The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories | Page 4

sausages and cabbage
spluttering. A cut-glass decanter of vodka, which diffused a smell of
orange-peel all over the room when it was poured out, was put on the
table also.
Yergunov was annoyed that Kalashnikov and the dark fellow Merik
talked together and took no notice of him at all, behaving exactly as
though he were not in the room. And he wanted to talk to them, to brag,
to drink, to have a good meal, and if possible to have a little fun with
Lyubka, who sat down near him half a dozen times while they were at
supper, and, as though by accident, brushed against him with her
handsome shoulders and passed her hands over her broad hips. She was
a healthy, active girl, always laughing and never still: she would sit
down, then get up, and when she was sitting down she would keep
turning first her face and then her back to her neighbour, like a fidgety
child, and never failed to brush against him with her elbows or her
knees.
And he was displeased, too, that the peasants drank only a glass each
and no more, and it was awkward for him to drink alone. But he could
not refrain from taking a second glass, all the same, then a third, and he
ate all the sausage. He brought himself to flatter the peasants, that they
might accept him as one of the party instead of holding him at arm's
length.

"You are a fine set of fellows in Bogalyovka!" he said, and wagged his
head.
"In what way fine fellows?" enquired Kalashnikov.
"Why, about horses, for instance. Fine fellows at stealing!"
"H'm! fine fellows, you call them. Nothing but thieves and drunkards."
"They have had their day, but it is over," said Merik, after a pause. "But
now they have only Filya left, and he is blind."
"Yes, there is no one but Filya," said Kalashnikov, with a sigh.
"Reckon it up, he must be seventy; the German settlers knocked out
one of his eyes, and he does not see well with the other. It is cataract. In
old days the police officer would shout as soon as he saw him: 'Hey,
you Shamil!' and all the peasants called him that --he was Shamil all
over the place; and now his only name is One-eyed Filya. But he was a
fine fellow! Lyuba's father, Andrey Grigoritch, and he stole one night
into Rozhnovo--there were cavalry regiments stationed there--and
carried off nine of the soldiers' horses, the very best of them. They
weren't frightened of the sentry, and in the morning they sold all the
horses for twenty roubles to the gypsy Afonka. Yes! But nowadays a
man contrives to carry off a horse whose rider is drunk or asleep, and
has no fear of God, but will take the very boots from a drunkard, and
then slinks off and goes away a hundred and fifty miles with a horse,
and haggles at the market, haggles like a Jew, till the policeman catches
him, the fool. There is no fun in it; it is simply a disgrace! A paltry set
of people, I must say."
"What about Merik?" asked Lyubka.
"Merik is not one of us," said Kalashnikov. "He is a Harkov man from
Mizhiritch. But that he is a bold fellow, that's the truth; there's no
gainsaying that he is a fine fellow."
Lyubka looked slily and gleefully at Merik, and said:
"It wasn't for nothing they dipped him in a hole in the ice."
"How was that?" asked Yergunov.
"It was like this . . ." said Merik, and he laughed. "Filya carried off
three horses from the Samoylenka tenants, and they pitched upon me.
There were ten of the tenants at Samoylenka, and with their labourers
there were thirty altogether, and all of them Molokans . . . . So one of
them says to me at the market: 'Come and have a look, Merik; we have
brought some new horses from the fair.' I was interested, of course. I

went up to them, and the whole lot of them, thirty men, tied my hands
behind me and led me to the river. 'We'll show you fine horses,' they
said. One hole in the ice was there already; they cut another beside it
seven feet away. Then, to be sure, they took a cord and put a noose
under my armpits, and tied a crooked stick to the other end, long
enough to reach both holes. They thrust the stick in and dragged it
through. I went plop into the ice-hole just as I was, in my fur coat and
my high boots, while they stood and shoved me, one with his foot and
one with his stick, then dragged me under the ice