“The mud was worst under the Indeysky Mountain,” remarked one of the soldiers.
“Yes, it was there he got more worse! So we considered it with Anoshenka—he was an old artillery sergeant. ‘Now really he can’t live, and he’s asking for God’s sake to be left behind; let us leave him here.’ So we decided. There was a tree, such a branchy one, growing there. Well, we took some soaked hardtack Zhdanov had, and put it near him, leant him against the tree, put a clean shirt on him, and said goodbye—all as it should be—and left him.”
“And was he a good soldier?”
“Yes, he was all right as a soldier,” remarked Zhdanov.
“And what became of him God only knows,” continued Antonov; “many of the likes of us perished there.”
“What, at Dargo?” said the infantryman, as he rose, scraping out his pipe, and again half-closing his eyes and shaking his head; “all sorts of things happened there.”
And he left us.
“And have we many men still in the battery who were at Dargo?” I asked.
“Many? why, there’s Zhdanov, myself, Patsan, who is now on furlough, and there may be six others, not more.”
“And why’s our Patsan holiday-making all this time?” said Chikin, stretching out his legs, and lying down with his head on a log. “I reckon he’s been away getting on for a year.”
“And you, have you had your year at home?” I asked Zhdanov.
“No, I did not go,” he answered unwillingly.