The small, shaggy horse with sad eyes trotted quietly along the road, shaking its head. It was carrying into the cold, dead distance three men who, grunting and grinding their teeth, were meaninglessly struggling in the sledge. The other horse, afraid that the men’s feet would hit it on the muzzle, began to lag.

VII

When Vanyushka, tired and sweating, came to himself after the struggle, he whispered to Salakin fear in his eyes:

“Look! Where’s the horse? It’s gone.”

“It won’t blab,” mumbled Salakin, wiping the blood from his face.

His comrade’s calm voice lessened Vanyushka’s fear.

“We’ve done it now!” he said, looking at the charcoal-burner out of the corner of his eye.

“It was better to kill him than to have him kill us,” observed Salakin with the same calmness, and forthwith added in a businesslike manner:

“Come, let’s strip him! You get the sheepskin jacket, I the overcoat. We must hurry, or we may meet somebody, or be overtaken.…”

Vanyushka silently turned the charcoal-burner over and began taking off his clothes. He kept glancing at his chum. He was thinking: “Can it be that he isn’t afraid?”

Salakin’s calm and businesslike attitude toward the murdered man aroused Vanyushka’s astonishment and made him timid in his comrade’s presence. What amazed him even more was Salakin’s pock-marked, scratched face: it twitched and grimaced as though with silent laughter, and his eyes shone in a peculiar way, as if he had had a drop too much or were overjoyed by something. In the struggle Vanyushka had lost his cap, and now Salakin took the charcoal-burner’s cap, handed it to Vanyushka, and said:

“Put it on, you’ll be cold! Besides, it isn’t right—a man without a cap. How did that happen?”

He proceeded to turn the murdered man’s trouser-pockets inside out, and he did it as quickly and deftly as though all his life his sole occupation had been killing and robbing.

“You’ve got to watch out for everything,” he said, unfastening the charcoal-burner’s tobacco pouch. “No one goes around without a cap. Look at that: a gold coin, five rubles, no, seven and a half…”

“Is…” Vanyushka spoke timidly, looking at the coin with eyes that had blazed up.

“What is it?” asked Salakin, glancing at him rapidly. And then he grumbled disdainfully:

“We’ll have enough dough. Gee-up, little one! Shake a leg.” And Salakin struck the horse’s rump with the flat of his hand.

“I didn’t mean money,” said Vanyushka. “I wanted to ask…”

“What?”

“Is this the first time?” Vanyushka winked at the stripped corpse of the charcoal-burner.

“You fool!” exclaimed Salakin, smiling. “What! am I a bandit?”

“I asked because you undressed him so quickly.”