‘Yes, she’s all right. She can move,’ answered Nikolay. (‘I wouldn’t mind seeing a good big hare run across that field, then I could show you what kind of dog she is!’ he thought to himself.) Turning to his groom, he said he would give a rouble to the first man who could start up a hiding hare.
‘What beats me,’ Ilagin went on, ‘is why some people are so jealous of each other when it comes to hunting and dogs. I’ll tell you this, Count: I enjoy a good hunt, as you well know. Splendid company and all that . . . nothing better.’ He doffed his beaver cap again to Natasha. ‘But counting the kills and keeping score – I’ve no time for that sort of thing.’
‘Certainly not!’
‘Or getting worked up because somebody else’s dog makes a kill and mine doesn’t. All I’m interested in is the actual hunting. Are you with me, Count? I see it this way . . .’
At that moment a long drawn-out halloo, ‘Over here! . . .’, came from one of the dog-handlers. He was standing on a little rise amid the stubble with his whip held high, and he gave the call again, ‘He’s here! . . .’ This cry, together with the raised whip, meant that he could see a hare squatting near by.
‘I think he’s spotted something,’ said Ilagin casually. ‘How about a little chase, Count?’
‘Yes, we must get over there . . . Er, shall we go together?’ answered Nikolay, with a close look at Yerza and ‘Uncle’s’ red Rugay, the two rivals he had not yet a chance of competing against. ‘What if they’re miles faster than my Milka?’ he thought, riding off with the two other men in the direction of the hare.
‘Nice big one, is he?’ called out Ilagin as they came towards the groom who had spotted the hare, and he looked round in some excitement, whistling to Yerza. ‘Are you going to have a go, Mikhail Nikanorych?’ he said to ‘Uncle’. ‘Uncle’ scowled and rode on.
‘I can’t compete with you,’ came the reply, ‘Look at your dogs . . . Fair for the chase! . . . You’ve paid whole villages for your dogs . . . They’re worth thousands. Run yours against each other – I’ll watch!’
‘Rugay! Here boy!’ he shouted. ‘Rugayushka!’ he added, unwittingly conveying through this diminutive both his affection for the red dog and all the hope he was investing in him. Natasha could see and sense the hidden thrill of excitement affecting the two elderly men and her brother, and she felt it too. The groom was still standing on the rise with his whip in the air. The three gentlemen were riding towards him at walking pace; the other hounds were up on the skyline, wheeling away from the hare; the other huntsmen, the non-gentry, were also riding away. Everything was happening slowly and methodically.
‘Where is he pointing?’ asked Nikolay, after riding another hundred paces towards the groom. But there was no time for an answer: the hare, sensing tomorrow morning’s frost, decided it had lain there long enough and was suddenly up and away. The hounds that were leashed together flew downhill in full cry after the hare, while the unleashed borzois sprinted from all directions towards the hounds or after the hare. The meandering group of huntsmen and whips who had been rounding the dogs up with shouts of ‘Stay!’ and the grooms who had been directing the dogs by shouting ‘Over here!’ now galloped off across the field. The imperturbable Ilagin, Nikolay, Natasha and ‘Uncle’ flew across the ground reckless of where and how they went as long as they could keep the dogs and the hare in view, anxious not to lose sight of the chase for a second. The hare turned out to be a seasoned courser. When he had jumped up he had not just raced away, he had pricked up his ears and listened to the cries and the thudding of paws and hooves coming at him from every side. Now he made off with a dozen bounds in his own good time, letting the dogs catch up a little, and then suddenly, fixing his direction and finally sensing the danger he was in, he put his ears back and was off like the wind. He had come from the stubble, but now open fields lay ahead, and on them marshy ground. The two dogs of the groom who had spotted him were the closest and the first to pick up his scent, but they weren’t anywhere near to catching him when Ilagin’s black-and-tan Yerza flew past, got within a yard, pounced with awesome speed, going for the hare’s tail, and rolled over, thinking she had him. But the hare arched his back and bounded off more smartly than ever, only for the stocky black-and-white Milka to come out from behind Yerza and sprint off in pursuit, rapidly gaining on the hare.
‘Milushka! Gorgeous girl!’ shouted Nikolay with a ring of triumph in his voice. It seemed for a moment that Milka couldn’t miss, but she overran the hare and went flying past. The hare dropped back. The splendid Yerza came at him again, hovering over the hare’s tail as if careful calculation was needed to avoid any mistakes this time and grab him by his hind-leg.
