"Cemetery Path"
By Leonard Q. Ross
Ivan was a timid little man - so timid that the villagers called him "Pigeon," or mocked him with the title "Ivan the Terrible."If you live!" Ivan pushed the cemetery gate open. He walked fast. But the darkness was a massive dread. The wind was so cruel, and the saber was like ice in his hands. Ivan shivered under the long, thick coat and broke into a limping run. He recognized the large tomb. He must have sobbed - that was drowned in the wind. And he kneeled, cold and terrified, and drove the saber into the hard ground. With his fist, he beat it down to the hilt. It was done. The cemetery...the challenge...five gold rubles. Ivan started to rise from his knees. But he could not move. Something held him. Something gripped him in an unyielding and implacable hold. Ivan tugged and lurched and pulled - gasping in his panic, shaken by a monstrous fear. But something held Ivan. He cried out in terror, then made senseless gurgling noises. They found Ivan, next morning, on the ground in front of the tomb that was in the center of the cemetery. His face was not that of a frozen man's, but of a man killed by some nameless horror. And the lieutenant's saber was in the ground where Ivan had pounded it through the dragging folds of his long coat. Ross, L. "Cemetery Path" (n.d.).Ivan's sickly protest only fed their taunts, and they jeered cruelly when the young Cossack lieutenant flung his horrid challenge at their quarry.Retrieved from
http://cmsnorthstar.weebly.com/uploads/5/6/6/3/56635067/cemetery_path__by_leonard_q__1_.pdfPerhaps it was the temptation of the five gold rubles.