"Hey there, you squint-eyed devil! Don't you see where you are turning? Running people down, you devil!" in a hoarse, discordant voice scolded one of the drivers, a short, little old man, as I judged by his voice and expression. He sprang hastily out of the hindmost sledge where he had been sitting, and started to run after the horses, still continuing roughly and violently to vilify my yamshchík.
But the horses did not come back. The driver ran after them, and in one instant both horses and driver were lost from sight in the white mist of the storm.
"Vasi-i-i-li! bring the bay horse here. Can't ketch him, so-o-o," echoed his voice in the distance.
One of the drivers, a very tall fellow, got out of his sledge, silently unhitched his troïka, mounted one of the horses by the breeching, and crunching over the snow in a clumsy gallop, disappeared in the same direction.
Our own troïka, with the two others, followed on over the steppe, behind the courier's which dashed ahead in full trot, jingling its bell.
"How is it? He'll get 'em?" said my driver, referring to the one who had gone to catch the horses. "If that mare didn't find the horses she wouldn't be good for much, you know: she'd wander off, so that—she'd get lost."
From the moment that my driver had the company of other teams he became more hilarious and talkative; and, as I had no desire to sleep, I did not fail, as a matter of course, to make the most of it. I took pains to ask him about his home and his family, and soon learned that he was a fellow-countryman of mine from Tula,—a peasant, belonging to a noble family from the village of Kirpitchnoé; that they had very little land, and the grain had entirely ceased to grow, owing to the cholera; that he and one of his brothers had staid at home, and a third had gone as a soldier; that since Christmas they had lacked bread, and had been obliged to work out; that his younger brother had kept the farm because he was married, but that he himself was a widower; that his villagers every year came here to exercise the trade of yamshchík, or driver; that, though he had not come as a regular driver, yet he was in the postal-service, so as to help his brother; that he earned there, thanks to God, a hundred and twenty paper rubles a year, of which he sent a hundred to his family; and that it would be good living, "but the couliers were very wild beasts, and the people here were impudent."
"Now, what was that driver scolding about? Great heavens![4] did I mean to lose his horses for him? Did I treat him in a mean way? And why did he go galloping off after 'em? They'd have come in of their own accord. Anyway, 'twould be better for the horses to freeze to death than for him to get lost," said the pious muzhík.
"What is that black thing I see coming?" I asked, pointing to some dark object in front of us.