Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/86

74 just as he had at the bear. I remembered that he was without a collar, and I cried, "Back, Bulka," and I shouted to the convicts not to kill my dog.

But the convict saw Bulka, guffawed, and skilfully speared at him with his hook, and caught him under the thigh.

Bulka tried to break away, but the convict pulled him toward him, and shouted to the other, "Kill him!"

The other was already swinging his club, and Bulka would have been surely killed, but he struggled, the skin on his haunch gave way, and, putting his tail between his legs, and with a frightful wound in his thigh, he dashed at full speed through the gate, into the house, and hid under my bed.

What saved him was the fact that the skin on the place where the hook seized him tore out entirely.

and Milton met their death about the same time. The old Cossack did not understand how to treat Milton. Instead of taking him with him only when he went after birds, he tried to make a boar-hunter of him.

That same autumn a sekatch boar gored him. No one knew how to sew up the wound, and Milton died.

Bulka also did not live long after his rescue from the convicts. Soon after his rescue from the convicts, he began to mope and to lick everything that came in his way. He would lick my hand, but not as in former days when he meant to caress me. He licked long, and energetically thrust out his tongue, and then he began to seize things with his teeth.

Evidently he felt the impulse to bite the hand, but tried to refrain. I did not like to let him have my hand.