leaning forward and staring at the floor. “You know, of course, that the
Ataman’s army has been protecting the city from looters.”
“Beggars are always safe from robbers,” said Michael.
Shimilin lifted his head and looked at the general in surprise.
“Beggars! I like a joke, Kirsakoff.”
“It is no joke being a beggar,” put in Katerin.
“You have millions of rubles,” said Shimilin.
“It is easy to count the money in the pockets of other people,” said
Katerin. “We were robbed of all we had long before the Ataman Zorogoff
began to rule.”
Shimilin’s face took on a sly look. “Is it that you do not like the
Ataman Zorogoff? Are you opposed to his rule?”
“I suppose Zorogoff would give up his power if we said we preferred
another ruler,” retorted Katerin. “If you came here to trick us into
saying anything against Zorogoff, it will not be said. And it takes
little of your breath to talk of millions of rubles. Does the Ataman
expect us to hand over to him a fortune which does not exist?”
“You talk like all the others,” said Shimilin wearily. “Partridges are
killed with silver bullets—and so are robbers. An army cannot live on
air. The Ataman needs money.”
“Protection from bandits! What difference does it make whether bandits
and looters take our money, or Zorogoff?” asked Michael sharply. “If we
had the money—what would it matter to us who got it if we lost it?”
“The Ataman asks a loan,” said Shimilin. “His government will repay you.
Am I to tell the Ataman that you regard him as a robber?”
“We have but a few rubles,” said Katerin hastily, to prevent her father
from saying something which would draw the wrath of the captain, for the
old man was showing his anger and was ready to defy Shimilin. “It is all
the money we have left.”
“How much?” asked Shimilin.
“Probably ten thousand rubles,” said Katerin. “I have not counted it
lately, but it is all we have to buy our food. What shall we eat if you
take it?”
Shimilin smiled. “That is not my problem. You can find more money, or
borrow. But we know you have plenty. Ten thousand rubles will not
satisfy the Ataman. I will take it, but only with the understanding that
it is mine—to intercede with the Ataman for you. You might find it
difficult to argue with his soldiers—in his military prison.”
Katerin shrugged her shoulders. “True. If the Ataman should want to send
us to prison, we could not prevent him. At least, he would have to feed
us there.”
“And is that the way Zorogoff will protect us from robbers?” demanded
Michael. “If we have no more money, we must go to prison, eh! And that
is what Zorogoff calls ruling, I presume. Hah!”
Katerin went behind the screen which shielded her bed and returned with
a large lacquered cabinet. She opened it and took out several packets of
rubles of the old Imperial issue.
“This is our fortune,” she said, with a gesture at the casket, and
turned away.
“Do you expect the Ataman to believe that?” asked Shimilin, as he stood
up and looked into the casket.
“I cannot do the Ataman’s thinking,” she retorted. “I do not give it—you
must take it.”
Shimilin got into his greatcoat, and leisurely stuffed his pockets with
the packets. When he had taken the last, he bowed to the glowering
Michael in a show of politeness.
“I will do what I can with the Ataman in your behalf,” he said. “But I
doubt if I will be able to alter his intentions toward you—and I am sure
that we shall meet again.”
And Shimilin made a gesture to his two soldiers, walked through the
door, and the trio clumped down the stairs.
“This means war with the Ataman,” said Michael, as they heard the gate
creak on its ancient hinges as their visitors went into the street.
“Before prison, we shall take the poison together, my daughter.”
“We shall not die by our own hands till the last minute,” said Katerin.
“We must pray that the Americans will come.”
“If they come at all it will be too late,” said Michael. “We, who have
conquered Asia, will be destroyed by Asia—we shall be lost in a yellow
flood. The Mongol rules now.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICER
AN American army transport came lurching out of the Japanese sea, and,
following the lead of a gray and gaunt destroyer which had come out to
meet the troopship, she swung slowly into the Gulf of Peter the Great.
The cliffs of the shore line of Siberia looked bleak and wind-whipped,
desolate and snow-slashed. The first blasts of winter had swept the
land. Brown and dull it looked, sullenly waiting the onset of northern
winds with smothering cold from the Pole.
