War and Peace
horsemen did not dismount and that the wolf shook herself and ran for
safety, Daniel set his chestnut galloping, not at the wolf but straight
toward the wood, just as Karáy had run to cut the animal off. As
a result of this, he galloped up to the wolf just when she had been
stopped a second time by “Uncle’s” borzois.
Daniel galloped up silently, holding a naked dagger in his left hand and
thrashing the laboring sides of his chestnut horse with his whip as if
it were a flail.
Nicholas neither saw nor heard Daniel until the chestnut, breathing
heavily, panted past him, and he heard the fall of a body and saw Daniel
lying on the wolf’s back among the dogs, trying to seize her by the
ears. It was evident to the dogs, the hunters, and to the wolf herself
that all was now over. The terrified wolf pressed back her ears and
tried to rise, but the borzois stuck to her. Daniel rose a little, took
a step, and with his whole weight, as if lying down to rest, fell on
the wolf, seizing her by the ears. Nicholas was about to stab her, but
Daniel whispered, “Don’t! We’ll gag her!” and, changing his
position, set his foot on the wolf’s neck. A stick was thrust between
her jaws and she was fastened with a leash, as if bridled, her legs were
bound together, and Daniel rolled her over once or twice from side to
side.
With happy, exhausted faces, they laid the old wolf, alive, on a shying
and snorting horse and, accompanied by the dogs yelping at her, took her
to the place where they were all to meet. The hounds had killed two of
the cubs and the borzois three. The huntsmen assembled with their booty
and their stories, and all came to look at the wolf, which, with her
broad-browed head hanging down and the bitten stick between her jaws,
gazed with great glassy eyes at this crowd of dogs and men surrounding
her. When she was touched, she jerked her bound legs and looked wildly
yet simply at everybody. Old Count Rostóv also rode up and touched the
wolf.
“Oh, what a formidable one!” said he. “A formidable one, eh?” he
asked Daniel, who was standing near.
“Yes, your excellency,” answered Daniel, quickly doffing his cap.
The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and his encounter with
Daniel.
“Ah, but you are a crusty fellow, friend!” said the count.
For sole reply Daniel gave him a shy, childlike, meek, and amiable
smile.
CHAPTER VI
The old count went home, and Natásha and Pétya promised to return very
soon, but as it was still early the hunt went farther. At midday
they put the hounds into a ravine thickly overgrown with young trees.
Nicholas standing in a fallow field could see all his whips.
Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman stood alone
in a hollow behind a hazel bush. The hounds had scarcely been loosed
before Nicholas heard one he knew, Voltórn, giving tongue at intervals;
other hounds joined in, now pausing and now again giving tongue. A
moment later he heard a cry from the wooded ravine that a fox had been
found, and the whole pack, joining together, rushed along the ravine
toward the ryefield and away from Nicholas.
He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the edge of the
ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox to show itself
at any moment on the ryefield opposite.
The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed his borzois, and
Nicholas saw a queer, short-legged red fox with a fine brush going hard
across the field. The borzois bore down on it.... Now they drew close
to the fox which began to dodge between the field in sharper and sharper
curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly a strange white borzoi dashed
in followed by a black one, and everything was in confusion; the borzois
formed a star-shaped figure, scarcely swaying their bodies and with
tails turned away from the center of the group. Two huntsmen galloped up
to the dogs; one in a red cap, the other, a stranger, in a green coat.
“What’s this?” thought Nicholas. “Where’s that huntsman from?
He is not ‘Uncle’s’ man.”
The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time without strapping
it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled and with high saddles, stood
near them and there too the dogs were lying. The huntsmen waved their
arms and did something to the fox. Then from that spot came the sound of
a horn, with the signal agreed on in case of a fight.
“That’s Ilágin’s huntsman having a row with our Iván,” said
Nicholas’ groom.
Nicholas sent the man to call Natásha and Pétya to him, and rode at a
footpace to the place where the whips were getting the hounds together.
Several of the field galloped to the spot where the fight was going on.
Nicholas dismounted, and with Natásha and Pétya, who had ridden up,
stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would end. Out of
the bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting and rode toward
his young master, with the fox tied to his crupper. While still at a
distance he took off his cap and tried to speak respectfully, but he was
pale and breathless and his face was angry. One of his eyes was black,
but he probably was not even aware of it.
“What has happened?” asked Nicholas.
“A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And it was my gray
bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!... He snatches at the fox! I
gave him one with the fox. Here it is on my saddle! Do you want a taste
of this?...” said the huntsman, pointing to his dagger and probably
imagining himself still speaking to his foe.
Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister and Pétya
to wait for him and rode to the spot where the enemy’s, Ilágin’s,
hunting party was.
The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and there,
surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted his exploits.
