"The fat one's Guchkov, isn't he?"
"Yes, he is, and he'll be shot all in good time, don't worry! The one with the cigarette holder is Boris Suvorin, his record's none too good, either. He's for a monarchy, you know, but not exactly a monarchy. He's a wriggler, but a clever journalist. We won't shoot him."
The cart turned into the village.
The huts and houses behind the garden plots seemed deserted.
The remains of fires were still smoking.
A few corpses lay on the ground, half trodden into the mud.
Isolated shots rang out, signalising the finishing-off of the "outsiders" dragged from cellars and haylofts.
A train of carts stood in confusion on the square.
The cries of the wounded arose from the carts.
Nurses in dirty, men's greatcoats, exhausted and at their wit's end, threaded their way among them.
Inhuman shrieks and the sound of lashing came from a yard in the neighbourhood.
Horsemen were galloping about.
A group of cadets were standing by a fence, drinking milk from a tin pail.
The sun shone ever more brightly and warmly from the blue, wind-swept depths of the sky.
Dangling from a bar fixed between a tree and a telegraph pole, were seven long corpses, their necks dislocated, the toes of their bare feet pointing downwards. These were Communists from the Revolutionary Committee and the Tribunal.
It was the last day of the Kornilov campaign.
Mounted scouts shading their eyes from the rays of the sun, could make out, through the mists of morning, the golden domes of Ekaterinodar beyond the turbid Kuban River.
The task before the leading cavalry unit was to get away from the Reds the only ferry on the Kuban, at the village of Elizavetinskaya.
This was a new manoeuvre of Kornilov's.
He could have been expected to attack from the south, at Novodmitrovskaya, or from the southwest, on the Novorossiisk-Ekaterinodar railway.
But that he would choose the extremely dangerous detour on the west side of the town, and attempt to cross, with his whole army, the turbulent waters of the Kuban at a place where there were no bridges, and only a single ferry, so that there was no possibility of retreat, was a strategic step which the Red headquarters of Commander in Chief Avtonomov could not possibly have foreseen.
And it Was precisely this, the most feebly defended route, allowing two or three days' respite from fighting, and leading the army straight to the orchards and vegetable plots of Ekaterinodar, which was chosen by the wily Kornilov.
Deficits in the supply of munitions were made good during the occupation of the railway station at Afipskaya, where the Volunteers blew up the line to secure themselves against being fired upon from armoured trains.
Despite this, machine guns from one of the Red trains overtook the flank of the attackers as they were wading through the sheets of water left by the melting snow.
When a line of bullets, raising great waterspouts, fell among them, they plunged into the water like ducks, head first.
Then they stuck out their heads again, and ran on.
The Afipskaya garrison put up a desperate resistance.
But the Reds were doomed—they were only on the defence, and the enemy was attacking.
The Volunteer units surrounded and detoured Afipskaya in slow, serpentine lines.
The bright sunlight streamed over the watery blue plain, from which trees, hayricks, and the roofs of homesteads protruded, while the shadows of spring clouds chased one another across the flood-waters.
In his short sheepskin jacket with the soft General's shoulder straps, armed with field glasses and a map, Kornilov moved on horseback through this miragelike atmosphere.
Every now and then he gave orders to aides, who galloped off in a whirlpool of splashes.
At one time he was under fire, and General Romanovsky, at his side, was slightly wounded.
When the station was outflanked from the west, and the general attack had begun, Kornilov whipped up his horse and trotted straight into Afipskaya.
He had never for a moment doubted that victory would be his.
There, on the railway lines, amidst abandoned trains, station buildings, warehouses and barracks, the Volunteer units slaughtered the trapped Reds.
This was the last and the bloodiest of the Volunteer Army's victories.
Colonel Nezhentsev, red-cheeked, youthful-looking, elated, bounded up to Kornilov, hopping over corpses. The glass in his pince-nez twinkling, he reported:
"The station of Afipskaya is occupied, Your Excellency!"
Kornilov interrupted him with an impatient:
"Has ammunition been seized?"
"Yes, Your Excellency! Seven hundred shells and four truck-loads of small arras and ammunition."
"God be thanked!"
Kornilov crossed himself with sweeping gestures, the nail of his little finger scratching the stiffened surface of his coat.
"God be thanked...."
Nezhentsev then indicated with a movement of his eyes the group of shock fighters crowding at the station— a special regiment of daredevils, with tricolour rectangular stripes sewn on their sleeves.
They stood leaning on their rifles, like men resting after a difficult ascent.
Their faces were set in lines of fury, the eyes roving, and their hands, and the very faces of many, were covered with blood.
"Twice they saved the situation, and were the first to rush in, Your Excellency!"
"Aha!"