Boris the Bear-Hunter

by Frederick Whishaw

"Well?" he said; "quick, what is it?"

The man scratched his head for inspiration, then he cleared his throat and began the business upon which he had come. He had been in the forest yesterday, he said, collecting firewood. The winters were cold, he proceeded, and the poor peasants must spend a good deal of their time during summer in laying up a store of fuel for the winter. But it was God's will that the peasants should be always poor.

"Get to the point," said Boris impatiently, "or I must go without hearing it."

That would be a pity, the man continued, for he believed that when the barin heard what he had to tell, the barin would give him a nachaiok (tea-money) for the news. He had been in the forest collecting wood, he repeated, when suddenly he saw a sight which filled him with fear—nothing less than a great she-wolf with a whole litter of young ones following at her heels. The man had at once thought to himself, "Here now is a chance of a nachaiok from Boris Ivanitch, who is a great hunter, and will love to hear of a family of wolves close at hand." But the moment after, said the peasant, he saw something which quite altered the aspect of the affair. When the wolf saw him, she had stopped and picked up from the ground where it lay close to her a small creature something like a human child, and which cried like one, but which was of course one of the lieshui, or wood-spirits, which often enough take the form of babe or old man. The she-wolf took up the creature in its mouth and trotted away with it into the forest. "Oho," the man had thought, "still more shall I earn a nachaiok from Boris Ivanitch; for now I must warn him that if he meets with this particular she-wolf and her brats he must give them a wide berth and be sure not to shoot or injure them, for this wolf is the handmaid of the lieshui, and woe to him who interferes with the favoured creatures of those touchy and tricksy spirits, for they would assuredly lure him to his destruction when next he ventured deep into the heart of the forest."

Boris hastily bade the man follow him and point out the exact spot where he had seen this wonderful sight. The peasant showed a place within a short distance of the house, and added that the wolf family had passed at sunset on the previous evening.

Here then was joyous news for Nancy; her babe had been alive and well some thirty-six hours after its disappearance, and had actually been seen within call of its own home, while its distracted parents had scoured the woods for a score of miles in every direction, little dreaming that the child was left far behind.

Nancy received the news calmly, but with the intensest joy and gratitude. "I was sure our darling was alive," she said; "but oh, Boris, if only it were winter and we could track the thief down! What are we to do, and how are we to find the child before the she-wolf carries her far away, or changes her mind and devours her?" And Nancy wailed aloud in her helplessness and misery.

There was nothing to be done but to search the forest daily, taking care to do nothing and permit nothing to be done in the village to frighten the wolves, and scare them away far into the depths of the forest, where there would be no hope of ever finding them again. Accordingly no day went by but was spent by Boris and his ever-hopeful but distracted wife in quartering the woods far and near, the pair going softly and speaking seldom, and that in whispers, for fear of scaring the wolves away.

But the days passed, and the weeks also, and a month came, and slowly there crept over their souls the certainty that their labour would be in vain, and that they had seen the last of their beloved child. Still, they would never entirely lose hope, and day by day they continued their wearisome tramping, sometimes going afoot, sometimes riding when their feet grew sore with the constant walking. Another fortnight went by, and it was now high summer, and still they were childless.