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By Root 4057 0

lying on the wolf’s rump in the midst of the dogs, trying to catch him by the ears. It was obvious to the hunters, and to the dogs, and to the wolf himself that it was all over now. The beast, his ears laid back fearfully, tried to get up, but the dogs clung to him. Danilo, standing up, made a falling step and, with his whole weight, as if lying down to rest, collapsed on the wolf, seizing him by the ears. Nikolai wanted to stab him, but Danilo whispered, “Don’t, we’ll truss him up,” and, changing position, he placed his foot on the wolf’s neck. They put a stick in the wolf’s mouth, tied it with a leash like a bridle, bound his legs, and Danilo rolled the wolf from side to side a couple of times.

With happy, exhausted faces, they hoisted the live, seasoned old wolf onto a shying, snorting horse and, accompanied by the squealing dogs, took him to the place where they were all supposed to assemble. The hounds had taken two young wolves and the borzois three. The hunters came together with their quarry and their stories, and everybody went to look at the seasoned old wolf, who, lolling his big-browed head with the stick gripped in his mouth, looked with wide, glassy eyes at this whole crowd of dogs and people surrounding him. When touched, he jerked his bound legs and looked at them all wildly and at the same time simply.

Count Ilya Andreich also rode up and touched the wolf.

“Oh, what a big old seasoned one!” he said. “A seasoned one, eh?” he asked Danilo, who was standing next to him.

“Yes, a seasoned one, Your Excellency,” replied Danilo, hastily doffing his hat.

The count remembered how he had let the wolf slip and his confrontation with Danilo.

“You do get angry, though, brother,” said the count. Danilo said nothing and just shyly smiled his childishly meek and pleasant smile.

VI

The old count rode home. Natasha and Petya stayed with the hunt, promising to come at once. The hunt went further on, because it was still early. At midday the hounds were loosed into a ravine overgrown with dense, young forest. Nikolai, standing in the stubble, could see all his hunters.

Across from Nikolai was a field of winter wheat, and there stood one of his hunters, alone, in a hollow behind an upthrust hazel bush. As soon as the hounds were loosed into the ravine, Nikolai heard the intermittent baying of a dog he knew—Voltorn; other dogs joined him, now falling silent, now giving tongue again. A moment later from the woods came a foxhunting cry, and the whole pack, joining together, went racing along the edge of the ravine in the direction of the field, away from Nikolai.

He saw the whippers-in in their red hats riding along the edge of the overgrown ravine; he even saw the dogs, and expected every second that a fox would appear on the other side, on the green field.

The hunter who was standing in the hollow stirred and loosed his dogs, and Nikolai saw a strange, low-slung red fox which, puffing up its tail, raced swiftly across the field. The dogs bore down on it. Now they drew close, now it started dodging among them, circling more and more quickly, and twining its puffed-up brush (tail) around itself; and now someone’s white dog flew at it, and after it a black one, and everything became confused, and then the dogs stood forming a star, their rumps pointing outwards, swaying slightly. Two hunters rode up to the dogs, one in a red hat, the other, a stranger, in a green kaftan.

“What’s this?” thought Nikolai. “Where did that hunter appear from? He’s not uncle’s.”

The hunters took the fox from the dogs, and stood dismounted for a long time without strapping it on. The horses, their bridles free and their saddles jutting up, stood nearby, and the dogs lay down. The hunters waved their arms and did something with the fox. The sound of a horn rang out from there—the conventional signal of a fight.

“It’s Ilagin’s hunter and our Ivan acting up over something,” said Nikolai’s groom.

Nikolai sent his groom to call his sister and Petya to him and rode at a walk to the place where the kennelmen were gathering the hounds. Several