Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 02.djvu/564

 526 had killed three men on our guns, and an officer, and we had gone astray from our battery, it was terrible,—we thought we should never get the gun away. It was so muddy."

"The worst was, it was muddy at Indian Mountain," remarked a soldier.

" Well, and he grew worse ! Then we considered,—Anóshenka and I,—Anóshenka was an old gun-sergeant,—that he could not live anyway, and that he invoked God to leave him. And so we concluded we would do so. There was a branching tree growing there. "We put down near him soaked hardtack,—Zhdánov had some,—and leaned him against the tree; we put a clean shirt on him, bade him farewell, as was proper, and left him."

"Was he a good soldier?"

"A pretty good one," remarked Zhdánov.

"God knows what became of him," continued Antónov. "We left many soldiers there."

"In Dargí?" said the foot-soldier, rising and poking his pipe, and again closing his eyes and shaking his head. "Yes, it was terrible there."

And he went away from us.

"Are there many soldiers in the battery who have been at Dargí?" I asked.

" Well! Zhdánov, I, Patsán, who is now on leave of absence, and six or seven other men. That is all."

"I wonder whether Patsán is having a good time on his leave of absence," said Chíkin, stretching out his legs and putting his head on a log. "It will soon be a year since he left."

"Did you take the annual leave?" I asked Zhdánov.

"No, I did not," he answered, reluctantly.

"But it is good to go," said Antónov, "when one is from a well-to-do house, or still able to work. It is pleasant, and people at home are glad to see you."

"What use is there in going, when there are two