He still spoke with that unaffected carelessness that had impressed me when we had first met outside the dingy little “tractir” in Skerstymone.
“Come,” cried the ragged, fox-faced man, impatiently, with an accent of South Russia. “We have no time to waste; we have many versts before us ere dawn.”
“Then you’d better be off, and leave me to find my way back as best I can,” I said, endeavouring to preserve an outward show of calmness.
Some noise, so faint that I did not distinguish it, caused both outlaws to hold their breath and listen. They exchanged quick glances. They had wandered thousands of versts across the “taiga” and the steppe, and constantly on the alert to evade Cossack patrols and police, knew every sound of the forest. They had learnt to know the voice of the wood; the speech of every tree. The great firs rustle with their thick boughs, the dark, gloomy pines whisper to one another in mystery, the bright green leafy trees wave their dewy branches, and the mountain-ash trembles with a noise like a faintly rippling brook. They knew, to their disgust, too, how those spies of the frontier, the magpies, hover in crowds over the track of the man who tries in daylight to creep unseen across the bare open steppe.
It was evident that the noise had for an instant puzzled them; yet, after listening a moment, both became reassured, and re-demanded with many violent threats whatever money I had upon me.
“I tell you I refuse,” I answered. “If you take me to Sonia you shall have two hundred roubles each, with twenty more na vódkou.”
“Then you do not wish to live?” exclaimed the man who had so cunningly entrapped me.
“I will give you nothing,” I said resolutely.
“Then take that!” he cried, wildly, and at the same time his revolver flashed close to my face.
The shot echoed far away among the myriad tree trunks, but the bullet passed harmlessly by my ear.