The adventure here narrated is one that happened to Tolstoy himself in 1858. More than twenty years later he gave up hunting, on humanitarian grounds.
We were out on a bear-hunting expedition. My comrade had shot at a bear, but only gave him a flesh wound. There were traces of blood on the snow, but the bear had got away.
We all collected in a group in the forest, to decide whether we ought to go after the bear at once, or wait two or three days till he should settle down again. We asked the peasant bear-drivers whether it would be possible to get round the bear that day.
“No. It’s impossible,” said an old bear-driver. “You must let the bear quiet down. In five days’ time it will be possible to surround him; but if you followed him now, you would only frighten him away, and he would not settle down.”
But a young bear-driver began disputing with the old man, saying that it was quite possible to get round the bear now.
“On such snow as this,” said he, “he won’t go far, for he is a fat bear. He will settle down before evening; or, if not, I can overtake him on snowshoes.”
The comrade I was with was against following up the bear, and advised waiting. But I said:
“We need not argue. You do as you like, but I will follow up the track with
Damian. If we get round the bear, all right. If not, we lose nothing. It is still early, and there is nothing else for us to do today.”
So it was arranged.
The others went back to the sledges, and returned to the village. Damian and I took some bread, and remained behind in the forest.
When they had all left us, Damian and I examined our guns, and after tucking the skirts of our warm coats into our belts, we started off, following the bear’s tracks.
The weather was fine, frosty and calm; but it was hard work snowshoeing.
The snow was deep and soft: it had not caked together at all in the forest, and fresh snow had fallen the day before, so that our snowshoes sank six inches deep in the snow, and sometimes more.
The bear’s tracks were visible from a distance, and we could see how he had been going; sometimes sinking in up to his belly and ploughing up the snow as he went. At first, while under large trees, we kept in sight of his track; but when it turned into a thicket of small firs, Damian stopped.
“We must leave the trail now,” said he. “He has probably settled somewhere here. You can see by the snow that he has been squatting down. Let us leave the track and go round; but we must go quietly. Don’t shout or cough, or we shall frighten him away.”
Leaving the track, therefore, we turned off to the left. But when we had gone about five hundred yards, there were the bear’s traces again right before us. We followed them, and they brought us out on to the road. There we stopped, examining the road to see which way the bear had gone. Here and there in the snow were prints of the bear’s paw, claws and all, and here and there the marks of a peasant’s bark shoes. The bear had evidently gone towards the village.
As we followed the road, Damian said:
“It’s no use watching the road now. We shall see where he has turned off, to right or left, by the marks in the soft snow at the side. He must have turned off somewhere; for he won’t have gone on to the village.”
We went along the road for nearly a mile, and then saw, ahead of us, the bear’s track turning off the road. We examined it. How strange! It was a bear’s track right enough, only not going from the road into the forest, but from the forest on to the road! The toes were pointing towards the road.
“This must be another bear,” I said.
Damian looked at it, and considered a while.
“No,” said he. “It’s the same one. He’s been playing tricks, and walked backwards when he left the road.”
We followed the track, and found it really was so! The bear had gone some ten steps backwards, and then, behind a fir tree, had turned round and gone straight ahead. Damian stopped and said:
“Now, we are sure to get round him. There is a marsh ahead of us, and he must have settled down there. Let us go round it.”
We began to make our way round, through a fir thicket. I was tired out by this time, and it had become still more difficult to get along. Now I glided on to juniper bushes and caught my snowshoes in them, now a tiny fir tree appeared between my feet, or, from want of practice, my snowshoes slipped off; and now I came upon a stump or a log hidden by the snow. I was getting very tired, and was drenched with perspiration; and I took off my fur cloak. And there was Damian all the time, gliding along as if in a boat, his snowshoes moving as if of their own accord, never catching against anything, nor slipping off. He even took my fur and slung it over his shoulder, and still kept urging me on.
We went on for two more miles, and came out on the other side of the marsh. I was lagging behind. My snowshoes kept slipping off, and my feet stumbled. Suddenly Damian, who was ahead of me, stopped and waved his arm. When I came up to him, he bent down, pointing with his hand, and whispered:
“Do you see the magpie chattering above that undergrowth? It scents the bear from afar. That is where he must be.”
We turned off and went on for more than another half mile, and presently we came on to the old track again. We had, therefore, been right round the bear who was now within the track we had left. We stopped, and
I took off my cap and loosened all my clothes. I was as hot as in a steam bath, and as wet as a drowned rat. Damian too was flushed, and wiped his face with his sleeve.
“Well, sir,” he said, “we have done our job, and now we must have a rest.”
The evening glow already showed red through the forest. We took off our snowshoes and sat down on them, and got some bread and salt out of our bags. First I ate some snow, and then some bread; and the bread tasted so good, that I thought I had never in my life had any like it before. We sat there resting until it began to grow dusk, and then I asked Damian if it was far to the village.
“Yes,” he said. “It must be about eight miles. We will go on there tonight, but now we must rest. Put on your fur coat, sir, or you’ll be catching cold.”
Damian flattened down the snow, and breaking off some fir branches made a bed of them. We lay down side by side, resting our heads on our arms. I do not remember how I fell asleep. Two hours later I woke up, hearing something crack.
I had slept so soundly that I did not know where I was. I looked around me. How wonderful! I was in some sort of a hall, all glittering and white with gleaming pillars, and when I looked up I saw, through delicate white tracery, a vault, raven black and studded with colored lights. After a good look, I remembered that we were in the forest, and that what I took for a hall and pillars, were trees covered with snow and hoarfrost, and the coloured lights were stars twinkling between the branches.
Hoarfrost had settled in the night; all the twigs were thick with it, Damian was covered with it, it was on my fur coat, and it dropped down from the trees. I woke Damian, and we put on our snowshoes and started. It was very quiet in the forest. No sound was heard but that of our snowshoes pushing through the soft snow; except when now and then a tree, cracked by the frost, made the forest resound. Only once we heard the sound of a living creature.
Something rustled close to us, and then rushed away. I felt sure it was the bear, but when we went to the spot whence the sound had come, we found the footmarks of hares, and saw several young aspen trees with their bark gnawed.
We had startled some hares while they were feeding.
We came out on the road, and followed it, dragging our snowshoes behind us. It was easy walking now. Our snowshoes clattered as they slid behind us from side to side of the hard-trodden road. The snow creaked under our boots, and the cold hoarfrost settled on our faces like down. Seen through the branches, the stars seemed to be running to meet us, now twinkling, now vanishing, as if the whole sky were on the move.
I found my comrade sleeping, but woke him up, and related how we had got round the bear. After telling our peasant host to collect beaters for the morning, we had supper and lay down to sleep.
I was so tired that I could have slept on till midday, if my comrade had not roused me. I jumped up, and saw that he was already dressed, and busy doing something to his gun.
“Where is Damian?” said I.
“In the forest, long ago. He has already been over the tracks you made, and been back here, and now he has gone to look after the beaters.”
I washed and dressed, and loaded my guns; and then we got into a sledge, and started.
The sharp frost still continued. It was quiet, and the sun could not be seen.
There was a thick mist above us, and hoarfrost still covered everything.
After driving about two miles along the road, as we came near the forest, we saw a cloud of smoke rising from a hollow, and presently reached a group of peasants, both men and women, armed with cudgels.
