all around us, just like Transylvania. The road was a well-used road, so it was easy riding. Every camp we made, someone had camped there before. After two days, we started to see farms in the valleys. We stopped in some nice meadows several times with good grass for our horses.
We were on the road for four days when we came upon a gentleman and two servants riding in the same direction as we were. They had a horse problem. The gentleman’s horse was limping. As we came up to them, I greeted the man in French. He replied in French, so I pulled up to them thinking that I could get some intelligent directions from him. I asked him what the problem was and he told me that he didn’t know. I got off and walked to his horse. It was a young mare. I picked up her sore leg and it looked like the soreness was right above her ankle. There was a small lump. I let Luke and Miklos have a look too. We all agreed that it was a torn ligament. I told him what we thought and that he shouldn’t ride her because it would take a while to heal. The gentleman then asked if I would trade horses. I asked him what he had to trade with. He pulled out a large gold coin.
I told him, “Let me talk to my brother about this.” I then told Luke and Miklos, “We want to go on a ship and it will cost us to take all of these horses onboard. We could sell Luke’s gelding and be one horse less.”
We all agreed and I told the man that we would trade. We consolidated the packs easy enough. Then we laid the old packsaddle by the road. I let one of his men saddle the gelding so he could try him out. He rode out a ways and then galloped back smiling. He said, “This is a good horse,” and the man handed me the coin. I led the new mare next to my stud because he could probably bring her into heat. I saw him do it many times.
We rode along together with our new friends and camped that night with them, and even shared our food. We talked about ships to France and he told us that a lot of trade was going on with Turkey and Greece. He said that schooners from Spain were also coming to Romania a lot.
The second day we stopped at noon and our new mare (the wounded mare) wanted the stud. I let him breed her three times and then we started out again. The gentleman had been studying our horses and started to realize what a fine string we had. He asked us if would sell any of them and I said, “Only the hurt mare you traded us.” He thought that over for a while and then pulled out a gold piece and offered it. I untied his original mare and handed him the reins. He gave me a French gold piece that was a little smaller than the Romanian one.
I gave the gold piece to Miklos and said, “Since you are going to France, you might as well keep it.”
He thanked me and said, “If you have any more of those you want to get rid of, I will gladly take them off your hands.”
That evening, the gentleman turned off on a narrow trail and we said our goodbyes.
4
Four days later, we came to the port city of Vylkove at the mouth of the Danube border town of Bessarabia. Our Romanian friend told me who to see in town. He was an agent for shipping. I found his place and we asked him how we could ship us and seven horses to Spain. He told us, “You can overland from there.” We talked this over and decided to book passage to Spain. He didn’t want any money but we had to be ready to go in seven days. He suggested that we take some food to supplement the food on the ship.
I asked him, “How long will it take to get to Spain?”
“Twenty to thirty days,” he replied.
I told him, “We are going to need 12 sacks of grain.”
He said, “I can easily arrange that.”
“We are also going to need a sack of potatoes too.”
He assured me that he would take care of everything and it would be ready by the time we left. We rented a room with three beds. They had a tailor next door, so we had him make us some new pants.
The ship arrived three days later and started offloading. It was a three-masted schooner with a steady engine and side wheels. We had our horses in a stable and were going to be the last loaded. We talked to the captain, who was fluent in French. He told us to get a bunch of straw for the horses, so we ordered some. He gave us a tiny room for the three of us. We bought six hams and six slabs of bacon. We bought some tea and just before loading the horses, we bought some fresh bread and some good wine. The captain ordered a lot of sauerkraut and several sacks of beans and peas. They had some sausage onboard but it was not very good, so I bought a bunch of good sausage for us to eat.
The cook was French and the mate was an American. There were three Englishmen and six Spaniards on the crew. Between them all, the seamen spoke a little of every language. They were a likable lot, cussing at everything.
We brought the horses onboard blindfolded on a big wide plank. We then lowered them down into the hatch with a canvas sling. Inside the hatch we had so
me straw spread out and gave each horse plenty of room to lie down. Our grain was onboard, half oats and half corn. The captain then told us that he would go on the next tide. I asked him when that would be and he said, “Around 3:00 a.m.”
