Page:Korolenko - Makar's Dream and Other Stories.djvu/53

Rh to the Tartar this minute, that will mean four hundred sins!"

"Look behind you," answered the priest.

Makar looked round. The white, empty plain lay stretched out far behind them; the Tartar appeared for a second upon it, a tiny, distant dot. Makar thought he could distinguish the white cloud rising from under the hoofs of his piebald, but next moment the dot, too, had vanished.

"Well, well, the Tartar will manage all right without his mahorka. You see how he has ruined my horse, the scoundrel!"

"No, he has not ruined your horse," answered the priest. "That horse was stolen. Have you not heard the old men say that a stolen horse will never go far?"

Makar had certainly heard this from the old men, but as he had often seen Tartars ride all the way to the city on horses that they had stolen, he had never put much belief in the saying. He now concluded that old men were sometimes right.

They now began to pass many other horsemen on the plain. All were hurrying along as fast as the first; the horses were flying like birds, the riders dripping with sweat, yet Makar and the priest kept overtaking them and leaving them behind.

Most of these horsemen were Tartars, but a few were natives of Chalgan; some of the latter were