War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [330]
“She’s a good one, that black-spotted one of yours—well-built!” he said.
“Yes, she’s all right. Good speed,” Nikolai replied. “If only there was a seasoned hare running through the field, I’d show you what kind of dog she is!” he thought. And turning to his groom, he said he would give a rouble to the hunter who could spot a hare in its form.
“I don’t understand,” Ilagin went on, “how it is that other hunters can be jealous over game and dogs. I’ll tell you about myself, Count. I enjoy having a ride, you know; you get together with company like this…what could be better?” (He again took his beaver cap off to Natasha.) “But this counting skins, who brought in how many—it’s all the same to me!”
“Well, yes.”
“Or that I should get upset that another man’s dog catches it and not mine—all I want is to admire the chase, isn’t that so, Count? Then, in my opinion…”
“Halloo!” came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi men, who had stopped. He was standing on a low knoll amidst the stubble with his whip raised, and once more called out: “Hallo-o-o!” (This sound and the raised whip signified that he had spotted a hare in its form in front of him.)
“Ah, seems he’s spotted one,” Ilagin said casually. “Well, let’s course it, Count.”
“Yes, we should ride over…together, shall we?” Nikolai replied, looking at Yerza and at his uncle’s red Rugai, two rivals with whom he had never yet had his dogs compete. “And what if they pull my Milka off its ears?” he thought, heading for the hare alongside his uncle and Ilagin.
“A seasoned one?” asked Ilagin, approaching the hunter who had spotted the hare and turning, not without excitement, to whistle up Yerza…
“And you, Mikhail Nikanorych?” he turned to the uncle. The uncle rode along, scowling.
“Why should I get into it! Your dogs—right you are!—you paid a village for each of them, they cost thousands. You match yours, and I’ll watch!”
“Rugai! Here, here!” he cried. “Rugayushka!” he added, involuntarily expressing by this diminutive his tenderness and the hope he placed in this red dog. Natasha saw and felt the hidden excitement of these two old men and her brother, and was excited herself.
The hunter on the knoll stood with his whip raised; the gentlemen rode up to him at a walk; the hounds, running just on the horizon, were turning away from the hare; the rest of the hunters were also riding away. Everything moved slowly and sedately.
“Where’s his head pointing?” asked Nikolai, riding up within a hundred paces of the hunter who had spotted the hare. But before the hunter had time to reply, the hare, sensing which way the wind was turning, leaped up from his form. The pack of hounds, linked in pairs, raced baying down the hill after the hare; from all sides the borzois, which were not on leashes, rushed after the hounds and the hare. All those slowly moving hunters and whippers-in crying “Hold up!”—throwing off their dogs—and the borzoi men crying “Sic him!” and driving their dogs on—galloped across the field. The calm Ilagin, Nikolai, Natasha, and the uncle flew along, not knowing how or where, seeing only the dogs and the hare, and only fearing to lose sight, even for a moment, of the course of the chase. The hare happened to be seasoned and swift-footed. Jumping up, he did not run at once, but moved his ears, listening to the shouting and stamping that suddenly arose on all sides. He made some ten leaps, not quickly, letting the dogs get closer to him, and finally, choosing his direction and realizing the danger, laid his ears back and dashed off as fast as his legs would carry him. He had been lying in the stubble, but ahead of him were the green fields, where the ground was soggy. The two dogs of the hunter who had spotted the hare, being closest to him, were the first to view and start after the hare; but