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In two minutes` time No. 7 train was due. “Oh, Lord! Have pity on innocent souls!” In his mind Semyon saw the engine strike against the loosened rail with its left wheel, shiver, careen, tear up and splinter the sleepers and just there, there was a curve and the embankment seventy feet high, down which the engine would topple and the third-class carriages would be packed… little children… All sitting in the train now, never dreaming of danger. “Oh, Lord! Tell me what to do! … No, it is impossible to run to the hut and get back in time.”

Semyon did not run on to the hut, but turned back and ran faster than before. He was running almost mechanically, blindly; he did not know himself what was to happen. He ran as far as the rail which had been pulled up; his sticks were lying in a heap. He bent down, seized one without knowing why, and ran on farther. It seemed to him the train was already coming.

Strength was exhausted

He heard the distant whistle; he heard the quiet, even tremor of the rails; but his strength was exhausted, he could run no farther, and came to a halt about six hundred feet from the awful spot. Then an idea came into his head, literally like a ray of light. Pulling off his cap, he took out of it a cotton scarf, drew his knife out of the upper part of his boot, and crossed himself, muttering, “God bless me. I tore up a rail!”

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He got two kopeks apiece for them. On the day following the visit of the commission he left his wife at home to meet the six o`clock train, and Started off to the forest to cut some sticks. He went to the end of his section at this point the line made a sharp turn descended the embankment, and struck into the wood at the foot of the mountain. About half a verst away there was a big marsh, around which splendid reeds for his flute grew.

He cut a whole bundle of stalks and started back home. The sun was already dropping low, and in the dead stillness only the twittering of the birds was audible, and the crackle of the dead wood under his feet. As he walked along rapidly, he fancied he heard the clang of iron striking iron, and he redoubled his pace. There was no repair going on in his section.

Quietly to crawl

What did it mean? He emerged from the woods, the railway embankment stood high before him; on the top a man was squatting on the bed of the line busily engaged in something. Semyon commenced quietly to crawl up towards him. He thought it was some one after the nuts which secure the rails. He watched, and the man got up, holding a crow-bar in his hand. He had loosened a rail, so that it would move to one side. A mist swam before Semyon`s eyes; he wanted to cry out, but could not. It was Vasily! Semyon scrambled up the bank, as Vasily with crow-bar and wrench slid headlong down the other side.

“Vasily Stepanych! My dear friend, come back! Give me the crowbar. We will put the rail back; no one will know. Come back! Save your soul from sin!”
Vasily did not look back, but disappeared into the woods.

Semyon stood, before the rail which had been tom up. He threw down his bundle of sticks. A train was due; not a freight, but a passenger- train. And he had nothing with which to stop it, no flag. He could not replace the rail and could not drive in the spikes with his bare hands. It was necessary to run, absolutely necessary to run to the hut for some tools. “God help me!” he murmured.

Semyon started running towards his hut. He was out of breath, but still ran, falling every now and then. He had cleared the forest; he was only a few hundred feet from his hut, not more, when he heard the distant hooter of the factory sound six o`clock!

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“Head office? Ah, you are going to complain, I suppose. Give it up! Vasily Stepanych, forget it.”

“No, mate, I will not forget. It is too late. See! He struck me in the face, drew blood. So long as I live I will not forget. I will not leave it like this!”

Semyon took his hand. “Give it up, Stepanych. I am giving you good advice. You will not better things”

“Better things! I know myself I shan`t better things. You were right about Fate. It would be better for me not to do it, but one must stand up for the right.”

“But tell me, how did it happen?”

Government inquiry

“How? He examined everything, got down from the trolley, looked into the hut. I knew beforehand that he would be strict, and so I had put everything into proper order. He was just going when I made my complaint. He immediately cried out: `Here is a Government inquiry coming, and you make a complaint about a vegetable garden. Here are privy councilors coming, and you annoy me with cabbages!` I lost patience and said something not very much, but it offended him, and he struck me in the face. I stood still; I did nothing, just as if what he did was perfectly all right. They went off; I came to myself, washed my face, and left.”
“And what about the hut?”

“My wife is staying there. She will look after things. Never mind about their roads.”

Vasily got up and collected himself. “Good-bye, Ivanov. I do not know whether I shall get any one at the office to listen to me.”

“Surely you are not going to walk?”

“At the station I will try to get on a freight train, and to-morrow I shall be in Moscow.”

The neighbors bade each other farewell. Vasily was absent for some time. His wife worked for him night and day. She never slept, and wore herself out waiting for her husband. On the third day the commission arrived. An engine, luggage-van, and two first-class saloons; but Vasily was still away. Semyon saw his wife on the fourth day. Her face was swollen from crying and her eyes were red.

“Has your husband returned?” he asked. But the woman only made a gesture with her hands, and without saying a word went her way.

Semyon had learned when still a lad to make flutes out of a kind of reed. He used to bum out the heart of the stalk, make holes where necessary, drill them, fix a mouth-piece at one end, and tune them so well that it was possible to play almost any air on them. He made a number of them in his spare time, and sent them by his friends amongst the freight brakemen to the bazaar in the town.

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Vasily kept silent for a while, pulling at his pipe, then added quietly: “A little more and I should have done for him.”

“You are hot-tempered.”

“No, I am not hot-tempered, but I tell the truth and think. Yes, he will still get a bloody nose from me. I will complain to the Chief. We will see then!” And Vasily did complain to the Chief.

