The Cowboy and the Cossack by Clair Huffaker

Review

If the cattle drive in the far-better-known Lonesome Dove, from the Rio Grande to Montana, was long, the drive in Clair Huffaker's The Cowboy and the Cossack is far, far longer. The cowboys in this novel must cross an ocean with their beeves, to Vladivistok, Russia, and then push on deep into Siberia with them.

Once on Russian soil, however, the Slash-Diamond outfit is met by a Cossack named Captain Rostov who informs the cowboys that his own men will drive the cattle onward from that point. The outfit's leader, Shad, refuses, insisting that they will complete the job they were hired to do themselves. Thus begins a prickly alliance between the cowboys and Cossacks who will make the grueling trek together to a starved town called Bakaskaya.

Told entirely from the point of view of the youngest cowboy in the outfit, Levi (whose parents named him after the jeans), the novel is a traditional coming-of-age story. It's also an out-and-out men's adventure story. The only women in the tale are glimpsed while serving food and drinks in one of the rare towns but always remain remote, mysterious, and yearned for.

But as manly adventure yarns go, it's a corker. The men of two worlds, suspicious and hostile to each other at first, develop mutual respect and even friendship as they battle weather, imperial soldiers, wild animals, and even wilder men in the form of Genghis Kharlagawl and his Tartars. Adding to the complications, Shad and his men eventually learn that they were brought to Russia under false pretenses.

Much of the fun, of course, derives from our learning about the world of 19th century Russia through the young protagonist's eyes. This is not the Russia of War and Peace or Anna Karenina, though; it's the remote outposts of Eastern Russia and the no-man's land of the Mongolian border. I have no idea how much Russian history Huffaker may have studied to pull this off, but it comes across with complete believability. The writing is clear and compelling, pulling you through the 300 or so pages in a flurry.

Huffaker was a successful novelist, writing mostly Westerns in the 50s and 60s, and a sought-after screen writer with more than a dozen movies credited to him. Many of his Western novels were turned into movies, though, oddly, not the one that was undoubtedly his best.

The lengthy caption below the author's photo was scanned from the back cover of one of his books.