The transport seemed reluctant to approach the shore of such an
inhospitable land. Her gray war-painted sides were festooned with
sea-grime from the Pacific. Her pace was slow, as if she mistrusted the
hills overhanging Vladivostok. She was all for caution, though the
tumbling destroyer drove ahead of her like a terrier leading the way for
a suspicious mastiff.
Among the officers crowding the upper deck of the transport was a young
man wearing single silver bars on the shoulders of his khaki tunic. On
his collar were little circles of bronze enclosing eagles fashioned from
the same metal. To those who understood such things, they proclaimed him
to be a First Lieutenant of the Intelligence Division of the General
Staff of the United States Army.
Lieutenant Gordon was a sturdy chap, of good height. His cleanly shaven
face was inclined to ruddiness. His chin was generously molded, his jaw
had a squat squareness to it which gave the lower half of his face a
suggestion of grimness, but the good-natured twinkle of his blue eyes
belied this grimness. Still, he was reserved—perhaps too serious for one
of his age, too moodily self-contained.
He had kept to himself a good deal on the passage of the transport from
San Francisco. While others of his age had been romping the decks and
singing and making gay, he had clung to his cabin. He said that he was
studying Russian.
When the transport began to draw near to the coast of Siberia, Gordon
had stood nearly all day alone in a sheltered nook at the head of the
upper deck where the shrouds came down to the rail and prevented more
than one person’s getting into the corner. He seemed always to gravitate
to spots in the ship which would insure his being alone or cut off in
some way from the crowds. Then he would stand motionless, gazing out
over the bows to the horizon ahead, busy with his own thoughts.
Yet for all his aloofness, Lieutenant Gordon was an affable chap. And he
was keenly interested in all things Russian—showed a most laudable
ambition to learn all he possibly could about the country in which he
was to serve. There was a captain at Gordon’s table who had a cabin full
of books about Russia, and Gordon listened most attentively to the
informal lectures by the well-read captain.
And there was a major who had been military attaché in Petrograd. He
spoke Russian well, and gave lessons in the language to the other
officers. Gordon attended some of the lessons, but his progress in
learning the language was distressingly slow. Still, Gordon did
extremely well at times. One day the major had asked the class to repeat
a Russian sentence. Gordon was the only one to repeat the words with
anything approaching correctness.
“Splendid!” exclaimed the major enthusiastically.
“You are getting a good accent. That’s really excellent, Mr. Gordon. And
somehow you resemble Russians—if it were not for your uniform, you might
easily be taken for a Russian.”
The class laughed. Gordon reddened. When he was asked to repeat another
sentence in Russian, he rather bungled it. And that day he quit the
Russian class, saying that he could learn faster alone with his grammar.
And he kept more to himself after that.
So no one thought it strange that Lieutenant Gordon preferred to stand
by himself at the head of the upper deck as the transport was nosing
into the harbor of Vladivostok. He scanned the islands sliding past, and
he watched the boat which came out flying the white and blue flag of the
Czar’s navy—the old Cross of St. Andrew. He watched the shattered hulks
of the navy of the Second Nicholas, lying in on the beach like the bones
of dead sea birds. And he saw the warships of Britain, of France, of
Japan, of the United States, all spick and span at anchor below the
city.
Many strange flags flew from the tops of buildings on the terraced
streets over the bay. The green spires of churches glistened in the
afternoon sun. Soon the gashes running down to the water were seen to be
streets with people moving in them—carriages, motor cars, and hurrying
throngs of civilians and soldiers.
On the hills above the city was a queer fringe of flat white piles, some
of them sheeted with canvas. These were vast stores of things gathered
to the port from all the world for the war against Germany—acres of
goods and metals, all idle and wasting because the throne of the
Romanoffs had toppled and the Czar himself was dead in a well.
The transport moved up to a dock at the end of the bay, past the city.
Gordon stood in his nook, watching Vladivostok pass in review before
him, and listening to the comments of the other officers who crowded the
upper deck for their first sight of this far port of a shattered
dynasty.
