'Get back!' Semyon yelled at a dog that had poked his nose out through the bushes. This made the count jump, and he dropped his snuff-box. Nastasya Ivanovna got off his horse to pick it up. The count and Semyon looked on. Suddenly - this sort of thing tends to happen suddenly - the sound of the hunt was upon them. It was as if the baying dogs and Danilo's whooping cries were right there in front of them.
The count looked round to his right where he saw Mitka standing there, goggling, raising his cap and pointing back the other way.
'Look out!' he roared in a voice that suggested the words had long been struggling to get out. He let the dogs go and galloped over towards the count.
The count and Chekmar galloped out of the bushes, and there to the left they saw a wolf loping gently along with an easy swinging movement just to the left of the very thicket they had been standing in. The dogs yelped furiously, tore themselves free from the leash and flashed past the horses' hooves in pursuit of the wolf.
The wolf paused in his flight and staggered as if he was having a heart attack, but then he turned with his broad brow to face the dogs, loped off with the same gentle swinging movement, gave a couple of bounds and disappeared with a flick of his tail into the bushes. The same instant there was a great wailing sound, and out of the opposite bushes sprang a desperate hound, followed by another, and a third, and then the whole pack flew across the grass to the spot where the wolf had scrambled through and scuttled away. The hazel bushes parted behind the dogs, and Danilo's chestnut horse emerged, dark with sweat. There on its long back sat Danilo, hunched up and leaning forward. He had lost his cap and his grey hair straggled down over his red, perspiring face.
'Loo! loo! loo! . . .' came his whooping voice. When he caught sight of the count, his eyes flashed like lightning.
'Blast you!' he roared, brandishing his whip at the count. 'You let him go! . . . Call yourself a huntsman?' And evidently not willing to waste any more words on the embarrassed and frightened count, he turned away from him and took his fury out on the brown gelding, lashing its sweating and heaving flanks as he flew off after the dogs. The count stood there like a schoolboy after punishment, looking round on all sides and hoping his smile might summon up Semyon to sympathize with him in his dire situation. But Semyon wasn't there - he had galloped round outside the bushes to cut the wolf off from the wood. The men in the field had also galloped in on their prey, from two different sides. But the wolf had nipped off through the bushes, and not one of the party got anywhere near him.
CHAPTER 5
Meanwhile Nikolay Rostov was standing at his post, watching for the wolf. From the noise of the chase as it came up close and went away again, from the cries of the dogs that were familiar to him, from the voices of the huntsmen near by, far away and then suddenly getting louder, he could follow what was going on within the copse. He knew there were young and old wolves in the covert. He knew the hounds had split into two packs, and somewhere they had had sight of a wolf, but something had gone wrong. Every second he expected a wolf to come his way. He had worked things out in a thousand different ways - how the wolf would emerge, where it would happen and how he would deal with it. Hope gave way to despair. Several times he prayed to God for a wolf to run out on him. He prayed with the kind of passion and sincerity which often overwhelms people in moments of deep distress over trivialities. 'Oh, what would it cost Thee,' he asked God, 'to do this for me? I know Thou art great and it's a sin to pray for this, but for God's sake please let an old wolf come out on me, and let Karay catch him and get his teeth into his throat and finish him off right in front of 'Uncle', because he's watching me.' Rostov strained his eyes a thousand times during that half-hour, anxiously scanning the thickets at the edge of the copse, where a couple of scraggy oaks towered above the aspen undergrowth, an undercut bank led steeply down the ravine and 'Uncle's' cap peeped out from behind a bush on the right-hand side.
'No, I won't get that kind of luck,' thought Rostov. 'And it would cost Him so little! No chance! I'm always unlucky - at cards, fighting in the war, everything.' Clear visions of Austerlitz and Dolokhov flashed through his mind in rapid succession. 'Just once in my life to kill an old wolf. It's all I want!' he thought, straining eyes and ears, looking left, right and centre, and listening for the slightest variation in sound coming from the hunt. He looked to the right again, and this time he saw something running towards him over the open ground. 'No, it can't be!' thought Rostov, taking a deep breath, as men do when something long expected is finally achieved. This was a sheer fluke, and it had come about so simply, with no sound, no splendid flourish, nothing to mark its arrival. Rostov couldn't believe his eyes, and his doubts lasted more than a second. But the wolf was running on. She made a clumsy job of jumping across a little hollow that lay across her path.
