and blue breeches. He pulled the strap from his face and revealed the
dark face of a Mongol. Sparse mustaches fell from the ends of his upper
lip, clinging to his jowls as they drooped past the side of his mouth.
His black eyes were set in close to a wide flat nose. Yet his face had a
proud and serious mien—the face of an Asiatic of high degree, the face
of a stoical and cruel man.
“I am the Ataman Zorogoff,” he said. “I rule. Your father would not loan
his fortune to my government. That is all I ask of you. I give you your
choice—submit or die.”
Katerin looked at him scornfully.
“I am nobody,” she said. “I submit only to God and the saints of heaven.
I do not recognize your right to rule, even though you take my life.
Tell your brave soldiers to shoot.”
Zorogoff laughed harshly.
“You have the spirit of the devil, mistress.”
“Speak of the devil and we see his tail,” retorted Katerin, using an old
Russian proverb.
“You are a brave woman,” repeated Zorogoff. “You have the blood of good
ancestors—a fighting, ruling breed—as were mine.”
“My ancestors have never feared death.”
“Do you know that I am a prince in Mongolia?” asked Zorogoff tartly. He
seemed nettled by Katerin’s way of looking at him, rather than by her
scornful words.
“I do not doubt it, sir. And you belong there.”
“Ah! Is that true? Though your father is governor no longer, you still
tell people where they belong. My people ruled this land before your
people came, and once more we shall rule. But if you will give up your
money to the government, in time you shall have it back. My soldiers
need food and clothing. What is your answer, mistress?”
A tremor of cold shook Katerin’s body. The air was stifling her, and she
was chilled till she no longer felt pain.
“Death!” she answered through quivering lips.
Zorogoff turned to Shimilin.
“The better the horse the worse his bite,” said the Ataman. “But once he
is broken, you have a good horse. I do not want to kill a woman so brave
as this one.” Turning to Katerin, he went on, “Your sons would know how
to rule, mistress.”
“I leave no sons,” she said, now too chilled to care or perceive what
the Ataman’s meaning might be.
“I was thinking of what your sons might be like,” went on Zorogoff. “Do
not be too sure about sons.”
Katerin gave a cry of agony. She knew now what Zorogoff meant—and she
feared now that she might not die after all. She looked at Zorogoff, as
he stood before her, peering into her face.
“Kill me!” she cried, and then realizing that unless she angered him by
insults, he might not give the order to the soldiers, she spoke with
infinite loathing, loud enough so that the soldiers might hear. “You are
a lowborn dog! Your mother was a scullion and your father a mover of
dead bodies! You are neither Cossack nor Mongol, but vermin from mud
huts and a disgrace to both white and yellow!”
“Ah!” said Zorogoff. “Now I know that there is fear in you, and fear for
what, my lady! You prefer the rifles to a palace. What if I should give
you the fate you dislike?”
“Go to the market place for your women, you swine!” cried Katerin.
The Ataman stepped aside and beckoned Shimilin after him. “Let us see
how brave she is,” whispered Zorogoff, and he made a gesture to the men
with the rifles. The muzzles lifted promptly and the men took aim at
Katerin.
“I will show you who rules now,” called Zorogoff.
“And I will show you how a woman of the nobility can die, lowborn one!”
“Fire!” commanded Zorogoff, throwing up an arm in a gesture of command.
But the rifles did not speak, though they remained leveled at Katerin.
She began a prayer, gazing steadily into the muzzles which faced her,
and waiting for the impact of the bullets.
Seconds passed. They became minutes. Katerin closed her eyes against the
cold. After a wait she opened her eyes again and eight rifles still
pointed straight at her.
“Shoot!” she pleaded. “Please shoot!”
She closed her eyes once more. The minutes passed, and Katerin’s body
wavered, swayed, and she collapsed in a faint across the fresh mound of
earth.
“Take her up and carry her into the house,” commanded the Ataman. “She
is a brave woman—but stubborn. She shall submit.”
The soldiers picked Katerin up and carried her through the hall to the
kitchen. Wassili and the old serving woman began to scream, thinking
that their mistress had been killed.
Zorogoff and Shimilin walked out of the yard and into the street.
