“Russia’s reception committee,” Old Keats murmured quietly, holding on to the railing for his balance. “Just on general principle, I sure hope they’re friendly.”
“Hell, Keats, why shouldn’t they be?” Slim grinned. “We’re bringin’ ’em the only good cattle this godforsaken place ever had!”
Three crewmen broke open a nearby gate in the railing and rolled a rope ladder out so that its far end fell down to the waves below. Our other cowhands were coming up onto the main deck now, some of them struggling with their gear. Shad and the captain of the Queen, a short, heavyset Scotsman named Barum, came down from the bridge at about the same time.
The man holding the tiller in the small boat got a grip on the rope ladder and started climbing, a couple of the others behind him. When he got to the top, Captain Barum gave him a hand up onto the deck and he stood there for a minute, looking us over in a not too friendly fashion and catching his breath as the other two came up behind him. He was middle-sized, with a lot more fat than muscle on him, and most of his forehead seemed to be a mass of thick brown eyebrows. He was wearing a heavy, long brown coat and a little brown cap that had a little shiny gold medal on it. I guess it was some kind of a naval uniform.
“I’m Captain Barum,” the captain said. “And this is Mr. Shad Northshield. He’ll be disembarking here tonight with his fourteen men and five hundred and thirty-six animals. And their baggage, of course.”
Shad said curtly, “Tell him we’re in a hurry to get docked so we can get unloaded.”
The Russian frowned at Shad and he spoke to the captain in a guttural, harsh voice, with an accent you could have cut with a dull ax. “I am Harbor Master Yakolev. I know nothing of all these men and animals.”
“That’s what we’re telling you about now,” Shad said, an ominously hard edge to his voice.
Yakolev glared at him. “What travel permission is it you have? Letters from immigration authority, passports?”
“Goddamn,” Slim whispered grimly to me and Old Keats, “I knew we’d forget somethin’. Ain’t one a’ all them five hundred longhorns got no passport.”
But Shad was already handing the Harbor Master a thick envelope. “Our Sea Papers,” he said levelly. “From Seattle through the port of Vladivostok. Okayed by the U.S.A. and by your Russian Consulate.” Then, as the man opened the envelope, he added flatly, “If you can read it, Yakolev.”
In terms of establishing a long-time friendship, Shad wasn’t making, or trying too hard to make, a whole lot of points. Yakolev glowered at him and then started to read the Sea Papers by the light of a lamp hanging from a roughly paneled bulkhead near him.
At last he said, “What’s this?” Which the way he talked sounded more like “Wawssis?” but it was getting so I could pretty much tell what he meant.
“What’s what?” Shad said.
“This—this Slash-Diamond?”
“That’s the brand on our cattle and horses. Just in case some of you Russians should get a mind t’ try t’ steal some of ’em.”
“Mr. Northshield doesn’t mean to say—” Captain Barum started uneasily.
But Yakolev silenced him with a raised hand and spoke to Shad in a high, angry voice. “I know the reason there is of branding! Under our most gracious Tzar, my friend, when a man does not behave just properly, here, that man himself is sometimes branded.” He smiled, but his smile looked more like he was about to bite something. “Your nation does not put you, or your men, outside our—our sometimes very strict laws.”
“We didn’t think t’ bring a lawyer,” Shad said. “Just check our papers.”
Yakolev, his face tight, studied them for a long, silent time, finally flipping them back and forth aimlessly.
“All right, Yakolev,” Shad said impatiently, “you can’t find one damn thing wrong with those papers, so stop wasting our time and let’s get this ship docked.”
But Yakolev, more hostile than ever, was now going to take all the time he could. “Levi Dougherty!” he suddenly said loudly, reading the name off the Sea Papers.
“Yeah?” I stepped forward curiously.
“Is not Levi, it’s a Jewish name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did it come from?”
“Well”—this was getting to be kind of embarrassing because it wasn’t a generally known fact—“I was named after a pair of pants.”
There were snickers from a couple of the men behind me, and without turning I said quietly, “Anybody who don’t like those pants ain’t a real American.”
Yakolev scratched one of his hugely bushy eyebrows. “Tell more,” he said suspiciously.
“The pants’re called Levi-Strauss. Ma wanted Levi an’ Pa wanted Strauss. Ma won.” Somebody, I think it was Dixie, chuckled from behind again, and I was starting to get mad anyway. “I like the name whether it’s Jewish or a pair a’ britches or anything else!”
Yakolev wasn’t about to let it go at that. “There are certain areas of Imperial Russia,” he said coldly, “where Jews are not welcome, or safe.”
“For Christ’s sake,” Slim said, starting to be as impatient as Shad. “How can anybody hold anything against a pair a’ Levi’s?”
“This is going to take much time,” Yakolev said. “Captain, you will bring a table and chair.”
Shad stepped forward. “Those papers clear me and my men into Russia. What is all this bullshit?”
“Bullshit? What’s this?” Yakolev said, making it sound like “Vullssit? Vawsis?”
Captain Barum said anxiously, “My sailing schedule and the tides don’t allow me more than a few hours here.”
Yakolev suddenly turned viciously ugly. “I am Harbor Master! I say a table and a chair!”
“Drop anchor!” Captain Barum bellowed to the men up forward. Then, resentfully, “Get a table and chair for the—Harbor Master.”
A couple of crewmen went to get them, and Old Keats said quietly, “Our Russian friend’s decided to try any way he can not to let us go ashore.”
Crab nodded. “He was out of joint in the first place, and then Shad’s bullheadedness really got to ’im.”
“What I think,” Slim said, “the sonofabitch is looking for some kind of a handout.”
I went over to where Shad and Captain Barum were and said to Shad in a low voice, “Maybe the sonofabitch is lookin’ for some kind of a handout.”
“That’s helped before when I’ve put in here.” The captain rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “All these goddamn Russian officials think they’re little tzars.”
“No,” Shad said.
“We’ve come clear out here to the end of the world, Shad.” I took a deep breath, knowing how he felt. “Don’t you think we oughtta go by whatever their rules are just this once?”
He spit some tobacco over the railing. “Goes against the grain.”
For at least an hour now everything went against the grain. Yakolev, with maddening slowness, asked all the men endless and stupid questions. Shad was tensely ready to bite a nail in half, and Captain Barum was getting more and more edgy, taking his pocket watch out every little while to see how many minutes had gone by.
The only good thing I can remember about that time was that we learned a few things about each other’s names that wouldn’t normally come up in any cowhand’s conversation. They had told us when we got on the Queen in Seattle to be careful to put our real names down or we could be sent back. And it turned out, for example, as Yakolev read the Sea Papers, that old Purse Mayhew was actually named Percival.
After Yakolev got through talking to him, and we’d made a few casual remarks, he told us with some small resentment, “The name Percival is perfectly normal in England!”