War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy (latest ebook reader .TXT) 📕

which, he said, swarmed with hares. Nicholas agreed, and the hunt, now doubled, moved on.

The way to Iligin’s upland was across the fields. The hunt servants fell into line. The masters rode together. “Uncle,” Rostóv, and Ilágin kept stealthily glancing at one another’s dogs, trying not to be observed by their companions and searching uneasily for rivals to their own borzois.

Rostóv was particularly struck by the beauty of a small, pure-bred, red-spotted bitch on Ilágin’s leash, slender but with muscles like steel, a delicate muzzle, and prominent black eyes. He had heard of the swiftness of Ilágin’s borzois, and in that beautiful bitch saw a rival to his own Mílka.

In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilágin about the year’s harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch.

“A fine little bitch, that!” said he in a careless tone. “Is she swift?”

“That one? Yes, she’s a good dog, gets what she’s after,” answered Ilágin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erzá, for which, a year before, he had given a neighbor three families of house serfs. “So in your parts, too, the harvest is nothing to boast of, Count?” he went on, continuing the conversation they had begun. And considering it polite to return the young count’s compliment, Ilágin looked at his borzois and picked out Mílka who attracted his attention by her breadth. “That black-spotted one of yours is fine—well shaped!” said he.

“Yes, she’s fast enough,” replied Nicholas, and thought: “If only a full-grown hare would cross the field now I’d show you what sort of borzoi she is,” and turning to his groom, he said he would give a ruble to anyone who found a hare.

“I don’t understand,” continued Ilágin, “how some sportsmen can be so jealous about game and dogs. For myself, I can tell you, Count, I enjoy riding in company such as this... what could be better?” (he again raised his cap to Natásha) “but as for counting skins and what one takes, I don’t care about that.”

“Of course not!”

“Or being upset because someone else’s borzoi and not mine catches something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the chase, is it not so, Count? For I consider that...”

“A-tu!” came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi whippers-in, who had halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip aloft, and again repeated his long-drawn cry, “A-tu!” (This call and the uplifted whip meant that he saw a sitting hare.)

“Ah, he has found one, I think,” said Ilágin carelessly. “Yes, we must ride up.... Shall we both course it?” answered Nicholas, seeing in Erzá and “Uncle’s” red Rugáy two rivals he had never yet had a chance of pitting against his own borzois. “And suppose they outdo my Mílka at once!” he thought as he rode with “Uncle” and Ilágin toward the hare.

“A full-grown one?” asked Ilágin as he approached the whip who had sighted the hare—and not without agitation he looked round and whistled to Erzá.

“And you, Michael Nikanórovich?” he said, addressing “Uncle.”

The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face.

“How can I join in? Why, you’ve given a village for each of your borzois! That’s it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours against one another, you two, and I’ll look on!”

“Rugáy, hey, hey!” he shouted. “Rugáyushka!” he added, involuntarily by this diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes he placed on this red borzoi. Natásha saw and felt the agitation the two elderly men and her brother were trying to conceal, and was herself excited by it.

The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip and the gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that were far off on the horizon turned away from the hare, and the whips, but not the gentlefolk, also moved away. All were moving slowly and sedately.

“How is it pointing?” asked Nicholas, riding a hundred paces toward the whip who had sighted the hare.

But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the frost coming next morning, was unable to rest and leaped up. The pack on leash rushed downhill in full cry after the hare, and from all sides the borzois that were not on leash darted after the hounds and the hare. All the hunt, who had been moving slowly, shouted, “Stop!” calling in the hounds, while the borzoi whips, with a cry of “A-tu!” galloped across the field setting the borzois on the hare. The tranquil Ilágin, Nicholas, Natásha, and “Uncle” flew, reckless of where and how they went, seeing only the borzois and the hare and fearing only to lose sight even for an instant of the chase. The hare they had started was a strong and swift one. When he jumped up he did not run at once, but pricked his ears listening to the shouting and trampling that resounded from all sides at once. He took a dozen bounds, not very quickly, letting the borzois gain on him, and, finally having chosen his direction and realized his danger, laid back his ears and rushed off headlong. He had been lying in the stubble, but in front of him was the autumn sowing where the ground was soft. The two borzois of the huntsman who had sighted him, having been the nearest, were the first to see and pursue him, but they had not gone far before Ilágin’s red-spotted Erzá passed them, got within a length, flew at the hare with terrible swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking she had seized him, rolled over like a ball. The hare arched his back and bounded off yet more swiftly. From behind Erzá rushed the broad-haunched, black-spotted Mílka and began rapidly gaining on the hare.

“Miláshka, dear!” rose Nicholas’ triumphant cry. It looked as if Mílka would immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and flew past. The hare had squatted. Again the beautiful Erzá reached him, but when close to the hare’s scut paused as if measuring the distance, so as not to make a mistake this time but seize his hind leg.

“Erzá, darling!” Ilágin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erzá did not hearken to his appeal. At the very moment when she would have seized her prey, the hare moved and darted along the balk between the winter rye and the stubble. Again Erzá and Mílka were abreast, running like a pair of carriage horses, and began to overtake the hare, but it was easier for the hare to run on the balk and the borzois did not overtake him so quickly.

“Rugáy, Rugáyushka! That’s it, come on!” came a third voice just then, and “Uncle’s” red borzoi, straining and curving its back, caught up with the two foremost borzois, pushed ahead of them regardless of the terrible strain, put on speed close to the hare, knocked it off the balk onto the ryefield, again put on speed still more viciously, sinking to his knees in the muddy field, and all one could see was how, muddying his back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring of borzois surrounded him. A moment later everyone had drawn up round the crowd of dogs. Only the delighted “Uncle” dismounted, and cut off a pad, shaking the hare for the blood to drip off, and anxiously glancing round with restless eyes while his arms and legs twitched. He spoke without himself knowing whom to or what about. “That’s it, come on! That’s a dog!... There, it has beaten them all, the