Chapter 7 - Page 2

and there's an
end of it! No, really, you tell him, he'll listen to you. It's too
bad!'

'Get along with you! What a thing to make a fuss about!' said
Lukashka, evidently thinking of something else. 'What bosh! If he
made us turn out of the village at night now, that would be
annoying: there one can have some fun, but here what is there?
It's all one whether we're in the cordon or in ambush. What a
fellow you are!'

'And are you going to the village?'

'I'll go for the holidays.'

'Gurka says your Dunayka is carrying on with Fomushkin,' said
Nazarka suddenly.

'Well, let her go to the devil,' said Lukashka, showing his
regular white teeth, though he did not laugh. 'As if I couldn't
find another!'

'Gurka says he went to her house. Her husband was out and there
was Fomushkin sitting and eating pie. Gurka stopped awhile and
then went away, and passing by the window he heard her say, "He's
gone, the fiend.... Why don't you eat your pie, my own? You
needn't go home for the night," she says. And Gurka under the
window says to himself, "That's fine!"'

'You're making it up.'

'No, quite true, by Heaven!'

'Well, if she's found another let her go to the devil,' said
Lukashka, after a pause. 'There's no lack of girls and I was sick
of her anyway.'

'Well, see what a devil you are!' said Nazarka. 'You should make
up to the cornet's girl, Maryanka. Why doesn't she walk out with
any one?'

Lukashka frowned. 'What of Maryanka? They're all alike,' said he.

'Well, you just try... '

'What do you think? Are girls so scarce in the village?'

And Lukashka recommenced whistling, and went along the cordon
pulling leaves and branches from the bushes as he went. Suddenly,
catching sight of a smooth sapling, he drew the knife from the
handle of his dagger and cut it down. 'What a ramrod it will
make,' he said, swinging the sapling till it whistled through the
air.

The Cossacks were sitting round a low Tartar table on the earthen
floor of the clay-plastered outer room of the hut, when the
question of whose turn it was to lie in ambush was raised. 'Who is
to go tonight?' shouted one of the Cossacks through the open door
to the corporal in the next room.

'Who is to go?' the corporal shouted back. 'Uncle Burlak has been
and Fomushkin too,' said he, not quite confidently. 'You two had
better go, you and Nazarka,' he went on, addressing Lukashka. 'And
Ergushov must go too; surely he has slept it off?'

'You don't sleep it off yourself so why should he?' said Nazarka
in a subdued voice.

The Cossacks laughed.

Ergushov was the Cossack who had been lying drunk and asleep near