That bit of dry land, as it happened, was the commencement of a low
ridge of hard ground on the border of the morass. The exhausted horse
stood beside his master, with legs extended and heaving flanks, turning
his nose to the wind as he panted for breath. The treacherous marshes
stretched away for miles on every side, and the panic-terror ran
through the animal like an electric shock. Behind him in the bogs the
tragedy wore on to its climax. Maddened horses broke away, men were
knocked down and rendered helpless, and animals and humans were sucked
down to a dreadful death. The columns in the rear had hardly left the
firm road before the darkness of night hid the inferno in front, and
only a few stragglers escaped to tell the tale of what befell that day.
When the sun was once more high in the heavens, the survivors marched
back from that dreadful place with leaden feet, shoulders huddled
forward, and red-rimmed eyes; they were thinking of the fearful fate of
their comrades.
As they trudged along the dusty road, the weary men stepping slowly
under the weight of their packs, they saw a little Cossack horse a
short distance from the highway, with drooping head and tired eyes,
standing under the shade of an overhanging tree beside a motionless
bundle covered with caked mud. The horse whinnied as they drew near,
and lifted his odd-shaped burden with his teeth. For a few yards he
struggled on with it; then he laid it down from sheer exhaustion.
"It looks like a man; see if he lives," ordered an officer. A sergeant
came forward and found that the helpless Cossack was still breathing.
How long he had lain there he never knew, for his faithful horse had
carried him by his belt little by little, yard by yard, from the place
where he had fallen--five weary versts away, they told him--till he
reached the shelter of those trees by the roadside. He had never left
his master save for a short time to crop the herbage or drink from a
pool during that long night and the day that followed. And now, when he
could do no more, help had come.
When Mooska Zarden's senses returned to him he seemed to remember lying
in the moonlight during that long night, with nothing but the stars
above him, and feeling the soft nose of the faithful animal touch his
hand; and he would feebly move it to show that he was alive. Then his
belt would tighten and he would be dragged on gently for a few yards
and laid down again, still only semi-conscious. Now the soldiers were
giving him restoratives, but he felt little except the throbbing of his
head. He opened his eyes feebly at last, but could not speak or think.
When he was placed on a stretcher the horse broke away from the man who
was leading him and took his place beside the bearers, every now and
then putting his nose against the shoulder of the prostrate figure.
"Let him be till we fall in with a Cossack regiment or some stragglers
of his own corps," said the colonel. "He saved the trooper's life."
When Zarden regained his senses he was in hospital, weak and spent by
fever; his brain had hardly as yet recovered from the shock. "Have I
been ill?" he inquired, but the nurse told him to lie still and ask no
questions. As yet he could remember nothing. The sun glinted in through
the windows and flecked the white-washed walls here and there with
gleams of golden light. There were rows and rows of beds in the long
ward, placed side by side, and Red Cross nurses were flitting about
among them. It was all very strange to him. After a while his eyes
rested upon the _ikon_ hanging on the wall. This was the first time he
had noticed it, and his memory brought him fitful shadows of the last
occasion on which he had seen one. An aged woman, of whom he had but a
hazy remembrance, was kneeling before it.
While he was trying to straighten out the tangle of mixed-up ideas in
his mind, a cry from one of the beds in the ward held his attention.
"Save me; I am sinking!" cried an agonized voice. Then, in a flash, he
remembered those pitiful shrieks of despair, and he covered his face
with his hands. Memory, that fickle jade, had come back at the point
where she had deserted him, and he lay back with closed eyes while
pictures floated through his brain of what he had passed through that
dreadful day, followed by the starlit night when he could hear the
troop-horse cropping the herbage at his side and the strike of the
animal's iron-shod hoofs as he slipped over stones, weighted with his
burden. Soon it all came back to him. "Bring me a mirror, nurse," he
said. It was the first thing he had asked for. He looked at it; then,
with a wild shriek, he flung it away.
"It is another--not me! Who am I?" he cried. "My hair and beard are as
white as snow! It is not me, Mooska Zarden, any more."
The nurse picked up the fragments of the broken glass hastily, and he
lay back raving as he had done in his fever.
"You must dye his hair and beard at once," the doctor ordered,
"otherwise he will lose his reason. With care, however, he will
recover; it is a nervous breakdown."