When we heard the commotion on deck, we got up and went out to see the shore slip away. After we could no longer see the shore in the dark any longer, we went into the mess hall and sampled their coffee. At first it was awful, but the more we drank the better it tasted. The cook had fresh meat for two days and he asked what we would like to eat. I suggested some goulash. He said that he didn’t know how to make it, so I volunteered to cook the goulash if he made the biscuits.
The next day we had Irish stew and it was real good. That was the last of the fresh meat. The cook then moved on to beans and peas with salt pork and smoked bacon pieces.
The American mate, Louis, was from New Orleans and spoke French. I went up and talked to him when he was on watch. He told me a lot of stories about America that fascinated me. He told me about the millions of buffalo on the plains, millions of wild horses, longhorn cattle, and land to be had. Louis told me about wagon trains to Oregon and people homesteading free land in some places. He also told me about cattlemen holding thousands of acres of land to graze their animals on.
I told Luke about all of this and he was just as fascinated with this as I was. At home it was always understood that the oldest son would inherit the land, so Luke and I would have to go and get our own. In America we could carve us out a big farm or even have a big cattle and horse operation that we could pass down to our sons. We could get just as much land in America that our family had in Hungary. Luke finally spoke the magic words and said, “Let’s go out there.” We both decided if we were going to do anything like this now was the time.
To make this happen we would have to ride to the West Coast of Spain and find a ship that would take us to America, preferably New Orleans where most of the people spoke French. We talked to Miklos about our plan but he told us that he had do go home as soon as things quieted down. Miklos would be inheriting his family’s land, so he wasn’t interested.
Luke had been hanging around a Spanish seaman and was picking up some Spanish and I started to learn English. We wanted to learn enough to get by. We still had all of the gold from home that we left with plus a little more that we added to it.
When we went through the straits and the Dardanelles on steam into the Mediterranean, we had our plans made. We were going to America. The captain warned us that it would be very difficult to find a ship that would take our horses. There was a lot of cargo going to America. The mate, Louis, told us to look for a smaller ship like the one we were on. He said, “One of them may take you, but you may have to buy some barrels for enough water for the trip.”
We spent our time fishing and talking and getting a lot of advice from the sailors. One sailor gave me a map of Spain. We made a list of everything we would need to buy and laid out the route we would have to take. Miklos was going with us part of the way. He would then turn towards France and we would go to the Port of Cadiz in Southern Spain. According to the captain and Louis, we would have the best chance at getting a small ship to cross the Atlantic.
We caught several good tasting fish, and we planned on taking some line and hooks with us. Maybe we would get lucky and catch some on the Atlantic crossing too. I wanted to find me a book to help me with my English and one to help Luke with his Spanish.
The captain took the ship close to Sicily and told us, “Four more days to Barcelona.” Louis told me that the best thing to do was to get out of town when we arrived. He said that we could do much better in the country because in the city everything cost much more for foreigners. We went south of Sardinia and north of Menorca making good time.
We had some ham and bacon left and the cook baked us two loaves of bread. We saved some of our potatoes too. We packed our packs and were ready to go on arrival.
When we arrived in Barcelona, the owners came onboard and sent the ship to Valencia to load. The captain told us that we could stay so we did, but Miklos got off. He helped us get four more sacks of corn and some other things for us. We then said our goodbyes to Miklos and got ready to settle down for a few more days on the water. Miklos went north on Count Rukovsky’s beautiful gelding. He had a large pack of food, his bedroll, and guns all fastened to his Polish saddle.
We decided to do some shopping with one of the sailors helping us. We sailed that night with the tide. Three days later we arrived in Valencia. The first thing the captain wanted was to offload the horses so he could clean the hold for loading. As soon as the horses were ashore, we saddled up and put our packsaddles on the mares. We then said our goodbyes and rode out of Valencia following the coast road.
