Chapter 40 - Page 2

was with great difficulty that Olenin managed to find out from
him what was happening. Scouts who had been sent out to search for
abreks had come upon several hillsmen some six miles from the
village. These abreks had taken shelter in pits and had fired at
the scouts, declaring they would not surrender. A corporal who had
been scouting with two Cossacks had remained to watch the abreks,
and had sent one Cossack back to get help.

The sun was just rising. Three miles beyond the village the steppe
spread out and nothing was visible except the dry, monotonous,
sandy, dismal plain covered with the footmarks of cattle, and here
and there with tufts of withered grass, with low reeds in the
flats, and rare, little-trodden footpaths, and the camps of the
nomad Nogay tribe just visible far away. The absence of shade and
the austere aspect of the place were striking. The sun always
rises and sets red in the steppe. When it is windy whole hills of
sand are carried by the wind from place to place.

When it is calm, as it was that morning, the silence,
uninterrupted by any movement or sound, is peculiarly striking.
That morning in the steppe it was quiet and dull, though the sun
had already risen. It all seemed specially soft and desolate. The
air was hushed, the footfalls and the snorting of the horses were
the only sounds to be heard, and even they quickly died away.

The men rode almost silently. A Cossack always carries his weapons
so that they neither jingle nor rattle. Jingling weapons are a
terrible disgrace to a Cossack. Two other Cossacks from the
village caught the party up and exchanged a few words. Lukashka's
horse either stumbled or caught its foot in some grass, and became
restive--which is a sign of bad luck among the Cossacks, and at
such a time was of special importance. The others exchanged
glances and turned away, trying not to notice what had happened.
Lukaskha pulled at the reins, frowned sternly, set his teeth, and
flourished his whip above his head. His good Kabarda horse,
prancing from one foot to another not knowing with which to start,
seemed to wish to fly upwards on wings. But Lukashka hit its well-
-fed sides with his whip once, then again, and a third time, and
the horse, showing its teeth and spreading out its tail, snorted
and reared and stepped on its hind legs a few paces away from the
others.

'Ah, a good steed that!' said the cornet.

That he said steed instead of HORSE indicated special praise.

'A lion of a horse,' assented one of the others, an old Cossack.

The Cossacks rode forward silently, now at a footpace, then at a
trot, and these changes were the only incidents that interrupted
for a moment the stillness and solemnity of their