Strogue struck the proper note. Of savage people I knew nothing, save of Income-tax Commissioners, who charged us twice upon our land,—once for our crime in owning it, and once for the profit which they alone were able to make out of it. But the Captain said: "These men will fight. And they fight quite as bravely as we do, only with more passion in it. To beat them, we must have man for man, or something very near it. The only plan is to find your friend Stepan, and all the fellows he can bring. That poor beggar who is groaning in his sleep seems to know where to find him. He will not be able to walk for days; but he can tell us where to go."
We had searched in vain, as I may have said, for any sign of Stepan near Karthlos. That was one of the things which made us sure that treachery was at work; for if he had travelled with the heavy goods, straightway home, as his orders were, he ought to have been at Karthlos long ago, in spite of the terrible winter. But no one seemed to know where to find him, although a rumour was spread abroad that his master was returning. There was, however, every prospect now of discovering him and those other retainers who had been with the Chief in his exile, for Usi could not have been so long the forester or huntsman of that district without knowing where to find all the principal members of his adopted tribe. What could be finer justice than that a fiendish plot of fratricide should be discomfited chiefly through the brutality of its conceiver? If that tortured victim could but recover the use of his swollen limbs, we might push along towards the Lesghian valleys in time to rouse the tribe on the Saturday night. But to carry poor Usi was a sad, slow drag, and to go without him would be useless, even if humanity allowed it.
"Bear's grease!" was his perpetual moan; "Oh, that men valued the precious bear's grease! If the good Lord would send me only half a pound of bear's grease, I would leap like the Ibex, and dance like the Tûr."
Then, as if to show that Heaven itself had taken a turn in our favour, a most unusual thing came to pass, although at the time I was very far from being at all surprised at it. But those who knew the country said that such a thing scarcely ever happened, and all of our little company might live to be ninety, and keep eyes like twenty, without ever seeing such a thing again. However, I can answer for it, and was not at all disturbed by it.
We came, walking heavily yet tenderly, and like men who (if they were in England) would go to their chemist and ask him whether he had tried his "Celandine" on his own feet,—we came about the middle of that day—Friday it was and a critical time—to a corner where two torrents ran into one another's arms, with as much noise as two Frenchmen make. There were no trees, not a leaf to break the sun; everything was either hard or wet; and the light itself seemed to come in gurgles, as if it were almost giddy with the shining of the water, and the staring of the rocks. In the loose spread of it, below the rush of the two streams into one another,—both being buxom with snow on the melt, which affords them a thickness of suet,—there I saw a great sprawling thing—sprawling at least it appeared to be, and at the same time splashing. I happened to be foremost of the file, yet for the life of me, I could not make out what it was; till Cator spoke over my shoulder thus—
"Motherly she-bear, carrying her cub! Economical father wants to kill it—they always do at this time of year—mother takes a different view. She will land in a second. Aim behind the shoulder. The kid is fine eating. If you feel like missing, let me do it for you."
"Get away!" I answered; "I came first—what have you got to do with it?" I put up my rifle, but when she landed with wonderful care not to hurt a hair of the baby in her clumsy mouth, and then looked at it so proudly—though it was but an ugly little lump—and began to lick the holy trickle from its newly opened eyes, such a touch of nature went into my heart, that I would rather have shot myself almost. "Fire, you stupid!" keen Cator cried. And fire I did, but not at her. For paterfamilias came down raging, with his coat thrown back on his body, and his little eyes rolling, and his hairy chin poked out in fury at his wife's self-assertion. My bullet behind his open shoulder told him that there might be two opinions about paternal duty, and he rolled like a log into the swirling torrent, and was washed up on our side a hundred yards below. Then Usi, the Svân, in a glory of excitement rose from his litter, and told us what to do; and we cut him out the fat that lies along the kidney part, and he scrabbled it into his stringy legs, and fell back again, and smiled at them. In less than half an hour he could walk, and we had all we could do to keep up with him.
That night we slept in Kazbek village, which is on the great Russian road; and we laid our plans for the morrow. Cator was to make rush for the mine, which he could reach before nightfall, and implore Jack Nickols to spare us every son of a gun who could handle a rifle; while Strogue, and Usi, and myself, and others, made every hour of daylight tell for our race in quest of Stepan. We feared that those vile Ossets had a short cut across the western mountain, from their village to the "Valley of Retribution," which would bring them in front of any speed of ours; and unhappily so it proved indeed. And they must have carried Usi by that track, when they caught him spying in their valley; although they gave him small chance of knowing what was time, or where was road. For the mighty mass of Kazbek lay betwixt the Osset villages, and the vale which had been for ages hallowed to their horrible revenge.
At daybreak on Saturday we set forth, in the midst of a miserable drizzle, which would have made the way as hard to find as it was bad when found, except for the knowledge of the land which Usi showed. That son of Shamyl, as he loved to be called, was of infinite service to our cause. Very seldom did he care to speak, unless he was consulted; and the bronze cast of his rugged face beneath that hairy thicket showed no more life than the juniper scrub which we saw on the cheeks of the mountain. But the quick blue flash of his eyes, whenever we caught them unexpectedly, was like the point blank spark that comes, when the lightning is over one's own lawn. Let me not be in that man's black-books—was the first thought of even the boldest mind, as Strogue said more than once to me.
Presently this "Bear-slayer" showed us that he deserved the name of "Straight-pipe," which he had received from Shamyl. For while we were halting in a glen to feed, Gator's rifle stood against a rock. We grudged every moment, and were eating against time, when one of those great black eagles, which are the grandest of European birds, came soaring above us at a mighty height, searching the earth for lamb, or kid, or perhaps a nice babe fast asleep beneath a rock. With Cator's leave, Usi raised his gun, and he must have been as quick as light, for the crack of the rifle and the heavy flop of the dead bird on the track before us, were the first I knew of the matter, although I was standing within a few yards of him. "That's a grand shot; I couldn't have done that, although I am not a bad hand," said Strogue. But the Svân was not satisfied with his work. "I struck him too far behind," he said, "my own pipe would have done it better. I must get time to search for it among the ashes." But we could not spare him yet; for he alone could show us the men we wanted.