Shimilin whistled on his fingers. Soon the troika of the Ataman swung
out of a side street and the horses came galloping up. There were three
men in the troika—two soldiers—and Michael.
“Where is my daughter?” demanded the old general. “What have you done
with her? Does she still live?”
“You will find her inside the house,” said Shimilin. “She is not dead.”
“God is good,” said Michael, at once careful of his words.
“Go back to your house,” said Zorogoff, “and wait till I return.”
“So?” asked Michael. “And why do you return?”
“You shall know then. There has been too much talk to-day.”
Michael got out of the troika and the Ataman got in with Shimilin.
Already the soldiers were marching out from the yard, and swinging back
into the city.
“Take care that you do not leave the house,” warned Zorogoff, as Michael
stood waiting for the soldiers to be clear of the gate. “I do not wish
to have you and your daughter run the danger of being fired upon by the
sentries. I wish you both to live as long as God lets you.”
Michael, afraid that there was still a trap and that the Ataman had no
intention of leaving, though he had been covered by the robes in the
troika and had swathed his face and head in furs, did not dare turn his
back upon the precious pair in the vehicle.
“I thank you for your consideration,” said the old general. “I thought I
was to die, but I still live and my daughter is safe.”
Zorogoff leaned out and spoke earnestly. “If the cat wants a fish, let
her wet her feet,” he said. And then added with taunting irony, “You are
proud of your rank and your race, Michael Alexandrovitch—you and your
daughter hold yourselves superior to a Mongol who is of the blood of
rulers, and who rules. But I, too, have pride. You should know more of
me and mine, and to that purpose you and your daughter shall live in my
palace. I go to prepare for you, and you shall both live under my roof.”
“What?” cried Michael. “That is a new string to the fiddle! Why should
we live in your palace?”
“So that I may take care of your health, Michael. And I shall need your
advice in government.”
“My advice in your government! You come with a firing squad to kill me
and now you talk of taking me to your palace! Surely, this is a day of
madness, and I do not understand!”
“You will in time,” replied the Ataman. “You have a lesson to learn. It
is that you must not hold yourselves superior to Mongol princes. For
your grandchildren, Michael, are to be Mongols, and you and your
daughter shall hold them in your arms. You both shall love them—though
they be of Mongol blood.”
Zorogoff spoke to the driver and the horses galloped away, leaving
Michael cursing under his breath. Then he ran into the yard as fast as
his cold-stiffened legs could carry him, and entered the house, calling
for Katerin.
Wassili burst through the door of the kitchen into the hall, and cried
out in terror at sight of the master whom he supposed to be dead. The
_moujik_ fell to his knees, crossing himself and making the sign to ward
off devils.
“Katerin! Katerin!” shouted Michael, as he saw the form of his daughter
stretched upon an old bench that had been turned into a couch. The old
serving woman was giving her mistress restoratives and attempting to
warm her—but she fled, screaming, as Michael entered.
Katerin opened her eyes and shivered violently. She stared at her
father, who stood over her, and then closed her eyes again and began to
cry. She supposed that she was delirious and that her father was not
really there.
“Have they tortured you?” cried Michael. “Oh, Katerin Stephanovna, you
are spared to me—and I live! Look, my daughter!”
He lifted her up from the bench and kissed her, crying to her again and
again that he was not dead.
“Oh, God! Thou art good!” she moaned, and then she was swept by sobs of
joy and fell back upon the bench.
Michael collapsed upon the floor, and when Wassili and the old woman
overcame their fears and entered the kitchen again they found father and
daughter crying quietly and clinging to each other consolingly.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VI
THE PRISON ON THE HILL
PETER did not stop at the Hotel Dauria to see the room which a
sleepy-eyed youth said might be had. There was a red-hot stove in the
entrance-hall, a dirty stairway leading to an upper floor, a pair of
stuffed bears standing among pots of rubber plants, and a few old
benches on which in better days the droshky-drivers, the fur-hunters and
the gossips of the city gathered of nights. The front windows were
boarded up and the place still bore signs of the work of looters—leather
hinges on the double doors, wall-paper ripped off in great gashes which
exposed the rough plaster, and here and there the mark of a bayonet
point or the pock marks of wild bullets.