It was an old she-wolf, grey-backed, with a well-filled, reddish belly. She wasn't in a hurry, apparently confident that no one could see her. Rostov held his breath and looked round at the dogs. Some were lying there, some were standing around, and they were oblivious to everything, not having seen the wolf. Old Karay had his head turned round and his yellow teeth bared as he rummaged angrily for a flea, snapping at his own haunches. 'Loo! loo! loo!' Rostov whispered, pursing his lips. The dogs leapt up, jingling the iron fittings on the leashes, and pricked up their ears. Karay stopped scratching his hind-leg and got up, cocking his ears and wagging his tail, with all its straggly tufts of hair.
'Shall I let them go?' Nikolay asked himself as the wolf moved away from the copse and came towards him. Suddenly the wolf was physically transformed. She shuddered - this was probably the first time she had felt human eyes upon her - turned her head slightly towards the huntsman and stopped, wondering whether to go on or go back. 'No difference. I'm going on!' the wolf seemed to say to herself, and she pressed on without looking round, treading softly and cautiously but with a firm and easy step. 'Loo! loo! . . .' Nikolay yelled in an unrecognizable voice, and his trusty horse hurtled off downhill of its own accord and leapt the watercourse to intercept the wolf, while the hounds ran even faster and overtook it.
Nikolay couldn't hear himself yelling and had no sense of galloping; he saw neither the dogs nor the ground he was covering. All he could see was the wolf, as she quickened her pace, bounding on in a dead straight line along the gully. The leading hound was Milka, the stocky black and white bitch, and she was closing on her. Nearer, nearer, almost there . . . But the wolf turned slightly sideways, and Milka, instead of putting on her usual final spurt, suddenly stiffened her fore-legs and pulled up with her tail in the air.
'Loo! loo! loo!' yelled Nikolay.
A red hound called Lyubim darted past Milka, dashed at the wolf and seized her by the hind leg, only to leap away immediately in terror. The wolf had squatted down, snarling, but now she got up again and raced away, followed a few feet behind by all the dogs, though they took care not to get too close.
'She'll get away! No, she can't!' thought Nikolay, still yelling in a husky voice.
'Karay! Loo! loo!' he yelled, looking for the old hound, his one last hope.
Karay summoned up all the strength left in his old frame and stretched out to his full length as he watched where the wolf was going and bounded slightly away from her to cut across her path. But it was clear from the wolf's speed and the dog's slowness that Karay had miscalculated. Nikolay could now see the copse not far ahead, and once the wolf got there she would be sure to escape. But suddenly in front of him some dogs appeared and a man with them, galloping almost straight at the wolf. There was still hope. A lanky, yellowish young borzoi, not one of the Rostovs' - Nikolay didn't know him - flew towards him straight at the wolf and almost knocked her down. The wolf recovered faster than might have been expected, snarled and savaged the young hound, which fell headlong on the ground with a piercing yelp, covered with blood from a gash in its side.
'Karay! Come on, old fellow!' Nikolay wailed.
Because of the wolf's setback the old dog,
with tufts of matted hair dangling from his haunches, had managed to cut across the wolf's path and was now only five paces behind her. Sensing the danger, the wolf took one sideways glance at Karay, tucked her tail further down between her legs and ran on even faster. But then something happened to Karay - Nikolay couldn't see exactly what it was - and there he was on top of the wolf with the pair of them rolling down in a struggling heap into a gully just ahead.
That moment, the moment when Nikolay saw the dogs struggling with the wolf down in the gully, her grey coat visible at the bottom of the heap, one hind-leg sticking out, her ears flattened and her head gasping in terror (Karay had her by the throat) - the moment Nikolay saw all this was the happiest moment of his whole life. He had grasped the pommel of his saddle to get down and stab the creature when suddenly the wolf stuck her head up through the heaving mass of dogs and managed to get her fore-legs out on to the edge of the gully. With a snap of her teeth (Karay having let go of her throat), she heaved her hind-legs out of the hollow, tucked her tail back down, struggled free of the dogs and ran off again. Karay stumbled out of the gully with his hackles raised, hurt and perhaps badly wounded.
