He stopped to think it over. There rode up to him another officer, Kostylín, with a gun, and said:
"Let us ride by ourselves, Zhilín! I cannot stand it any longer: I am hungry, and it is so hot. My shirt is dripping wet."
Kostylín was a heavy, stout man, with a red face, and the perspiration was just rolling down his face. Zhilín thought awhile and said:
"Is your gun loaded?"
"It is."
"Well, then, we will go, but on one condition, that we do not separate."
And so they rode ahead on the highway. They rode through the steppe, and talked, and looked about them. They could see a long way off.
When the steppe came to an end, the road entered a cleft between two mountains. So Zhilín said:
"We ought to ride up the mountain to take a look; for here they may leap out on us from the mountain without our seeing them."
But Kostylín said: