At first Tihon undertook the rough work of making fires, fetching v ter, skinning horses, and so on, but he soon showed great zeal and coacity for guerilla warfare. He would go after booty at night, and rver failed to bring back French clothes and weapons, and when he v.s bidden, he would bring back prisoners too. Denisov took Tihon from b menial work, and began to employ him on expeditions, and to reckon 1 n among the Cossacks.
Tihon did not like riding, and always went on foot, yet never lagged l hind the cavalry. His weapons were a musket, which he carried rather ; a joke, a pike, and an axe, which he used as skilfully as a wolf does i teeth—catching fleas in its coat and crunching thick bones with them eually easily. With equal precision Tihon swinging his axe split logs, c, taking it by the head, cut thin skewers or carved spoons. Among bnisov’s followers, Tihon was on a special footing of his own. When aything particularly disagreeable or revolting had to be done—to put re’s shoulder to a waggon stuck in the mud, to drag a horse out of a bog h the tail, to flay a horse, to creep into the midst of the French, to walk ity versts in a day—every one laughed, and looked to Tihon to do it. ‘No harm will come to him; the devil, he’s a stalwart beast,’ they led to say of him.
One day a Frenchman he had captured wounded Tihon with a pistol- ;ot in the fleshy part of the back. This wound, which Tihon treated only b applications of vodka—internal and external—was the subject of the veliest jokes through the whole party, and Tihon lent himself readily their jests.
‘Well, old chap, you won’t do that again! Are you crook-backed!’ ughed the Cossacks; and Tihon, assuming a doleful face, and grimacing pretend he was angry, would abuse the French with the most comical \ths. The effect of the incident on Tihon was that he rarely afterwards ought prisoners in.
Tihon was the bravest and most useful man of the lot. No one dis- ivered so many opportunities of attack, no one captured or killed so any Frenchmen. And consequently he was the favourite subject of all ie gibes of the Cossacks and the hussars, and readily fell in with the psition.
Tihon had been sent overnight by Denisov to Shamshevo to capture ‘tongue.’ But either because he was not satisfied with one French ,isoner, or because he had been asleep all night, he had crept by day to the bushes in the very middle of the French, and, as Denisov had en from the hill, had been discovered by them.
VI
After talking a little while longer with the esaul about the next day attack, which Denisov seemed to have finally decided upon after seeii how near the French were, he turned his horse’s head and rode back.
‘Now, my boy, we will go and dry ourselves,’ he said to Petya.
As he came near the forester’s hut, Denisov stopped, looking into tl wood before him. A man in a short jacket, bast shoes, and a Kazan ha with a gun across his shoulder, and an axe in his belt, was stridin: lightly through the forest with long legs and long arms swinging at h side. Catching sight of Denisov, he hastily flung something into th bushes, and taking off his sopped hat, the brim of which drooped limply he walked up to his commanding officer.
This was Tihon. His pock-marked and wrinkled face, with little slit of eyes, beamed with self-satisfaction and merriment. He held his hea high, and looked straight at Denisov as though he were suppressing laugh.
‘Well, where have you been?’ said Denisov.
‘Where have I been? I have been after the French,’ Tihon answere. boldly and hastily, in a husky, but mellow bass.
‘Why did you creep in in the daytime? Ass! Well, why didn’t you catcl one?’
‘Catch one I did,’ said Tihon.
‘Where is he, then?’
‘I caught one at the very first at daybreak,’ Tihon went on, settinj his feet down wider apart, in their flat, turned-up bast shoes; ‘and took him into the wood too. I see he’s no good. So, thinks I, better g( and get another, rather more the proper article.’
‘Ay, the rogue, so that’s how it is,’ said Denisov to the esaul. ‘Why didn’t you bring that one?’
‘Why, what was the use of bringing him in?’ Tihon broke in, hurriedly and angrily. ‘A worthless fellow! Don’t I know what sort you want?
‘Ah, you brute! . . . Well?’
‘I went to get another,’ Tihon went on. ‘I crept up in this way in the wood, and I lay down.’ With a sudden, supple movement, Tihon lay down on his stomach, to show how he had done this. ‘One turned up,’ he went on, ‘I seized him like this,’ Tihon jumped up swiftly and lightly ‘ “Come along to the colonel,” says I. He set up such a shouting; ana then I saw four of them. And they rushed at me with their sabres. 1 went at them like this with my axe. “What are you about?” says I “Christ be with you,” ’ cried Tihon, waving his arms and squaring hi; chest with a menacing scowl.
‘Oh yes, we saw from the hill how you gave them the slip, through thf pools;’ said the esaul, screwing up his sparkling eyes.
