The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy

flatter Lukashka’s mother.
    “I thank God that he is a good son, a good boy! Everyone’s pleased with him,” the old woman says. “If only he would get married, then I could die a happy woman!”
    “It’s not like there’s a lack of girls in our village,” Ulitka answers nimbly, carefully replacing the lid on the matchbox with her large, callused hand.
    “Oh, there are many girls, many,” Lukashka’s mother agrees, nodding her head. “But your Maryanka, now she’s a girl one doesn’t find every day.”
    Ulitka knows what Lukashka’s mother has in mind, and though she considers Lukashka a good Cossack, she shrinks from this conversation: She is a cornet’s wife and well-to-do, while Lukashka is the son of a simple Cossack, and is now fatherless; furthermore, she is not in a hurry to part with her daughter. But the main reason for her reticence is that custom requires a mother to be restrained. “Well, when Maryanka comes of age, she’ll be marriageable enough,” Ulitka says coolly.
    “I’ll send the matchmaker over. After we finish with the grape picking, we will come bow to you and Ilya Vasilyevich.”
    “Ilya?” Ulitka replies haughtily. “It’s me you have to speak to. But all in good time.”
    Lukashka’s mother sees in the severe look of the cornet’s wife that this is not the moment to say more. She lights the rag with the match and rises to go. “Remember our chat,” she says, “and don’t turn us down when the time comes. I’m off, I have to light the fire,” she adds, and as she crosses the street waving the burning rag in her outstretched hand, she sees Maryanka, who bows to her.
    “What a fine girl, and a hard worker too,” the old woman thinks, eyeing Maryanka. “Ulitka says when she comes of age! It’s high time the girl got married, and married into a good house like ours! She must marry my Lukashka!”
    But Old Ulitka has her own worries, and she remains sitting on the porch, deep in thought, until her daughter calls her.
6
    The men of the Cossack villages spend their lives on campaigns and at military checkpoints, or “posts” as the Cossacks call them. It was late afternoon, and Lukashka the Snatcher, whom the two old women in the village had been talking about, was standing on a watchtower of the Nizhnye Prototsky checkpoint on the bank of the Terek. Leaning on the tower’s parapet, he narrowed his eyes, looking far over the river and then down at his comrades, exchanging a few words with them. The sun was already nearing the snowy range that sparkled whiteabove the clouds which were rolling over its foothills, taking on darker and darker shadows. Translucency poured through the evening air. A coolness emanated from the wild, overgrown forests, but the area around the checkpoint was still hot. The Cossacks’ voices rang out more sonorously, hanging in the air. The moving mass of the swift, brown Terek stood out more distinctly from its immovable banks. Its waters were receding, and here and there wet sand lay brown on the riverbanks and shoals. The side of the river across from the checkpoint was deserted, and an endless waste of reeds stretched all the way to the mountains. A short distance down the low riverbank were a few mud huts, with the flat roofs and funnel-shaped chimneys of a Chechen village. From the watchtower, Lukashka’s sharp eyes peered through the evening smoke of the peaceful village at the bustling figures of the Chechen women in their blue and red dresses.
    The Cossacks at the checkpoint were not particularly vigilant, even though Chechen marauders were expected to attack from the Tatar side of the river, for it was May, and the woods along the Terek were now so thick that they were almost impassible, and the river was so shallow that one could easily wade across at any point. Nor were the Cossacks particularly concerned that a messenger had been sent by the commander of the regiment ordering them to heighten their vigil: scouts had reported that