The Winter Horses Read Online Free PDF Page A

The Germans had done their job with predictably brutal efficiency, for the wild horses were quite beyond anything that even a veterinary surgeon could have done. A horse in motion is a beautiful, almost fluid thing, but now their ragged brown bodies lay on the pinkish snow like untidy heaps of solid, upturned earth. Nothing ever looks quite as dead as a dead horse. It was a heartbreaking sight.
    To Kalinka’s relief, there was no sign of the mare who had first befriended her, nor the stallion who was her mate; of course, this was no guarantee that they were still alive. The steppe is a vast plain and it was not unlikely that their dead bodies lay several kilometers on the other side of the horizon, where they might have been chased by the relentless SS motorcycles. But she hoped for the best, and it was with a tremendous sense of reliefthat when she returned to her hiding place, she found the stallion and the mare hiding there.
    “Thank goodness you’re alive,” she said, embracing the mare. “I thought you were both dead.”
    Kalinka tried to embrace the stallion, too, but he was having none of it, and to have tried more than once would have been to risk a kick or a bite, so she embraced the trembling mare again, and this time she found there was blood on her hands.
    “Oh, but you’re hurt,” she said, and as soon as she had found the wound—which was in the mare’s shoulder—she scooped up a handful of snow with which to wash it clean and, she hoped, to stanch the flow of blood. Kalinka held the snow over the wound for as long as her bare hand could take the cold, and the mare seemed to appreciate her attempt to help, for she dropped her nose onto Kalinka’s neck and licked it. But the flow of blood from the horse’s shoulder was only a little diminished by the snow poultice.
    Kalinka debated out loud what to do. “It’s not like I can put a bandage or a tourniquet around this,” she said. “For one thing, it would have to be a very big bandage. And for another, I can’t see how it would possibly stay on. Stitches would be best, I think, but I’ve never done that kind of thing before. Besides, I don’t happen to have a needle and thread.”
    She thought for a moment, and nodded firmly as she arrived at a decision:
    “I think we’ll see how you are in the morning and then, if you’re still bleeding, I shall have to return to that old man’s cottage and see if I can’t steal a needle and thread. Although having seen his clothes, I don’t hold out much hope of that. I never saw such a ragged-looking person. Except perhaps myself, of course. But then I’ve got an excuse. He’s living in a warm cottage with a fire and a wood-burning stove, and I’m living out here, on the steppe. I’m sure if I lived in such a nice little place, my clothes wouldn’t look like a family of mice had been nesting in them.”

T HE FOLLOWING DAY , M AX heard more gunfire in the distance, but this time he did not go and watch what was happening, nor did he go to saddle Molnija for the captain; instead, he stayed in and around his little blue cottage and tried not to think about what was happening. He washed his crockery, took out the hot ashes, did some dusting and swept the floor. A couple of times he caught his dog, Taras, looking at him in a strange way as if he held all men—including Max—responsible for what the German soldiers had done to the Przewalski’s horses.
    “What could I have done?” Max asked Taras. “You tell me. I’d like to know. Really, I would. The Germans would have shot me, for sure. And then who would look after you, dog? Tell me that? And, after all, it’s not like the horses are the only animals at Askaniya-Nova. There’s all sorts of rare breeds that’ll need our help before this waris out—you mark my words. We’ll recover. You’ll see. The Germans can’t stay here forever. You heard what Captain Grenzmann said; the war is not going well for them, so God willing, they’ll be