Although Vasíli Andréevich felt quite warm in his two fur coats, especially after struggling in the snowdrift, a cold shiver ran down his back on realizing that he must really spend the night where they were. To calm himself he sat down in the sledge and got out his cigarettes and matches.
Nikíta meanwhile unharnessed Mukhórty. He unstrapped the bellyband and the back-band, took away the reins, loosened the collar-strap, and removed the shaft-bow, talking to him all the time to encourage him.
“Now come out! come out!” he said, leading him clear of the shafts. “Now we’ll tie you up here and I’ll put down some straw and take off your bridle. When you’ve had a bite you’ll feel more cheerful.”
But Mukhórty was restless and evidently not comforted by Nikíta’s remarks. He stepped now on one foot and now on another, and pressed close against the sledge, turning his back to the wind and rubbing his head on Nikíta’s sleeve. Then, as if not to pain Nikíta by refusing his offer of the straw he put before him, he hurriedly snatched a wisp out of the sledge, but immediately decided that it was now no time to think of straw and threw it down, and the wind instantly scattered it, carried it away, and covered it with snow.
“Now we will set up a signal,” said Nikíta, and turning the front of the sledge to the wind he tied the shafts together with a strap and set them up on end in front of the sledge. “There now, when the snow covers us up, good folk will see the shafts and dig us out,” he said, slapping his mittens together and putting them on. “That’s what the old folk taught us!”