“He has stopped behind,” thought she,—“surely not gone ahead; but he must have lain down in some hollow, and that is why I cannot see him.”
Azya’s horse neighed a second time, shaking himself somewhat and putting back his ears; but from the steppe he was answered by silence.
“I will go and find him,” said Basia.
And she turned, when a sudden alarm seized her, and a voice precisely as if human called,—
“Basia, do not go back!”
That moment the silence was broken by other and ill-omened voices near, and coming, as it were, from under the earth, howling, coughing, whining, groaning, and finally a ghastly squeal, short, interrupted. This was all the more terrible since there was nothing to be seen on the steppe. Cold sweat covered Basia from head to foot; and from her blue lips was wrested the cry,—
“What is that? What has happened?”
She divined at once, it is true, that wolves had killed her horse; but she could not understand why she did not see him, since, judging by the sounds, he was not more than five hundred yards behind.
There was no time to fly to the rescue, for the horse must be torn to pieces already; besides, she needed to think of her own life. Basia fired the pistol to frighten the wolves, and moved forward. While going she pondered over what had happened, and after a while it shot through her head that perhaps it was not wolves that had taken her horse, since those voices seemed to come from under the ground. At this thought a cold shiver went along her back; but dwelling on the matter more carefully, she remembered that in her sleep it had seemed to her that she was going down and then going up again.
“It must be so,” said she; “I must have crossed in my sleep some ravine, not very steep. There my horse remained; and there the wolves found him.”