But the horse given over to him was a sorry jade, and not accustomed, as his other had been, to the steppes. He could make but few miles a day, and whenever he came to a bridge his rider had to dismount and drag the animal across. He would not go over a bridge.
Owing to such a bad mount he did not reach Taganrog until four days after the arrival of the Czar.
One day Jakuskin found out that the Czar intended going from Alapka to Mordinof. Now there was but one road to it, and that only a bridle-path—a path called by the natives "the ladder." It well merited its cognomen, rising so steeply up the mountain-side that sometimes the horse has to force its way through narrow clefts in the rock.
Jakuskin hired a Tartar guide, who was to lead him through the forest to the summit of "the ladder."
Before dawn, in the dead of night, he made his start, to be there before the Czar. He was dressed in the costume of a Tartar huntsman, a double-barrelled gun slung over his shoulder. Emerging from the thick forest, he saw the steep mountain path before him. Over a spring, gushing from out the rocky wall, grew a bush some ten feet distant from the path. The path itself was intercepted here by a cleft in the rock, across which a narrow bridge had been thrown, only wide enough for one horseman to pass at a time.
The most favorable spot possible for an ambush.
"Hi, lad! How green your eyes are!"
The man laughed a hollow, low laugh, as though out of an empty cask.
"You're right; my eyes are green." He spoke, and disappeared in the thick underwood.
Bethsaba's tale came into Jakuskin's mind. He drew back behind the tree, loaded his gun, and waited.