Those two hanged men were too much on all of our minds for any of us to want to, or be able to, just haul off and get a kick out of anything.
As a matter of pure fact, there wasn’t one man there who didn’t know just exactly what direction Shad and Rostov were pushing us in. Even Big Yawn, who was generally as thick as a brick wall, and who had been maybe the hardest-set against cossack clothes, was examining a big, baggy pair of flaming-red britches that belonged to Kirdyaga, who was about his same size. And Big Yawn had already made his mind up what he was going to do when he looked up from those red britches as Shad spoke out in a hard voice.
“In about ten minutes,” he said, “I want thirty cossacks t’ ride over that hill t’ pay homage t’ them two fellas.”
And about ten minutes later, that’s exactly what happened.
It wasn’t all that easy for the whole bunch of us to hurry up and look like cossacks, but we managed. Boots and hats were the scarcest items because a lot of Rostov’s men weren’t carrying spares. But there were plenty of capes and britches to go around, and those were what would be most easily seen and recognized at a distance anyway. For most of those ten minutes, us cowboys in that camp looked too ridiculous to even try to describe. Picking out fellas about their same size, the cossacks were bringing over their spare stuff, while we were getting down to our long Johns and starting, with a good deal of cussing and growling, to get into those unfamiliar things.
“My God!” Crab snarled. “This goddamn shirt buttons up the back!”
But Ilya, who owned the silken-looking shirt, saw the problem and started to give Crab a hand with buttoning it. I lucked out, because Igor had a complete second uniform that fit me like it had been made to order. The fur hat felt funniest of all, not having any brim to take hold of, but I was soon to find out that the good feeling of the cape more than made up for that. It felt kind of good and free when you were just wearing it normally, but mounted, when you opened your horse up a little, it went whipping out behind and around you like a huge bird’s wings flapping, giving you the feeling of damnere halfway flying.
Struggling into one of those blood-red vests that Nick had given him, Slim said to Shad and Rostov, “You ain’t leavin’ nobody at all in camp?”
“Nope.” Shad swung one of Rostov’s capes around his shoulders. “We ain’t gonna be gone but a few minutes.”
Rostov nodded. “This way, they’ll see the greatest show of force we can mount.”
“I still ain’t sure about me an’ Link,” Shiny said, pulling on a pair of Yuri’s britches. “Our complexions’re awful dark.”
“Pull your hats down,” Dixie said dryly.
“We won’t give ’em much time t’ study on us,” Shad told them. “Let’s get t’ horse.”
And a moment later we were mounting up and moving out.
Poor old Purse Mayhew, standing lookout, almost collapsed from sheer shock as all those cossacks came galloping up toward him, but then he saw Shad up front, and some of us others, and realized what was going on.
We rode past the still-openmouthed Purse, over the crest of the rise, and started down the far side. From here we could see Khabarovsk far off and below in the distance.
There were still a lot of people gathered around that big oak tree on the edge of town, so far away that even the huge tree itself looked small. I could just barely make out the two tiny figures hanging motionlessly from one large limb, and I swallowed hard.
“Pull up!” Shad ordered. “And line out!”
Rostov repeated the order in Russian, and within a few seconds there were thirty of us sitting our horses side by side, facing the distant crowd around the grim, terrible oak tree with its two hanging bodies.
Even from that far away we’d already been noticed by Verushki’s cossacks and the rest of the people there. Verushki’s men, staring off and up at us, must have had the same feeling I did. As I looked from one side to the other, at all of our fellas lined up, we sure didn’t appear to be a bunch to mess around with lightly.
Shad and Rostov were next to each other in the center of the long line, and they said something back and forth.
“Take out your rifles!” Shad ordered. “We’re gonna give them two fellas a three-gun salute!”
Rostov was calling out the same instructions to his men.
“Aim your rifles up!” Shad told us. “And shoot when I yell fire!”
We all cocked our rifles and raised them toward the sky.
Shad now called out, “Ready!—Fire!”
A slightly ragged, but damned impressive volley roared out and echoed across the wide, sloping meadows toward Khabarovsk.
Before the sound of the first volley had faded out of the air, Shad yelled “Fire!” again and the second thunder boomed out from our assembled guns. A few cossacks had single-shot rifles and couldn’t fire again, but with all the smoke and noise it was impossible to tell the difference. Buck started to rear under me a little, thinking we were overdoing the whole thing, and a couple of other horses weren’t all too happy, but by that time the third command came and the third roar of rifles rolled boomingly out across the meadow.
“Put your guns back, and let’s go!” Shad called. He and Rostov led off, and we followed the two of them back up over the rise and out of sight of Khabarovsk. I doubt if all told we’d actually been in sight of the town for as much as one full minute.
“Jesus!” Purse yelled as we rode back past him. “I sure am glad I’m on your side!”
He might have been sort of trying to kid us a little, what with our uniforms and all, but his voice came out sounding flat dead on the level.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AT CAMP we finally got our clothes situation straightened back around without too much confusion.
Rostov sent some of his cossacks out to stand guard at high, strategic points, and Shad put half a dozen of our men on the herd, which was gathered in a wide, grassy depression in the broken flats. A stream ran by near our camp, and widened out into a small lake not far beyond, so there was plenty of grass and water handy to keep the herd in good shape.
We’d got a fire going and put some water on to boil coffee. And now, not much more than spitting distance away, some of the cossacks were starting to build their own fire.
“Say, Captain Rostov,” Slim said, “we’ll have a big pot a’ coffee ready pretty quick.”
The cossacks looked at us, and Old Keats said, “There’ll be more’n enough.”
Rostov didn’t exactly turn the offer down, but he didn’t exactly accept it either. “My men drink tea.”
“It would be interesting, sir,” Igor said. “I’ve never drank coffee.”
“Never?” I asked, stunned at such an unbelievable thing.
“No.” He shook his head. “Never.”
“Then,” Shad said, quietly making the invitation official, “maybe it’s time ya’ did.”
Igor looked at Rostov, ready to go along with whatever he decided.
“All right,” Rostov said finally. “Coffee.”
As the cossacks gathered around our fire with us, Slim got out a bag of Acme Prime Grade Coffee Beans and started to grind them.
It was kind of a strange feeling just then, because after all the weeks we’d more or less been together, it was the first time we’d ever really been together in a friendly, easygoing way of everybody sitting around one fire.
The cossacks gradually settled in next to the rest of us around the burning, crackling wood, and there was a long silence, but it wasn’t a bad silence.