Peter simply dumped his baggage in the entrance-hallway and went out
again to pay off the _iswostchik_. Where he went, Peter wanted no one
watching, so he set out as if on a casual ramble through the almost
deserted streets.
He knew the way to the old prison. It would be up the Sofistkaya and
over the little bridge which spanned the frozen stream running through
the city. But it was not the same old wooden bridge which Peter expected
to find. It proved to be a sturdy arch of concrete, level and wide.
Some of the buildings near by had been half wrecked or burned. One big
building was but a shell, a black ruin streaked with snow, with the
windows out and the interior walls revealing old log pillars and a few
crazy rafters. From a lower window there fluttered a bit of curtain,
like a distress signal from an abandoned derelict. It was the old house
of the governor—Kirsakoff.
Peter lingered and studied this building. There were few people in the
streets, and they paid no attention to him, for in his furs there was
little about him to mark him as a foreign officer, or a soldier at all,
for that matter, because he wore his pistol under his outer coat in such
way that he could reach it through a pocket.
Water-carts hauled by ponies passed, bringing water from the city wells.
They were shrouded in ice. A few peasants were on their way to the
station bazaar with bundles of vegetables or partridges. Chinese trotted
about with packs on their backs, smugglers in sugar and tea, or traders
in luxuries brought in by hand over the railroad—such luxuries as
candles, buttons, cigarettes, and salt.
Peter went on till he could see above him on the hill the yellow walls
of the old stockade. He mounted the slope, but headed as if to pass the
prison far below, and walking as if he had no other intention than to
wander up the hill and look back upon the city. He stopped at times, and
looked behind him.
As he went up the slope he managed to draw in closer to the stockade.
The old road had no tracks upon it, proof that the prison must be
deserted. And, in fact, the city itself seemed to be deserted as he
looked down into it from the upper land. Though smoke came from the
chimneys, the people kept mostly indoors. There was an ominous hush in
the air, as if the inhabitants were afraid to be seen. The forests gave
off no sound of woodsmen or hunters. Away on the side of the plains
toward Manchuria Peter could see groups of three and four horsemen on
patrol. But the Valley of Despair seemed like a place in which a
pestilence raged, so bare was it of living beings except around the
station.
“The place is accursed!” said Peter, as he stood and gazed out over the
valley and the city. “After America, I know now what this all means. And
there is something which has brought me back. My father, can it be you?
Can you know? Have you guided me so that justice may be done? I pray
that Kirsakoff be still alive!”
And Peter did know the meaning of it all. Chita was a ghastly city built
from the weeping of women and the curses of men doomed to chains and
living deaths in dark cells. The very soil reeked with the blood of
exiles.
And Peter Gordon, the American, was once more Peter Petrovitch Gorekin,
the Russian. During the three weeks that he had been on the train from
Vladivostok, he had become more Russian every day. He knew now that the
Russians were not free, though the throne had been overturned. There was
still work to do.
Peter went on, now straight for the entrance to the prison, where he
found the heavy gate lying in the snow, torn from its iron hinges and
covered with the dents of logs and rocks which had battered it down.
He entered the prison yard. There were broken tables and piles of half
burned records among charred logs. The sentry platforms had been dragged
down from the inner wall and made a clutter of wrecked timbers. The
little windows gaped open and the iron bars across them had been bent
outward. Fine, hard snow covered the wreckage like a powder, gathered
here and there in the cracks of the stone walks and in the holes where
the flat stones had been ripped out and overturned.
The place was without life. Yet it seemed to throb with life. Peter half
expected to find people inside the long galleries of the prison
buildings, though he knew that there could be no living person in such a
place of horrors.
The door opening to the inner guardroom was also down, a thing of planks
strapped together with iron bars. It lay askew across the stone
threshold, and Peter walked over its side. It gave out a dull, hollow
sound, which set the echoes going through the long inner galleries of
the cell-wings. A vile odor assailed him as he stepped inside, and he
shivered.
He knew this place well. There were broken desks here, and gun-racks on
the walls had been ripped from their supports. It was here that he had
been taken the morning after his father had been cut down by the Cossack
before the post-house. And Peter saw again in his mind’s eye the
commandant with the gold bars on his shoulders, he heard again the
careless questions snapped at him. Then he saw himself, a terrified
little boy, led down the long gallery and thrust into a dark cell.
