The Cossack Cowboy

by Lester S. Taube

  They reached the base of the mountain at twenty minutes after four and Paul looked up, his heart leaping to find that the riders had not yet come to the mouth of the draw. He examined his horse carefully, finding it so exhausted and so weak from hunger that he doubted if it could continue an hour longer. Nevertheless, it had to move, so he spent several valuable minutes rubbing it down again, then began to pull it along the side of the mountain, speaking softly to it, coaxing. As a last resort, he took off the saddle and hid it in a snowbank, tying the saddle blanket to the animal’s back with a piece of rope. That seemed to help.

  He looked up again. His pursuers were finally coming down, but only one of them was using his method of descent. He checked his watch; four-thirty. He had gained another priceless fifteen minutes. The sun was beginning to sink below the horizon, the clouds in the sky helping to mute its rays, but there was still an hour of light for tracking, although the riders would lose half of it just coming down the draw.

  Once out of sight, Paul immediately started his horse uphill again. There was no sense speaking to it or coaxing it any further - the poor creature was beyond that point. Paul used a rope to beat it onward, knowing that a fifteen- or twenty-minute effort could mean the difference between escape and failure. Mercilessly he whipped it upward, and when it no longer responded to the rope, he drew his knife and jabbed it up and up

  He did not realize that it was dark until he suddenly found it hard to distinguish the beast’s rump from its rear, and he fell to the ground, totally and utterly exhausted, his hands barely able to return the Bowie knife to its sheath. But there was no time, even now, to relax, for the horse would die before morning if it did not have care. He climbed to his feet and rubbed it down again, talking quietly and soothingly to it, then he spread the blanket over it to keep it warm. He groped around until he found a sheltered spot and scraped the snow away to reach grass. Pulling up a handful, he took it to the horse and shoved it in its mouth. The animal let it fall to the ground. Paul picked it up and placed it in its mouth again, holding it there with his hand.

  “Eat, little one, eat, my beauty. What a heart you have, my sweet one. There is not a horse in this world who has a heart so full of courage. Eat, my little one, just one mouthful.”

  He almost wept when he felt its mouth move, tentatively nibbling, then taking the grass between its teeth and beginning to chew. He returned to the sheltered spot and pulled handful after handful from the ground, forcing them into the animal’s mouth until it seemed able to eat by itself. While it chewed, he slowly pushed the animal to where the snow was cleared away and pressed down its head until it found the grass and began to crop.

  Then, with a sigh, Paul turned back to face his enemies. They were only two hundred and fifty or three hundred yards below him, being led uphill by a figure, who was carrying a torch to light up his tracks. Paul unslung his rifle, slid fifty yards to one side, carefully aimed and fired. The figure holding the torch toppled from his horse, the snow extinguishing the flame as it fell. Immediately, Paul crawled a few yards away and waited, but there were no answering shots. He reasoned to himself that his shot had caught them by surprise and they were not about to reveal their present positions by shooting back unless they had a target to fire at.

  Rising, he forced his feet to carry him to his horse, who was now eating voraciously. Kneeling down, he pulled up handfuls of grass and stuffed them inside his coat, then, when he had enough, he tugged gently on the reins, leading the animal a few steps away. When it stopped, he took out a handful of grass and placed it in its mouth, pulling it forward again while it was chewing. It was easy travelling, for he was heading around the side of the knob in the direction of the draw he had descended. When he felt its strength returning, he started uphill again, coaxing the slowly-recovering animal with grass and allowing it to rest for short periods.

  At midnight, he could take no more, so clearing the snow from a large area for the horse to graze to its heart’s content, he lay down and was asleep an instant later.

