The Cossacks - graf Tolstoy Leo (suggested reading TXT) 📗

Chapter XL

The next day Olenin awoke earlier than usual, and immediately

remembered what lay before him, and he joyfully recalled her

kisses, the pressure of her hard hands, and her words, ‘What white

hands you have!’ He jumped up and wished to go at once to his

hosts’ hut to ask for their consent to his marriage with Maryanka.

The sun had not yet risen, but it seemed that there was an unusual

bustle in the street and side-street: people were moving about on

foot and on horseback, and talking. He threw on his Circassian

coat and hastened out into the porch. His hosts were not yet up.

Five Cossacks were riding past and talking loudly together. In

front rode Lukashka on his broad-backed Kabarda horse.

 

The Cossacks were all speaking and shouting so that it was

impossible to make out exactly what they were saying.

 

‘Ride to the Upper Post,’ shouted one.

 

‘Saddle and catch us up, be quick,’ said another.

 

‘It’s nearer through the other gate!’

 

‘What are you talking about?’ cried Lukashka. ‘We must go through

the middle gates, of course.’

 

‘So we must, it’s nearer that way,’ said one of the Cossacks who

was covered with dust and rode a perspiring horse. Lukashka’s face

was red and swollen after the drinking of the previous night and

his cap was pushed to the back of his head. He was calling out

with authority as though he were an officer.

 

‘What is the matter? Where are you going?’ asked Olenin, with

difficulty attracting the Cossacks’ attention.

 

‘We are off to catch abreks. They’re hiding among the sand-drifts.

We are just off, but there are not enough of us yet.’

 

And the Cossacks continued to shout, more and more of them joining

as they rode down the street. It occurred to Olenin that it would

not look well for him to stay behind; besides he thought he could

soon come back. He dressed, loaded his gun with bullets, jumped

onto his horse which Vanyusha had saddled more or less well, and

overtook the Cossacks at the village gates. The Cossacks had

dismounted, and filling a wooden bowl with chikhir from a little

cask which they had brought with them, they passed the bowl round

to one another and drank to the success of their expedition. Among

them was a smartly dressed young cornet, who happened to be in the

village and who took command of the group of nine Cossacks who had

joined for the expedition. All these Cossacks were privates, and

although the cornet assumed the airs of a commanding officer, they

only obeyed Lukashka. Of Olenin they took no notice at all, and

when they had all mounted and started, and Olenin rode up to the

cornet and began asking him what was taking place, the cornet, who

was usually quite friendly, treated him with marked condescension.

It was with great difficulty that Olenin managed to find out from

him what was happening. Scouts who had been sent out to search for

abreks had come upon several hillsmen some six miles from the

village. These abreks had taken shelter in pits and had fired at

the scouts, declaring they would not surrender. A corporal who had

been scouting with two Cossacks had remained to watch the abreks,

and had sent one Cossack back to get help.

 

The sun was just rising. Three miles beyond the village the steppe

spread out and nothing was visible except the dry, monotonous,

sandy, dismal plain covered with the footmarks of cattle, and here

and there with tufts of withered grass, with low reeds in the

flats, and rare, little-trodden footpaths, and the camps of the

nomad Nogay tribe just visible far away. The absence of shade and

the austere aspect of the place were striking. The sun always

rises and sets red in the steppe. When it is windy whole hills of

sand are carried by the wind from place to place.

 

When it is calm, as it was that morning, the silence,

uninterrupted by any movement or sound, is peculiarly striking.

That morning in the steppe it was quiet and dull, though the sun

had already risen. It all seemed specially soft and desolate. The

air was hushed, the footfalls and the snorting of the horses were

the only sounds to be heard, and even they quickly died away.

 

The men rode almost silently. A Cossack always carries his weapons

so that they neither jingle nor rattle. Jingling weapons are a

terrible disgrace to a Cossack. Two other Cossacks from the

village caught the party up and exchanged a few words. Lukashka’s

horse either stumbled or caught its foot in some grass, and became

restive—which is a sign of bad luck among the Cossacks, and at

such a time was of special importance. The others exchanged

glances and turned away, trying not to notice what had happened.

Lukaskha pulled at the reins, frowned sternly, set his teeth, and

flourished his whip above his head. His good Kabarda horse,

prancing from one foot to another not knowing with which to start,

seemed to wish to fly upwards on wings. But Lukashka hit its well-

-fed sides with his whip once, then again, and a third time, and

the horse, showing its teeth and spreading out its tail, snorted

and reared and stepped on its hind legs a few paces away from the

others.

 

‘Ah, a good steed that!’ said the cornet.

 

That he said steed instead of HORSE indicated special praise.

 

‘A lion of a horse,’ assented one of the others, an old Cossack.

 

The Cossacks rode forward silently, now at a footpace, then at a

trot, and these changes were the only incidents that interrupted

for a moment the stillness and solemnity of their movements.

 

Riding through the steppe for about six miles, they passed nothing

but one Nogay tent, placed on a cart and moving slowly along at a

distance of about a mile from them. A Nogay family was moving from

one part of the steppe to another. Afterwards they met two

tattered Nogay women with high cheekbones, who with baskets on

their backs were gathering dung left by the cattle that wandered

over the steppe. The cornet, who did not know their language well,

tried to question them, but they did not understand him and,

obviously frightened, looked at one another.

 

Lukashka rode up to them both, stopped his horse, and promptly

uttered the usual greeting. The Nogay women were evidently

relieved, and began speaking to him quite freely as to a brother.

 

‘Ay—ay, kop abrek!’ they said plaintively, pointing in the

direction in which the Cossacks were going. Olenin understood that

they were saying, ‘Many abreks.’

 

Never having seen an engagement of that kind, and having formed an

idea of them only from Daddy Eroshka’s tales, Olenin wished not to

be left behind by the Cossacks, but wanted to see it all. He

admired the Cossacks, and was on the watch, looking and listening

and making his own observations. Though he had brought his sword

and a loaded gun with him, when he noticed that the Cossacks

avoided him he decided to take no part in the action, as in his

opinion his courage had already been sufficiently proved when he

was with his detachment, and also because he was very happy.

 

Suddenly a shot was heard in the distance.

 

The cornet became excited, and began giving orders to the Cossacks

as to how they should divide and from which side they should

approach. But the Cossacks did not appear to pay any attention to

these orders, listening only to what Lukashka said and looking to

him alone. Lukashka’s face and figure were expressive of calm

solemnity. He put his horse to a trot with which the others were

unable to keep pace, and screwing up his eyes kept looking ahead.

 

‘There’s a man on horseback,’ he said, reining in his horse and

keeping in line with the others.

 

Olenin looked intently, but could not see anything. The Cossacks

soon distinguished two riders and quietly rode straight towards

them.

 

‘Are those the ABREKS?’ asked Olenin.

 

The Cossacks did not answer his question, which appeared quite

meaningless to them. The ABREKS would have been fools to venture

across the river on horseback.

 

‘That’s friend Rodka waving to us, I do believe,’ said Lukashka,

pointing to the two mounted men who were now clearly visible.

‘Look, he’s coming to us.’

 

A few minutes later it became plain that the two horsemen were the

Cossack scouts. The corporal rode up to Lukashka.