Once the Chief came to inspect the line. Three days later important personages were coming from St. Petersburg and would pass over the line. They were conducting an inquiry, so that previous to their journey it was necessary to put everything in order. Ballast was laid down, the bed was leveled, the sleepers carefully examined, spikes driven in a bit, nuts screwed up, posts painted, and orders given for yellow sand to be sprinkled at the level crossings. The woman at the neighboring hut turned her old man out to weed.

Cleaned and polished

Semyon worked for a whole week. He put everything in order, mended his kaftan, cleaned and polished his brass plate until it fairly shone. Vasily also worked hard. The Chief arrived on a trolley, four men working the handles and the levers, making the six wheels hum. The trolley traveled at twenty versts an hour, but the wheels squeaked. It reached Semyon`s hut, and he ran out and reported in soldierly fashion. All appeared to be in repair.

“Have you been here long?” inquired the Chief.

“Since the second of May, your Excellency.”

“All right. Thank you. And who is at hut No. 164?”

The traffic inspector (he was traveling with the Chief on the trolley) replied: “Vasily Spiridov.”

“Spiridov, Spiridov Ah! is he the man against whom you made a note last year?”

“He is.”

“Well, we will see Vasily Spirodov. Go on!” The workmen laid to the handles, and the trolley got under way. Semyon watched it, and thought, “There will be trouble between them and my neighbor.”

About two hours later he started on his round. He saw some one coming along the line from the cutting. Something white showed on his head. Semyon began to look more attentively. It was Vasily. He had a stick in his hand, a small bundle on his shoulder, and his cheek was bound up in a handkerchief.
“Where are you off to?” cried Semyon.

Vasily came quite close. He was very pale, white as chalk, and his eyes had a wild look. Almost choking, he muttered: “To town to Moscow to the head office.”

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Semyon also got up. “Neighbor,” he called, “why do you lose your temper?” But his neighbor did not look round, and kept on his way.

Semyon gazed after him until he was lost to sight in the cutting at the turn. He went home and said to his wife: “Arina, our neighbor is a wicked person, not a man.”

However, they did not quarrel. They met again and discussed the same topics.

“Ah, friend, if it were not for men we should not be poking in these huts,” said Vasily, on one occasion.

“And what if we are poking in these huts? It`s not so bad. You can live in them.”

“Live in them, indeed! Bah, you!… You have lived long and learned little, looked at much and seen little. What sort of life is there for a poor man in a hut here or there? The cannibals are devouring you. They are sucking up all your life-blood, and when you become old, they will throw you out just as they do husks to feed the pigs on. What pay do you get?”
“Not much, Vasily Stepanych twelve rubles.”

Firing and lighting

“And I, thirteen and a half rubles. Why? By the regulations the company should give us fifteen rubles a month with firing and lighting. Who decides that you should have twelve rubles, or I thirteen and a half? Ask yourself! And you say a man can live on that? You understand it is not a question of one and a half rubles or three rubles even If they paid us each the whole fifteen rubles. I was at the station last month. The director passed through. I saw him. I had that honor. He had a separate coach. He came out and stood on the platform I shall not stay here long; I shall go somewhere, anywhere, follow my nose.”

“But where will you go, Stepanych? Leave well enough alone. Here you have a house, warmth, alittle piece of land. Your wife is a worker.”
“Land! You should look at my piece of land. Not a twig on it nothing. I planted some cabbages in the spring, just when the inspector nime along. He said: `What is this? Why have you not reported this? Why have you done this without permission? Dig them up, roots and nil.` He was drunk. Another time he would not have said a word, but this time it struck him. Three rubles fine!…”

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Two months passed, and Semyon commenced to make the acquaintance of his neighbors, the track-walkers on either side of him. One was a very old man, whom the authorities were always meaning to relieve. He scarcely moved out of his hut. His wife used to do all his work. The other track-walker, nearer the station, was a young man, thin, but muscular. He and Semyon met for the first time on the line midway between the huts. Semyon took off his hat and bowed. “Good health to you, neighbor,” he said.

The neighbor glanced askance at him. “How do you do?” he replied ; then turned around and made off.

Later the wives met. Semyon`s wife passed the time of day with her neighbor, but neither did she say much.

On one occasion Semyon said to her: “Young woman, your husband is not very talkative.”

The woman said nothing at first, then replied: “But what is there for him to talk about? Every one has his own business. Go your way, and God be with you.”

However, after another month or so they became acquainted. Semyon would go with Vasily along the line, sit on the edge of a pipe, smoke, and talk of life. Vasily, for the most part, kept silent, but Semyon talked of his village and of the campaign through which he had passed.

Sorrow in my day

“I have had no little sorrow in my day,” he would say; “and goodness knows I have not lived long. God has not given me happiness, but what He may give, so will it be. That`s so, friend Vasily Stepanych.”

Vasily Stepanych knocked the ashes out of his pipe against a rail, stood up, and said: “It is not luck which follows us in life, but human beings. There is no crueller beast on this earth than man. Wolf does not eat wolf, but man will readily devour man.”

“Come, friend, don`t say that; a wolf eats wolf.”

“The words came into my mind and I said it. All the same, there is nothing crueller than man. If it were not for his wickedness and greed, it would be possible to live. Everybody tries to sting you to the quick, to bite and eat you up.”

Semyon pondered a bit. “I don`t know, brother,” he said; “perhaps it is as you say, and perhaps it is God`s will.”

“And perhaps,” said Vasily, “it is waste of time for me to talk to you. To put everything unpleasant on God, and sit and suffer, means, brother, being not a man but an animal. That`s what I have to say.” And he turned and went off without saying good-bye.

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