Everybody was in place by then, and at about that time I saw Shad ride up to join the others over near the big rock.
Igor and Mushy, the starters for the teams, were mounted, each holding a heavy rock in one hand and ready to go. Nick raised his arm and then quickly dropped it, signaling the two of them to bust out.
They took off like demons, and both of them made that first low jump over the stream all right, each of them holding their rock kind of up against their chests so they could hang on to it better. But by the time they approached the first relay point far across the meadow, where Dixie and Ilya were waiting and raring to go, Igor, on that fast Blackeye, had now pulled about two or three lengths ahead of Mushy. He handed his rock to Ilya, who in turn took off at full tilt. And then Mushy was there, passing his big rock over to Dixie. It looked like they damnere dropped it, but then Dixie was also on his way, galloping furiously to try to narrow the cossack lead.
Dixie was on his handsome Appaloosa, Shiloh, who could outrun damnere any living thing on four legs, and taking that second part of the course in almost exactly the same route Ilya used, Dixie picked up a couple of lengths.
The race was getting exciting as hell, and was now suddenly half over as Ilya and Dixie barreled up to Purse and Kirdyaga with at the very most one second difference in their running time. With growing, eager excitement, Pietre leaned over and whacked me powerfully on the back, letting out a wild whoop that may have been Russian, but sure sounded like a pure cowboy yell.
And then Ilya, who was handier with balalaikas than rocks, dropped his as he was handing it over to Kirdyaga. The giant Kirdyaga didn’t even dismount to get the heavy rock. He spun his horse around and, leaning far down, did an almost impossible thing by simply picking it back up in one huge hand.
But just that brief time still lost them three or four lengths because Dixie had passed his rock to Purse and Purse was on his way. It would have been a shoo-in for us then except that Purse tried to gain even more time by cutting too close to a pole in some thick trees and he got slowed down for a long, maddening moment, so that when he and Kirdyaga came charging out of that grove of trees and onto the open meadow, they were as close together as the two sides of a silver dollar.
Pietre was going crazy, and I guess I was too, because all of a sudden I realized I was hollering at Purse, and urging him on, as loud as Pietre was yelling at Kirdyaga.
The two of us each got handed our rock at about the same time, and I damnere lost myself along with the rock as Buck, feeling all the intense excitement, roared away so fast he almost left me sitting there in midair.
Getting my seat back, I took the rough outcropping of rock closer to the first pole than Pietre did and for a few seconds had to slow down or Buck could have hurt himself. Pietre took a way that was farther around but faster, so we both galloped out of the rocks about even.
We exactly reversed that process going through the thick stand of trees farther on. Pietre elected this time for the shorter, more tangled route, and a grasping branch almost tore the rock out of his hand, slowing him briefly as he went ducking and weaving through. Playing it safer this time, I spotted a wide path forty feet to the left of the pole where I could charge through at a dead run, and I chose that way.
And again, goddamned if we weren’t still flying along neck and neck on the far side of the trees.
And now, in these last seconds, the whole, entire race boiled down to whatever the two of us made up our minds to do.
It was a flat-out straightaway toward that final, deadly obstacle, and we were going so fast I don’t think any one of those combined eight hooves were hardly even touching the ground.
It was going to be awful damn tight.
Maybe Pietre suddenly got the same idea about me that I suddenly got about him. But I for sure suddenly got the idea that he wasn’t going to play it in the least bit safe, but was going right smack at that last pole to take that killer of a jump there. So no matter who was reading whose mind, before there was any time to think it over, that’s exactly where we were both headed, like blistered bats out of burning hell.
I knew as sure as I knew my own name that I shouldn’t try to make that jump. But in those last feverish, speeding moments, I’d have probably needed three guesses to come up with my own name anyway. Winning that race had crowded out everything else in the world. And yet I did somehow know that the jump was wrong.
All things equal, I suddenly decided on what seemed to me to be a brilliant way out of my dilemma.
Cradling my rock against my chest, I leaned forward over Buck’s ears and said, “I’ve decided t’ leave this up t’ you. If ya’ can make that jump, then make it. An’ if ya’ can’t, then fuck it. As f’r me, I’m just gonna sit here with this rock.”
Even at the blinding speed that we were traveling, Buck’s ears were twitching back every now and then as I spoke, as though he wanted to be sure not to miss anything.
And that dumb buckskin sonofabitch decided to make it. If possible, he opened up even a little more, his neck and nose stretched out ahead as straight and graceful as the prow of a speeding ship.
All this time, Pietre and his skewbald were staying so close alongside us that he and I could’ve shook hands without leaning over.
Right now there was just time for one quick breath before we’d be at that brutal, empty space looming swiftly up ahead, so I sucked in a half breath of air as I leaned forward, balancing myself into the killing jump.
And at that precise moment, Buck changed his mind and stopped. When I say he stopped, I don’t mean he just slowed down or anything like that, because there wasn’t enough time to fool around. I mean he slammed on every goddamn brake he had as he sat right down and dragged his butt holding both forelegs stretched stiffly out before him so that he dug up enough dirt to start a small farm with, and skidded to a halt that was just slightly less abrupt than running straight into a brick wall.
Both me and my rock came awful close to sailing on all by ourselves and completing the remainder of that jump, or at least a portion of it, without benefit of Buck. It was so close, that gripping onto Buck’s ribs and then his flanks with every bit of foot and leg power I had, I swear it was only my toenails finally holding firm that just barely kept me from going on.
But Pietre did take that awesome leap. As me and Buck were skidding, he and his mare were flying, and that skewbald of his was one hell of a jumper. They just made it, but the ground on the far side wasn’t firm enough for all that flying weight, and as they came down, some of the dirt at that far edge broke away under her hind hooves and, slipping, she almost went over and down backward.
But superb horseman that he was, Pietre’s right hand instinctively flashed back and whacked her on the rear as his left hand swiftly hauled her head around so that she was jerked into one of the quickest half-turns ever seen, and her struggling hind hooves were now on secure ground farther from the edge.
This had all happened with such split-second timing that it was just about now that the rock he’d had to drop in order to save his mare splashed into the stream below.
After a deep sigh of relief that Pietre and his mare weren’t hurt, I spurred Buck down to where the stream was easy to cross and rode unhurriedly up to the big rock, and the finish line, where the others were gathering.
Pietre was sitting his mare quietly, just past the finish line, looking miserable as hell. He’d crossed over it, but crossing without his rock didn’t count. And as if that didn’t add up to enough misery for him already, it wasn’t hard to guess that Nick had given him hell for even trying the dangerous jump in the first place.