The wished-for night covered the earth at last. Basia was so wearied that when she came to a naked steppe, free from forest, she said to herself,—
“Here I shall not be crushed against a tree; I will sleep right away, even if I freeze.”
When she was closing her eyes it seemed to her that far off in the distance, in the white snow, she saw a number of black points which were moving in various directions. For a while longer she overcame her sleep. “Those are surely wolves,” muttered she, quietly.
Before she had gone many yards, those points disappeared; then she fell asleep so soundly that she woke only when Azya’s horse, on which she was sitting, neighed under her.
She looked around; she was on the edge of a forest, and woke in time, for if she had not waked she might have been crushed against a tree.
Suddenly she saw that the other horse was not near her.
“What has happened?” cried she, in great alarm.
But a very simple thing had happened. Basia had tied, it is true, the reins of her horse’s bridle to the pommel of the saddle on which she was sitting; but her stiffened hands served her badly, and she was not able to knot the straps firmly; afterward the reins fell off, and the wearied horse stopped to seek food under the snow or lie down.
Fortunately Basia had her pistol at her girdle, and not in the holsters; the powder-horn and the bag with the rest of the seeds were also with her. Finally the misfortune was not too appalling; for Azya’s horse, though he yielded to hers in speed, surpassed him undoubtedly in endurance of cold and labor. Still, Basia was grieved for her favorite horse, and at the first moment determined to search for him.
She was astonished, however, when she looked around the steppe and saw nothing of the beast, though the night was unusually clear.