  He woke about four in the morning, cold, hungry, thirsty, every bone in his body aching. Yawning, he climbed to his feet and inspected his horse in the dark. It had recovered enough to nuzzle him gently. Picking up the reins, he continued uphill, conserving his waning strength for the coming day, knowing that he was no better off than the night before, but, in fact, weaker. Somehow he must find another way to throw off his pursuers. He hoped he had seriously wounded the torch-bearer last night. If so, they would have to leave one or two men to tend him or take him back to camp. If he was dead, it would mean only one less gunfighter to evade after sunup.

  He reached the crest of the first range before daylight where he turned north and started down a saddle to the next higher range of bills - completely opposite to any logical direction of travel, for he was headed towards the highest, most rugged part of the entire complex.

  Suddenly, he felt something flutter against his cheek? He stopped in his tracks and turned his face skyward, nearly letting out a cry of joy as he felt another flake fall, then another.

  “Snow,” he breathed, almost like a caress. “Come, snow!” he whispered hoarsely, filled with an overwhelming hope, an exultation, reaching up at the feathery crystals which were handing back his life, laughing at the bleakness of the sky, hopping up and down as if gone mad, the weariness within him gone and forgotten. “Come, you kisses from heaven! Snow! Snow!”

  And snow it did. There was no break of dawn, only a cloud of swirling flakes that built up and lightened the air, spreading another carpet over the one already there. In time, it became light enough to see sufficiently ahead to plan more than a step-by-step evasion. Paul looked back - his tracks were already being obliterated.

  He led his horse through the snowfall for four hours, holding a tight rein on his hunger and thirst, for he knew he must get far beyond the range of pursuit or accidental discovery before the snow stopped. At noon, he turned into a clump of trees, kicked clear an area for his horse to reach grass, and lit a small fire. He ate half of the remaining bread and a can of beans, drank two cups of coffee, then lay back and slept for an hour.

  Upon awakening, he mounted his horse and continued higher into the mountains, the snow still falling but the air warmer than the night before. They made good time, and when he finally stopped in the late afternoon, he found himself on a long plateau covered with fir trees and scrub oak and quaking aspen that extended to an escarpment rising four hundred feet in the air.

  He let out a long sigh of relief. Here was safety, shelter, a place to rest for a few days so he and his horse could recover from the grueling, strength-sapping flight of the past forty-eight hours.

  Paul looked about for a place to pitch camp. At the base of the escarpment he noticed a dark spot which could be a cave. His horse had pawed out a small hole and was tearing at the grass. Paul pulled up the reins, raising its head.

  At that instant, as the horse stepped back a pace, a bullet struck it full in the head, at the exact spot occupied by Paul’s hip just a moment before!

  CHAPTER XII

  It was lucky that his horse carried no saddle, for had it done so, Paul’s foot would have been in the stirrup and therefore pinned under the animal when it dropped lifelessly to the ground. As it was, he was thrown clear.

  The utterly unexpected shot coming like a bolt from out of the blue stunned Paul as he fell to the snow, but fate smiled on him because he landed on the far side of his dead horse, away from his attacker. The jolt shook him awake and a second shot tearing up snow an inch from his head galvanized him to action, sending him rolling furiously towards a stand of trees a few yards away. As he rolled, he felt the tug of a bullet bore though the leather of his coat and scrape the tip of his shoulder, then he was behind a tree, his rifle unslung, ready to fight back.

  The idiot who had fired at him was seated on a horse less than a hundred paces away, completely out in the open, as if the accuracy of the first shot would not require any others.


  Paul leveled his rifle and began to squeeze the trigger - then pulled it violently to one side the instant it went off. His eyes widened as he recognized the person he had almost shot - Tina Birman!

  What in the world was she doing there? asked a thunderstruck Paul of himself. A bullet splashing splinters from the tree into his face answered his question; she was certainly trying her best to kill him.

  Paul re-aimed his rifle and fired. His bullet struck Tina’s carbine right in the stock, knocking it out of her hands into the snow.