As the troopship warped in, Russians in belted blouses and great boots
stood on the dock and stared up at the ship and its soldiers in khaki
from a distant land. These Russians loafed and gossiped and ate
sunflower seeds. Cossack soldiers in high woolly caps swaggered about
with sabers jingling at their sides. German prisoners of war labored
with heavy cases. These men were still clad in the dirty finery of gaudy
uniforms, sorry-looking specimens of what had been once smart soldiers.
Shaggy horses in rude wagons, driven by peasant girls with shawls over
their heads and wearing men’s heavy boots, did the work of strong men
with sacks and bales, loading the carts. The Russians could find nothing
else to do but gossip.
Gordon watched the people on the dock with interest. When the hawsers
were fast to the pier, he left the deck and went to his cabin. There,
alone, he loaded his automatic pistol. He filled extra magazines with
the blunt-nosed bullets, and distributed the magazines through his
pockets in such way that they would not be noticeable through the fabric
of his garments.
He looked at himself in the mirror on the bulkhead. His face had
increased its grimness, and the blue of his eyes had taken on a steely
sheen. He seemed to be angry about something. But he forced a smile at
himself—a tight-lipped smile of satisfaction.
“Speed is good for nothing but catching fleas,” he whispered to his
image in the glass.
Soon an orderly came to tell him that an automobile waited on the dock
to take all officers who had to report direct to Headquarters to the
building in the city where the Commanding General and his staff were
housed. Gordon followed the orderly, and stepping from the end of the
gangplank, saluted the land.
The car bumped away up the street with a group of officers. Gordon was
silent, while the others chattered. The water-front streets were muddy
and unpaved. Squalid buildings with crude signs in Russian announced
that within many of the buildings might be had tea and food and liquors.
Pigs were loose in the streets, scratching themselves amiably on
house-corners. Old Russian songs were being bawled from lusty throats of
roisterers inside the _kabaks_. Russians wandered about aimlessly,
staring at all the strange things which had come to Siberia—the American
army mules, the motor cycles whizzing about among the pigs and wagons,
and the honking car with the party of American officers.
Everybody seemed on holiday but the Chinese. They trotted about with
burdens on their backs, working like ants, apparently unaware that
freedom had come to Russia and that no one need work. Military motors
were shooting about in all directions, dilapidated trolley cars packed
with humanity creaked over bad rails, droshkies careened crazily among
the burden-bearing Chinese coolies.
The car carrying Gordon rolled into the Svetlanskaya, the main street of
Vladivostok, and began to climb one of the many hills. There was a great
stream of confused traffic, and mixed in it were strange men in
uniforms—black Annamites in French blue, yellow Japanese in buff,
bronzed Czechs in brown, Cossacks in natural gray; Canadians in brown
short coats, and Americans in snuff-colored khaki. On them all were the
musty odors and the ancient dust of Asia.
The city was a place of swarming tangles of people—beggars and princes,
vagabonds and viceroys, generals and stragglers, friends and enemies,
conquerors and conquered, all whirling about in mad antics and hurrying
as if they expected the end of the world to come with sundown. Refugees
from the interior carrying their few poor possessions in old blankets
mingled with nobles of the old régime who still tried to keep up a
semblance of importance; poor women in rags with frightened red eyes and
crying children clustered about them stood on the curbs and stared at
foreign-looking ladies lolling in carriages and clad in suspicious
grandeur. The human parasites had gathered from all the ports of the
Orient to this land where people were starving in the streets.
Adventurers seeking command and harpies hoping to get their fingers into
stolen jewels, pushed aside blind beggars to get into the cafés.
The crisp cold air of winter was seething with joy. There were flags
everywhere. The restaurants were crowded with people who lacked
lodgings, gabbling, whispering, gaming. But there was something sinister
lurking in the background of the mad show, glimpsed now and then in a
squad of soldiers with bayonets fixed to their rifles and marching from
some mysterious place to some other mysterious place with an attitude of
deadly earnestness. The temper of the people was fickle. They were ready
to rally to any leader who presented some dramatic ideal, or to submit
to any ruler who was strong enough to subdue them by force of arms. But
just now they were occupied with having a grand celebration and believed
that life from now on would be nothing but a carnival.
