After all of us others had helped ourselves, he just quietly took some beans and coffee and let it go at that.
On top of what Rostov had said before, that made me damned sad and thoughtful.
Later, after we’d eaten, Old Keats came over and sat down on the ground beside me. Sammy the Kid was idly fooling with his guitar, and a few of the others were playing showdown by the fire, laughing and passing the deal back and forth among them.
Off in the distance, from the cossack camp, we could dimly hear another string instrument, and some of the cossacks were humming a pretty, peaceful tune in a low, strong way.
“How ya’ feelin’?” Old Keats said quietly, and I knew that Shad was on his mind too.
“Sad an’ thoughtful,” I told him accurately.
“Yeah?” He hunched forward, clasping his arms around his knees. “Well, personally I’m not feelin’ too bad, m’self.”
“How come?”
“Shad didn’t eat any a’ that venison. But on the other hand, he didn’t send you packin’ right over t’ the cossack camp t’ give it back. I think there might be some hope there for that hardheaded bastard, somewhere.”
Shad had gone out to take a ride around the herd, checking it. He rode back in now and took care of Red. Then he poured a cup of coffee and came over to sit beside us.
After he’d settled down and taken a couple of sips, he said, “Somethin’s botherin’ you, Levi.”
“I dunno exactly how ya’ know, but damn right there is.”
“What?”
“Rostov.”
“Why?”
“He—He’s got an idea that—sometime you an’ him may come t’ tanglin’ ass. And that wouldn’t be any fun at all, for anybody.”
“Hell.” Shad took another slow sip of coffee. “Didn’t you know about that possibility up front, Levi?”
“Not the way he said it!” I kept my voice down so that it was just the three of us in the conversation, but I couldn’t keep the worry out of my voice. “What he said about you, word for word, was, ‘I hope not, but one day I may be forced to kill him.’ An’ that Rostov’s sure as hell one tough sonofabitch!”
Shad shrugged very slightly and drank some more of his coffee.
Old Keats frowned. “What the hell’d he say a thing like that for? He knew ya’d have t’ tell Shad.”
“It’s pretty easy,” Shad said. “He figures we’re gonna come up against some tough times. And he thinks that as bosses he and me may have some strong differences of opinion on what t’ do under certain circumstances.”
“Well, then—” Keats hesitated. “What he told Levi wasn’t so much a threat as a friendly warnin’.”
I nodded. “I think maybe so. He sure looked unhappy as hell when he said it. Maybe if you just tried to cooperate with ’im—”
Shad ignored what I was suggesting. “One way or the other, I won’t lose much sleep over it.” He finished his coffee and stared quietly at the cup. “All I want is t’ get those longhorns delivered. If there’s need for any fights along the way, then they’ll be fought.”
“Maybe he didn’t actually mean nothing,” I said hopefully, without really believing it. “Maybe he was just kinda foolin’ with me a little.”
“That man would never fool about fightin’, or killin’.” Old Keats had the same sense of foreboding that I had, and he looked grimly at Shad. “I’d sure as hell hate t’ see you two rough bastards go against each other. It’d have t’ be kinda like the earth itself gettin’ torn apart.”
Shad wasn’t all that impressed. He stood up, stretched and yawned slightly. “One thing I meant for damn sure. About not losin’ any sleep.”
He went over to get into his bedroll, and Old Keats turned to me. “You got an extra problem that I shoulda guessed by now.”
“Which extra problem?”
“Well, Shad’s like your big brother. But you’ve also gotten t’ kinda respect an’ like Rostov.”
“Oh, hell!”
“Don’t oh-hell me. That’s as it should be, and I know Rostov earned it.” He scratched his chin, frowning. “It’s just—If they do get around t’ getting into a scrap, don’t get yourself in the middle. That’d be awful perilous ground. With them two, only one of ’em would come out alive.”
Maybe what he said about not getting in the middle gave me the idea, or maybe I’d have thought of it anyway, but the next day I told Rostov what was uppermost in my mind. We’d ridden ahead and he’d paused at the top of a hill, so it gave me a chance to speak.
“Captain Rostov, sir?” I said.
“Umm?” He’d been intensely studying the far hills, and he turned to me.
“You—you said somethin’ about one day maybe havin’ t’ kill Shad Northshield.”
“Yes.” He was now studying me with that same intensity, and yet as always it was mixed with that strange kind of humor that seemed to forever be lurking somewhere in his eyes.
“Well”—I took a deep breath—“I just wanted t’ mention that even if ya’ could kill Shad, which is unlikely, that you’ll have t’ kill me first.”
Even though there was a tiny grin at one edge of his mouth, his gaze was still boring right through to the back of my head.
“And don’t tell me nothin’, please, about a puppy barkin’. I’m just tellin’ you right now. But I can bite, too.”
He looked at me for a long, fairly spooky moment, and then his teeth flashed in an unexpected and totally genuine smile that damnere dazzled me. “Good for you, Levi. But I expected no less.”
Then he turned abruptly and rode off, and that was the end of the conversation.
“Well hell,” I muttered to myself and Buck. “Is Shad still in jeopardy, or me, or both of us, or whomever the hell ever?” Buck twisted his left ear back, thinking what I was saying was a little silly.
So after all my intended bravery, I had no choice but to let the talk stop there and follow Rostov, going at a full run to try to keep up.
Rostov had said his piece, and for damn sure meant it. I’d said mine, and meant it. And Shad hadn’t even bothered to put his two-cents’ worth into it, which in my mind made them about even.
I rode after Rostov knowing that he would never say anything more about killing Shad.
He might do it, but he wouldn’t talk about it.
And that was the hell of it. Just the idea that while he’d never talk about killing him again, he might just up, sometime, and take a crack at it.
CHAPTER NINE
ROSTOV NOW started taking even more of an interest in talking to me, telling me about things as we went along, and that tended to be one hell of an education all in itself. I guess he’d decided maybe I wasn’t a puppy.
I’d like to think that.
Also, he quietly saw to it that I gradually got to know the other cossacks.
Aside from Igor, the two others who spoke American, though they called it English, were Lieutenant Vassily Bruk and Sergeant Nikolai Razin. They hadn’t got the language down quite as good as Igor, but they held their own pretty well.
The lieutenant, Bruk, was the oldest man among the cossacks. He was lean and taciturn, and despite his age, which was probably pushing up over fifty, was as tough as a hardened old iron bar. Actually, I think our old man, Keats, had a few years on Bruk. But as Rostov later explained to me, in better words of course, when a fella’s as far advanced in years as either one of them was, and still banging around on hard, active duty, you have to figure he’s pretty special in the first place, and likely has that extra inner resilience of mind and body that can push a rare man clear up over the hundred-year mark and find him still raring to go for a good fight, a few drinks, and maybe even a lady or two.
If I’d had to compare the other one, Sergeant Nikolai Razin, to anyone in our outfit, it would have been Slim. He was as heavyset as Slim, with what looked like a fat belly, but in both their cases it was still all muscle. And while they were both quick to smile and loved to laugh, running up against either one of them would be like taking a knife and fork and trying to make a quick dinner out of a good-natured, slightly potbellied bear. You wouldn’t get much to eat, but it would be your most memorable, and last, dinner.