'Oh my God . . . No!' Nikolay shouted in despair. But then one of 'Uncle's' huntsmen cut across from the other side and his hounds ran the wolf to earth again. Again she was hemmed in on all sides.
Nikolay, his groom, 'Uncle' and his huntsman pranced round above the beast, whooping and howling, a second away from dismounting when the wolf cowered away, but starting forward again every time she shook herself free and edged towards the copse which might yet be her salvation.
At the beginning of this cruel scene Danilo, hearing the hunters' cries, had darted into the edge of the copse. He saw that Karay had the wolf at his mercy and checked his horse, assuming it was all over. But when he saw that the hunters were not dismounting and the wolf was shaking herself free and was off again, Danilo galloped his own horse, not towards the wolf, but straight towards the copse, like Karay, to cut her off. It was because of this manoeuvre that he was bearing down on the wolf when 'Uncle's' dogs brought her down for the second time.
Danilo galloped up in silence, holding a drawn dagger in his left hand and lashing the heaving flanks of his chestnut, using his riding whip as a kind of flail.
Nikolay didn't see Danilo and didn't hear him until the gasping chestnut flashed past and he heard the sound of a falling body and saw Danilo lying in the midst of the dogs on the wolf's back, trying to grab her by the ears. It was obvious to them all, dogs, hunters and wolf, that this was the end. The beast, flattening its ears in terror, tried to get up, but the dogs hung on. Danilo half-rose, then stumbled down, and as if he was going to bed collapsed with all his weight on top of the wolf and grabbed her by the ears. Nikolay was about to finish her off with the dagger, but Danilo whispered, 'No, don't. We'll string her up!' and he changed position to put his foot on the wolf's neck. They put a stick between the wolf's jaws and tied her up as if they were putting her on the leash, and also tied her legs. Danilo swung the she-wolf from side to side once or twice.
With weary, happy faces they tied the great beast, still alive, to a horse, which bridled and snorted, and with all the dogs milling round and yelping at her, they brought her to the place where they were all supposed to meet. The wolfhounds had taken two of the cubs, and the borzois the other three. The hunters were coming in now, proud of their booty and swapping stories, and everyone came over to have a look at the grand old wolf with her big broad head hanging down and the stick in her teeth, as she gazed with great, glassy eyes at the crowd of dogs and men around her. When they poked her, her tied legs jerked and she looked at them all, wild-eyed yet somehow innocent. Count Ilya Rostov rode over too, and had a poke at the wolf.
'Splendid beast!' he said. 'An old one, eh?' he asked.
'That she be, your Excellency,' answered Danilo, swift to doff his cap.
The count remembered the wolf he had missed, and his clash with Danilo. 'Have to do something about your temper, my boy,' said the count.
Danilo said nothing, but his nervous smile was as sweet and gentle as a child's.
CHAPTER 6
The old count went home. Natasha and Petya stayed on with the hunt but promised to follow immediately. It was still early in the day so the hunting party went on further. At midday they let the hounds loose in a ravine thickly overgrown with young trees. Nikolay stood at the top on some stubble land, from where he could see all his party.
Across from Nikolay was a field of winter rye, in which he could see one of his huntsmen standing alone in a hollow behind a hazel bush. No sooner had they loosed the hounds when Nikolay heard an intermittent baying sound coming from a dog he knew, Voltorn; other hounds joined in, pausing now and then, only to take up the same call. A moment later he heard from the ravine a call that told him they were on the scent of a fox, and the whole pack made off together along a narrow run, up towards the rye-field away from Nikolay.
He could see the whippers-in in their red caps galloping along the edge of the overgrown ravine. He could even see the dogs, and he was expecting the fox to come into sight at any moment now in the field across the ravine.
