Page:More Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/102

More Tales from Tolstoi mountains. So it was commanded that twice a week a military escort should proceed from fortress to fortress with the people in the midst of it.

The affair happened in the summer. At dawn of day the baggage-wagons assembled in the fortress, the military escort marched out, and the whole company took the road. Zhilin went on horseback, and his wagon with his things was among the baggage.

The distance to be traversed was twenty miles, but the caravan moved but slowly. Sometimes it was the soldiers who stopped, sometimes a wheel flew off one of the baggage-wagons, or a horse wouldn't go—and then they all had to stop and wait.

The sun had already passed the meridian, and the caravan had only gone half the distance. There was nothing but heat and dust, the sun regularly burned, and there was no shelter to be had. All around nothing but the naked steppe—not a village, not a wayside bush.

Zhilin had galloped on in front, he had now stopped, and was waiting for the cavalcade to come up. Then he heard a horn blown in the rear, and knew that they had stopped again. Then thought Zhilin: "Why not go on by oneself without the soldiers? I've a good horse beneath me, and if I stumble upon the Tatars—I can make a bolt for it. Or shall I not go?"

He stood there considering, and up there came trotting another mounted officer, called Kostuilin, with a musket, and he said:

"Let us go on alone, Zhilin. I can't stand it any longer, I want some grub; the heat is stifling, and my shirt is regularly sticking to me."