His usual immediate luck had failed him this time.
The losses had been enormous.
The Bolsheviks, occupying Shablievka, had only retreated towards evening, under pressure of the general situation.
Leaning slightly forward in his saddle, he peered at the indistinct outlines of several dead bodies, rigid in the poses in which they had been overtaken by death.
They were his officers, each of them had been worth a whole platoon in battle.
Several hundred of his best fighters had been killed and wounded, simply because his mind had been temporarily below par.
He heard a groan, heavy breathing, a kind of hissing, like that of a man waking out of a nightmare.
An officer came into sight, climbing out of a trench in front of the bridge, but immediately fell forward over the parapet.
Coughing, he held fast, and, with difficulty lifting his leg, climbed out and stood staring at a great, clear star in the dying sunset.
Turning his shaven head, he groaned and took a stumbling step forward, when he suddenly caught sight of General Markov.
He saluted, dropped his hand, and said:
"I've had a concussion, Your Excellency."
"So I see."
"I have been shot in the back."
"Too bad...."
"I was shot in the back from a revolver at close range. Volunteer Valerian Onoli fired deliberately at me...."
"Your name?" asked Markov curtly.
"Roshchin.... Lieutenant Colonel Roshchin."
At that very moment the 6-inch gun on the northward-bound Red armoured train fired one last shot.
The shell flew wailing over the dark steppe.
The General's grey horse, alarmed, pricked up its ears and began to get down on its haunches.
Tearing across the sky, the shell exploded five paces away from Markov.
When the dust and smoke cleared away, Vadim Petrovich Roshchin, who had been flung back by the blast from the explosion, saw the grey horse on the ground, its hoofs beating the air frantically—beside it sprawled a small, motionless body.
Trying to rise, Roshchin shouted:
"Stretcher bearers!
General Markov has been killed!"
Having occupied Torgovaya, the Volunteer Army turned north, towards Velikoknyazheskaya, with a twofold purpose: to assist Ataman Krasnov to clear the Salsk district of Bolsheviks, and to strengthen its rear in case of attack from Tsaritsyn.
Velikoknyazheskaya was taken with slight losses, but it was impossible to follow up this victory, as a Budyonny cavalry detachment had overrun and routed Erdeli's Cossack units in a night engagement, thus preventing them from crossing the river Manich.
The first armoured train of the Volunteer Army had a narrow escape in the neighbourhood of the station.
Its crew assumed that an engine coming towards them, flying a white flag, was carrying trace-bearers, and the Whites held their fire.
But the engine flew on, at full speed, whistling incessantly.
Only at the last moment did the crew of the armoured train recover sufficient presence of mind to fire a few rounds at close range.
But a collision could not be avoided, a truck was smashed, and the engine, which had previously been soaked in petrol, and hung all over with bombs, was derailed.
For a few moments the combatants were spectators of a scene worthy of an American movie.
Handing over the district to the Don Cossacks, and leaving the work of finishing off the Bolsheviks to local Cossack detachments, Denikin once more turned southward, with the aim of capturing an all-important junction—the station of Tikhoretskaya, linking the Don with the Kuban, and the Black Sea with the Caspian.
There were grave dangers to be contended with.
In his path lay two big non-Cossack villages—Peschanokopskoye and Belaya Glina. They were both hotbeds of Bolshevism, and were being hastily fortified.
The army of Kalnin was feverishly entrenching on the outskirts of Tikhoretskaya.
Sorokin's army, by now recovered from its state of panic, was beginning to exert pressure from the west.
Those Red units which had been thrown into confusion on the Manich had been reorganized, and were once more attacking the enemy's rear.
Many villages were sending volunteer reinforcements.
All that Denikin could count on was the lack of coordination in the movements of the enemy.
But even this might at any moment change, and so he had to hurry.
It sometimes required his personal efforts to urge his troops forward, as they lay utterly exhausted on the field.
The infantry had to be moved on carts.
In front of the army went the improvised armoured train.
The whole population was fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Red Army at Pesdianokopskoye.
The Volunteer Army had never before encountered such a fury of opposition.
The steppe rocked beneath the cannonade from morning till night.
The regiments of Borovsky and Drozdovsky were twice driven out of the village, and it was only when they saw themselves surrounded on all sides by an enemy whose strength and equipment they had no means of gauging, that the Reds, to a man, abandoned the village.