第50章 ON A VOLCANO(2)

"Woe, woe to us! The Reds have arrived. A horseman is galloping fast through the forest road. I called to him but he did not answer me. It was dark but I knew the horse was a strange one.""Do not babble so," said another of the workmen. "Some Mongol rode by and you jumped to the conclusion that he was a Red.""No, it was not a Mongol," he replied. "The horse was shod. Iheard the sound of iron shoes on the road. Woe to us!""Well," said my friend, "it seems that this is our finish. It is a silly way for it all to end."He was right. Just then there was a knock at our door but it was that of the Mongol bringing us three horses for our escape.

Immediately we saddled them, packed the third beast with our tent and food and rode off at once to take leave of Gay.

In his house we found the whole war council. Two or three colonists and several Cossacks had galloped from the mountains and announced that the Red detachment was approaching Khathyl but would remain for the night in the forest, where they were building campfires. In fact, through the house windows we could see the glare of the fires. It seemed very strange that the enemy should await the morning there in the forest when they were right on the village they wished to capture.

An armed Cossack entered the room and announced that two armed men from the detachment were approaching. All the men in the room pricked up their ears. Outside were heard the horses' hoofs followed by men's voices and a knock at the door.

"Come in," said Gay.

Two young men entered, their moustaches and beards white and their cheeks blazing red from the cold. They were dressed in the common Siberian overcoat with the big Astrakhan caps, but they had no weapons. Questions began. It developed that it was a detachment of White peasants from the Irkutsk and Yakutsk districts who had been fighting with the Bolsheviki. They had been defeated somewhere in the vicinity of Irkutsk and were now trying to make a junction with Kazagrandi. The leader of this band was a socialist, Captain Vassilieff, who had suffered much under the Czar because of his tenets.