Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

the horse back and drove through the outskirts of the village.

“Why not stay the night?” Isáy shouted after them.

But Vasíli Andréevich 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.

Vasíli Andréevich 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. Mukhórty 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.

Vasíli Andréevich 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 Vasíli Andréevich.

“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 Nikíta’s shoulder and then began to fall behind.

“Just see what liquor does!” said Nikíta. “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 Vasíli Andréevich, and he drove on more boldly without examining the way-marks, urging on the horse and trusting to him.

Nikíta had nothing to do, and as usual in such circumstances he drowsed, making up for much sleepless time. Suddenly the horse stopped and Nikíta nearly fell forward onto his nose.

“You know we’re off the track again!” said Vasíli Andréevich.

“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 Nikíta 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 snowstorm had not increased but had also not subsided.

“If we could only hear those peasants!” said Vasíli Andréevich.

“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 Vasíli Andréevich.

“Why, we must let the horse take its own way,” said Nikíta. “He will take us right. Let me have the reins.”

Vasíli Andréevich gave him the reins, the more willingly because his hands were beginning to feel frozen in his thick gloves.

Nikíta 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,” Nikíta 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,” Nikíta 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 Gríshkino again!” Nikíta suddenly exclaimed.

And indeed, there