第 43 页

"Hallo there, Pavel! Hardly recognised you in this rig-out."

Pankratov laughed drily: "Rig-out isn't the word for it. Plenty of ventilation holes anyway. The deserters pinched his overcoat, Okunev gave him that jacket — they've got a commune, you know. But Pavel's all right, he's got warm blood in his veins. He'll warm himself for a week or two more on the concrete floor — the straw doesn't make much difference — and then he'll be ready for a nice pine-wood coffin," the stevedore wound up with grim humour.

Dark-browed, snub-nosed Okunev narrowed his mischievous eyes and objected: "Never mind,we'll take care of Pavel. We can vote him a job in the kitchen helping Odarka. If he isn't a fool he can get himself a bit of extra grub and snuggle up to the stove or to Odarka herself."

A roar of laughter met this remark; it was the first time they had laughed that day.

Fyodor inspected the rise, then drove out with Tokarev and Patoshkin by sled to the timber felling.

When he returned, the men were still digging with dogged persistence into the hill. Fyodor noted the rapid movement of the spades, and the backs of the workers bent under the strain. Turning to Akim, he said in an undertone:

"No need of meetings. No agitation required here. You were right, Tokarev, when you said these lads are worth their weight in gold. This is where the steel is tempered."

Zhukhrai gazed at the diggers with admiration and stern, yet tender pride. Some of them only a short time back had stood before him bristling with the steel of their bayonets. That was on the night before the insurrection. And now, moved by a single impulse, they were toiling in order that the steel arteries of the railway might reach out to the precious source of warmth and life.

Politely but firmly Patoshkin showed Fyodor that it was impossible to dig through the rise in lessthan two weeks. Fyodor listened to his arguments with a preoccupied air, his mind clearly busywith some problem of its own.

"Stop all work on the cut and carry on farther up the line. We'll tackle that hill in a different way,"he said finally.

Down at the station he spent a long time at the telephone. Kholyava, on guard outside the door,heard Fyodor's hoarse bass from within.

"Ring up the chief of staff of the Military Area and tell him in my name to transfer Puzyrevsky's regiment to the railway job at once. The bandits must be cleared out of the area without delay.

Send an armoured train over with demolition men. I'll take care of the rest myself. I'll be back late.

Tell Litke to be at the station with the car by midnight."

In the barracks, after a short speech by Akim, Zhukhrai took the floor and an hour fled by in comradely discussion. Fyodor told the men there could be no question of extending the January 1 time limit allotted for the completion of the job.

"From now on we are putting the work on a military footing," he said. "The Party members will form a special task company with Comrade Dubava in command. All six work teams will receive definite assignments. The remainder of the job will be divided into six equal sectors, one for each team. By January 1 all the work must be completed. The team that finishes first will be allowed to go back to town. Also, the Presidium of the Gubernia Executive Committee is asking the Government to award the Order of the Red Banner to the best worker in the team that comes out first."

The leaders of the various teams were appointed as follows: No. 1, Comrade Pankratov, No. 2,Comrade Dubava, No. 3, Comrade Khomutov, No. 4, Comrade Lagutin, No. 5, Comrade

Korchagin, No. 6, Comrade Okunev.

"The chief of the job, its political and administrative leader will, as before, be Anton Nikiforovich Tokarev," Zhukhrai wound up with an oratorical flourish.

Like a flock of birds suddenly taking wing, the hand-clapping burst forth and stern faces relaxed in smiles. The warm whimsical conclusion to the speech relieved the strained attention of the meeting in a gust of laughter.

Some twenty men trooped down to the station to see Akim and Fyodor off.

As he shook hands with Korchagin, Fyodor glanced down at Pavel's snow-filled galosh.

"I'll send you a pair of boots," he said in a low voice. "You haven't frozen your feet yet, I hope?"

"They've begun to swell a bit," Pavel replied, then remembering something he had asked for a long time ago, he caught Fyodor by the arm. "Could you let me have a few cartridges for my revolver? I believe I only have three good ones left."

Zhukhrai shook his head in regret, but catching Pavel's disappointed look, he quickly unstrapped his own Mauser. "Here's a present for you."