The facts were that Ilágin, with whom the Rostóvs had a quarrel and
were at law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to the Rostóvs,
and had now, as if purposely, sent his men to the very woods the
Rostóvs were hunting and let his man snatch a fox their dogs had
chased.
Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilágin, with his usual absence
of moderation in judgment, hated him cordially from reports of his
arbitrariness and violence, and regarded him as his bitterest foe. He
rode in angry agitation toward him, firmly grasping his whip and fully
prepared to take the most resolute and desperate steps to punish his
enemy.
Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a stout gentleman in
a beaver cap came riding toward him on a handsome raven-black horse,
accompanied by two hunt servants.
Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilágin a stately and courteous
gentleman who was particularly anxious to make the young count’s
acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilágin raised his beaver
cap and said he much regretted what had occurred and would have the
man punished who had allowed himself to seize a fox hunted by someone
else’s borzois. He hoped to become better acquainted with the count
and invited him to draw his covert.
Natásha, afraid that her brother would do something dreadful, had
followed him in some excitement. Seeing the enemies exchanging friendly
greetings, she rode up to them. Ilágin lifted his beaver cap still
higher to Natásha and said, with a pleasant smile, that the young
countess resembled Diana in her passion for the chase as well as in her
beauty, of which he had heard much.
To expiate his huntsman’s offense, Ilágin pressed the Rostóvs to
come to an upland of his about a mile away which he usually kept for
himself and which, he said, swarmed with hares. Nicholas agreed, and the
hunt, now doubled, moved on.
The way to Iligin’s upland was across the fields. The hunt servants
fell into line. The masters rode together. “Uncle,” Rostóv, and
Ilágin kept stealthily glancing at one another’s dogs, trying not
to be observed by their companions and searching uneasily for rivals to
their own borzois.
Rostóv was particularly struck by the beauty of a small, pure-bred,
red-spotted bitch on Ilágin’s leash, slender but with muscles like
steel, a delicate muzzle, and prominent black eyes. He had heard of
the swiftness of Ilágin’s borzois, and in that beautiful bitch saw a
rival to his own Mílka.
In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilágin about the
year’s harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch.
“A fine little bitch, that!” said he in a careless tone. “Is she
swift?”
“That one? Yes, she’s a good dog, gets what she’s after,”
answered Ilágin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erzá, for
which, a year before, he had given a neighbor three families of house
serfs. “So in your parts, too, the harvest is nothing to boast of,
Count?” he went on, continuing the conversation they had begun. And
considering it polite to return the young count’s compliment, Ilágin
looked at his borzois and picked out Mílka who attracted his attention
by her breadth. “That black-spotted one of yours is fine—well
shaped!” said he.
“Yes, she’s fast enough,” replied Nicholas, and thought: “If
only a full-grown hare would cross the field now I’d show you what
sort of borzoi she is,” and turning to his groom, he said he would
give a ruble to anyone who found a hare.
“I don’t understand,” continued Ilágin, “how some sportsmen can
be so jealous about game and dogs. For myself, I can tell you, Count,
I enjoy riding in company such as this... what could be better?” (he
again raised his cap to Natásha) “but as for counting skins and what
one takes, I don’t care about that.”
“Of course not!”
“Or being upset because someone else’s borzoi and not mine catches
something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the chase, is it not so,
Count? For I consider that...”
“A-tu!” came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi whippers-in,
who had halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip
aloft, and again repeated his long-drawn cry, “A-tu!” (This call and
the uplifted whip meant that he saw a sitting hare.)
“Ah, he has found one, I think,” said Ilágin carelessly. “Yes, we
must ride up.... Shall we both course it?” answered Nicholas, seeing
in Erzá and “Uncle’s” red Rugáy two rivals he had never yet had
a chance of pitting against his own borzois. “And suppose they outdo
my Mílka at once!” he thought as he rode with “Uncle” and Ilágin
toward the hare.
“A full-grown one?” asked Ilágin as he approached the whip who
had sighted the hare—and not without agitation he looked round and
whistled to Erzá.
“And you, Michael Nikanórovich?” he said, addressing “Uncle.”
The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face.
“How can I join in? Why, you’ve given a village for each of your
borzois! That’s it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours
against one another, you two, and I’ll look on!”
“Rugáy, hey, hey!” he shouted. “Rugáyushka!” he added,
involuntarily by this diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes
he placed on this red borzoi. Natásha saw and felt the agitation the
two elderly men and her brother were trying to conceal, and was herself
excited by it.
The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip and the
gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that were far off
on the horizon turned away from the hare, and the whips, but not the
gentlefolk, also moved away. All were moving slowly and sedately.
“How is it pointing?” asked Nicholas, riding a hundred paces toward
the whip who had sighted the hare.
But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the frost coming
next morning, was unable to rest and leaped up. The pack on leash rushed
downhill in full cry after the hare, and from all sides the borzois that
were not on leash darted after the hounds and the hare. All the hunt,