XXXIII: I SOW DISSENSION
IN the morning my two rogues had a very pretty quarrel over the breakfast, and the result was that I only got a morsel of dry black bread, while Martemian devoured all the meat and left bread and a little fish for Mikhail. The latter, purple with rage, choked furiously over his meal and eyed his superior so fiercely that more than once I entertained wild hopes. However, the trouble blew over and we mounted a little after sunrise, Martemian leading now, at least five yards ahead, and Mikhail, sulky and hungry, in the rear, while I rode between, and to-day they did not tie my hands; they knew full well that escape was impossible, while one or the other could shoot me down at leisure.
At first, we passed through a belt of firs, sparse and storm-beaten on the northern side, their trunks coated with grey lichens, and the shadows were black here, in contrast to the endless sunlight on those vast plains that surrounded us as we journeyed on. Plains where I could see a man so far off that he was but a speck, and where the hardy, shaggy-coated cattle grazed, travelling slowly southward in search of the fresh green upon the slopes. Though it was spring and the sun shone, it made me shudder to think of the snow on those steppes in winter, of the rolling,soft, shimmering, deadly whiteness, and the cold and the north wind.
As I rode, I studied the square outlines of Martemian’s figure; his short, thick neck, red and folded at the nape, like a bull’s; his brutal head, his wide shoulders and strong, muscular limbs gripping the horse tightly with the knees. Not an easy man to kill, I reflected, and as if my thoughts were carried to him by the current of the air, he turned sharply, and looked me between the eyes, and scowled, meeting my glance. Then he rode on, and once I saw him slyly peep at my bag of roubles; meanwhile, however, I heard Mikhail’s horse plodding steadily behind, but to-day he did not sing. It is a dangerous sign when a noisy knave falls silent; I have ever found it so. The villain who stabbed Henri Quatre did not sing, I warrant, or whistle either.
As the sun travelled upward in the heavens, we travelled upward too, and the road lay straight and white before us, but now some low bushes grew beside it, sprayed with green, and presently we rode through the main street of a little hamlet, where the log houses were sparsely planted about the chapel and the graveyard. And here the peasants came out to stare at us and Martemian bought bread and meat and liquor—with my money; and I saw the women swinging in public—a sport that the Russian women loved so much that a swing of boards was made inevery village green, and a slave regularly appointed to swing the wives and daughters of the freedmen. And some of these were very pretty, as I saw, but all were painted on their faces, and their arms and hands, and they were so curious at the sight of a foreigner in “German clothes,” that they must needs run up to me and feel of my clothing, and many of them forgot to drop thefataover their faces, and looked up at me coquettishly, for which one stout woman was seized by a puny, jealous husband and well beaten as we rode away.
This journeying on and on in silence grew more and more oppressive, and the pain in my head, though less than yesterday, was bad enough; yet, as I looked from the brutal, dogged face of Martemian to the sulky, watchful face of Mikhail, I grew hopeful. If I could but speak to the duller rogue—but therein lay my difficulty, and the beasts travelled well. We passed verst-stone after verst-stone, and all the way I tried to remember and to mark the road, and yet had no means of even blazing a tree trunk or casting a stone by the wayside, and the plains seemed to stretch to the edge of the world. My plan—a desperate one—would miscarry too, without fresh horses, and, as the day wore on, I stirred uneasily in my saddle. It could scarcely be to-day, and—the Princess Daria? Ah, but that way lay madness!
It was past noon and we had not halted; the horsesbegan to lag and hang their heads, and I saw Martemian shading his eyes with his hands, looking, as I knew, for water, and the rogue behind, who had fallen so silent all the forenoon, shouted to his leader.
“Will ye ride forever on an empty stomach, Martemian, son of Stenko?” he roared. “If you had meat, I had nothing but bread and a fishbone, and, by all Koshchei’s devils, I’ll have both meat and drink now!”
At the mention of Koshchei, a demon of the Russian forests, Martemian, the brutal and the fierce, crossed himself and looked behind him, for there is ever a leak-hole somewhere in a bully’s spiritual armour, and this brute feared devils and prostrated himself at every wayside shrine, red-handed though he might be, and branded seventy times seven with the mark of Cain.
“You’ll have meat and drink too,” he growled at Mikhail, “and may it choke you, if you summon devils here with your idle tongue. May the Baba Yaga get you! Yonder is a spring; we’ll bait the horses here and eat ourselves; there’s no hurry while Galitsyn pays,” and he laughed deeply, the purple mark showing sharply on his forehead.