He pushed on now into the gallery with its battered cell doors lying
half inside and half outside the cells, some swinging crazily on bent
hinges, some partly burned and lying in bits of charred wood, others
splintered and their fragments strewn along the stone-floored passage.
His feet made dull echoes. There was a sound of frightened things
scampering into dark holes before him. And to Peter it seemed that there
were thousands of men in the place—men who peered out at him derisively
and gave long hooting laughs at him.
It was colder inside the prison than outside in the clean air—a dark,
dank, penetrating cold combined with the sickly smell of an old cage in
which frozen white shoots of growing vegetation killed and preserved by
the cold glimmered uncannily in the rank air.
He found the cell that had been his—sixth on the right side. The big
door was swung inward. The stone benches inside were black and polished
with years of dirt and years of being sat upon. The stained log walls
were covered with thousands of marks which recorded days and years spent
in the cell by exiles. Among these rows of time-keeping scratches were
also etched words of hate and messages of comfort and the scribbled
jeers of men who had made a jest of going from such a place to the
execution yard.
One line on the wall caught Peter’s eye under the searching beam of his
pocket flash light. “God curse Kirsakoff,” Peter read. The letter had
been formed by his own boyish fingers with a nail—fingers stiff with
cold. He laughed at the sight of it now, and slapped the pistol on his
hip under his greatcoat. His laugh came back to him multiplied a hundred
times from the cells of the long galleries stretching away in the
darkness. The echoes sounded like a scornful chorus from ghosts.
He sat down on the stone bench and looked at the dirty hole in the door
through which food had been passed in to him—black bread and greasy soup
made from the refuse of cabbages. He sat there several minutes, and
threw his memory back to the days and nights which he had spent there
buried alive, doubting at times that he existed till food was brought
and the rats gathered round him, squeaking for their share.
Fear gripped him. He sprang up and ran, his boots making a clatter over
the planks of the broken doors in the passage. He gained the prison yard
and his whole body was laved in a sweat of agony. He got out into the
open, and stopping an instant to scan the slopes below to see if he had
been observed or followed, he turned away to the left to the fenced-in
grove which was the old burial ground of the prison.
It was in there that his father had been buried, but Peter did not know
where. A few rotten boards lay upon the ground; a few weather-beaten
crosses scored and twisted out of shape, littered the ground. Peter
stood with tears in his eyes and looked over the rough ground.
“Peter Petrovitch has come back, my father,” he said. And crossing
himself, he said a prayer. Then he turned and descended the slopes
toward the city, bearing off to the right and trying to make it appear
to any watcher that he had been wandering about aimlessly. The thought
struck him that he had been unwise in going to the prison. It might lead
to gossip, especially when it became known in the city that he was an
American. Why should an American officer go prowling about the old
prison of a city which——
Peter checked his thoughts in that direction. It seemed strange that he
should refer to himself as an American. America was now very far away, a
dim vista in his memory, hard to realize, like an old dream faintly
remembered. It seemed odd that America had receded so far into the
background of his mind. For was he not a Russian? Yes, he knew that he
was Russian to the core. His Americanism had never been anything but an
outer shell, a readjustment to new conditions, a learning of new things,
and a new life. But he had not changed—only the clothes upon his back.
True, he thought, the clothes would serve a purpose. Who would ever
suspect that an American officer had come to Chita to do what he hoped
to do? Who would ever suspect that the American lieutenant, Peter
Gordon, could be Peter Petrovitch Gorekin, the son of an unfortunate?
He entered the city again, this time far to the right of where he had
gone up the slope, and rambled along the Sofistkaya till he came to the
old post-house again—the restaurant. He went in, and found a few
soldiers sitting about tables talking and playing games. He took a table
to himself and when the gypsy girl came for his order, he called for
vodka. He was chilled by his walk on the hill and his spirits were
depressed by the prison. The liquor warmed him.
The restaurant was a dirty place. The old plank floors were spotted with
mud where the ice-balls from the heels of patrons had melted, and the
blackened log rafters were cobwebby and sooty. There was an ancient icon
in the corner. The walls had been partly stripped of a moldy old paper
so that the yellow plaster showed through the gashes. And here, as in
the hotel, there were bullet craters.
