"By the ever-to-be-praised apostles!" swore Andrieff, his red beard wagging in impotent rage, "the devils have turned the horses loose on the _steppe_. Every box is empty!"
It was true--and almost frantic with distress Peter and the overseer had been forced to turn back into the house to wait till day-break.
Well! there was work there for them while they waited. Paul and the lad Alexis were soon brought back to consciousness with nothing more serious than badly swollen and throbbing heads. But poor Baxter still lay in a heap on the floor. He seemed not to have stirred. And Peter thought, as he knelt over him, that he would never move again.
They lifted his sagging body to a couch and then Andrieff, who was something of an amateur surgeon, examined him carefully.
The bullet had ploughed a furrow just above his temple; but after some probing Andrieff decided it had passed on without penetrating the skull. His heart was still beating faintly and they forced spirits between his lips until after a time he revived. Paul himself helped put the wounded man in bed and would not leave him until he saw that Baxter had dropped off into a natural sleep.
Then with the others he paced the floor impatiently until it began to grow light. There were four of them--and with the help of as many more trusty servants they felt they could give Boris and his crew a pretty fight--if they could only find him!
Not till they came to decide on what men they would take with them did Paul recall how he had been disposed of earlier in the night.
"That big _moujik_ who showed me to my room last evening!" he cried suddenly, turning to Peter. "Where is the dog? It was he who struck me down!"
"By the Lord!" exclaimed Andrieff, "that explains why the horses are gone! The cur is a traitor! I'll cut his heart out this day!"
"He took old Moka out of the room, too, do you remember?" Peter asked. "He must have been in Boris's pay all the while--the man has been with us but a short time. Oh! if I could but get my hands upon his villainous throat!" But of what avail were imprecations? The four men finally ceased to talk, but the fierce determination which grimly lighted each face, boded ill for Boris' cut-throat gang, when they should be come up with, on the morrow.