As soon as we came to a green meadow, we let the horses graze. They sure loved that gras after being on corn for a month. After we went through Alicante, we took the road that would take us into Granada eventually. We had beautiful weather. The people that we came in contact with were very nice. We started shopping little by little. Our plan was to try for a ship in Malaga or Cadiz. It was pleasant traveling in Spain. We could buy good sausages, ham, bread, bacon, and wine for very little. We ate very well and so did our horses.
We met up with a fellow traveler who was in a buggy. He spoke some French. He told us to be very careful because there were a lot of gypsies around that stole horses. We were not too worried. We had them in Hungary too and we had our pistols handy.
Luke practiced his Spanish every time he had a chance.
In Granada we went to a hotel and stabled our horses. We had our packs locked up. We spent three days there. We each bought a short Spanish jacket, two pairs of trousers, shirts, some Spanish hats, and boots. We also had our Hungarian boots repaired. While we were waiting, we visited the town. We went to some bull fights and sampled some of the local restaurants’ food. All in all we had a good time.
From Granada we went down to Malaga. There were two ships in town that were going to America, but they wanted nothing to do with horses. We then took the coast road to Cadiz. Here, we went to see a shipping agent that told us that he would have a ship that was coming from Genova to pick up olive oil from Tampico, Mexico and he thought it would probably be able to take us.
He said, “The captain is from Portugal but it is a Spanish ship. It has a sail and steam. The name of the ship is the Andorra.”
Six days later, the ship came in and we went to talk to the captain. He could take us but he had only one room with one bunk, so one of us would have to sleep with the crew. We went to see where the horses would be. It was kind of tight, but it would do. We talked to the captain about water and he assured us that he had enough. He carried a lot of fresh water for his boiler and the engine was only used when they went into port. He had two other passengers coming aboard, a lady and her maid.
We bought ten sacks of corn and enough food for us to supplement the ship’s food. We packed everything into our tiny room. We decided that at night we would roll out both of our bed rolls and one of us could sleep on that.
A couple of days later, we loaded the horses and moved onboard. We were to sail the following morning. The lady and her maid came aboard that afternoon with their entourage. They were in the mess hall carrying on. There were about 20 of them. The captain was also there and was in uniform. All of the men were drinking. The sailors had to eat on the fantail. We ate in our room. The lady had the room next to us.
The party went on until we sailed at 4:00 a.m. We stayed on deck until breakfast and then went to rest up since we didn’t get much rest during from all of the partying. Luke went to feed and check on the horses and then he came back to the room and lay down.
We went to the mess hall to have lunch. The lady was there and was very beautiful. The captain tried to introduce us to her since we had to eat at the same table, but The Ladyship told him that she was not interested i
n knowing us. It did not bother me much but it bothered Luke. We overheard that she was going to Monterrey in Mexico to marry a banker there. The captain was very nice and he apologized to us later.
That afternoon, the land disappeared from sight and we were now out in the Atlantic. All sails were set and it looked like we were flying.
The ship had two mates. The first mate was a South American. He had a lot of Indian blood in him. The second mate was an Englishman. The captain told us not to have any drinks with him because he was an alcoholic. I went and helped the cook a little, just trying to make friends. The two mates were friendly enough, but they were really disappointed in our lady travelers.
I asked the captain if he knew of any big ships going from Tampico to New Orleans. He said, “Not very often.” We figured that we would go by land if there were no ships available.
We were at sea for about six days when the captain had a heart attack in the mess room. The mate tried to revive him but a few minutes later he was dead. Her Ladyship demanded that the ship be turned around and head back to Spain. The mate told her to shut up. The crew buried the captain that evening. The mate then moved into the captain’s room and the second mate moved over to the first mate’s room. They told us that we could have the other room if we wanted it, so Luke took it.
A couple of days later, the new captain and first mate got drunk. The ship’s bosun watched over things on deck. That night the lady’s maid came banging on my door. I opened the door and she told me that the captain was raping her mistress. I told her that she could stay in my brother’s room for the night. There was more room there.
I took her to the room and told my brother what was going on. All he said was, “Good” in Hungarian. Luke let the girl stay there and he came back to my room with me and we slept on our bedrolls. He listened at the bulkhead with a big smile on his face.
The Nagyvradi Brothers Page 4
