Two cossacks still held their sabers, and they now cut their wrists slightly before putting them back in their scabbards.
“Just exactly what the hell we gonna do?” Crab asked.
“Leap the stream and slash the water without disturbing it,” Rostov said. “Then, both going and coming back, strike each pine cone so that you cut it without taking it off. To cut it off is the worst thing you can do on the ride. Then cross the stream one more time and come back here.”
“Wait!” Rufe said. “Shouldn’t we be racin’ some a’ these cossacks?”
“I suspect you’ll have your hands full,” Slim said, “racin’ yourselves. Get ready!”
The five of us put our horses into a rough line.
“Go!” Slim yelled, and we charged toward the quiet part of the stream.
When I jumped it and slashed, my saber sent up enough water for an average-sized man to take a bath in. Out of the corner of my eye it looked like Natcho and Dixie both did a lot better than me. But Crab and Rufe, it turned out in later conversations, both fell upon evil times. Crab went so deep he brought up some mud. And Rufe swung wild and missed altogether. The only thing he did hit, toward the end of his swing, was Bobtail’s ear. Luckily, he just nicked the tip of it, though Bobtail didn’t consider it particularly lucky, and shied off to one side, breaking his stride and obviously wondering who the hell, and for what possible reason, was attacking his ear.
Natcho went into the lead with Dixie a little behind him and me and Crab neck and neck for third and fourth. By the time Rufe got Bobtail straightened out he was about three lengths to the rear.
We didn’t do as bad as I thought we would on the pine cones. That had to do with a little bit of instinctive skill and a whole lot of instinctive cheating. After using the sabers on the water, it was clearly true that they weren’t all that simple to handle at a full gallop. So, for myself, I took what I hoped seemed to be genuine swings at the first three pine cones, but I was trying my level damnedest to just tap them as lightly as Queen Victoria might do upon knighting some old fella.
If there was one honest rider among us, it was Natcho. From fairly close range, I could see that he was sending chips out of the pine cones without even coming close to knocking them off the poles they were stuck on. Right then I’d have bet Buck and myself both against a plugged nickel that that smooth Mexican bastard had handled sabers before, while in my whole life I’d never had anything but a pocketknife.
He was already halfway back along the pine cones on Diablo, while Buck and me, stretched full out, were halfway into them.
“Cuidado!” he yelled, which was sometimes his way of saying “Look out!” as he almost ran me and Buck down. And before I had a chance to yell anything fitting back at him, he was long gone.
Then Dixie, who was about a hundred feet ahead of me, made an unforgivable mistake that I cherished a lot. He got carried away and cut the last pine cone and slashed right through it, sending the pine cone itself flying three or four feet into the air. A little later, looking madder than thunder, he sped back past me.
I felt much better. Rufe and Crab were a little behind me, and Dixie’d just chopped off a head, which kind of disqualified him. Things were looking up.
So, continuing at full speed, I knighted the last standing pine cone as gently as possible and whirled Buck to charge back the way we’d come.
I roared back past Rufe and Crab and could see that except for Natcho I could win. And Buck was just as fast as Diablo, so if Natcho made a mistake, I could even beat him too.
Also going as fast as I was, I was picking up time on both Dixie and Natcho.
I really did saber the next pine cone neatly, sending a few chips flying, and then there was only one more pine cone between me and Buck and the stream, and we were going like greased lightning.
Old Keats told me once about a Greek word called “hubris,” which he said meant false pride. Or a sort of stupid confidence that gets turned inside out and comes out arrogance.
Anyway, I really whacked at that last pine cone and damnere got jerked out of the saddle as I realized how tough a two- or three-pound pine cone can be. My blade had gone about halfway through the cone, and between the sudden pressures being exerted, my arm almost came out of its socket, and would have except that the goddamn pole came out of the ground instead.
I guess that was better than me being ripped off old Buck, but not much better. He went into a circle, and I was left leaning about parallel to the ground, with my arm stretched out, and the saber after that, and then the pine cone, and then the trailing pole. I grabbed for the saber with my other hand too and cut it trying to get free.
Then, about the time I struggled back to a sitting-up position, Rufe and Crab hurtled by me on their way back, but I still had that awful problem.
Finally, with both hands, I pulled the saber loose from that heavy, sticky pine cone.
Humiliated as hell, I still made the best ride I could on the way back.
The others were there before I jumped Buck over the stream, but I didn’t pick up too much water with the saber this time and I at least got back in while everybody else was still breathing heavy.
I gave Igor his saber, handle first. As he took it, I said, “You can put it back. It’s not only drawn blood, but pine-cone sap.” As I started to hold my other hand to stop the bleeding, Igor grinned slightly and put his saber in its scabbard. Then he handed me a handkerchief to hold against the flowing blood.
At an order from Rostov, two of the cossacks rode down to the meadow to undo the damage Dixie and I had caused to their poles and pine cones. Dixie watched after them, still with a hint of that same dark thunder in his eyes.
“Well, Rostov,” Slim said, “what was the order a’ winnin’ among these fellas?”
Rostov said, “Natcho, Crab and Rufe were first, second and third. Then Dixie and Levi.”
I was surprised at Slim asking such a question, and his next line made me wonder even more. “Umm,” he nodded. “Kinda’ thought maybe ol’ Levi’d won.”
“Levi?” Crab said as we all frowned at Slim.
“Yeah. Downright spectacular.”
I began to sense Slim’s devious mind at work, so I didn’t say anything, but Rufe now got sucked in along with Crab. “What d’ya mean?”
“I doubt if in the history a’ them war games nobody ever b’fore took both a pine cone an’ a pole prisoner simultaneous like Levi just did.”
I looked at Slim and pretended to be mad, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t be because I suddenly knew that bighearted bastard was putting pressure on me to make it easier on Dixie, who’d not only lopped a pine cone clean off, but also lost a fairly rough scrap just before.
“You think you’re jokin’, you dumb sonofabitch,” I told Slim. “But it takes years a’ hard practice t’ perfect a saber blow like that.”
Rostov, who somehow understood everything that was going on, said, “How long do you think it would take you, Levi, to teach my men that fantastic saber thrust?”
“A lot more’n the week or so we’ll be here, sir.”
“A pity,” Rostov said. “Not knowing the Levi Dougherty thrust will probably set back cossackdom a hundred years.”
All the others were grinning now, at my expense, and it was cheap at twice the price because Dixie was now grinning too.
“This is all very goddamn fuckin’ funny,” I said. “But in the meantime I’m sittin’ here bleedin’ t’ death.”
Slim looked at my cut hand. “Ya’ got some sap in the cut, along with the blood.”