  Her eyes grew large with the sudden realization that she was seated there in plain view, at the mercy of a man who had been her target just a few seconds before. At once, she whirled her horse around, sank her spurs and began to race towards a draw at the edge of the plateau. Without a moment’s hesitation, Paul shot her mount squarely in the head.

  They went down in a great flurry of snow, the dead animal sliding several feet before it came to a stop. Paul rose from behind his tree and walked out into the open, circling the fallen horse and girl carefully, wary of the revolver she was surely carrying. Then he saw she was motionless, with both of her hands in sight and her right leg trapped under the horse. He trotted over and knelt beside her, noticing the mark from a blow on her forehead that had knocked her unconscious. Swiftly he searched her, taking from around her waist a gunbelt holding a 38 caliber revolver similar to his own, a small sheath-knife fastened to a thong hanging. around her neck, and a pocketful of rifle cartridges. Her saddlebags bulged with bread, coffee beans and cans of tomatoes, and her bedroll consisted of two blankets wrapped in a square of canvas.

  Paul backtracked to where she had attacked him and probed into the snow until he found her carbine. Slinging his rifle and Tina’s gunbelt over his shoulder, he reloaded the carbine and began walking cautiously down the trail, seeking her companions, knowing that now was the end of running and hiding, for a man afoot against gunfighters with fresh horses and all necessary supplies was like a broken-winged pigeon facing a hungry fox, and that the time had come for the inevitable confrontation.

  He walked almost two hundred yards before the thought struck him that she might have come alone, and another two hundred yards convinced him of the astonishing fact that she had done so, for here her horse’s footprints were obliterated by the snow. Almost disbelieving what his eyes saw, he reconnoitered to the left and right, thoroughly baffled at her coming without an escort, since there was not the least sign of tracks anywhere in sight.

  She had regained consciousness when he returned, and it was obvious from the white, pinched look on her face and the clenching of her teeth that she had tried desperately to pull her leg out from under the horse’s body, and that it was injured and agonizingly painful. He suspected that the leg would be broken, and it was with no small amount of pleasure that he watched her suffer.

  She made no sound as she stared straight at him, those intense green eyes filled with fury, her full, sensitive lips drawn back in a snarl, her chest heaving at the effort she had been making to free herself.

  Paul turned on his heels and strode away. He felt her eyes bore into him as he continued walking, but not once did he look back. When he came to his dead horse, he took off the blanket and the pieces of lasso, slung them over his shoulder next to his rifle, Tina’s gunbelt and the small bag of food, and started towards the dark spot in the escarpment which looked like a cave. It was a half-mile away and took thirty minutes to reach. It was a cave with a head-high opening, and the moment he entered he could smell wolf. When his eyes adjusted to the dimness inside, he found it to be twenty feet deep and eight feet wide with a slash to the left about ten feet wide. The main part of the cave rose to twice his height, and at the far end he found bones, which brought him to the conclusion that wolves had used the cave to give birth and to raise their young.

  The snow had nearly stopped when he stepped outside and looked about. To his immediate front and to the left, trees prevented a view of the entrance. To the right, in line with where the dead horses lay, the hole could be seen. He would have to guard against any light showing at that angle. With his Bowie knife he cut a stack of branches, stored them at the rear of the main cave, then slung his rifle and started back to Tina. It was growing dark when he arrived, but still light enough to see that she had fainted. He searched about until he found a stout branch which he used to dig out the snow from under the horse alongside both sides of her leg, then he slid the limb in one of the slots. When all was ready he slapped her face until she revived.

  “Do you understand me?” he asked her.

  She nodded.

  “When I lift up on this limb I want you to push against the horse with your hands and good leg. I’m not going to be able to lift him completely off you, so you’ll have to pull yourself out. Try to move your leg into the slot I have cut into the snow. Are you ready?”

  She nodded again, grim-faced.

  Paul set himself, grasped the branch with both hands and heaved upward. He could hear her harsh breathing as she strained against the weight on her leg. Slowly she came loose until, with an almost animal grunt, she pulled it free. Then she fainted again.

