The sun had already set and the shades of night were rapidly spreading
from the edge of the wood. The Cossacks finished their task round the
cordon and gathered in the hut for supper. Only the old man still
stayed under the plane tree watching for the vulture and pulling the
string tied to the falcon’s leg, but though a vulture was really
perching on the plane tree it declined to swoop down on the lure.
Lukáshka, singing one song after another, was leisurely placing nets
among the very thickest brambles to trap pheasants. In spite of his
tall stature and big hands every kind of work, both rough and delicate,
prospered under Lukáshka’s fingers.
“Hallo, Luke!” came Nazárka’s shrill, sharp voice calling him from the
thicket close by. “The Cossacks have gone in to supper.”
Nazárka, with a live pheasant under his arm, forced his way through the
brambles and emerged on the footpath.
“Oh!” said Lukáshka, breaking off in his song, “where did you get that
cock pheasant? I suppose it was in my trap?”
Nazárka was of the same age as Lukáshka and had also only been at the
front since the previous spring.
He was plain, thin and puny, with a shrill voice that rang in one’s
ears. They were neighbours and comrades. Lukáshka was sitting on the
grass cross-legged like a Tartar, adjusting his nets.
“I don’t know whose it was—yours, I expect.”
“Was it beyond the pit by the plane tree? Then it is mine! I set the
nets last night.”
Lukáshka rose and examined the captured pheasant. After stroking the
dark burnished head of the bird, which rolled its eyes and stretched
out its neck in terror, Lukáshka took the pheasant in his hands.
“We’ll have it in a pilau tonight. You go and kill and pluck it.”
“And shall we eat it ourselves or give it to the corporal?”
“He has plenty!”
“I don’t like killing them,” said Nazárka.
“Give it here!”
Lukáshka drew a little knife from under his dagger and gave it a swift
jerk. The bird fluttered, but before it could spread its wings the
bleeding head bent and quivered.
“That’s how one should do it!” said Lukáshka, throwing down the
pheasant. “It will make a fat pilau.”
Nazárka shuddered as he looked at the bird.
“I say, Lukáshka, that fiend will be sending us to the ambush again
tonight,” he said, taking up the bird. (He was alluding to the
corporal.) “He has sent Fómushkin to get wine, and it ought to be his
turn. He always puts it on us.”
Lukáshka went whistling along the cordon.
“Take the string with you,” he shouted.
Nazirka obeyed.
“I’ll give him a bit of my mind today, I really will,” continued
Nazárka. “Let’s say we won’t go; we’re tired out and there’s an end of
it! No, really, you tell him, he’ll listen to you. It’s too bad!”
“Get along with you! What a thing to make a fuss about!” said Lukáshka,
evidently thinking of something else. “What bosh! If he made us turn
out of the village at night now, that would be annoying: there one can
have some fun, but here what is there? It’s all one whether we’re in
the cordon or in ambush. What a fellow you are!”
“And are you going to the village?”
“I’ll go for the holidays.”
“Gúrka says your Dunáyka is carrying on with Fómushkin,” said Nazárka
suddenly.
“Well, let her go to the devil,” said Lukáshka, showing his regular
white teeth, though he did not laugh. “As if I couldn’t find another!”
“Gúrka says he went to her house. Her husband was out and there was
Fómushkin sitting and eating pie. Gúrka stopped awhile and then went
away, and passing by the window he heard her say, ‘He’s gone, the
fiend.... Why don’t you eat your pie, my own? You needn’t go home for
the night,’ she says. And Gúrka under the window says to himself,
‘That’s fine!’”
“You’re making it up.”
“No, quite true, by Heaven!”
“Well, if she’s found another let her go to the devil,” said Lukáshka,
after a pause. “There’s no lack of girls and I was sick of her anyway.”
“Well, see what a devil you are!” said Nazárka. “You should make up to
the cornet’s girl, Maryánka. Why doesn’t she walk out with any one?”
Lukáshka frowned. “What of Maryánka? They’re all alike,” said he.
“Well, you just try...”
“What do you think? Are girls so scarce in the village?”
And Lukáshka recommenced whistling, and went along the cordon pulling
leaves and branches from the bushes as he went. Suddenly, catching
sight of a smooth sapling, he drew the knife from the handle of his
dagger and cut it down. “What a ramrod it will make,” he said, swinging
the sapling till it whistled through the air.
The Cossacks were sitting round a low Tartar table on the earthen floor
of the clay-plastered outer room of the hut, when the question of whose
turn it was to lie in ambush was raised. “Who is to go tonight?”
shouted one of the Cossacks through the open door to the corporal in
the next room.
“Who is to go?” the corporal shouted back. “Uncle Burlák has been and
Fómushkin too,” said he, not quite confidently. “You two had better go,
you and Nazárka,” he went on, addressing Lukáshka. “And Ergushóv must
go too; surely he has slept it off?”
“You don’t sleep it off yourself so why should he?” said Nazárka in a
subdued voice.
The Cossacks laughed.
Ergushóv was the Cossack who had been lying drunk and asleep near the
hut. He had only that moment staggered into the room rubbing his eyes.
Lukáshka had already risen and was getting his gun ready.
“Be quick and go! Finish your supper and go!” said the corporal; and
without waiting for an expression of consent he shut the door,
evidently not expecting the Cossack to obey. “Of course,” thought he,
“if I hadn’t been ordered to I wouldn’t send anyone, but an officer
might turn up at any moment. As it is, they say eight _abreks_ have
crossed over.”
“Well, I suppose I must go,” remarked Ergushóv, “it’s the regulation.
Can’t be helped! The times are such. I say, we must go.”
Meanwhile Lukáshka, holding a big piece of pheasant to his mouth with
both hands and glancing now at Nazárka, now at Ergushóv, seemed quite
indifferent to what passed and only laughed at them both. Before the
Cossacks were ready to go into ambush. Uncle Eróshka, who had been
vainly waiting under the plane tree till night fell, entered the dark
outer room.
“Well, lads,” his loud bass resounded through the low-roofed room
drowning all the other voices, “I’m going with you. You’ll watch for
Chéchens and I for boars!”