Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/63

Rh please, but I am going with Demyan after the bear. If we track him, all right; if we don't track him, it's all the same whether we do anything more to-day or not: it is still early."

That was what we did.

The others got into the sledge and returned to the village, while Demyan and I took some bread with us and remained in the woods.

As soon as the rest were gone from us, Demyan and I inspected our arms, belted our shubas, and started after the bear.

The weather was fine,—frosty and still. But it was laborious traveling on snow-shoes, for the snow was deep and mealy. The snow had not yet settled in the forest, and the evening before there had been a fresh fall, so that the snow-shoes sank over the edge, and in some places even deeper. The bear's tracks were visible for a long distance. We could see how the bear had made off; how in some places he had sunk up to his belly, and had scratched away the snow.

At first we followed the tracks over the deep snow through tall forest trees, but at last they turned into a fir thicket. Demyan halted.

"Now," said he, "we must abandon the trail. He must have his lair here. Here he stopped to rest; you can see by the snow. We will turn away from the trail, and make a circuit. Only we must go quietly, and not shout or cough, else we shall scare him."

We turned away from the trail abruptly to the left. After going five hundred paces, we discovered the bear's tracks again, right in front of us. Again we followed the trail, and this time the trail led us to the road. We stopped on the road and tried to decide what direction the bear had taken.

In one place on the road we could see where the bear's whole paw, with its toes, was imprinted; and here in another place a peasant had walked along the road in his bark shoes. Apparently it had gone toward the village.