Pavel could not believe at first that he was really getting something he had set his heart on for so long, but Zhukhrai threw the leather strap over his shoulder saying: "Take it, take it! I know you've had your eye on it for a long time. But take care you don't shoot any of our own men with it. Here are three full clips to go with it." Pavel felt the envious eyes of the others upon him. "Hey, Pavka," someone yelled, "I'll swap with you for a pair of boots and a sheepskin thrown in."

Pankratov nudged Pavel provokingly in the back.

"Come on, I'll give you a pair of felt boots for it. Anyway you'll be dead before Christmas with that galosh of yours."

With one foot on the step of the trolley for support, Zhukhrai wrote out a permit for the Mauser.

Early the next morning an armoured train clattered over the switches and pulled up at the station.

The engine spouted plumes of steam as white as swansdown that vanished in the crystal-clear frosty air. Leather-clad figures emerged from the steel cars. A few hours later three demolition men from the train had planted in the earth of the hill two large black pumpkin-like objects with long fuses attached. They fired a few warning shots and the men scattered in all directions away from the now deadly hill. A match was put to the end of the fuse which flared up with a tiny phosphorescent flame.

For a while the men held their breath. One or two moments of suspense, and then the earth trembled, and a terrific force rent the hill asunder, tossing huge chunks of earth skywards. The second explosion was more powerful than the first. The thunder of it reverberated over the surrounding forest, filling it with a confusion of sound.

When the smoke and dust cleared a deep pit yawned where the hill had just stood, and the sugary snow was sprinkled with earth for dozens of paces all around.

Men with picks and shovels rushed to the cavity formed by the explosion.

After Zhukhrai's departure, a stubborn contest for the honour of being the first to finish the job commenced among the teams.

Long before dawn Korchagin rose quietly, taking care not to wake the others, and stepping cautiously on numb feet over the chilly floor made his way to the kitchen. There he heated the water for tea and went back to wake up his team.

By the time the others were up it was broad daylight. That morning Pankratov elbowed his way through the crowded barracks to where Dubava and his group were having their breakfast.

"Hear that, Mityai?" he said heatedly. "Pavka went and got his lads up before daylight. I bet they've got a good twenty yards laid out by now. The fellows say he's got those railway repair shop boys all worked up to finish their section by the twenty-fifth. Wants to beat the rest of us hollow. But I say nothing doing!"

Dubava gave a sour smile. He could understand why the secretary of the river-port Komsomol had been touched on the raw by what the railway repair shopmen had done. As a matter of fact his friend Pavel had stolen a march on him, Dubava, as well. Without saying a word to anyone he had simply challenged the whole company.

"Friends or no friends, it's the best man who wins," Pankratov said.

Around midday Korchagin's team was hard at work when an unexpected interruption occurred.

The sentry standing guard over the rifles caught sight of a group of horsemen approaching through the trees and fired a warning shot.

"To arms, lads! Bandits!" cried Pavel. He flung down his spade and rushed over to the tree where his Mauser hung.

Snatching their rifles the others dropped down straight in the snow by the edge of the line. The leading horsemen waved their caps.

"Steady there, Comrades, don't shoot!" one of them shouted.

Some fifty cavalrymen in Budyonny caps with bright red stars came riding up the road.

A unit of Puzyrevsky's regiment had come on a visit to the job. Pavel noticed that the commander's horse, a handsome grey mare with a white blaze on her forehead, had the tip of one ear missing. She pranced restlessly under her rider, and when Pavel rushed forward and seized her by the bridle, she shied away nervously.

"Why, Lyska old girl, I never thought we'd meet again! So the bullets didn't get you, my one-eared beauty."

He embraced her slender neck tenderly and stroked her quivering nostrils.

The commander stared at Pavel for a moment, then cried out in amazement: "Well, if it isn't Korchagin! You recognise the mare but you don't see your old pal Sereda. Greetings, lad!"

In the meantime back in town pressure was being exerted in all quarters to expedite the building of the line, and this was felt at once at the job. Zharky had literally stripped the Komsomol District Committee of all the male personnel and sent them out to Boyarka. Only the girls were left at Solomenka. He got the railway school to send out another batch of students.

