“Yes, prospecting and all that will be just to while away the time — purely for the fun of it,” Ivan Semenovich agreed.
“It’s a deal then!”
The reader may wonder at this point how Lida and Artem found themselves in the company of these two men of science. The explanation is very simple. Both the young people were students at the college where Ivan Semenovich taught: both were ardent lovers of geology. Lida, a distant relative of Ivan Semenovich, talked him into taking her along as a helper, to do some of the chores. How did Artem fit into the picture? That is also easy enough to explain. He was rightfully regarded as one of the best students at the college. Ivan Semenovich had high hopes for him and suggested that they spend their vacation together. Was there any need to say how overjoyed Artem was to accept such a proposal?.. To go on holiday in the company of his beloved and esteemed professor, and on top of it, to take part in real geological prospecting? It was nothing short of heaven!
Thus a close-knit group of two scientists and two college students had been formed; they had come to the foot of the ridge and settled in the vicinity of the Sharp Mount.
“Four people, not counting a dog,” Artem would say jokingly. The dog, a wonderful fawn boxer that Ivan Semenovich had brought along with him, could not be ignored, for Diana was large and intelligent, lacking, in the words of Lida, only the ability to speak.
It should be noted that Ivan Semenovich and Dmitro Borisovich had both broken their mutual pledges the moment they had reached the Sharp Mount. The only sense in which the trip could be called a holiday was that neither of them had any lectures to give or any thinking or writing to do. Prospecting had overstepped the bounds of mere “fun.” Very soon, there appeared prospecting shafts at the Sharp Mount that had been dug by Artem and Lida under the supervision of Ivan Semenovich. As far as Dmitro Borisovich was concerned, how could he think of anything else when he had an unexplored cave full of secrets at his disposal?
Truth to tell, the results of their prospecting and exploring had been negligible thus far. Some copper ore had, in fact, been found, but not much more. As has already been mentioned, all the copper veins broke off only a short distance from the surface, and all the hopes of the geologist rested on the unexpected finds that had been made by Dmitro Borisovich and Lida.
The archeologist had not been very lucky either until the other day, when he had managed to penetrate the rockfall barring the passage.
It would be worthwhile to say a few words about the cave if only for the reason that it had awakened an interest in archeology in Lida and Artem.
An opening to a dark underground passage half overgrown with shrubbery could be seen on the slope of the Sharp Mount among tall, thick weeds.
The locals suggested that it had served as a bandits’ hideout long ago; since then rockfalls had occurred in the cave, drastically reducing it in size and making it a very dangerous place, so that even children who enjoyed playing hide-and-seek games, generally avoided venturing into it.
During the first days after their arrival, the archeologist examined the cave. Unfortunately, he found nothing to mention except traces of copper ore veins.
Artem lucked out and chanced upon a very old man who was slightly deaf but still had a sound enough memory. From him, Artem learned that it was in this very cave that the old man’s father had once found several ancient artifacts, including broken pieces of old weapons. What had happened to the finds afterwards, the old man did not know. They had just disappeared, and that was all there was to it.
But Dmitro Borisovich, intrigued by the story, was not so easily put off. He knew from his own experience that such seemingly insignificant finds could lead to important archeological discoveries if you only looked in the right place. He willingly told the young man of such discoveries. Artem’s conversion to archeology dated from these stories. Artem wondered why he had never thought before that archeology could be such an entrancing subject!
“That’s because you’ve never had anything to do with the practical work of archeologists,” Dmitro Borisovich would say, chuckling through his moustache as he looked into Artem’s big black eyes that were burning with excitement.
When darkness fell, Artem and Lida would build a campfire. It was very agreeable to sit by the fire under the immense canopy of the starry sky. Everything around seemed full of suspense as the darkness pressed ever closer on all sides of the burning branches. Giving in to the insistent requests of Artem, Dmitro Borisovich would begin telling of things long past, and was so convincing it was as though he had personally witnessed the stirring events of ancient times. Even Ivan Semenovich was also fascinated, though he took every opportunity to reproach the two young people for their enthusiasm for “the science studying the dead” as he put it. Indeed, Dmitro Borisovich, who was a great lover of archeology, could easily inspire his listeners.
Lida and Artem imagined quaint scenes from ancient times when the tribes of Scythians, Sarmatians, Greeks, and Persians had wandered through these areas, when the great and powerful nations had appeared on the historical scene to fight their neighbors, to win bloody battles or to be routed and disappear…
Red tongues of flame rose up and mingled with black smoke. Artem listened to the archeologist with his head resting on his hands, gazing into the fire. It seemed to him that he was not listening to the archeologist’s stories but seeing the actual protagonists in flesh and blood.
He was especially fascinated by the stories of the ancient Scythians. Artem’s imagination was utterly captivated by this mysterious people, a mixture of different tribes who had progressed from very primitive conditions to more advanced ones: they were at first nomads, hunters and then tillers of the land. Artem was enthralled with the unusual customs of the Scythians, who did not leave behind any written texts, and of whose existence one could learn only from indirect sources: mention made by ancient Greek and Roman historians, and from archeological excavations at their burial sites, now thickly overgrown with grass.
It was believed that in their migration from Southern Siberia and Kazakhstan, the Scythian tribes had mixed with other nomads, related to them in origin, in the Aral steppes, and then moved on to what is now the Ukraine and area around the Black Sea. Later on they were driven into the Crimea, Asia Minor and the Balkans by migrating Sarmat- ians. A part of the Scythians must have been absorbed by these new nomads, setting the scene for the earliest Slavic population on the territory of the present-day Ukraine. This story of the most ancient forefathers of Slavs sounded exciting and romantic!
That was the way the geology student had quite unexpectedly allowed himself to be captivated by archeology. And that was why it was such a blow for him when, as the reader already knows, Dmitro Borisovich and Lida had so treacherously left him out. No wonder he got angry. The reader remembers as well that he decided to do something to spite everyone. But what was it? It will soon be revealed.
Sunday is by rights the day a person can sleep late. That was what Artem believed and always did. But this particular Sunday, he got up earlier than usual. He dressed quietly, careful not to awaken Ivan Semenovich with whom he roomed, and picked up his miner’s gear.
Only the dog noticed that Artem was leaving. She looked at him expectantly, hoping he would play with her. But he stole away, and the boxer decided to be quiet, too. She rested her head on her outstretched front legs and closed her eyes.
The moment Artem was outside, he turned round to see whether anyone had noticed his leaving, and them made straight for the Sharp Mount. He walked through the high grass and weeds, heedless of the paths, hacking at the stalks with his pick as though the weeds were his personal enemies.