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“Well, I am glad to see you,” Densov interrupted him, and his face again assumed its anxious expression.
“Michael Feokltych,” said he to the esaul, “this is again fwom that German, you know. He”—he indicated Ptya—“is serving under him.”
And Densov told the esaul that the dispatch just delivered was a repetition of the German general’s demand that he should join forces with him for an attack on the transport.
“If we don’t take it tomowwow, he’ll snatch it fwom under our noses,” he added.
While Densov was talking to the esaul, Ptya—abashed by Densov’s cold tone and supposing that it was due to the condition of his trousers—furtively tried to pull them down under his greatcoat so that no one should notice it, while maintaining as martial an air as possible.
“Will there be any orders, your honor?” he asked Densov, holding his hand at the salute and resuming the game of adjutant and general for which he had prepared himself, “or shall I remain with your honor?”
“Orders?” Densov repeated thoughtfully. “But can you stay till tomowwow?”
“Oh, please... May I stay with you?” cried Ptya.
“But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at once?” asked Densov.
Ptya blushed.
“He gave me no instructions. I think I could?” he returned, inquiringly.
“Well, all wight,” said Densov.
And turning to his men he directed a party to go on to the halting place arranged near the watchman’s hut in the forest, and told the officer on the Kirghz horse (who performed the duties of an adjutant) to go and find out where Dlokhov was and whether he would come that evening. Densov himself intended going with the esaul and Ptya to the edge of the forest where it reached out to Shmshevo, to have a look at the part of the French bivouac they were to attack next day.
“Well, old fellow,” said he to the peasant guide, “lead us to Shmshevo.”
Densov, Ptya, and the esaul, accompanied by some Cossacks and the hussar who had the prisoner, rode to the left across a ravine to the edge of the forest.
The rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and drops from the trees. Densov, the esaul, and Ptya rode silently, following the peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned toes and moving noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet leaves, silently led them to the edge of the forest.
He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him, and advanced to where the screen of trees was less dense. On reaching a large oak tree that had not yet shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously to them with his hand.
Densov and Ptya rode up to him. From the spot where the peasant was standing they could see the French. Immediately beyond the forest, on a downward slope, lay a field of spring rye. To the right, beyond a steep ravine, was a small village and a landowner’s house with a broken roof. In the village, in the house, in the garden, by the well, by the pond, over all the rising ground, and all along the road uphill from the bridge leading to the village, not more than five hundred yards away, crowds of men could be seen through the shimmering mist. Their un-Russian shouting at their horses which were straining uphill with the carts, and their calls to one another, could be clearly heard.
“Bwing the prisoner here,” said Densov in a low voice, not taking his eyes off the French.
A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took him to Densov. Pointing to the French troops, Densov asked him what these and those of them were. The boy, thrusting his cold hands into his pockets and lifting his eyebrows, looked at Densov in affright, but in spite of an evident desire to say all he knew gave confused answers, merely assenting to everything Densov asked him. Densov turned away from him frowning and addressed the esaul, conveying his own conjectures to him.
Ptya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy, now at Densov, now at the esaul, and now at the French in the village and along the road, trying not to miss anything of importance.
“Whether Dlokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?” said Densov with a merry sparkle in his eyes.
“It is a very suitable spot,” said the esaul.
“We’ll send the infantwy down by the swamps,” Densov continued. “They’ll cweep up to the garden; you’ll wide up fwom there with the Cossacks”—he pointed to a spot in the forest beyond the village—“and I with my hussars fwom here. And at the signal shot...”
“The hollow is impassable—there’s a swamp there,” said the esaul. “The horses would sink. We must ride round more to the left....”
While they were talking in undertones the crack of a shot sounded from the low ground by the pond, a puff of white smoke appeared, then another, and the sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French voices shouting together came up from the slope. For a moment Densov and the esaul drew back. They were so near that they thought they were the cause of the firing and shouting. But the firing and shouting did not relate to them. Down below, a man wearing something red was running through the marsh. The French were evidently firing and shouting at him.
“Why, that’s our Tkhon,” said the esaul.
“So it is! It is!”
“The wascal!” said Densov.
“He’ll get away!” said the esaul, screwing up his eyes.
The man whom they called Tkhon, having run to the stream, plunged in so that the water splashed in the air, and, having disappeared for an instant, scrambled out on all fours, all black with the wet, and ran on. The French who had been pursuing him stopped.
“Smart, that!” said the esaul.
“What a beast!” said Densov with his former look of vexation. “What has he been doing all this time?”
“Who is he?” asked Ptya.
“He’s our plastn. I sent him to capture a ‘tongue.’”
“Oh, yes,” said Ptya, nodding at the first words Densov uttered as if he understood it all, though he really did not understand anything of it.
Tkhon Shcherbty was one of the most indispensable men in their band. He was a peasant from Pokrvsk, near the river Gzhat. When Densov had come to Pokrvsk at the beginning of his operations and had as usual summoned the village elder and asked him what he knew about the French, the elder, as though shielding himself, had replied, as all village elders did, that he had neither seen nor heard anything of them. But when Densov explained that his purpose was to kill the French, and asked if no French had strayed that way, the elder replied that some “more-orderers” had really been at their village, but that Tkhon Shcherbty was the only man who dealt with such matters. Densov had Tkhon called and, having praised him for his activity, said a few words in the elder’s presence about loyalty to the Tsar and the country and the hatred of the French that all sons of the fatherland should cherish.
