الفصل الفصل 303 · 第303章

The rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and drops from

the trees. Denísov, the esaul, and Pétya rode silently, following the

peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned toes

and moving noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet leaves,

silently led them to the edge of the forest.

He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him, and advanced to where

the screen of trees was less dense. On reaching a large oak tree that

had not yet shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously to

them with his hand.

Denísov and Pétya rode up to him. From the spot where the peasant was

standing they could see the French. Immediately beyond the forest, on a

downward slope, lay a field of spring rye. To the right, beyond a steep

ravine, was a small village and a landowner’s house with a broken roof.

In the village, in the house, in the garden, by the well, by the pond,

over all the rising ground, and all along the road uphill from the

bridge leading to the village, not more than five hundred yards

away, crowds of men could be seen through the shimmering mist. Their

un-Russian shouting at their horses which were straining uphill with the

carts, and their calls to one another, could be clearly heard.

“Bwing the prisoner here,” said Denísov in a low voice, not taking his

eyes off the French.

A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took him to Denísov.

Pointing to the French troops, Denísov asked him what these and those

of them were. The boy, thrusting his cold hands into his pockets and

lifting his eyebrows, looked at Denísov in affright, but in spite of

an evident desire to say all he knew gave confused answers, merely

assenting to everything Denísov asked him. Denísov turned away from him

frowning and addressed the esaul, conveying his own conjectures to him.

Pétya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy, now

at Denísov, now at the esaul, and now at the French in the village and

along the road, trying not to miss anything of importance.

“Whether Dólokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?” said Denísov with

a merry sparkle in his eyes.

“It is a very suitable spot,” said the esaul.

“We’ll send the infantwy down by the swamps,” Denísov continued.

“They’ll cweep up to the garden; you’ll wide up fwom there with the

Cossacks”—he pointed to a spot in the forest beyond the village—“and I

with my hussars fwom here. And at the signal shot...”

“The hollow is impassable—there’s a swamp there,” said the esaul. “The

horses would sink. We must ride round more to the left....”

While they were talking in undertones the crack of a shot sounded

from the low ground by the pond, a puff of white smoke appeared, then

another, and the sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French voices

shouting together came up from the slope. For a moment Denísov and the

esaul drew back. They were so near that they thought they were the cause

of the firing and shouting. But the firing and shouting did not relate

to them. Down below, a man wearing something red was running through the

marsh. The French were evidently firing and shouting at him.

“Why, that’s our Tíkhon,” said the esaul.

“So it is! It is!”

“The wascal!” said Denísov.

“He’ll get away!” said the esaul, screwing up his eyes.

The man whom they called Tíkhon, having run to the stream, plunged in

so that the water splashed in the air, and, having disappeared for an

instant, scrambled out on all fours, all black with the wet, and ran on.

The French who had been pursuing him stopped.

“Smart, that!” said the esaul.

“What a beast!” said Denísov with his former look of vexation. “What has

he been doing all this time?”

“Who is he?” asked Pétya.

“He’s our plastún. I sent him to capture a ‘tongue.’”

“Oh, yes,” said Pétya, nodding at the first words Denísov uttered as if

he understood it all, though he really did not understand anything of

it.

Tíkhon Shcherbáty was one of the most indispensable men in their band.

He was a peasant from Pokróvsk, near the river Gzhat. When Denísov had

come to Pokróvsk at the beginning of his operations and had as usual

summoned the village elder and asked him what he knew about the French,

the elder, as though shielding himself, had replied, as all village

elders did, that he had neither seen nor heard anything of them. But

when Denísov explained that his purpose was to kill the French, and

asked if no French had strayed that way, the elder replied that some

“more-orderers” had really been at their village, but that Tíkhon

Shcherbáty was the only man who dealt with such matters. Denísov had

Tíkhon called and, having praised him for his activity, said a few words

in the elder’s presence about loyalty to the Tsar and the country and

the hatred of the French that all sons of the fatherland should cherish.

“We don’t do the French any harm,” said Tíkhon, evidently frightened by

Denísov’s words. “We only fooled about with the lads for fun, you know!

We killed a score or so of ‘more-orderers,’ but we did no harm else....”

Next day when Denísov had left Pokróvsk, having quite forgotten about

this peasant, it was reported to him that Tíkhon had attached himself

to their party and asked to be allowed to remain with it. Denísov gave

orders to let him do so.

Tíkhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires, fetching water,

flaying dead horses, and so on, soon showed a great liking and aptitude

for partisan warfare. At night he would go out for booty and always

brought back French clothing and weapons, and when told to would bring

in French captives also. Denísov then relieved him from drudgery and

began taking him with him when he went out on expeditions and had him

enrolled among the Cossacks.

Tíkhon did not like riding, and always went on foot, never lagging

behind the cavalry. He was armed with a musketoon (which he carried

rather as a joke), a pike and an ax, which latter he used as a wolf uses

its teeth, with equal ease picking fleas out of its fur or crunching

thick bones. Tíkhon with equal accuracy would split logs with blows at

arm’s length, or holding the head of the ax would cut thin little pegs

or carve spoons. In Denísov’s party he held a peculiar and exceptional

position. When anything particularly difficult or nasty had to be

done—to push a cart out of the mud with one’s shoulders, pull a horse

out of a swamp by its tail, skin it, slink in among the French, or walk

more than thirty miles in a day—everybody pointed laughingly at Tíkhon.

“It won’t hurt that devil—he’s as strong as a horse!” they said of him.

Once a Frenchman Tíkhon was trying to capture fired a pistol at him

and shot him in the fleshy part of the back. That wound (which Tíkhon

treated only with internal and external applications of vodka) was the

subject of the liveliest jokes by the whole detachment—jokes in which

Tíkhon readily joined.

“Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?” the Cossacks would banter

him. And Tíkhon, purposely writhing and making faces, pretended to be

angry and swore at the French with the funniest curses. The only effect

of this incident on Tíkhon was that after being wounded he seldom

brought in prisoners.

He was the bravest and most useful man in the party. No one found more

opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more Frenchmen,

and consequently he was made the buffoon of all the Cossacks and hussars

and willingly accepted that role. Now he had been sent by Denísov

overnight to Shámshevo to capture a “tongue.” But whether because he

had not been content to take only one Frenchman or because he had slept

through the night, he had crept by day into some bushes right among the

French and, as Denísov had witnessed from above, had been detected by

them.