The Cossacks Part 26

'That's all very well, but you need not take my lad along with you,'

the old man muttered with a still darker frown.

'Just see the old devil, he knows everything,' muttered Lukashka to himself, and a worried expression came over his face; but then, noticing a corner where a number of Cossack girls were standing, he turned his horse towards them.

'Good evening, girls!' he shouted in his powerful, resonant voice, suddenly checking his horse. 'You've grown old without me, you witches!' and he laughed.

'Good evening, Lukashka! Good evening, laddie!' the merry voices answered. 'Have you brought much money? Buy some sweets for the girls!

... Have you come for long? True enough, it's long since we saw you....'

'Nazarka and I have just flown across to make a night of it,' replied Lukashka, raising his whip and riding straight at the girls.

'Why, Maryanka has quite forgotten you,' said Ustenka, nudging Maryanka with her elbow and breaking into a shrill laugh.

Maryanka moved away from the horse and throwing back her head calmly looked at the Cossack with her large sparkling eyes.

'True enough, you have not been home for a long time! Why are you trampling us under your horse?' she remarked dryly, and turned away.

Lukashka had appeared particularly merry. His face shone with audacity and joy. Obviously staggered by Maryanka's cold reply he suddenly knitted his brow.

'Step up on my stirrup and I'll carry you away to the mountains.

Mammy!' he suddenly exclaimed, and as if to disperse his dark thoughts he caracoled among the girls. Stooping down towards Maryanka, he said, 'I'll kiss, oh, how I'll kiss you! ...'

Maryanka's eyes met his and she suddenly blushed and stepped back.

'Oh, bother you! you'll crush my feet,' she said, and bending her head looked at her well-shaped feet in their tightly fitting light blue stockings with clocks and her new red slippers trimmed with narrow silver braid.

Lukashka turned towards Ustenka, and Maryanka sat down next to a woman with a baby in her arms. The baby stretched his plump little hands towards the girl and seized a necklace string that hung down onto her blue beshmet. Maryanka bent towards the child and glanced at Lukashka from the corner of her eyes. Lukashka just then was getting out from under his coat, from the pocket of his black beshmet, a bundle of sweetmeats and seeds.

'There, I give them to all of you,' he said, handing the bundle to Ustenka and smiling at Maryanka.

A confused expression again appeared on the girl's face. It was as though a mist gathered over her beautiful eyes. She drew her kerchief down below her lips, and leaning her head over the fair-skinned face of the baby that still held her by her coin necklace she suddenly began to kiss it greedily. The baby pressed his little hands against the girl's high b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and opening his toothless mouth screamed loudly.

"You're smothering the boy!" said the little one's mother, taking him away; and she unfastened her beshmet to give him the breast. "You'd better have a chat with the young fellow."

"I'll only go and put up my horse and then Nazarka and I will come back; we'll make merry all night," said Lukashka, touching his horse with his whip and riding away from the girls.

Turning into a side street, he and Nazarka rode up to two huts that stood side by side.

"Here we are all right, old fellow! Be quick and come soon!" called Lukashka to his comrade, dismounting in front of one of the huts; then he carefully led his horse in at the gate of the wattle fence of his own home.

"How d'you do, Stepka?" he said to his dumb sister, who, smartly dressed like the others, came in from the street to take his horse; and he made signs to her to take the horse to the hay, but not to unsaddle it.

The dumb girl made her usual humming noise, smacked her lips as she pointed to the horse and kissed it on the nose, as much as to say that she loved it and that it was a fine horse.

"How d'you do. Mother? How is it that you have not gone out yet?"

shouted Lukashka, holding his gun in place as he mounted the steps of the porch.

His old mother opened the door.

"Dear me! I never expected, never thought, you'd come," said the old woman. "Why, Kirka said you wouldn't be here."

"Go and bring some chikhir, Mother. Nazarka is coming here and we will celebrate the feast day."

"Directly, Lukashka, directly!" answered the old woman. "Our women are making merry. I expect our dumb one has gone too."

She took her keys and hurriedly went to the outhouse. Nazarka, after putting up his horse and taking the gun off his shoulder, returned to Lukashka's house and went in.

Chapter x.x.xVII

'Your health!' said Lukashka, taking from his mother's hands a cup filled to the brim with chikhir and carefully raising it to his bowed head.

'A bad business!' said Nazarka. 'You heard how Daddy Burlak said, "Have you stolen many horses?" He seems to know!'

'A regular wizard!' Lukashka replied shortly. 'But what of it!' he added, tossing his head. 'They are across the river by now. Go and find them!'

'Still it's a bad lookout.'

'What's a bad lookout? Go and take some chikhir to him to-morrow and nothing will come of it. Now let's make merry. Drink!' shouted Lukashka, just in the tone in which old Eroshka uttered the word.

'We'll go out into the street and make merry with the girls. You go and get some honey; or no, I'll send our dumb wench. We'll make merry till morning.'

Nazarka smiled.

'Are we stopping here long?' he asked.

Till we've had a bit of fun. Run and get some vodka. Here's the money.'

Nazarka ran off obediently to get the vodka from Yamka's.

Daddy Eroshka and Ergushov, like birds of prey, scenting where the merry-making was going on, tumbled into the hut one after the other, both tipsy.

'Bring us another half-pail,' shouted Lukashka to his mother, by way of reply to their greeting.

'Now then, tell us where did you steal them, you devil?' shouted Eroshka. 'Fine fellow, I'm fond of you!'

'Fond indeed...' answered Lukashka laughing, 'carrying sweets from cadets to la.s.ses! Eh, you old...'

'That's not true, not true! ... Oh, Mark,' and the old man burst out laughing. 'And how that devil begged me. "Go," he said, "and arrange it." He offered me a gun! But no. I'd have managed it, but I feel for you. Now tell us where have you been?' And the old man began speaking in Tartar.

Lukashka answered him promptly.

Ergushov, who did not know much Tartar, only occasionally put in a word in Russian: 'What I say is he's driven away the horses. I know it for a fact,' he chimed in.

'Girey and I went together.' (His speaking of Girey Khan as 'Girey'

was, to the Cossack mind, evidence of his boldness.) 'Just beyond the river he kept bragging that he knew the whole of the steppe and would lead the way straight, but we rode on and the night was dark, and my Girey lost his way and began wandering in a circle without getting anywhere: couldn't find the village, and there we were. We must have gone too much to the right. I believe we wandered about well--nigh till midnight. Then, thank goodness, we heard dogs howling.'