It was past noon and we had not halted; the horses began 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 my teeth 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, yawning until 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.