War and Peace Leo Tolstoy (best e books to read .TXT) 📖

and checked his horse, supposing the affair to be over. But when he saw that the horsemen did not dismount and that the wolf shook herself and ran for safety, Danílo set his chestnut galloping, not at the wolf but straight toward the wood, just as Karáy had run to cut the animal off. As a result of this, he galloped up to the wolf just when she had been stopped a second time by “Uncle’s” borzois.

Danílo galloped up silently, holding a naked dagger in his left hand and thrashing the laboring sides of his chestnut horse with his whip as if it were a flail.

Nikoláy neither saw nor heard Danílo until the chestnut, breathing heavily, panted past him, and he heard the fall of a body and saw Danílo lying on the wolf’s back among the dogs, trying to seize her by the ears. It was evident to the dogs, the hunters, and to the wolf herself that all was now over. The terrified wolf pressed back her ears and tried to rise, but the borzois stuck to her. Danílo rose a little, took a step, and with his whole weight, as if lying down to rest, fell on the wolf, seizing her by the ears. Nikoláy was about to stab her, but Danílo whispered, “Don’t! We’ll gag her!” and, changing his position, set his foot on the wolf’s neck. A stick was thrust between her jaws and she was fastened with a leash, as if bridled, her legs were bound together, and Danílo rolled her over once or twice from side to side.

With happy, exhausted faces, they laid the old wolf, alive, on a shying and snorting horse and, accompanied by the dogs yelping at her, took her to the place where they were all to meet. The hounds had killed two of the cubs and the borzois three. The huntsmen assembled with their booty and their stories, and all came to look at the wolf, which, with her broad-browed head hanging down and the bitten stick between her jaws, gazed with great glassy eyes at this crowd of dogs and men surrounding her. When she was touched, she jerked her bound legs and looked wildly yet simply at everybody. Count Ilyá Andréevich also rode up and touched the wolf.

“Oh, what a formidable one!” said he. “A formidable one, eh?” he asked Danílo, who was standing near.

“Yes, your excellency,” answered Danílo, quickly doffing his cap.

The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and his encounter with Danílo.

“Ah, but you are a crusty fellow, friend!” said the count.

For sole reply Danílo gave him a shy, childlike, meek, and amiable smile.

VI

The old count went home, and Natásha and Pétya promised to return very soon, but as it was still early the hunt went farther. At midday they put the hounds into a ravine thickly overgrown with young trees. Nikoláy standing in a fallow field could see all his whips.

Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman stood alone in a hollow behind a hazel bush. The hounds had scarcely been loosed before Nikoláy heard one he knew, Voltórn, giving tongue at intervals; other hounds joined in, now pausing and now again giving tongue. A moment later he heard a cry from the wooded ravine that a fox had been found, and the whole pack, joining together, rushed along the ravine toward the ryefield and away from Nikoláy.

He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the edge of the ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox to show itself at any moment on the ryefield opposite.

The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed his borzois, and Nikoláy saw a queer, short-legged red fox with a fine brush going hard across the field. The borzois bore down on it.⁠ ⁠… Now they drew close to the fox which began to dodge between the field in sharper and sharper curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly a strange white borzoi dashed in followed by a black one, and everything was in confusion; the borzois formed a star-shaped figure, scarcely swaying their bodies and with tails turned away from the center of the group. Two huntsmen galloped up to the dogs; one in a red cap, the other, a stranger, in a green coat.

“What’s this?” thought Nikoláy. “Where’s that huntsman from? He is not ‘Uncle’s’ man.”

The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time without strapping it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled and with high saddles, stood near them and there too the dogs were lying. The huntsmen waved their arms and did something to the fox. Then from that spot came the sound of a horn, with the signal agreed on in case of a fight.

“That’s Ilágin’s huntsman having a row with our Iván,” said Nikoláy’s groom.

Nikoláy sent the man to call Natásha and Pétya to him, and rode at a footpace to the place where the whips were getting the hounds together. Several of the field galloped to the spot where the fight was going on.

Nikoláy dismounted, and with Natásha and Pétya, who had ridden up, stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would end. Out of the bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting and rode toward his young master, with the fox tied to his crupper. While still at a distance he took off his cap and tried to speak respectfully, but he was pale and breathless and his face was angry. One of his eyes was black, but he probably was not even aware of it.

“What has happened?” asked Nikoláy.

“A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And it was my gray bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!⁠ ⁠… He snatches at the fox! I gave him one with the fox. Here it is on my saddle! Do you want a taste of this?⁠ ⁠…” said the huntsman, pointing to his dagger and probably imagining himself