Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1888
Source: Translated by Nathan Haskell Dole
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
Bulka and Milton met their death about the same time. The old Cossack did not understand how to treat Milton. Instead of taking him with him only when he went after birds, he tried to make a boar-hunter of him.
That same autumn a sekatch l boar gored him. No one knew how to sew up the wound, and Milton died.
Bulka also did not live long after his rescue from the convicts. Soon after his rescue from the convicts, he began to mope and to lick everything that came in his way. He would lick my hand, but not as in former days when he meant to caress me. He licked long, and energetically thrust out his tongue, and then he began to seize things with his teeth.
Evidently he felt the impulse to bite the hand, but tried to refrain. I did not like to let him have my hand.
1 Sekatch is a two-year-old wild boar, with sharp, straight tusks. AUTHOR'S NOTE.
Then he began to lick my boot and the table leg, and then to bite the boot or the table leg.This lasted two days, and on the third day he disap- peared, and no one ever saw him or heard of him again.
It was impossible for him to have been stolen, and he could not have run away from me.
Now this happened to be about six weeks after the wolf had bitten him. It must have been that the wolf was quite rabid. Bulka also became rabid and went off. He was afflicted with what hunters call stetchka the first stage of madness. It is said that madness is first shown by spasms in the throat. Rabid animals desire to drink, but are unable, because water makes the spasms more violent. Then they get beside themselves with pain and thirst, and begin to bite.
Probably these spasms were just beginning with Bulka, when he showed such a disposition to lick everything, and then to bite my boot and the table leg.
I traveled over the whole region and made inquiries about Bulka, but I could learn nothing about where he had gone or how he died.
If he had run mad and bitten any one as mad dogs usually do, I should have heard from him. But probably he went out somewhere into the thick woods, and died there alone.
Huntsmen declare that when an intelligent dog is at- tacked by madness, he runs off into the field or woods, and there finds the herb which he needs, rolls over in the dew, and cures himself.
Evidently Bulka did not get well. He never returned, and he disappeared forever.