Master and Man
of the sledge and himself getting stuck in the ditch.
The horse gave a start and quickly climbed out onto the frozen bank. It
was evidently a ditch that had been dug there.
‘Where are we now?’ asked Vasili Andreevich.
‘We’ll soon find out!’ Nikita replied. ‘Go on, we’ll get somewhere.’
‘Why, this must be the Goryachkin forest!’ said Vasili Andreevich,
pointing to something dark that appeared amid the snow in front of them.
‘We’ll see what forest it is when we get there,’ said Nikita.
He saw that beside the black thing they had noticed, dry, oblong
willow-leaves were fluttering, and so he knew it was not a forest but a
settlement, but he did not wish to say so. And in fact they had not gone
twenty-five yards beyond the ditch before something in front of them,
evidently trees, showed up black, and they heard a new and melancholy
sound. Nikita had guessed right: it was not a wood, but a row of tall
willows with a few leaves still fluttering on them here and there. They
had evidently been planted along the ditch round a threshing-floor.
Coming up to the willows, which moaned sadly in the wind, the horse
suddenly planted his forelegs above the height of the sledge, drew up
his hind legs also, pulling the sledge onto higher ground, and turned to
the left, no longer sinking up to his knees in snow. They were back on a
road.
‘Well, here we are, but heaven only knows where!’ said Nikita.
The horse kept straight along the road through the drifted snow, and
before they had gone another hundred yards the straight line of the
dark wattle wall of a barn showed up black before them, its roof heavily
covered with snow which poured down from it. After passing the barn the
road turned to the wind and they drove into a snow-drift. But ahead of
them was a lane with houses on either side, so evidently the snow had
been blown across the road and they had to drive through the drift. And
so in fact it was. Having driven through the snow they came out into a
street. At the end house of the village some frozen clothes hanging on
a line--shirts, one red and one white, trousers, leg-bands, and a
petticoat--fluttered wildly in the wind. The white shirt in particular
struggled desperately, waving its sleeves about.
‘There now, either a lazy woman or a dead one has not taken her clothes
down before the holiday,’ remarked Nikita, looking at the fluttering
shirts.
III
At the entrance to the street the wind still raged and the road was
thickly covered with snow, but well within the village it was calm,
warm, and cheerful. At one house a dog was barking, at another a woman,
covering her head with her coat, came running from somewhere and entered
the door of a hut, stopping on the threshold to have a look at the
passing sledge. In the middle of the village girls could be heard
singing.
Here in the village there seemed to be less wind and snow, and the frost
was less keen.
‘Why, this is Grishkino,’ said Vasili Andreevich.
‘So it is,’ responded Nikita.
It really was Grishkino, which meant that they had gone too far to the
left and had travelled some six miles, not quite in the direction they
aimed at, but towards their destination for all that.
From Grishkino to Goryachkin was about another four miles.
In the middle of the village they almost ran into a tall man walking
down the middle of the street.
‘Who are you?’ shouted the man, stopping the horse, and recognizing
Vasili Anereevich he immediately took hold of the shaft, went along it
hand over hand till he reached the sledge, and placed himself on the
driver’s seat.
He was Isay, a peasant of Vasili Andreevich’s acquaintance, and well
known as the principal horse-thief in the district.
‘Ah, Vasili Andreevich! Where are you off to?’ said Isay, enveloping
Nikita in the odour of the vodka he had drunk.
‘We were going to Goryachkin.’
‘And look where you’ve got to! You should have gone through
Molchanovka.’
‘Should have, but didn’t manage it,’ said Vasili Andreevich, holding in
the horse.
‘That’s a good horse,’ said Isay, with a shrewd glance at Mukhorty, and
with a practised hand he tightened the loosened knot high in the horse’s
bushy tail.
‘Are you going to stay the night?’
‘No, friend. I must get on.’
‘Your business must be pressing. And who is this? Ah, Nikita Stepanych!’
‘Who else?’ replied Nikita. ‘But I say, good friend, how are we to avoid
going astray again?’
‘Where can you go astray here? Turn back straight down the street and
then when you come out keep straight on. Don’t take to the left. You
will come out onto the high road, and then turn to the right.’
‘And where do we turn off the high road? As in summer, or the winter
way?’ asked Nikita.
‘The winter way. As soon as you turn off you’ll see some bushes, and
opposite them there is a way-mark--a large oak, one with branches--and
that’s the way.’
Vasili Andreevich turned the horse back and drove through the outskirts
of the village.
‘Why not stay the night?’ Isay shouted after them.
But Vasili Andreevich did not answer and touched up the horse. Four
miles of good road, two of which lay through the forest, seemed easy to
manage, especially as the wind was apparently quieter and the snow had
stopped.
Having driven along the trodden village street, darkened here and there
by fresh manure, past the yard where the clothes hung out and where the
white shirt had broken loose and was now attached only by one frozen
sleeve, they again came within sound of the weird moan of the willows,
and again emerged on the open fields. The storm, far from ceasing,
seemed to have grown yet stronger. The road was completely covered with
drifting snow, and only the stakes showed that they had not lost their
way. But even the stakes ahead of them were not easy to see, since the
wind blew in their faces.
