Shad’s earlier anger had diminished by about one-half of a shaved inch, and he was still ready to explode, but his voice was controlled as he now spoke to Rostov. “Let’s get back to that ‘had thought’ bullshit. What’s the problem you got?”
Rostov’s eyes matched Shad’s, evenly controlled and evenly hard. “There’s a reinforced contingent of cossacks down there in Khabarovsk.”
This statement took a while to sink in, and I for one was vaguely aware of my mouth sort of hanging a little ajar, due to general astonishment.
And then Shad did explode. “Well what the fuck difference does that make? You’re cossacks!”
Rostov still spoke quietly. “There’s a difference.” And somehow, from the way he said it, you could tell that whatever that difference was, it was gigantic. And you could also tell that the problem on Rostov’s mind had walloped him severely. On the outside he was still as hard and tough, and his mind as keen as, say, that great steel saber hooked onto his belt. But inside him, there was an intense sorrow that went deep and couldn’t be hidden because, somehow, it came out of his eyes.
Lieutenant Bruk, whose clear old eyes were now filled with the same dark sorrow, had filled and lighted the long clay pipe he carried with him. Now, he silently handed it to Rostov, who took it and said, “I honestly couldn’t foresee this, Northshield.” He took a puff on the pipe and passed it back to Bruk. “Otherwise, I’d have warned you.”
Shad’s reaction to this was both a relief and a surprise to me. Maybe it was because he too could see the hurt in these men. Or maybe it was because he was thinking on something he’d already somehow guessed about way ahead of the rest of us. In any case, instead of the anger within him growing, it now ebbed away as he reached slowly into his shirt pocket for the makings of a smoke, studying Rostov quietly. Working with the paper and tobacco, he said, “What couldn’t you foresee? That you could’ve warned me about?”
“The garrison in Khabarovsk has been undermanned for over a year. But right now there are two new companies of cossacks down there, who must have arrived within the last three or four weeks.”
Shad pulled the now rolled paper lightly across the tip of his tongue to firm his smoke together. “You’ll have t’ pardon my density,” he said dryly, “but it sure is a strange-as-hell thing, you fellas standin’ here passin’ that pipe back an’ forth like the end of the world happened yesterday.” He struck a match with his thumbnail and lighted his smoke slowly, thoughtfully, before shaking out the flame on the match. For him, he was talking at a damnere unheard of length. And more and more, I was getting a sneaking suspicion that he was about a mile ahead of the conversation. He dropped the no-longer-lighted match and ground it into the earth with the toe of his boot. “Hell, I’d think you’d be yellin’ an’ dancin’ an’ dashin’ down off there t’ celebrate with them other cossacks.” He inhaled on his smoke. “But then, you did mention somethin’ about a—‘difference.’”
Rostov spoke in a quietly hard voice. “There’s quite a bit of difference. We’re not taking this herd to Blagoveshchensk, as your papers show. We’re taking it farther north, to the people who bought and paid for it, in our own free town of Bakaskaya.”
“Well,” Shad shrugged. “The name a’ your town sure as hell is a lot easier t’ pronounce than that other one.”
I think Rostov was as surprised as I was at Shad’s calmness. But now, still quietly, he went on. “Those men down there are Imperial Cossacks. They belong to the Tzar.”
Slim’s face twisted into an almost painfully puzzled frown. “Well, Christ Jesus!” he finally said. “There ain’t nothin’ in all a’ Russia that don’t b’long t’ the Tzar!” He glanced toward Old Keats, looking for some kind of confirmation. “Or am I crazy?”
Keats was still frowning, too. “That’s sure as hell what we always been told.”
“Captain Rostov, sir?” I asked hesitantly, partly guessing about and partly hoping for the answer I wanted to hear. “If you fellas don’t belong t’ the Tzar, then who do ya’ b’long to?”
Rostov’s eyes, though they were still full of deep sorrow, bored into me. “If you still have to ask me such a question, Levi, then you’re not worthy of a reply.”
In his own way he’d given me the answer I was hoping for, but his own way sure was a killer. Blood rushed suddenly and hotly to my face, and right then I both felt like and wished I was the tiniest little pissant on earth so I could just shrink into practically nothing and disappear.
Whether or not he did it on purpose, Shad now saved me from dying of sheer, agonized embarrassment right there on the spot. He did it by saying a lot better what I’d meant to say myself in the first place. And something about the way he spoke made me know that there was much more, deep within him, than the words alone could say.
“I don’t mind a reasonable change a’ destination if the reason’s right,” he said quietly to Rostov. “But since it’s not with the Tzar, then just where, exactly, is your outfit’s allegiance?”
Rostov looked at his men gathered beside him. And then, finally, back at Shad. “Our allegiance is, Mr. Northshield, no more and certainly never less than to each other—and to our honor.” He hesitated, weighing each word slowly and carefully. “And to our homes in Bakaskaya, to the people there we love. And perhaps more than anything else, our allegiance is to the beautiful, fiercely independent and free spirit of all those who have the will and the courage to be a part of Bakaskaya.”
He stopped then, and in the long silence no one, including Shad, had anything to say. It might just well have been, for once, that Shad had gotten a lot more of an answer back than he’d expected.
So the way it finally worked, it was Rostov who at last spoke again to Shad. “Considering the—unexpected circumstances we’ve found here, you and your men have no choice but to get away and go back now, while you can. You’ll be safe. We’re the outlaws here, not you.”
Except for Shad, we all frowned at each other, and then Slim said the first thought that came to his mind. “Hell, what about that damned herd?”
Rostov spoke very quietly. “You’ve brought it almost halfway. And by any man’s judgment, that’s more than far enough. Especially when there are high rivers and the Tzar’s cossacks ahead.” His quiet voice became even deeper now. “My men and I will take the herd from here on.” He paused. “And we’ll take it alone. That’s as it will be.” Rostov was speaking gently, but gently as he spoke, that low, quiet voice of his somehow carried, without any chance of mistake, the hollow, black echoes of approaching death.
Slim said with growing amazement, “Goddamn! You bastards’re fightin’ a goddamn revolution!”
Rostov shrugged slightly. “I suppose you could say that.”
Old Keats leaned slowly forward on his saddle, resting his forearms on the pommel. “Tell me, Captain, is there, perhaps, some part a’ that very movin’ oath of allegiance you just talked about before that got left out?”
Rostov looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Like workin’ overtime t’ get yourselves killed for a foolish an’ hopeless reason? Like I gather your town of Bakaskaya must be.”
“No attempt at a free society is ever foolish or hopeless.”
“And forgettin’ all about them Imperial Cossacks,” Keats went on, “you just for certain can’t handle that herd.”