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The two borzois of the huntsman who had sighted him, having been the nearest, were the first to see and pursue him, but they had not gone far before Ilagin's red-spotted Erza passed them, got within a length, flew at the hare with terrible swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking she had seized him, rolled over like a ball. The hare arched his back and bounded off yet more swiftly.
At the very moment when she would have seized her prey, the hare moved and darted along the balk between the winter rye and the stubble. Again Erza and Milka were abreast, running like a pair of carriage horses, and began to overtake the hare, but it was easier for the hare to run on the balk and the borzois did not overtake him so quickly. "Rugay, Rugayushka!
He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip aloft, and again repeated his long-drawn cry, "A-tu!" "Ah, he has found one, I think," said Ilagin carelessly. "Yes, we must ride up.... Shall we both course it?" answered Nicholas, seeing in Erza and "Uncle's" red Rugay two rivals he had never yet had a chance of pitting against his own borzois.
Again the beautiful Erza reached him, but when close to the hare's scut paused as if measuring the distance, so as not to make a mistake this time but seize his hind leg. "Erza, darling!" Ilagin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erza did not hearken to his appeal.
"And suppose they outdo my Milka at once!" he thought as he rode with "Uncle" and Ilagin toward the hare. "A full-grown one?" asked Ilagin as he approached the whip who had sighted the hare and not without agitation he looked round and whistled to Erza. "And you, Michael Nikanorovich?" he said, addressing "Uncle." The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face. "How can I join in?
From behind Erza rushed the broad-haunched, black-spotted Milka and began rapidly gaining on the hare. "Milashka, dear!" rose Nicholas' triumphant cry. It looked as if Milka would immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and flew past. The hare had squatted.
Yes, she's a good dog, gets what she's after," answered Ilagin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erza, for which, a year before, he had given a neighbor three families of house serfs. "So in your parts, too, the harvest is nothing to boast of, Count?" he went on, continuing the conversation they had begun.
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