She looked around; she was on the edge of a forest, and woke in time, for if she had not waked she might have been crushed against a tree.
Suddenly she saw that the other horse was not near her.
“What has happened?” cried she, in great alarm.
But a very simple thing had happened. Basia had tied, it is true, the reins of her horse’s bridle to the pommel of the saddle on which she was sitting; but her stiffened hands served her badly, and she was not able to knot the straps firmly; afterward the reins fell off, and the wearied horse stopped to seek food under the snow or lie down.
Fortunately Basia had her pistol at her girdle, and not in the holsters; the powder-horn and the bag with the rest of the seeds were also with her. Finally the misfortune was not too appalling; for Azya’s horse, though he yielded to hers in speed, surpassed him undoubtedly in endurance of cold and labor. Still, Basia was grieved for her favorite horse, and at the first moment determined to search for him.
She was astonished, however, when she looked around the steppe and saw nothing of the beast, though the night was unusually clear.
“He has stopped behind,” thought she—“surely not gone ahead; but he must have lain down in some hollow, and that is why I cannot see him.”
Azya’s horse neighed a second time, shaking himself somewhat and putting back his ears; but from the steppe he was answered by silence.
“I will go and find him,” said Basia.
And she turned, when a sudden alarm seized her, and a voice precisely as if human called—
“Basia, do not go back!”
That moment the silence was broken by other and ill-omened voices near, and coming, as it were, from under the earth, howling, coughing, whining, groaning, and finally a ghastly squeal, short, interrupted. This was all the more terrible since there was nothing to be seen on the steppe. Cold sweat covered Basia from head to foot; and from her blue lips was wrested the cry—
“What is that? What has happened?”
She divined at once, it is true, that wolves had killed her horse; but she could not understand why she did not see him, since, judging by the sounds, he was not more than five hundred yards behind.
There was no time to fly to the rescue, for the horse must be torn to pieces already; besides, she needed to think of her own life. Basia fired the pistol to frighten the wolves, and moved forward. While going she pondered over what had happened, and after a while it shot through her head that perhaps it was not wolves that had taken her horse, since those voices seemed to come from under the ground. At this thought a cold shiver went along her back; but dwelling on the matter more carefully, she remembered that in her sleep it had seemed to her that she was going down and then going up again.
“It must be so,” said she; “I must have crossed in my sleep some ravine, not very steep. There my horse remained; and there the wolves found him.”
The rest of the night passed without accident. Having eaten hay the morning before, the horse went with great endurance, so that Basia herself was amazed at his strength. That was a Tartar horse—a “wolf hunter” of great stock, and of endurance almost without limit. During the short halts which Basia made, he ate everything without distinction—moss, leaves; he gnawed even the bark of trees, and went on and on. Basia urged him to a gallop on the plains. Then he began to groan somewhat, and to breathe loudly when reined in; he panted, trembled, and dropped his head low from weariness, but did not fall. Her horse, even had he not perished under the teeth of the wolves, could not have endured such a journey. Next morning Basia, after her prayers, began to calculate the time.
“I broke away from Azya on Tuesday in the afternoon,” said she to herself, “I galloped till night; then one night passed on the road; after that a whole day; then again a whole night, and now the third day has begun. A pursuit, even had there been one, must have returned already, and Hreptyoff ought to be near, for I have not spared the horses.”
After a while she added, “It is time; it is time! God pity me!”
At moments a desire seized her to approach the Dniester, for at the bank it would be easier to learn where she was; but when she remembered that fifty of Azya’s men had remained with Pan Gorzenski in Mohiloff, she was afraid. It occurred to her that because she had made such a circuit she might not have passed Mohiloff yet. On the road, in so far as sleep had not closed her eyes, she tried, it is true, to note carefully whether she did not come on a very wide ravine, like that in which Mohiloff was situated; but she did not see such a place. However, the ravine in the interior might be narrow and altogether different from what it was at Mohiloff; might have come to an end or contracted at some furlongs beyond the town; in a word, Basia had not the least idea of where Mohiloff was.
Only she implored God without ceasing that it might be near, for she felt that she could not endure toil, hunger, sleeplessness, and cold much longer. During three days she had lived on seeds alone, and though she had spared them most carefully, still she had eaten the last kernel that morning, and there was nothing in the bag.
Now she could only nourish and warm herself with the hope that Hreptyoff was near. In addition to hope, fever was warming her. Basia felt perfectly that she had a fever; for though the air was growing colder, and it was even freezing, her hands and feet were as hot then as they had
