“Huh?”
“At playing that game of yours—showdown.”
Shad swung up aboard Red. “You didn’t do too bad yourself.”
Slim glanced from one of them to the other, as surprised as the rest of us that they’d actually said something pleasant to each other. “Well, unless you two plan on spendin’ all night congratulatin’ yourselves, how ’bout us findin’ the nearest saloon?”
Rostov said, “I think that’s an excellent idea. Right now it would be an even further indication of how secure we feel.” He glanced at Shad, not asking his opinion, but ready to hear it.
“I doubt we’ll ever again agree on anything twice in a row”—Shad turned Red from the hitching rail—“so let’s go drink t’ that rare occurrence while we got the chance.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ROSTOV KNEW where to go, and he and Shad led us off at an easy walk across the square and down one of the wider, better lighted streets.
As we rode slowly, quietly along, my head was kind of divided. The part of it that belonged to my eyes was fascinated by the people on the street and on the boardwalks. There sure was every kind, and most of them were looking at us with interest and curiosity. Young and old, tall and short, they were usually on the heavy side, but not always. The thick, rough clothes most of them wore added to that feeling of heaviness, the men in rugged homespun jackets and coats, the women in long, generally black, wool dresses. Most of the men wore fur hats, but some of them were made out of thick cloth or felt, and I even saw one top hat on a man in a black suit. Almost all of the women had white handkerchiefs on their heads, folded in the shape of a triangle and tied under their chins.
Aside from those who looked like farmers and laborers, and a few businessmen, there were some men who I judged by their worn fringed buckskins to be the equivalent of our mountain men, trappers and hunters and the like. Ranging the street, aside from the normal riding horses and pack mules, there were some dogs and pigs that looked for all the world like they owned the place, and they’d move out of the way resentfully when an occasional wagon or carriage drove by. Along the sides of the street or on the boardwalks, there were quite a few noisy vendors, fellas shouting out from near their little stands to call attention to whatever it was they had for sale.
But as I mentioned before, despite all these fascinating things, my head was divided, and the back of it wouldn’t let go of a kind of throbbing fear that was sort of like a dull headache. It had a whole lot to do with what we’d agreed on with Verushki, which seemed to me to be a shaky enough agreement in the first place. But in the second place, even that shaky deal was based on there being sixty of us. And such a count was ridiculous, because no matter how hard you added us all up, there were only thirty-one of us.
Rostov pulled in to the hitching rail before a well-lighted two-story building that had a hand-printed sign on it and half a dozen big windows facing the street on the ground floor. Inside you could see people eating and drinking at large, heavy tables, and all in all seeming to be having a pretty good time. We dismounted to tie up, and Slim, studying the place, said, “It ain’t exactly the Silver Slipper, but it don’t look half bad neither.”
And then a nice thing happened. From not far away, a band struck up and started playing. We all turned to look, and about a half a block farther down the street there was a small round building that was built about six or eight feet up off the ground. It didn’t have any sides at all, but just some beams holding up the roof over it. So that way, from any angle, you could see the band sitting inside and now playing away with a lot of pep and vigor as another fella waved a little stick in front of them. They were all in real fancy uniforms, blue pants and jackets with considerable strands of gold braid on their shoulders and around their waists, and ribbons and medals across their chests.
“Cossacks?” I said.
“Hell, no, Levi,” Slim told me. “What them fellas’re wearin’ is musicians’ outfits. Anybody tried t’ fight in them uniforms, he’d strangle hisself on his own gold braid.”
The street widened out where the little round building was, and a lot of people were walking up in a circle around it now, just to stand there and listen to those men playing their music.
“That’s a real goddamn fine thing,” I said, but the others were already going around the hitching rail and starting across the crowded boardwalk.
As I stepped onto the boardwalk, Igor suddenly grabbed my arm, holding me protectively back. Since the only person walking in front of me was a feeble old lady with a bucket, I couldn’t imagine what he was protecting me from, and gave him a puzzled look.
When she’d moved on a few slow steps, he let go of my arm. “Never pass a woman carrying an empty pail,” he said. “It’s bad luck.”
“Oh.”
I looked back at the old lady, and sure enough most of the people were giving her a wide berth as she went trudging along the boardwalk to wherever she was going with her bucket.
And then we crossed the walk to enter the building, where the others were already going in.
Igor and I were the last ones through the door, and I stood for a moment, sort of awe-struck. This was only the second time I’d been indoors in Russia, not counting the Imperial Cossacks’ headquarters we’d just come out of, which right then I was trying hard to forget, anyway. The other time had been that night in Vladivostok, in that lopsided, rough little place where we’d bought the vodka for the herd, with the three grubby soldiers, staring at us from off in one corner, and the fat greasy-aproned bartender.
But this big, fine place was really different.
It was just one wide, long room, with a swinging door on a far side that led to the kitchen and some stairs on the other side going up to the second floor. Everything in it was made of heavy, dark wood, the floors and walls and tables and chairs and the beamed ceiling. And, according to the smell, some of it was fresh cut and hewn. Beyond that, there was the rich, homey smell about the place of good food being cooked and eaten. And, somehow, the people themselves had that same thing about them, the warm feel and smell of fresh-cut wood and good simple cooking.
And, too, there was the deep, bubbling sound of men’s laughter, which often sounds deeper and better when they’re laughing only partly because of what’s being said and mostly because of just having a good time with their friends and some strong liquor. But the best part of all was that the big, handsomely carved tables were being tended by six or eight girls. And except for one, who was a tough-looking old gal, they wore those same floor-length dresses and the triangle-shaped handkerchiefs on their heads. And like the theory of longhorns, their dresses came in every color of the rainbow. One girl, carrying a trayful of drinks to some men at a nearby table, was wearing a red-and-white-checked dress, and she looked as spunky and cheerful as a brand-new tablecloth. Except for the fact that no table was ever in history built along the same sort of overwhelming lines as that young lady. She looked at our bunch near the door and gave us all a big, sunny smile as she headed back toward the door to the kitchen.
And it was a kind of interesting thing that everybody in that big room, although they seemed a little surprised, also seemed to be just about as friendly as she was. They could tell at a glance, of course, that us Slash-Diamonders were foreigners. But when they looked at Rostov and his men, sizing up their uniforms, their reactions were just the opposite of Verushki’s and his Imperial Cossacks. They showed open admiration, and a couple of big men waved their glasses toward Rostov and called out something in rough, friendly voices before drinking.