Once in April when the country-side had only just began to put forth
its buds and shoots, when the woods were still wrapped in a dark blue
gloom, and the grass had only just begun to appear on the fat fields
basking in the sun--the chums were going along the high-road smoking
_makharka_[1] cigars of their own manufacture, and conversing.
[1] Coarse tobacco smoked by the peasants.
"You are coughing worse than ever," said Jig-Leg to his comrade in a
tone of mild reproach.
"A fig for that! Look ye, the dear little sun will soon warm me up--and
I shall feel alive again."
"H'm! You may have to go into the hospital you know."
"What do I want with hospitals? If die I must, let me die!"
"Well, that's true enough."
They were passing a tract of land planted with birches, and the
birches cast upon them the patterned shadows of their fine slender
leaves. The sparrows were hopping along the road chirping merrily.
"You don't walk very well," remarked Jig-Leg after a moment's silence.
"That's because I have a choky feeling," exclaimed Hopeful. "The air
is now thick and damp, it is a fat sort of air and I find it hard to
swallow."
And stopping short, he fell a-coughing.
Jig-Leg stood beside him, smoked away, and never took his eyes off him.
Hopeful, shaken by his attack of coughing, held his bosom with his
hands and his face grew blue.
"It gives my lungs a good tearing any way!" said he, when he had ceased
coughing.
And on they went again after scaring away the sparrows.
"Now we are coming to Mukhina," observed Jig-Leg, throwing away his
cigarette, and spitting. "We must make a circuit round it at the
back by the way of the outhouses, perhaps we may be able to pick up
something. Then further on past the Sivtsova spinny to Kuznechikha....
From Kuznechikha we'll turn off towards Markvoka, and so home."
"That will be a walk of thirty versts," said Hopeful. "May it not be in
vain!"
To the left of the road stood a wood uniformly dark and inhospitable,
there was not a single patch of green amidst its naked branches to
cheer the eye. On the outskirts of the wood a small, rough, shaggy
little horse, with woefully fallen-in flanks was roaming, and its
prominent ribs were as sharply denned as the hoops of a barrel. The
chums stopped again and looked at it for a long time, watching how it
slowly picked its way along, lowering its snout towards the ground, and
cropping the herbage with its lips, carefully munching them with its
worn-out yellow teeth.
"She's starved too!" observed Hopeful.
"Gee-gee!" cried Jig-Leg enticingly.
The horse looked at him, and shaking his head, negatively bent it
earthwards again.
Hopeful explained the horse's wearisome movement: "He doesn't like
you!" said he.
"Come! If we hand him over to the gipsies, they no doubt will give us
seven roubles for her," observed Jig-Leg meditatively.
"No they won't! What could they do with her?"
"There's the hide!"
"The hide? Do you suppose they'll give as much as that for the hide?
Look at it! What sort of a hide do you call that? Why it isn't equal to
old shoe leather."
"Well, they'd give something any way."
"Yes, I suppose that's true enough."
Jig-Leg looked at his comrade, and after a pause, said:
"Well?"
"Awkward...." replied Hopeful doubtfully.
"How?"
"We should leave tracks. The ground is damp ... they could trace
where we took it."
"We could put clouts on her feet."
"As you like."
"Come along! Let's drive her into the wood and pass the night in the
gully. In the night we'll bring her out and drive her to the gipsies.
It's not far--only three versts."
"Let's go then," said Hopeful, shaking his head. "A bird in the bush
you know.... But suppose something comes of it?"
"Nothing will come of it," said Jig-Leg with conviction.
They quitted the road, and after glancing carefully around them,
entered the wood. The horse looked at them, snorted, waved her tail,
and again fell to munching the withered grass.