Beasts, Men and Gods/Chapter 22
AMONG THE MURDERERS
AS we approached the telegraph station, we were met by a blonde young man who was in charge of the office, Kanine by name. With some little confusion he offered us a place in his house for the night. When we entered the room, a tall, lanky man rose from the table and indecisively walked toward us, looking very attentively at us the while.
"Guests …" explained Kanine. "They are going to Khathyl. Private persons, strangers, foreigners …"
"A-h," drawled the stranger in a quiet, comprehending tone.
While we were untying our girdles and with difficulty getting out of our great Mongolian coats, the tall man was animatedly whispering something to our host. As we approached the table to sit down and rest, I overheard him say: "We are forced to postpone it," and saw Kanine simply nod in answer.
Several other people were seated at the table, among them the assistant of Kanine, a tall blonde man with a white face, who talked like a Gatling gun about everything imaginable. He was half crazy and his semi-madness expressed itself when any loud talking, shouting or sudden sharp report led him to repeat the words of the one to whom he was talking at the time or to relate in a mechanical, hurried manner stories of what was happening around him just at this particular juncture. The wife of Kanine, a pale, young, exhausted-looking woman with frightened eyes and a face distorted by fear, was also there and near her a young girl of fifteen with cropped hair and dressed like a man, as well as the two small sons of Kanine. We made acquaintance with all of them. The tall stranger called himself Gorokoff, a Russian colonist from Samgaltai, and presented the short-haired girl as his sister. Kanine's wife looked at us with plainly discernible fear and said nothing, evidently displeased over our being there. However, we had no choice and consequently began drinking tea and eating our bread and cold meat.
Kanine told us that ever since the telegraph line had been destroyed all his family and relatives had felt very keenly the poverty and hardship that naturally followed. The Bolsheviki did not send him any salary from Irkutsk, so that he was compelled to shift for himself as best he could. They cut and cured hay for sale to the Russian colonists, handled private messages and merchandise from Khathyl to Uliassutai and Samgaltai, bought and sold cattle, hunted and in this manner managed to exist. Gorokoff announced that his commercial affairs compelled him to go to Khathyl and that he and his sister would be glad to join our caravan. He had a most unprepossessing, angry-looking face with colorless eyes that always avoided those of the person with whom he was speaking. During the conversation we asked Kanine if there were Russian colonists near by, to which he answered with knitted brow and a look of disgust on his face:
"There is one rich old man, Bobroff, who lives a verst away from our station; but I would not advise you to visit him. He is a miserly, inhospitable old fellow who does not like guests."
During these words of her husband Madame Kanine dropped her eyes and contracted her shoulders in something resembling a shudder. Gorokoff and his sister smoked along indifferently. I very clearly remarked all this as well as the hostile tone of Kanine, the confusion of his wife and the artificial indifference of Gorokoff; and I determined to see the old colonist given such a bad name by Kanine. In Uliassutai I knew two Bobroffs. I said to Kanine that I had been asked to hand a letter personally to Bobroff and, after finishing my tea, put on my overcoat and went out.
The house of Bobroff stood in a deep sink in the mountains, surrounded by a high fence over which the low roofs of the houses could be seen. A light shone through the window. I knocked at the gate. A furious barking of dogs answered me and through the cracks of the fence I made out four huge black Mongol dogs, showing their teeth and growling as they rushed toward the gate. Inside the court someone opened the door and called out: "Who is there?"
I answered that I was traveling through from Uliassutai. The dogs were first caught and chained and I was then admitted by a man who looked me over very carefully and inquiringly from head to foot. A revolver handle stuck out of his pocket. Satisfied with his observations and learning that I knew his relatives, he warmly welcomed me to the house and presented me to his wife, a dignified old woman, and to his beautiful little adopted daughter, a girl of five years. She had been found on the plain beside the dead body of her mother exhausted in her attempt to escape from the Bolsheviki in Siberia.
Bobroff told me that the Russian detachment of Kazagrandi had succeeded in driving the Red troops away from the Kosogol and that we could consequently continue our trip to Khathyl without danger.
"Why did you not stop with me instead of with those brigands?" asked the old fellow.