The huntsman standing in the hollow made a move and let his dogs go, and Nikolay saw a odd-looking red fox with stumpy legs and a big bushy tail scurrying across the green field. The hounds bore down on it, closing in, and the fox began to weave in and out in smaller and smaller circles, trailing its big brush, when all of a sudden a white dog - not one of ours - leapt on it, followed by a black one, and then there was a general hurly-burly which ended with the dogs standing over it, scarcely moving, their heads thrust in and behinds sticking out like the points of a star. Two huntsmen galloped over to the dogs, one in a red cap, the other, a stranger, in a green kaftan.
'Hello, what's this?' wondered Nikolay. 'Where did he come from? He's not one of "Uncle's" men.'
The huntsmen retrieved the fox, and stood there for quite some time without making any effort to tie it to a saddle. He could see the tethered horses and the outline of their empty saddles as they stood close to the huntsmen, and the dogs were there too, lying down. There was much waving of arms as the huntsmen did something to the fox. Someone blew a horn - which always signalled a fight.
'That's one of Ilagin's huntsmen, and he's having some sort of row with our Ivan,' said Nikolay's groom.
Nikolay told the groom to fetch his sister and Petya, and rode off at walking pace towards the spot where the whippers-in were rounding up the hounds. Several of the party galloped over to the scene of the squabble.
Nikolay dismounted, and when Natasha and Petya had ridden up he stood with them near the hounds waiting to hear how things had turned out. The huntsman who had been involved in the row soon came riding out of the bushes with the fox tied to the back of his saddle, and rode over to his young master. He had doffed his cap some way off and was making every effort to be polite, but he was as white as a sheet and gasping for breath, and fury was written all over his face. He had a black eye, though he seemed not to be aware of it.
'What was all that about?' asked Nikolay.
'Well, 'e was going to finish off our fox! And 'twas my bitch that caught it - the mouse-coloured one. I'll swing for him! Pinching my fox! Let 'im have it, I did - 'im and 'is fox. Here 'tis on my saddle. D'you want some of this?' said the huntsman, pointing to his hunting-knife, apparently under the delusion that he was still talking to his enemy.
Nikolay wasted no more words on this man; telling his sister and Petya to wait there, he rode over to the place where the enemy hunt, under Ilagin, had collected.
The victorious Rostov huntsman rode over to join the others, and there, to a crowd of sympathetic and curious admirers, he recounted his noble deed.
The facts were clear. Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs were conducting a dispute that had gone to law, was hunting in places that belonged by custom to the Rostovs, and had now - deliberately, it seemed - sent his men to the very area
where the Rostovs were hunting, and then allowed his man to snatch a fox being chased by other people's dogs.
Nikolay had never set eyes on Ilagin, but, never a man for half-measures when it came to judgements and feelings and having heard that their neighbour was an obstinate brute, he loathed him with every fibre of his being and considered him his bitterest foe. All worked up and spitting with rage, he was now on his way to have things out with him, clenching his riding-crop and ready for anything as long as it involved decisive action against his enemy.
He had scarcely emerged from the edge of the wood when he saw a stout gentleman in a beaver cap coming towards him on a splendid black horse, accompanied by two grooms. This was no enemy. Nikolay found Ilagin to be an impressive gentleman of great courtesy who seemed particularly anxious to make the young count's acquaintance. Ilagin raised his beaver cap as he approached, apologized profusely for what had occurred, said he would have the man punished for hunting someone else's fox, hoped that they could now become better acquainted and offered him the use of his own land for hunting on.
Natasha had followed on not far behind her brother, worried that his blood was up and he might do something terrible, but when she saw the two enemies exchanging friendly greetings she rode straight over to them. Ilagin raised his beaver cap even higher to Natasha, gave her the most affable of smiles and said the countess was worthy of Diana both in her love of hunting and in her beauty, of which he had heard so much.
By way of atonement for his huntsman's offence, Ilagin persuaded Rostov to ride up to his high land less than a mile away, which he preserved for his own shooting; it was, as he put it, swarming with hares. Nikolay consented, and the hunting party, swollen to twice its size, set off again. Their way led across several fields. The huntsmen fell back to move in line, while the gentry rode together. 'Uncle', Rostov and Ilagin kept stealing the odd furtive glance at each other's dogs, trying not to be noticed as they did so, and looking anxiously for any rivals that might outrun their own dogs.