Chapter 15

'Well, what was I saying?' he continued, trying to remember. 'Yes,
that's the sort of man I am. I am a hunter. There is no hunter to
equal me in the whole army. I will find and show you any animal
and any bird, and what and where. I know it all! I have dogs, and
two guns, and nets, and a screen and a hawk. I have everything,
thank the Lord! If you are not bragging but are a real sportsman,
I'll show you everything. Do you know what a man I am? When I have
found a track--I know the animal. I know where he will lie down
and where he'll drink or wallow. I make myself a perch and sit
there all night watching. What's the good of staying at home? One
only gets into mischief, gets drunk. And here women come and
chatter, and boys shout at me--enough to drive one mad. It's a
different matter when you go out at nightfall, choose yourself a
place, press down the reeds and sit there and stay waiting, like a
jolly fellow. One knows everything that goes on in the woods. One
looks up at the sky: the stars move, you look at them and find out
from them how the time goes. One looks round--the wood is
rustling; one goes on waiting, now there comes a crackling--a boar
comes to rub himself; one listens to hear the young eaglets
screech and then the cocks give voice in the village, or the
geese. When you hear the geese you know it is not yet midnight.
And I know all about it! Or when a gun is fired somewhere far
away, thoughts come to me. One thinks, who is that firing? Is it
another Cossack like myself who has been watching for some animal?
And has he killed it? Or only wounded it so that now the poor
thing goes through the reeds smearing them with its blood all for
nothing? I don't like that! Oh, how I dislike it! Why injure a
beast? You fool, you fool! Or one thinks, "Maybe an abrek has
killed some silly little Cossack." All this passes through one's
mind. And once as I sat watching by the river I saw a cradle
floating down. It was sound except for one corner which was broken
off. Thoughts did come that time! I thought some of your soldiers,
the devils, must have got into a Tartar village and seized the
Chechen women, and one of the devils has killed the little one:
taken it by its legs, and hit its head against a wall. Don't they
do such things? Ah! Men have no souls! And thoughts came to me
that filled me with pity. I thought: they've thrown away the
cradle and driven the wife out, and her brave has taken his gun
and come across to our side to rob us. One watches and thinks. And
when one hears a litter breaking through the thicket, something
begins to knock inside one. Dear one, come this way! "They'll
scent me," one thinks; and one sits and does not stir while one's
heart goes dun! dun! dun!