"I'm left here with the female proletariat," he joked, reporting the results of his work to Akim. "I think I'll put Talya Lagutina in my place, hang out the sign 'Women's Department' on the door and clear out to Boyarka myself. It's awkward for me here, the only man among all these women. You ought to see the nasty looks they give me. I'm sure they're saying: 'Look, the sly beggar sent everybody off, but stays on himself.' Or something worse still. You must let me go."

But Akim merely laughed at his words.

New workers continued to arrive at Boyarka, among them sixty students from the railway school.

Zhukhrai induced the railway administration to send four passenger carriages to Boyarka to house the newcomers.

Dubava's team was released from work and sent to Pushcha-Voditsa to bring back the engines and sixty-five narrow-gauge flatcars. This assignment was to be counted as part of the work on their section.

Before leaving, Dubava advised Tokarev to recall Klavicek from town and put him in charge of one of the newly-organised work teams at Boyarka. Tokarev did so. He did not know the real reason for Dubava's request: a note from Anna which the newcomers from Solomenka had brought.

"Dmitri!" Anna wrote. "Klavicek and I have prepared a pile of books for you. We send our warmest greetings to you and all the other Boyarka shock workers. You are all wonderful! We wish you strength and energy to carry on. Yesterday the last stocks of wood were distributed.

Klavicek asks me to send you his greetings. He is wonderful. He bakes all the bread for Boyarka,sifts the flour and kneads the dough high himself. He doesn't trust anyone in the bakery to do it.

He managed to get excellent flour and his bread is good, much better than the kind I get. In the evenings our friends gather in my place — Lagutina, Artyukhin, Klavicek, and sometimes Zharky. We do a bit of reading but mostly we talk about everybody and everything, chiefly about you in Boyarka. The girls are furious with Tokarev for refusing to let them work on the railway. They say they can endure hardships as well as anyone. Talya declares she's going to dress up in her father's

clothes and go out to Boyarka by herself. 'Let him just try to kick me out,' she says.

"I wouldn't be surprised if she kept her word. Please give my regards to your dark-eyed friend.

"Anna."

The blizzard came upon them suddenly. Low grey clouds spread themselves over the sky and the snow fell thickly. When night came the wind howled in the chimneys and moaned in the trees,

chasing the whirling snow-flakes and awakening the forest echoes with its malevolent whine.

All night long the storm raged in a wild fury, and although the stoves were kept warm throughout the night the men shivered; the wrecked station building could not hold the warmth.

In the morning they had to plough through the deep snow to reach their sections. High above the trees the sun shone in a blue sky without a single cloudlet to mar its clear expanse.

Korchagin and his men went to work to clear the snowdrifts from their section. Only now did Pavel realise how much a man could suffer from the cold. Okunev's threadbare jacket gave him scant protection and his galosh was constantly full of snow. He kept losing it in the snow, and now his other boot was threatening to fall apart. Two enormous boils had broken out on his neck — the result of sleeping on the cold floor. Tokarev had given him his towel to wear in place of a scarf.

Gaunt and red-eyed, Pavel was furiously plying his wooden snow shovel when a passenger train puffed slowly into the station. Its expiring engine had barely managed to haul it this far; there was not a single log of wood in the tender and the last embers were burning low in the firebox.

"Give us fuel and we'll go on, or else shunt us onto a siding while we still have the power to move!" the engine driver yelled to the station master.

The train was switched onto a siding. The reason for the halt was explained to the disgruntled passengers and a storm of complaints and curses broke out in the crowded carriages.

"Go and talk to that old chap," the station master advised the train guards, pointing to Tokarev who was walking down the platform.

"He's the chief of the job here. Maybe he can get wood brought down by sled to the engine.

They're using the logs for sleepers."

"I'll give you the wood, but you'll have to work for it," said Tokarev when" the conductors applied to him. "After all, it's our building material. We're being held up at the moment by the snow.

There must be about six or seven hundred passengers inside your train. The women and children can stay inside but let the men come and lend a hand clearing the snow until evening and I'll give you firewood. If they refuse they can stay where they are till New Year's."