Natcho was too entranced to even bother about or notice Slim’s words. “By the dear Lord,” he said, “they certainly know about horses. Look at those animals! And their saddles and spurs and bits! Beautiful!”
Mushy chewed his last piece of bacon slowly and grudgingly. “Yeah. They’re a hasty an’ heavy-lookin’ outfit.”
Captain Rostov came toward us and stopped a few feet from the fire. “You’ve finished breakfast.” He looked at Shad levelly. “Now I hope we can have a brief, intelligent conversation.”
Shad stood up. “It’ll be brief.”
Rostov’s face grew hard for a moment, but he forced himself to control his anger and took out some papers. “If there is any question of our identity this is a copy of the bill of sale between your ranch and our ataman in the city of Blagoveshchensk.”
At a nod from Shad, Old Keats took the papers and started looking them over.
Rostov continued, saying, “Your duty is to deliver that herd to its destination.”
“I’ll do it.”
“My duty is to make certain you get there.” Rostov was getting close to fighting mad. “And I’ll goddamn well do that, too.”
That was the first time Rostov had sworn in English, and it made his statement kind of impressive, almost as though you weren’t necessarily talking to a foreigner. Maybe that’s why Shad eased off enough to explain something, which he didn’t often do. “I’ve got maps t’ show me where I’m goin’. And I’ve got fifteen men armed with sideguns an’ repeating rifles, and they know how to use ’em. Plus some other various and sundry weaponry in our packs. This country’s no rougher than the country we’re used to. So there just ain’t no way we won’t get there. And we don’t need any unwanted company or help. Is that clear, mister?”
Rostov breathed deeply, impatiently. “I’m pleased that you’re well equipped, mister. But one thing you don’t know is that those cattle are immeasurably more important to me and my people than they are to you. Another thing is that you haven’t any idea how deep or swift the Ussuri and Amur rivers are at this time of year. You don’t even know exactly where they or their tributaries are. Thirdly, you probably never heard of a Tartar warrior. And most important, you certainly never heard of a man named Genghis Kharlagawl, who has an entire army of Tartar warriors somewhere between here and our destination.”
There was a long moment of silence, because we sure as hell did not know any of those things he was talking about.
Finally Old Keats handed the papers back to Rostov. “That’s a legitimate copy, Shad. Listen, there’s just no doubt in my mind we’ll be able to use any help we can get along the way.”
Slim nodded. “I don’t like the idea a’ outside help anymore’n you do, Shad, but I second that motion. But a’ course whatever you say goes, boss.”
Shad thought about their opinions for a moment, then he grunted. “Okay. We’ll try it a while. But if you Russians cause any trouble the arrangement’ll come to a screeching halt.”
Rostov ignored this. “We’ll ride ahead of you and around you to scout the way. I want one of your men to ride with me.”
I expected Shad, in his tough frame of mind, to refuse, or maybe to volunteer Old Keats. But instead he looked at me. “You go, Levi.”
“Me?”
“You.”
So while the rest of the hands were working at packing and breaking up camp, I saddled Buck up with shaking hands and started ahead with the cossacks.
I didn’t know quite what to think as I rode up to the cossacks. It came out kind of a nervousness and fear and excitement and even fascination, all mingled together. For the first part of the ride I knew they were just waiting for me to fall off old Buck or do something else stupid. But I managed to keep up with their swift pace and not look too silly, I think.
At the top of a hill, after moving like bats out of hell, Rostov suddenly stopped us and we looked far back down at the beach. Most of the Slash-D men were asaddle by now, and yelling and twirling lariats to start the herd moving up toward us. Old Fooler, who always seemed to know the right way to go anyway, was following Shad riding point on Red, leading the cattle off in our direction. The Russians on the beach, who’d skinned the coyote-dun bull, were still busy dressing the meat, and a couple of them waved as cowboys rode by.
Beyond them, the blue-gray waters of the sea stretched forever.
Rostov glanced down at the scene and then at me, with hard eyes that seemed to go right through me and out the back of my head. “You gave them that entire bull.”
Remembering what he’d said about how important the herd was to him and his people, I hesitated a little bit before I answered. “Yeah.”
“Good.”
He turned and rode on north, and I spurred after him.
CHAPTER SIX
IF I’D had any suspicion that getting out of riding herd was going to make life easier for me, that first day with the cossacks changed my mind.
Keeping up with Rostov was like trying to race full tilt with a deer, outguessing what direction it was going to veer off to at any instant. When Rostov said he was going to scout ahead, he surely meant just that. The cossacks leading the spare mounts and packhorses didn’t have it too bad. They just walked their mounts at an easy pace in the lowlands, usually staying about half a mile ahead of the first longhorns. But the others, and especially me and Rostov, had been all over every foot of every mountain in sight long before Old Fooler and the first cattle ever stuck their noses into a valley below. Yet with all his hard riding, Rostov always somehow saw to it that his horse never got winded or tired, and I never once saw a drop of lather on that big black stallion.
A couple of times, when Rostov and I were alone near the top of a ridge, the ride got downright terrifying, too. Rostov, without hesitation, went barreling over a narrow, broken ledge that would have made a mountain goat stop and consider. Even though he hadn’t said a word since morning, and never even seemed to look at me, I still had the impression he was testing me every minute. So with the reputation of the good old Slash-Diamond at stake, I barreled along right after him. I was still trying to get my heart back in place a minute later, when we came to the second ledge, which was even higher and trickier to cross. He galloped over it as smooth as though his horse was a big, black bird, and thinking fatal thoughts I stuck right behind him. Mostly the path was the width of a skinny ironing board, and if we’d gone over the side it was at least two hundred feet to jagged rocks below.
And after maybe a minute, and aging ten years, I made it.
Rostov still didn’t look back or say anything.
But a while later, when we’d stopped and dismounted, he took a little meat out of his fancy, soft leather saddlebags and wordlessly offered me a bite of it. All in all, that wordless gesture of his seemed to me to be one hell of a compliment. I honestly didn’t know quite what to do. So I shook my head. But I compromised the refusal by giving him a very slight, brief grin.
Finally, around sunset, when my butt and the saddle under it felt like they were both about to shove themselves right up through the top of my head, Rostov pulled up on a bluff overlooking a beautiful and wide green flat with a creek running through it.
“I would suggest this as our camping place.”
Not wanting to agree with him too much, I said, “It’s not bad.”
“Ride back and tell Northshield.”