I began to question him and received some very im portant news. It seemed that Kanine was a Bolshevik, the agent of the Irkutsk Soviet, and stationed here for purposes of observation. However, now he was rendered harmless, because the road between him and Irkutsk was interrupted. Still from Biisk in the Altai country had just come a very important commissar.
"Gorokoff?" I asked.
"That's what he calls himself," replied the old fellow; "but I am also from Biisk and I know everyone there. His real name is Pouzikoff and the short-haired girl with him is his mistress. He is the commissar of the 'Cheka' and she is the agent of this establishment. Last August the two of them shot with their revolvers seventy bound officers from Kolchak's army. Villainous, cowardly murderers! Now they have come here for a reconnaissance. They wanted to stay in my house but I knew them too well and refused them place."
"And you do not fear him?" I asked, remembering the different words and glances of these people as they sat at the table in the station.
"No," answered the old man. "I know how to defend myself and my family and I have a protector too—my son, such a shot, a rider and a fighter as does not exist in all Mongolia. I am very sorry that you will not make the acquaintance of my boy. He has gone off to the herds and will return only tomorrow evening."
We took most cordial leave of each other and I promised to stop with him on my return.
"Well, what yarns did Bobroff tell you about us?" was the question with which Kanine and Gorokoff met me when I came back to the station.
"Nothing about you," I answered, "because he did not even want to speak with me when he found out that I was staying in your house. What is the trouble between you?" I asked of them, expressing complete astonishment on my face.
"It is an old score," growled Gorokoff.
"A malicious old churl," Kanine added in agreement, the while the frightened, suffering-laden eyes of his wife again gave expression to terrifying horror, as if she momentarily expected a deadly blow. Gorokoff began to pack his luggage in preparation for the journey with us the following morning. We prepared our simple beds in an adjoining room and went to sleep. I whispered to my friend to keep his revolver handy for anything that might happen but he only smiled as he dragged his revolver and his ax from his coat to place them under his pillow.
"This people at the outset seemed to me very suspicious," he whispered. "They are cooking up something crooked. Tomorrow I shall ride behind this Gorokoff and shall prepare for him a very faithful one of my bullets, a little dum-dum."
The Mongols spent the night under their tent in the open court beside their camels, because they wanted to be near to feed them. About seven o'clock we started. My friend took up his post as rear guard to our caravan, keeping all the time behind Gorokoff, who with his sister, both armed from tip to toe, rode splendid mounts.
"How have you kept your horses in such fine condition coming all the way from Samgaltai?" I inquired as I looked over their fine beasts.
When he answered that these belonged to his host, I realized that Kanine was not so poor as he made out; for any rich Mongol would have given him in exchange for one of these lovely animals enough sheep to have kept his household in mutton for a whole year.
Soon we came to a large swamp surrounded by dense brush, where I was much astonished by seeing literally hundreds of white kuropatka or partridges. Out of the water rose a flock of duck with a mad rush as we hove in sight. Winter, cold driving wind, snow and wild ducks! The Mongol explained it to me thus:
"This swamp always remains warm and never freezes. The wild ducks live here the year round and the kuropatka too, finding fresh food in the soft warm earth."
As I was speaking with the Mongol I noticed over the swamp a tongue of reddish-yellow flame. It flashed and disappeared at once but later, on the farther edge, two further tongues ran upward. I realized that here was the real will-o'-the-wisp surrounded by so many thousands of legends and explained so simply by chemistry as merely a flash of methane or swamp gas generated by the putrefying of vegetable matter in the warm damp earth.
"Here dwell the demons of Adair, who are in perpetual war with those of Muren," explained the Mongol.
"Indeed," I thought, "if in prosaic Europe in our days the inhabitants of our villages believe these flames to be some wild sorcery, then surely in the land of mystery they must be at least the evidences of war between the demons of two neighboring rivers!"
After passing this swamp we made out far ahead of us a large monastery. Though this was some half mile off the road, the Gorokoffs said they would ride over to it to make some purchases in the Chinese shops there. They quickly rode away, promising to overtake us shortly, but we did not see them again for a while. They slipped away without leaving any trail but we met them later in very unexpected circumstances of fatal portent for them. On our part we were highly satisfied that we were rid of them so soon and, after they were gone, I imparted to my friend the information gleaned from Bobroff the evening before.