Vasili Andreevich screwed up his eyes, bent down his head, and looked
out for the way-marks, but trusted mainly to the horse’s sagacity,
letting it take its own way. And the horse really did not lose the road
but followed its windings, turning now to the right and now to the left
and sensing it under his feet, so that though the snow fell thicker and
the wind strengthened they still continued to see way-marks now to the
left and now to the right of them.
So they travelled on for about ten minutes, when suddenly, through the
slanting screen of wind-driven snow, something black showed up which
moved in front of the horse.
This was another sledge with fellow-travellers. Mukhorty overtook them,
and struck his hoofs against the back of the sledge in front of them.
‘Pass on... hey there... get in front!’ cried voices from the
sledge.
Vasili Andreevich swerved aside to pass the other sledge.
In it sat three men and a woman, evidently visitors returning from a
feast. One peasant was whacking the snow-covered croup of their little
horse with a long switch, and the other two sitting in front waved their
arms and shouted something. The woman, completely wrapped up and covered
with snow, sat drowsing and bumping at the back.
‘Who are you?’ shouted Vasili Andreevich.
‘From A-a-a...’ was all that could be heard.
‘I say, where are you from?’
‘From A-a-a-a!’ one of the peasants shouted with all his might, but
still it was impossible to make out who they were.
‘Get along! Keep up!’ shouted another, ceaselessly beating his horse
with the switch.
‘So you’re from a feast, it seems?’
‘Go on, go on! Faster, Simon! Get in front! Faster!’
The wings of the sledges bumped against one another, almost got jammed
but managed to separate, and the peasants’ sledge began to fall behind.
Their shaggy, big-bellied horse, all covered with snow, breathed heavily
under the low shaft-bow and, evidently using the last of its strength,
vainly endeavoured to escape from the switch, hobbling with its short
legs through the deep snow which it threw up under itself.
Its muzzle, young-looking, with the nether lip drawn up like that of a
fish, nostrils distended and ears pressed back from fear, kept up for a
few seconds near Nikita’s shoulder and then began to fall behind.
‘Just see what liquor does!’ said Nikita. ‘They’ve tired that little
horse to death. What pagans!’
For a few minutes they heard the panting of the tired little horse and
the drunken shouting of the peasants. Then the panting and the shouts
died away, and around them nothing could be heard but the whistling
of the wind in their ears and now and then the squeak of their
sledge-runners over a windswept part of the road.
This encounter cheered and enlivened Vasili Andreevich, and he drove
on more boldly without examining the way-marks, urging on the horse and
trusting to him.
Nikita had nothing to do, and as usual in such circumstances he drowsed,
making up for much sleepless time. Suddenly the horse stopped and Nikita
nearly fell forward onto his nose.
‘You know we’re off the track again!’ said Vasili Andreevich.
‘How’s that?’
‘Why, there are no way-marks to be seen. We must have got off the road
again.’
‘Well, if we’ve lost the road we must find it,’ said Nikita curtly, and
getting out and stepping lightly on his pigeon-toed feet he started once
more going about on the snow.
He walked about for a long time, now disappearing and now reappearing,
and finally he came back.
‘There is no road here. There may be farther on,’ he said, getting into
the sledge.
It was already growing dark. The snow-storm had not increased but had
also not subsided.
‘If we could only hear those peasants!’ said Vasili Andreevich.
‘Well they haven’t caught us up. We must have gone far astray. Or maybe
they have lost their way too.’
‘Where are we to go then?’ asked Vasili Andreevich.
‘Why, we must let the horse take its own way,’ said Nikita. ‘He will
take us right. Let me have the reins.’
Vasili Andreevich gave him the reins, the more willingly because his
hands were beginning to feel frozen in his thick gloves.
Nikita took the reins, but only held them, trying not to shake them
and rejoicing at his favourite’s sagacity. And indeed the clever horse,
turning first one ear and then the other now to one side and then to the
other, began to wheel round.
‘The one thing he can’t do is to talk,’ Nikita kept saying. ‘See what he
is doing! Go on, go on! You know best. That’s it, that’s it!’
The wind was now blowing from behind and it felt warmer.
‘Yes, he’s clever,’ Nikita continued, admiring the horse. ‘A Kirgiz
horse is strong but stupid. But this one--just see what he’s doing with
his ears! He doesn’t need any telegraph. He can scent a mile off.’
Before another half-hour had passed they saw something dark ahead of
them--a wood or a village--and stakes again appeared to the right. They
had evidently come out onto the road.
‘Why, that’s Grishkino again!’ Nikita suddenly exclaimed.
And indeed, there on their left was that same barn with the snow flying
from it, and farther on the same line with the frozen washing, shirts
and trousers, which still fluttered desperately in the wind.
Again they drove into the street and again it grew quiet, warm, and
cheerful, and again they could see the manure-stained street and hear
voices and songs and the barking of a dog. It was already so dark that
there were lights in some of the windows.
Half-way through the village Vasili Andreevich turned the horse towards
a large double-fronted brick house and stopped at the porch.
Nikita went to the lighted snow-covered window, in the rays of which
flying snow-flakes glittered, and knocked at it with his whip.
‘Who is there?’ a voice replied to his knock.
‘From Kresty, the Brekhunovs, dear fellow,’ answered Nikita. ‘Just come
out for a minute.’