And once, after a swift gallop to cross a railroad and an exchange of shots with the Red guards at long range, the sotnia of the Wild Division rode at evening into a little hamlet of one short, miserable street, and shouted for a fire that could be seen as far as Moscow.
That night they discovered vodka––not much––enough to set them singing first, then dancing. The troopers danced together in the fire-glare––clumsily, in their boots, with interims of the pas seul savouring of the capers of those ancient Mongol horsemen in the Hezars of Genghis Khan.
But no dancing, no singing, no clumsy capers were enough to satisfy these riders of the Wild Division, now made boisterous by vodka and horse-meat. Gossip crackled in every group; jests flew; they shouted at the peasants; they roared at their own jokes.
“Comrade novice!––Pretty boy with a shorn head!” they bawled. “Harangue us once more on law and love.”
She stood with legs apart and thumbs hooked in her belt, laughing at them across the fire. And all around crowded the wretched mujiks, peering at her through shaggy hair, out of little wolfish eyes.
A Cossack shouted: “My law first! Land for all! That is what we have, we Cossacks! Land for the xxxvi people, one and all––land for the mujik; land for the bourgeois; land for the aristocrat! That law solves all, clears all questions, satisfies all. It is the Law of Peace!”
A Cossack shoved a soldier-deserter forward into the firelight. He wore a patch of red on his sleeve.
“Answer, comrade! Is that the true law? Or have you and your comrades made a better one in Petrograd?”
The deserter, a little frightened, tried to grin: “A good law is, kill all generals,” he said huskily. “Afterward we shall have peace.”
A roar of laughter greeted him; these dark, thickset Cossacks with slanting eyes were from the Urals. What did they care how many generals were killed? Besides, their hetman had already killed himself.