They were an hour or more at their dinner, eating greedily, and they kept me between them that I might get no chance to run while they ate. I looked well at the horses, and, seeing that they were fagged, set myteeth to bide my time. So, after this, we rode again until nightfall, through vast plains, and at last skirted a forest—black and gaunt in its nakedness, not yet covered, but only tasselled here and there with green and red. At sunset Martemian halted us for the night and, after supping, and tying me, like an old horse, to a tree, they slept, but they left the fire of fagots burning, for we heard more than once, in the still darkness, that long, fierce, far-reaching yelp, the cry of the wolf,—Saint Yegory’s dog,—and the horses snorted, and tugged at their halters, shivering. I kept a vigil that night, the blackest—as I thought—of my life, and the angel that visited it had the face of Daria, but all the while I knew that she drifted from me, yet to-morrow, to-morrow,—I told myself!
My plans were ripe, and the hour, for the horses would be fresh, the woods a covert, and the goal—life and liberty. I watched the stars go and saw the paling of the sky, the white finger of morning running along the east, and, at last, daybreak. Martemian was ever the first to stir; if the man slept, I think it was with one eye only, for he always knew if I moved or struggled to be free, and he would rise, in the dead of night, and tighten the very cord that I had loosened, but to-day he played into my hands. He rose and went to the stream to drink, and Mikhail, who lay near me, awoke and sat up and rubbed his eyes, yawninguntil I thought the top of his head would surely split off the lower half.
“A curse on it!” he grumbled; “I’m stiff as a stake, and half fed and half paid, to boot. Curse the rogue, I’ll get more to-day or I’ll——” He caught my eye and stopped—staring at me.
“Curse me!” he said, “if I don’t believe you know Russ!”
“I do,” I replied calmly, in a low voice, “but keep your tongue still, if you would win. Look you,” I went on, “you have not ill-used me, I owe you a good turn. Yonder rogue, at the stream, took a bag of roubles from me—fifty roubles—and he has them at his belt.”
The knave’s eyes shot fire; his greedy, brutish face turned purple with anger. He never doubted my word, he knew Martemian too well.
“I have told you,” I said. “Will you loose me from this tree? I am stiff as you, and stiffer.”
He was not thinking of me, and cut my halter mechanically, watching Martemian all the while. He left my ankles bound, and thought that my hands were too, but in his anger he had been more careless than usual, and had cut a cord that left the noose loose on my wrists, but of this I gave no sign, though my heart leaped.
Martemian, meanwhile, had quenched his thirst, and now he was bathing his face; a process so unusualthat it made patches of whiteness in the brunette tinge of his complexion.
Mikhail rose deliberately and untethered the horses, letting them stray for fresh provender, a custom of his at morning, then he walked slowly to the brook. I drew my hands cautiously out of the loosened cords and began to undo the bonds on my ankles.
Martemian ran his wet fingers through his long hair and beard. The morning air was sweet, and I saw him draw his breath deeply, and I watched the figure behind him—treading stealthily—draw a long sharp knife. One foot was free now, and I worked wildly at the other, yet—all the while—I watched the scene. The whiteness of the early morning lay far off on the plain, the stream sparkled, the black shadows hung behind us in the forest, the horses nibbled the short turf near me. One man stood still, the other crept, the long knife gleamed. Then Mikhail’s foot crushed a dried twig and Martemian wheeled and saw him. There was a scream of passion, a fierce answering roar, and the two clenched and fought, as demons might.
I sprang to my feet, and hunted the ground for a stick and found a stout one, then I caught the nearest horse and mounted.
They did not see me; they wrestled and writhed like two giants, the knife between them, death intheir hearts. They rolled over on the ground and grappled, and Martemian was underneath.
I cut the other horses sharply with my stick and they reared, plunged forward, and ran before me like wild deer, and I—I rode for life, for liberty, for love!
The clatter of the horses’ feet roused the two ruffians; loosing each other, they rose from the dirt, shouting and running after me, but their horses ran before mine. I looked back and saw two tongues of flame, and a bullet clipped my ear while another grazed one of the horses on the flank, and faster and faster they fled, until the cries grew faint and far-distant, and died at last in silence. I looked back and saw only two little black dots on the crest of the slope, and, at last, nothing but the wide swell of the land.
And the wind blew from the south and the sun shone.