Nikolay neither saw nor heard Danilo till his panting chestnut darted close by him, and he heard the sound of a falling body and saw Danilo lying in the midst of the dogs on the wolf’s back, trying to get him by the ears. It was obvious to the dogs, to the hunters, and to the wolf that all was over now. The beast, its ears drawn back in terror, tried to get up, but the dogs clung to him. Danilo, as he got up, stumbled, and as though sinking down to rest, rolled with all his weight on the wolf, and snatched him by the ears. Nikolay would have stabbed him, but Danilo whispered: ‘Don’t; we will string him up!’ and shifting his position he put his foot on the wolf’s neck. They put a stick in the wolf’s jaws, fastened it, as it were bridling him with a leash, and tied his legs. Danilo swung the wolf twice from side to side. With happy, exhausted faces they tied the great wolf alive on a horse, that started and snorted in alarm at it; and with all the dogs trooping after and whining at the wolf, they brought it to the place where all were to meet. The wolf hounds had captured two cubs, and the greyhounds three. The party met together to show their booty and tell their stories, and every one went to look at the big wolf, which with its heavy-browed head hanging downward and the stick in its teeth, gazed with its great, glassy eyes at the crowd of dogs and men around it. When they touched him, his fastened legs quivered and he looked wildly and yet simply at all of them. Count Ilya Andreitch too went up and touched the wolf.
‘Oh, what a great beast!’ he said. ‘He’s an old one, eh?’ he asked Danilo, who was standing near him.
‘That he is, your excellency,’ answered Danilo, hurriedly taking off his cap.
The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and Danilo’s outburst. ‘You have a hot temper though, my man,’ said the count.
Danilo said nothing, but he shyly smiled a smile of childlike sweetness and amiability.
VI
The old count went home. Natasha and Petya promised to follow immediately. The hunting party went on further as it was still early. In the middle of the day they set the hounds into a ravine covered with thickly growing young copse. Nikolay, standing on the stubble land above, could see all his party.
Facing Nikolay on the opposite side was a field of green corn, and there stood his huntsman, alone in a hollow behind a nut bush. As soon as they loosed the hounds, Nikolay heard a hound he knew—Voltorn—■ give tongue at intervals; other hounds joined him, pausing now and then, and taking up the cry again. A moment later he heard from the ravine the cry that they were on the scent of a fox, and all the pack joining together made for the opening towards the green corn away from Nikolay.
He saw the whippers-in in their red caps galloping along the edge of the overgrown ravine; he could see the dogs even, and was every instant expecting the fox to come into sight on the further side among the green corn.
The huntsman standing in the hollow started off and let his dogs go, and Nikolay saw the red, uncouth-looking fox hurrying along close to the ground, with its bushy tail, through the green corn. The dogs bore down on it. And now they were getting close, and now the fox was beginning to wind in circles between them, making the circles more and more rapidly, and sweeping its bushy brush around it, when all of a sudden a strange white dog flew down upon it, and was followed by a black one, and everything was confusion, and the dogs formed a starshaped figure round it, scarcely moving, with their heads together, and their tails out. Two huntsmen galloped down to the dogs; one in a red cap, the other, a stranger, in a green coat.
‘What’s the meaning of it?’ wondered Nikolay. ‘Where did that huntsman spring from? That’s not uncle’s man.’
The huntsmen got the fox, and remained a long while standing on foot there, without hanging the fox on the saddle.
He could see the horses with their snaffles jutting up standing close by the huntsmen, and the dogs lying down. The huntsmen were waving their arms and doing something with the fox. A horn was sounded— the signal agreed upon in case of a dispute.
‘That’s Ilagin’s huntsman getting up a row of some sort with our Ivan,’ said Nikolay’s groom.
Nikolay sent the groom to call his sister and Petya to come to him, and rode at a walking pace towards the spot where the whippers-in were getting the hounds together. Several of the party galloped to the scene of the squabble.
Nikolay dismounted, and, with Natasha and Petya, who had ridden up, he stood by the hounds waiting to hear how the difficulty was settled. The huntsman who had been quarrelling came riding out of the bushes with the fox on the crupper, and rode towards his young master. He took off his cap a long way off, and tried as he came up to speak respectfully. But he was pale and gasping for breath, and his face was wrathful. One of his eyes was blackened, but he was probably not aware of it.