  Untying her saddle bags containing the food, he laid them over one shoulder, then kneeling down, he lifted her inert form over his other shoulder.

  By the time he reached the cave he was staggering with fatigue. She had revived somewhere along the way, but made no sound as her broken leg swayed with his motion. It made him feel better and less tired when he thought of the pain she must be enduring.

  It was pitch black inside the cave. Setting her down, he leaned against the wall until he regained his breath.

  “I’m going after your blankets,” he told her. “Just sit quietly and don’t move.”

  Picking up her carbine and gunbelt, he took them outside, walked twenty paces to one side of the cave and buried there, then started towards the dead horses. His two trips had made a path in the snow, so he merely followed it until he came to the mound that was her horse. Placing her lasso, bedroll and the saddle blanket to one side, he slipped out his knife and cut large chunks of meat from the animal’s haunch, then started back.

  When he returned to the cave, he dropped his burden and stretched out on the dirt floor, too far gone to do anything but rest. It was half an hour before he could stir. Using branches to prop up her horse’s saddle blanket against the entrance, he blacked out the opening, then felt around until he collected enough twigs and small branches to begin a fire. Soon there was light and warmth. He bent over Tina’s leg.

  She was wearing soft doeskin pants and calf-high boots. He touched her near the top of the boot. Instantly she sucked in her breath. He drew out his knife. “I’m going to cut off the boot. Try to hold as still as possible.”

  He did so gently, but it hurt, although she fought not to show it. She merely let out a low sigh when it finally came off. He slit the pants leg to her knee to ex amine her injury. It was a broken bone, no doubt of that, but fortunately it had not been bent at an angle nor had it pierced the skin. The area around the break was swollen and black and blue.

  Opening her pack, he took out a blanket and cut it into lengths, wrapping them around selected branches which he bound to her leg to form a sturdy splint.

  She watched him without speaking, her eyes studying the lines of fatigue in his face, noting the effort it took to cut the blanket and the way he had to force himself to rise from his knees.

  When he had finished, he cut pieces from a chunk of meat and impaled them on a thin branch which he placed over the fire on pronged sticks. Slicing what was left of his bread, he laid them near the fire to thaw out, and put two cups filled with snow on coals to heat water for coffee.

  When the meat was roasted, he broke the stick in two and handed one part over to her with a slice of bread. Famished, he gulped down the meat and bread, then when he had drained his coffee, he sat back against the wall almost in a stupor.

  “Why didn’t you kil
l me?” he heard her say. Her voice was low, throaty, as clear and pure as a running brook,

  He opened his eyes. She was leaning back against the opposite wall, her cup of coffee in her hands. “A lapse of sanity,” he said, closing his eyes again. “I’ll probably live to regret it.”

  There was silence for a few seconds. “I would have. killed you.”

  Paul didn’t open his eyes. “I know you would. Can’t understand why, though.”

  “You were going to kill one of my brothers sooner or later.”

  He chuckled. “A pleasant thought. Can’t think of anyone who deserves killing more than the members of your family.” He forced his eyes open. “Speaking of killing and all that reminds me that I am absolutely dog-tired and must get some sleep. Now, how am I going to get through the night alive with you here? Must I tie you hand and foot or have you another suggestion.?”

  “I cannot move -I have a broken leg.”

  He laughed. “Can’t move? A cobra running loose would be less dangerous than you with two broken legs - and arms to boot.” He rose to his feet and yawned. “Well, my girl, back in the corner with you, and let’s have your hands behind you.”

  Once she was at the rear of the slash, he spread the canvas for her to lie on, tied her hands securely, and covered her with the blanket. He built up the fire, unloaded his rifle and placed it against the wall in the main cave, then, strapping his revolver and Bowie knife under his coat, he rolled in his blanket and closed his eyes.

  “What is your name?” she asked from her comer.