In the Steppe

MICHAEL STROGOFF and Nadia were once more as free as they had been in the journey from Perm to the banks of the Irtych. But how the conditions under which they traveled were altered! Then, a comfortable tarantass, fresh horses, well-kept post-horses assured the rapidity of their journey. Now they were on foot; it was utterly impossible to procure any other means of locomotion, they were without resources, not knowing how to obtain even food, and they had still nearly three hundred miles to go! Moreover, Michael could now only see with Nadia’s eyes.
As to the friend whom chance had given them, they had just lost him, and fearful might be his fate. Michael had thrown himself down under the brushwood at the side of the road. Nadia stood beside him, waiting for the word from him to continue the march.
It was ten o’clock. The sun had more than three hours before disappeared below the horizon. There was not a house in sight. The last of the Tartars was lost in the distance. Michael and Nadia were quite alone.
“What will they do with our friend?” exclaimed the girl. “Poor Nicholas! Our meeting will have been fatal to him!” Michael made no response.
“Michael,” continued Nadia, “do you not know that he defended you when you were the Tartars’ sport; that he risked his life for me?”
Michael was still silent. Motionless, his face buried in his hands; of what was he thinking? Perhaps, although he did not answer, he heard Nadia speak.
Yes! he heard her, for when the young girl added, “Where shall I lead you, Michael?”
“To Irkutsk!” he replied.
“By the highroad?”
“Yes, Nadia.”
Michael was still the same man who had sworn, whatever happened, to accomplish his object. To follow the highroad, was certainly to go the shortest way. If the vanguard of Feofar-Khan’s troops appeared, it would then be time to strike across the country.
Nadia took Michael’s hand, and they started.
The next morning, the 13th of September, twenty versts further, they made a short halt in the village of Joulounov-skoe. It was burnt and deserted. All night Nadia had tried to see if the body of Nicholas had not been left on the road, but it was in vain that she looked among the ruins, and searched among the dead. Was he reserved for some cruel torture at Irkutsk?
Nadia, exhausted with hunger, was fortunate enough to find in one of the houses a quantity of dried meat and “soukharis,” pieces of bread, which, dried by evaporation, preserve their nutritive qualities for an indefinite time.
Michael and the girl loaded themselves with as much as they could carry. They had thus a supply of food for several days, and as to water, there would be no want of that in a district rendered fertile by the numerous little affluents of the Angara.
They continued their journey. Michael walked with a firm step, and only slackened his pace for his companion’s sake. Nadia, not wishing to retard him, obliged herself to walk. Happily, he could not see to what a miserable state fatigue had reduced her.
However, Michael guessed it. “You are quite done up, poor child,” he said sometimes.
“No,” she would reply.
“When you can no longer walk, I will carry you.”
“Yes, Michael.”
During this day they came to the little river Oka, but it was fordable, and they had no difficulty in crossing. The sky was cloudy and the temperature moderate. There was some fear that the rain might come on, which would much have increased their misery. A few showers fell, but they did not last.
They went on as before, hand in hand, speaking little, Nadia looking about on every side; twice a day they halted. Six hours of the night were given to sleep. In a few huts Nadia again found a little mutton; but, contrary to Michael’s hopes, there was not a single beast of burden in the country; horses, camels — all had been either killed or carried off. They must still continue to plod on across this weary steppe on foot.
The third Tartar column, on its way to Irkutsk, had left plain traces: here a dead horse, there an abandoned cart. The bodies of unfortunate Siberians lay along the road, principally at the entrances to villages. Nadia, overcoming her repugnance, looked at all these corpses!
The chief danger lay, not before, but behind. The advance guard of the Emir’s army, commanded by Ivan Ogareff, might at any moment appear. The boats sent down the lower Yenisei must by this time have reached Krasnoiarsk and been made use of. The road was therefore open to the invaders. No Russian force could be opposed to them between Krasnoiarsk and Lake Baikal, Michael therefore expected before long the appearance of the Tartar scouts.
At each halt, Nadia climbed some hill and looked anxiously to the Westward, but as yet no cloud of dust had signaled the approach of a troop of horse.
Then the march was resumed; and when Michael felt that he was dragging poor Nadia forward too rapidly, he went at a slower pace. They spoke little, and only of Nicholas. The young girl recalled all that this companion of a few days had done for them.
In answering, Michael tried to give Nadia some hope of which he did not feel a spark himself, for he well knew that the unfortunate fellow would not escape death.
One day Michael said to the girl, “You never speak to me of my mother, Nadia.”
His mother! Nadia had never wished to do so. Why renew his grief? Was not the old Siberian dead? Had not her son given the last kiss to her corpse stretched on the plain of Tomsk?
“Speak to me of her, Nadia,” said Michael. “Speak — you will please me.”
And then Nadia did what she had not done before. She told all that had passed between Marfa and herself since their meeting at Omsk, where they had seen each other for the first time. She said how an inexplicable instinct had led her towards the old prisoner without knowing who she was, and what encouragement she had received in return. At that time Michael Strogoff had been to her but Nicholas Korpanoff.
“Whom I ought always to have been,” replied Michael, his brow darkening.
Then later he added, “I have broken my oath, Nadia. I had sworn not to see my mother!”
“But you did not try to see her, Michael,” replied Nadia. “Chance alone brought you into her presence.”
“I had sworn, whatever might happen, not to betray myself.”
“Michael, Michael! at sight of the lash raised upon Marfa, could you refrain? No! No oath could prevent a son from succoring his mother!”
“I have broken my oath, Nadia,” returned Michael. “May God and the Father pardon me!”
“Michael,” resumed the girl, “I have a question to ask you. Do not answer it if you think you ought not. Nothing from you would vex me!”
“Speak, Nadia.”
“Why, now that the Czar’s letter has been taken from you, are you so anxious to reach Irkutsk?”
Michael tightly pressed his companion’s hand, but he did not answer.
“Did you know the contents of that letter before you left Moscow?”
“No, I did not know.”
“Must I think, Michael, that the wish alone to place me in my father’s hands draws you toward Irkutsk?”
“No, Nadia,” replied Michael, gravely. “I should deceive you if I allowed you to believe that it was so. I go where duty orders me to go. As to taking you to Irkutsk, is it not you, Nadia, who are now taking me there? Do I not see with your eyes; and is it not your hand that guides me? Have you not repaid a hundred-fold the help which I was able to give you at first? I do not know if fate will cease to go against us; but the day on which you thank me for having placed you in your father’s hands, I in my turn will thank you for having led me to Irkutsk.”
“Poor Michael!” answered Nadia, with emotion. “Do not speak so. That does not answer me. Michael, why, now, are you in such haste to reach Irkutsk?”
“Because I must be there before Ivan Ogareff,” exclaimed Michael.
“Even now?”
“Even now, and I will be there, too!”
In uttering these words, Michael did not speak solely through hatred to the traitor. Nadia understood that her companion had not told, or could not tell, her all.
On the 15th of September, three days later, the two reached the village of Kouitounskoe. The young girl suffered dreadfully. He............