Should a position be inconvenient, or the cadets be for the moment too great a menace, it didn't matter much. They could wait till next time—and they would let Kornilov pass.
For the Volunteer Army, however, each battle was a matter of life and death.
It was compelled to win a battle and move its baggage carts and its wounded in a single day's march.
There was no possibility of retreat.
And the Kornilov troops conquered by the force of sheer despair.
This time, too, the same thing happened.
On a last year's haystack, about a quarter of a mile from the lines under machine-gun fire, stood Kornilov, his legs straddled.
Raising his elbows, he looked through field glasses.
A canvas knapsack quivered on his back.
His sheepskin coat, black with grey trimmings, was unbuttoned.
He was hot.
His chin, which was covered with grey stubble, stuck out obstinately beneath the field glasses.
Below, hugging the side of the haystack, stood Lieutenant Dolinsky, the Commander's aide, a large-eyed, black-browed youth wearing an officer's greatcoat and a jauntily dented peaked cap.
Swallowing the excitement rising in his throat, he looked up at the Commander's grey chin, as if the only hope of survival was in this stubble—so human, so familiar!
"Excellency, come down, I implore you—you'll be shot," said Dolinsky over and over again.
He saw Kornilov's purple lips part, baring his teeth convulsively.
This meant things were bad.
Dolinsky no longer looked over there, where the tiny black figures of the Bolshevik lines kept moving and running over the brown-green steppe.
Bursts of shrapnel poured over them with protracted hisses.
But he knew very well how few—God, how few!— shells there were. Beyond the bridge, which had been blown up, sounded the grave "boom!" of the Bolshevik heavy gun.... A machine gun chimed in with its hurried' rap-rap.
And bullets buzzed like bees all round the Commander's head.
"You'll be shot, Excellency...."
Kornilov let the field glasses fall to his side.
He puckered up his tanned Mongolian face, with the black bird-like eyes.
Stamping over the hay, he turned and leaned towards a group of dismounted Turkmen who were standing behind the haystack. These were his body-guard.
They were lean, bowlegged men in huge round sheepskin caps and striped, salmon-coloured Circassian tunics.
They stood motionless as statues, holding the bridles of their lean horses.
Kornilov barked out an order in his harsh voice, and pointed to the ravine.
The Turkmen scrambled into their saddles like cats, one of them uttered a characteristic guttural cry, and they all waved their crooked swords, and set off, first at a trot, then at a gallop, for the steppe, in the direction of the ravine, where there was a strip of black ploughland, and, beyond it, the railway line.
Semyon Krasilnikov lay on his side now—he felt easier that way.
Only an hour ago strong and full of fury, now he lay groaning feebly, spitting up blood with an effort.
To his right and left his comrades were firing spasmodically.
Like him, they were all looking at the brown slope on the other side of the ravine.
About fifty horsemen were pouring in lava formation down its side.
This was the charge of the cavalry reserve.
A man ran up from behind, and fell on his knees beside Krasilnikov, shouting himself hoarse and brandishing a Mauser.
He wore a black leather jacket!
The horsemen made a clattering descent of the ravine.
The man in the leather jacket was shouting, in quite unmilitary but extremely insistent tones:
"Don't retreat—stand your ground!"
Huge caps now began to show on the near side of the ravine, and a drawn-out cry, like the howling of the wind, was heard.
It was the Turkmen dashing up.
In their striped quilted jackets, almost prone on their horses' necks, they galloped over the glutinous ploughland, in the furrows of which there were still patches of grimy snow.
Clods of mud were hurled into the air by the horses' hoofs.
Bloodcurdling cries issued from the throats of the little men in the tall caps, their bared teeth set in fierce grins on their tanned, moustached faces.
Now the watery gleam of their crooked swords could be seen.
How were the Reds to repel a cavalry attack?
The greycoated figures rose from the ploughland.
They fired, retreating.
The Commissar in the leather jacket was in a frenzy—he leaped forward and struck one of them in the back: