‘What a carp you’ve landed!’ cried one of the Cossacks who had assembled in a circle, as the body, lifted out of the skiff, was laid on the bank, pressing down the grass.
‘How yellow he is!’ said another.
‘Where have our fellows gone to search? I expect the rest of them are on the other bank. If this one had not been a scout he would not have swum that way. Why else should he swim alone?’ said a third.
‘Must have been a smart one to offer himself before the others; a regular brave!’ said Lukashka mockingly, shivering as he wrung out his clothes that had got wet on the bank.
‘His beard is dyed and cropped.’
‘And he has tied a bag with a coat in it to his back.’
‘That would make it easier for him to swim,’ said some one.
‘I say, Lukashka,’ said the corporal, who was holding the dagger and gun taken from the dead man. ‘Keep the dagger for yourself and the coat too; but I’ll give you three rubles for the gun. You see it has a hole in it,’ said he, blowing into the muzzle. ‘I want it just for a souvenir.’
Lukashka did not answer. Evidently this sort of begging vexed him but he knew it could not be avoided.
‘See, what a devil!’ said he, frowning and throwing down the Chechen’s coat. ‘If at least it were a good coat, but it’s a mere rag.’
‘It’ll do to fetch firewood in,’ said one of the Cossacks.
‘Mosev, I’ll go home,’ said Lukashka, evidently forgetting his vexation and wishing to get some advantage out of having to give a present to his superior.
‘All right, you may go!’
‘Take the body beyond the cordon, lads,’ said the corporal, still examining the gun, ‘and put a shelter over him from the sun. Perhaps they’ll send from the mountains to ransom it.’
‘It isn’t hot yet,’ said someone.
‘And supposing a jackal tears him? Would that be well?’ remarked another Cossack.
‘We’ll set a watch; if they should come to ransom him it won’t do for him to have been torn.’
‘Well, Lukashka, whatever you do you must stand a pail of vodka for the lads,’ said the corporal gaily.
‘Of course! That’s the custom,’ chimed in the Cossacks. ‘See what luck God has sent you! Without ever having seen anything of the kind before, you’ve killed a brave!’
‘Buy the dagger and coat and don’t be stingy, and I’ll let you have the trousers too,’ said Lukashka. ‘They’re too tight for me; he was a thin devil.’
One Cossack bought the coat for a ruble and another gave the price of two pails of vodka for the dagger.
‘Drink, lads! I’ll stand you a pail!’ said Luke. ‘I’ll bring it myself from the village.’
‘And cut up the trousers into kerchiefs for the girls!’ said Nazarka.
The Cossacks burst out laughing.
‘Have done laughing!’ said the corporal. ‘And take the body away. Why have you put the nasty thing by the hut?’
‘What are you standing there for? Haul him along, lads!’ shouted Lukashka in a commanding voice to the Cossacks, who reluctantly took hold of the body, obeying him as though he were their chief. After dragging the body along for a few steps the Cossacks let fall the legs, which dropped with a lifeless jerk, and stepping apart they then stood silent for a few moments. Nazarka came up and straightened the head, which was turned to one side so that the round wound above the temple and the whole of the dead man’s face were visible. ‘See what a mark he has made right in the brain,’ he said. ‘He won’t get lost. His owners will always know him!’ No one answered, and again the Angel of Silence flew over the Cossacks.
The sun had risen high and its diverging beams were lighting up the dewy grass. Near by, the Terek murmured in the awakened wood and, greeting the morning, the pheasants called to one another. The Cossacks stood still and silent around the dead man, gazing at him. The brown body, with nothing on but the wet blue trousers held by a girdle over the sunken stomach, was well shaped and handsome. The muscular arms lay stretched straight out by his sides; the blue, freshly shaven, round head with the clotted wound on one side of it was thrown back. The smooth tanned forehead contrasted sharply with the shaven part of the head. The open glassy eyes with lowered pupils stared upwards, seeming to gaze past everything. Under the red trimmed moustache the fine lips, drawn at the corners, seemed stiffened into a smile of good-natured subtle raillery. The fingers of the small hands covered with red hairs were bent inward, and the nails were dyed red.
Lukashka had not yet dressed. He was wet. His neck was redder and his eyes brighter than usual, his broad jaws twitched, and from his healthy body a hardly perceptible steam rose in the fresh morning air.
‘He too was a man!’ he muttered, evidently admiring the corpse.
‘Yes, if you had fallen into his hands you would have had short shrift,’ said one of the Cossacks.
The Angel of Silence had taken wing. The Cossacks began bustling about and talking. Two of them went to cut brushwood for a shelter, others strolled towards the cordon. Luke and Nazarka ran to get ready to go to the village.
Half an hour later they were both on their way homewards, talking incessantly and almost running through the dense woods which separated the Terek from the village.
‘Mind, don’t tell her I sent you, but just go and find out if her husband is at home,’ Luke was saying in his shrill voice.
‘And I’ll go round to Yamka too,’ said the devoted Nazarka. ‘We’ll have a spree, shall we?’
‘When should we have one if not to-day?’ replied Luke.
When they reached the village the two Cossacks drank, and lay down to sleep till evening.
Chapter 10
On the third day after the events above described, two companies of a Caucasian infantry regiment arrived at the Cossack village of Novomlinsk. The horses had been unharnessed and the companies’ wagons were standing in the square. The cooks had dug a pit, and with logs gathered from various yards (where they had not been sufficiently securely stored) were now cooking the food; the pay-sergeants were settling accounts with the soldiers. The Service Corps men were driving piles in the ground to which to tie the horses, and the quartermasters were going about the streets just as if they were at home, showing officers and men to their quarters. Here were green ammunition boxes in a line, the company’s carts, horses, and cauldrons in which buckwheat porridge was being cooked. Here were the captain and the lieutenant and the sergeant-major, Onisim Mikhaylovich, and all this was in the Cossack village where it was reported that the companies were ordered to take up their quarters: therefore they were at home here. But why they were stationed there, who the Cossacks were, and whether they wanted the troops to be there, and whether they were Old Believers or not — was all quite immaterial. Having received their pay and been dismissed, tired out and covered with dust, the soldiers noisily and in disorder, like a swarm of bees about to settle, spread over the squares and streets; quite regardless of the Cossacks’ ill will, chattering merrily and with their muskets clinking, by twos and threes they entered the huts and hung up their accoutrements, unpacked their bags, and bantered the women. At their favourite spot, round the porridge-cauldrons, a large group of soldiers assembled and with little pipes between their teeth they gazed, now at the smoke which rose into the hot sky, becoming visible when it thickened into white clouds as it rose, and now at the camp fires which were quivering in the pure air like molten glass, and bantered and made fun of the Cossack men and women because they do not live at all