"The mange. You'll have to dispose of him to the gypsies."
"Better have his throat cut; only have it done to-day."
The morning was calm and clear. The herd had gone to pasture.
Kholstomír remained behind. A strange man came along; thin, dark,
dirty, in a kaftan spotted with something black. This was the
scavenger. He took Kholstomír by the halter, and without looking at him
started off. The horse followed quietly, not looking round, and, as
always, dragging his legs and kicking up the straw with his hind-legs.
As he went out of the gate, he turned his head toward the well; but the
scavenger twitched the halter, and said,--
"It's not worth while."
The scavenger, and Vaska who followed, proceeded to a depression behind
the brick barn, and stopped, as though there were something peculiar
in this most ordinary place; and the scavenger, handing the halter to
Vaska, took off his kaftan, rolled up his sleeves, and produced a knife
and whetstone from his boot-leg.
The piebald pulled at the halter, and out of sheer _ennui_ tried to
bite it, but it was too far off. He sighed, and closed his eyes. He
hung down his lip, showing his worn yellow teeth, and began to drowse,
lulled by the sound of the knife on the stone. Only his sick and
swollen leg trembled a little.
Suddenly he perceived that he was grasped by the lower jaw, and that
his head was lifted up. He opened his eyes. Two dogs were in front of
him. One was snuffing in the direction of the scavenger, the other sat
looking at the gelding as though expecting something especially from
him. The gelding looked at them, and began to rub his jaw against the
hand that held him.
"Of course they want to cure me," he said: "let it come!"
And the thought had hardly passed through his mind, before they did
something to his throat. It hurt him; he started back, stamped his
foot, but restrained himself, and waited for what was to follow....
What followed, was some liquid pouring in a stream down his neck and
breast. He drew a deep breath, lifting his sides. And it seemed easier,
much easier, to him.
The whole burden of his life was taken from him.
He closed his eyes, and began to droop his head,--no one held it. Then
his legs quivered, his whole body swayed. He was not so much terrified
as he was astonished....
Every thing was so new. He was astonished; he tried to run ahead, up
the hill, ... but instead of this, his legs, moving where he stood,
interfered. He began to roll over on his side, and while expecting to
make a step he fell forward, and on his left side.
The scavenger waited till the death-struggle was over, drove away the
dogs that were creeping nearer, and then seized the horse by the legs,
turned him over on the back, and, telling Vaska to hold his leg, began
to take off the hide.
"That was a horse indeed!" said Vaska.
"If he'd been fatter, it would have been a fine hide," said the
scavenger.
That evening the herd passed by the hill; and those who were on the
left wing saw a red object below them, and around it some dogs busily
romping, and crows and hawks flying over it. One dog, with his paws
on the carcass, and shaking his head, was growling over what he was
tearing with his teeth. The brown filly stopped, lifted her head and
neck, and long sniffed the air. It took force to drive her away.
At sunrise, in a ravine of the ancient forest, in the bottom of an
overgrown glade, some wolf-whelps were beside themselves with joy.
There were five of them,--four about of a size, and one little one with
a head bigger than his body. A lean, hairless she-wolf, her belly with
hanging dugs almost touching the ground, crept out of the bushes, and
sat down in front of the wolves. The wolves sat in a semi-circle in
front of her. She went to the smallest, and lowering her stumpy tail,
and bending her nose to the ground, made a few convulsive motions, and
opening her jaws filled with teeth she struggled, and disgorged a
great piece of horse-flesh.
The larger whelps made a movement to seize it; but she restrained them
with a threatening growl, and let the little one have it all. The
little one, as though in anger, seized the morsel, hiding it under him,
and began to devour it. Then the she-wolf disgorged for the second, and
the third, and in the same way for all five, and finally lay down in
front of them to rest.
At the end of a week there lay behind the brick barn only the great
skull, and two shoulder-blades; all the rest had disappeared. In the
summer a muzhík who gathered up the bones carried off also the skull
and shoulder-blades, and put them to use.
The dead body of Sierpukhovskoï who had been about in the world, and
had eaten and drunken, was buried long after. Neither his skin nor his
flesh nor his bones were of any use.
And just as his dead body, which had been about in the world, had been
a great burden to others for twenty years, so the disposal of this body
became only an additional charge upon men. Long it had been useless
to every one, long it had been only a burden. But still the dead who
bury their dead found it expedient to dress this soon-to-be-decaying,
swollen body, in a fine uniform, in fine boots; to place it in a fine
new coffin, with new tassels on the four corners; then to place this
new coffin in another, made of lead, and carry it to Moscow; and there
to dig up the bones of people long buried, and then to lay away this
mal-odorous body devoured by worms, in its new uniform and polished
boots, and to cover the whole with earth.