It took them another day to reach the second area of the gang's activity, which was on their route and which they also had to navigate with particular caution. More than two days had passed since their landing. They replenished their water supplies in forest streams, but food was in much worse shape. Cherenko was making snares as he went, trying to set them at campsites to catch a suitable animal. While making them, he once told them his life story.
He was born, raised, and lived half his life in the Urals. From an early age, his father took him hunting and fishing, and soon Tolya developed a passion for these activities, almost as much as his father did. He then went to study in Moscow, found work there, and got married, but the idyll didn't last long. The noisy, overcrowded city, his