Peter finished his glass of vodka and went out again. He hurried back
toward the hotel, but he had not gone far when he espied in between two
modern buildings and well back from the street, an old hut—an _isba_ of
the old days. He stopped in his tracks and stared at it. The building
was not more than eight feet square, of single story, with a small
window under the eaves. There was a rude chimney of stones at one end. A
sign over the door told that cigarettes, matches, and holy cards were
sold within.
Peter went in between the two buildings and pushed open the low and
sagging door of the hut. There was an old man sitting on a bench under
the window with a newspaper—a thin old hulk of a graybeard with a face
shrouded in white whiskers that were stained yellow about his hidden
mouth. He wore a tiny black skullcap on his head which brought out the
bleached whiteness of his whiskers and the pallor of his crinkled
forehead. His hands were tucked in the sleeves of his ragged old coat,
and he huddled up toward the smoldering fire in the ancient fire-pit.
Startled by Peter’s entrance, the old man thrust the newspaper behind
him quickly. As he got to his feet he kicked the paper out of sight
behind a box. He stood looking at Peter with questioning eyes, knowing
that there was something strange about the visitor but not being able to
tell what in the vague light coming through the frosted window.
“Do you sell cigarettes here?” asked Peter.
“Yes, I sell cigarettes here,” croaked the graybeard. “Is it that you
have come for cigarettes to this poor place—you, who are dressed in odd
clothes?”
“What else should I come for?” asked Peter pleasantly. “Do you think I
have come to rob you?”
The old one appeared relieved, but he was still on his guard.
“We never know what a man comes for these days. And you are not a man of
Chita, I can tell that.”
“What does it matter where I came from, if I pay for what I take? Come!
Let me see some cigarettes!”
The graybeard grunted and shuffled across the room to a shelf and took
down some packets of tin covered with a faded paper.
Peter looked the room over. It was hard to believe that this tiny hut
was the place in which he had worked with his father. In his memory it
had taken on vaster proportions, yet in reality it was but a boxlike
hovel. There was the same old adz-hewn plank bench well polished by
years of use; the floor near the fire-pit had the very depressions worn
into the wood by the legs of his father’s stitching-frame. And the same
stone in the chimney on which his father had whetted the leather-knives!
By that fire-pit Peter had spent many nights studying out Russian
letters and words in battered almanacs. The place still smelled of
leather—or Peter fancied it did.
“Here are cigarettes of the best quality from Harbin, _gospodeen_,” said
the old man, proffering a long tin box. “I keep them for such as are of
the upper class. I must pay grease to Chinese for bringing these
cigarettes in, and if you buy, you will be back for more—and twenty
rubles for the box.”
Peter sat down on the bench and pretended to examine the packet of
cigarettes. But he was really looking at the little battered samovar on
the little wooden table. Beside the samovar was a blackened piece of tin
which was used to transfer hot coals from the fire-pit to the samovar.
And the rude shelves with their packages of “Moscow biscuits,” matches,
cigarettes, and holy cards for the holidays and the name days of
children drew Peter’s eyes. The stock in trade was smoke-blackened and
fly-specked by countless summers and winters. And the room reeked with
smoke, which made the old man’s eyes red and watery.
Peter saw that the cigarettes were of the cheapest grade.
“Why do you double the price because I am a stranger?” asked Peter. “You
know that half a ruble would buy these in the old days, and now with the
money bad, ten is enough for them?”
“God protect us! You speak the Czar’s Russian, though you wear a foreign
coat! Have you come here to buy from me, or to find who is smuggling?
There is no duty now, true, but I have to pay grease, as I said. I would
say the same to the Ataman himself.”
“But I know something about the price of cigarettes,” said Peter. He was
willing enough to pay the price but he knew that reluctance would draw
the old man out, and that an argument would probably develop an
acquaintance which might be useful.
“But the troubles have come and that makes the price high,” whined the
old man. “Am I to starve among my cigarettes? There are few enough to
buy these days, I tell you.”
“I will pay, but you are an old robber,” said Peter, going into his
pockets and fetching out two ten-ruble notes of Imperial money. The old
man’s eyes danced, for he knew Imperials to be worth twice again the new
paper money on which his prices were based.