The car carrying Gordon and the other officers arrived at the big
building overlooking the bay where flew the flag of the United
States—American Staff Headquarters. Gordon found the Chief of
Intelligence in a large room filled with map-makers, translators,
clerks, officers, busy orderlies. But Gordon did not approach the desk
of his chief at once. The grave-faced colonel with spectacles was busy
just then, and Gordon lingered among the office workers. There was a
great buzzing of conversation and a mighty clacking of typewriters.
Gordon was keenly interested in everything. The walls were covered with
maps of the Russian empire stuck full of tacks with colored heads—the
fever spots of a sick nation, showing where the disease was most rampant
and dangerous. And Gordon listened to the talk of the Russians, who
discussed the Americans frankly, knowing that they were not understood
by the strangers.
In time Gordon presented himself at the colonel’s desk, saluted, gave
his name, and turned over certain papers. The colonel looked him over
casually, not especially interested that another Intelligence officer
had been added to his staff by Washington.
“You’ll want to look about the city, Mr. Gordon, after your month in a
transport. You’ll be quartered in this building. Report to me again in
the morning,” said the colonel.
So Lieutenant Gordon spent the afternoon in the teeming cafés along the
Svetlanskaya. He mingled with the various factions scattered through the
city—monarchists, anarchists, nihilists out of a job, German secret
agents, and the adherents of new men and new parties intriguing for
power with the next throw of the national dice. It was all a great orgy
of talking and whispering and singing. Gordon could make neither head
nor tail of it. But he watched the throngs closely. Every man got a
scrutiny from the American lieutenant. An observer might think that
Gordon was looking for some particular person in all that motley throng.
At the officers’ mess that evening Gordon overheard a conversation in
which the necessity of sending an Intelligence officer to Irkutsk was
discussed. And Gordon was on the alert at once. He said nothing, but he
watched the Chief of Intelligence up at the head of the table and
followed him from the mess-room to his desk upstairs.
“Sir,” began Gordon, “I understand that an officer will be sent up
toward Lake Baikal—Irkutsk—to look into the situation there.”
The colonel looked at Gordon wonderingly. It struck the chief that this
new arrival was dipping into things rather hastily. There was enough to
learn around Vladivostok for a stranger, thought the colonel.
“Yes, it has been mentioned,” said the colonel. “We need an observing
officer up there. That country is controlled now by Zorogoff, the Ataman
of the Cossacks, and we don’t know any too much about Zorogoff. What do
you know about him?”
“Nothing, sir. But I would like to—see the country.”
“You ought to have a little more time to get acquainted with the
situation here before you go into the interior. The Baikal region is a
long way from here.”
“Yes, sir,” said Gordon. “I don’t want to appear too confident of my own
abilities, but it strikes me, sir, that the back country explains what
is going on here, rather than what you see here explains the country.”
The colonel smiled. “You like to travel, young man.”
“Yes, sir. Frankly, I’d like to see all I can.”
“Have you been assigned to any duty here yet?”
“No, sir. Perhaps when I got back from the Baikal region I’d be more
valuable—have a better understanding of the situation as a whole.”
“I’ll think it over,” said the colonel, and reached for his ringing
telephone.
And the colonel evidently did think it over, for within an hour
Lieutenant Gordon was handed his orders to leave at once for Irkutsk in
a train carrying Czech soldiers and supplies toward Omsk and that place
known so vaguely as “the front.” And an American soldier who was a
native of Russia was detailed to accompany Lieutenant Gordon as an
orderly and interpreter.
Gordon did not delay. He went at once to the Trans-Siberian station to
find his train, leaving the Russian orderly to bring on baggage and
bedding-roll. Gordon found the station filled to overflowing with
refugees from the interior—sick and well, women and children, lame and
blind, hungry and unclean. They lay on the floors, cooking and eating,
begging and filching food wherever they could find it. They were like a
dirty froth thrown up on a beach after a tidal wave, a pitiful human
wreckage fighting for existence after having survived a typhoon which
had destroyed a nation. The sights, the smells, the misery were
appalling. It almost made Gordon ill. He longed to find some one person
who could be blamed for it. A wrath began to grow in his soul.
He stumbled down the railroad yards in the growing dark, seeking the
train among a labyrinth of box cars. Though he was already in his furs
and his sheepskin-lined coat against the wolf of winter which was
howling across the landscape, the wind from the bay chilled him to his
bones.
Candles gleaming through the windows of an old fourth-class car drew
him. He found soldiers within—Czechs cooking their supper of stew over
crude heating stoves amid clouds of yellow sulphurous smoke from the
awful Manchurian coal.
The interior of the car was so jammed with men that there seemed to be
no more room. The shelves were full of soldiers, and the floor was
littered with coal and wood and boxes and bundles. It was like a pen on
wheels, that car. It was filthy, battered, and broken. But it belonged
to the train leaving for the front, and Gordon was content.
Presently the orderly came, laden with baggage. He explained to the
Czechs that the American officer was to travel in that car by order of
the Czech commandant. The soldiers smiled and provided two shelves. And
in a few minutes the train began to grind slowly away from Vladivostok,
to carry Lieutenant Gordon and his orderly some two thousand versts
away.
They reached Nikolsk-Ussurisk the next morning. An American captain came
to the train. His orderly had been sent back to Vladivostok, ill. The
captain was without an interpreter.
“Look here,” said Gordon. “You can’t go on here without an
interpreter—and I’ll not need mine till I get to Irkutsk. You’ll have a
new interpreter sent up to you by that time. I’m all right on this
train—for a week or two. Send mine along to me when I telegraph where I
am.”
“Well, that’s an idea!” said the captain. “A most pious idea! Perhaps I
can send your man along after you in a couple of days. He can catch this
train all right, on a passenger train.”
“Hold my man, sir, till you hear from me,” said Gordon. “I’ll wire when
I need him. There is a Czech in this car who speaks fairly good English.
I’ll get on all right.”
“Now that’s mighty decent of you,” said the captain. “What’s your
name—so there won’t be any hitch about sending your man on?”
“Gordon, sir—Peter Gordon.” And the train rumbled on, leaving behind the
native of Russia who had been detailed as interpreter for Lieutenant
Peter Gordon.
The railroad followed old caravan trails into Manchuria and Mongolia,
over plains and up through mountains in which yellow _bonzes_ hid
themselves from the world on sky-kissing peaks in secret monasteries.
Then, winding down through the passes, the train traversed the millet
plains where the conquerors of ancient Tartary and China recruited their
hordes of warriors—and on into the wilderness of Siberia where wolves
still ruled.
The land was now held in the grip of a desperate cold. The wheels whined
as they ground along on frosty rails. Bridges lay in ruins across
rivers, replaced by shaky structures of logs that swayed and groaned
under the weight of the train.
And at every station Peter found mobs of refugees fighting to get aboard
anything that moved. Some were trying to get to Vladivostok, some wanted
to go in the opposite direction to Perm, or Ufa, or Samara. They wanted
to get anywhere but where they were. Long strings of box cars in the
sidings were packed with men, women, and children, ragged, filthy,
hungry, dying, dead. Those alive threshed grain by hand from the rotting
piles in the fields, or fished in the rivers with wooden spears. And
there were trains coming back from the front filled with human
derelicts—in cattle cars festooned with crimson icicles!
Yet the people seemed patient in their misery. They waited patiently
while first one faction rose to power only to fall again. And usurpers
gambled for power with bands of brigands which their leaders called
armies. The people had destroyed one government. Now they waited for
some one to create another for them.
Lieutenant Peter Gordon watched day by day in silence. At times, his
eyes flamed with anger. But he smiled sometimes, too, when he mixed with
peasants in the station restaurants and ate cabbage soup with a wooden
spoon. For the peasants had many queer and amusing things to say about
the _Americansky_ after they had assured themselves that the stranger
could speak but a few words of Russian, and understood less. But Peter
understood enough to know that these peasants were not at all friendly
to officers, no matter what country they came from. They wanted no
aristocrats in Siberia, American or otherwise. They were going to kill
all the aristocrats, and be free men. They were not going to leave all
the land to aristocrats, and pay taxes so that their rulers could make
slaves of them. Not any more.
One evening Peter strolled up toward the engine while the train was
stopped in a station.
“When will we get to Chita?” he asked the engineer.
“Perhaps to-morrow.”
“Are you sure we won’t go through Chita sometime to-night?”
“No, not to-night. Not till long after daylight.”