Part 2

“Do not look at them, little daughter,” said Kirsakoff. “They have disobeyed the rules. Was it cold coming from Irkutsk? And did you bring me many kisses?”

The Governor lifted her out of the sledge and smothered her in his arms. At this moment a Cossack interposed himself between the bootmaker and the Governor, and two soldiers closed in on Peter and his father, their bayonets fixed upon their rifles.

Gorekin held up his hand in a plea to speak once more to the Governor. The bootmaker had dropped his cap, his face showed the agony of his despair, and the tears streamed down his face. His mouth was open and his lips trembled with the chagrin and horror of what had befallen him.

“Excellence! I submit!” he pleaded. “But by the mercy of God, condemn not my son to the prison too!”

One of the Cossacks pushed him back violently so that he spun round and staggered blindly in an effort to keep his footing on the slippery snow. Then he turned with a cry and thrust the Cossack aside, to run after the Governor, hands stretched out in supplication.

“Mercy for my son!” he called after Kirsakoff.

A Cossack’s saber flashed, and Gorekin received its point in the back—once, twice—and with a scream, fell writhing on the snow-packed street before the post-house.

Kirsakoff ran with little Katerin in his arms toward the near-by droshky which was awaiting them. The crowd closed in at once about the stricken bootmaker and his son.

Little Peter fell to his knees beside his father, who had been rudely rolled upon his back by the Cossack with the saber. This Cossack searched hastily through the pockets of the greatcoat of Gorekin. Peter, screaming in terror, supposed that all this was being done to help his father.

The Cossack found the curved leather-knife of Gorekin in a pocket of the dying man’s coat, and flung the knife upon the ground. “He held this knife in his hand!” cried the Cossack. “It is the knife with which he would have killed the Governor!”

Peter could not realize yet the disaster which had come to him and his father. He knew only that the one human being who loved him, and whom he loved above everything in the world, was hurt and bleeding. The slowly reddening snow beside his father gave the boy a vague idea of a wound which might in time be cured.

And it might not be real at all, this tragic morning, but a dream. Peter saw about him the black circle of boots like the trees of a forest; he saw the print of nails in the hard snow; he noted a small round stone close by his father’s head—the world appeared to be full of trifling things, yet suddenly all trifles were invested with terror. He prayed even as he screamed, that he might wake to find his father reading from the new almanac beside the fire in their little hut.

“Little father! Little father!” he cried in his agony.

The bootmaker coughed harshly.

“He tried to kill the Governor,” said a voice. “There lies the knife—and I ran him through with my saber.”

Peter recognized the voice as that of the Cossack who had struck down his father.

“Little son—” gasped Gorekin, his dimming eyes on Peter, and his hand moving slowly toward the boy.

“Thou whom I love!” cried Peter, “come quickly for the man who has medicine and can cure you! Come to the watch-fixer who has the charms and the herbs!”

“God’s blessing on you—I go—to meet—the—dead!” whispered Gorekin.

“You are not to die!” cried Peter, and flung himself down upon his father and kissed him. Then he sat back on his heels, moaning wildly as he saw his father’s face graying to the color of the trampled snow.

“I shall kill Kirsakoff!” Peter shouted. “I shall kill—the Governor——!”

“Pray!” said his father weakly. “Pray to God for—power and—” but he could say no more, and making an effort to cross himself with both hands he died, staring up into the leaden sky.

“He is dead,” said a voice. “Take the boy to the prison. It is the order of the Governor.”

And Peter, sobbing and kicking out against the soldiers who grasped him and dragged him away, left his father lying in the snow before the post-house.

The soldiers dragged Peter up the Sofistkaya. His eyes clung to the mail bags being carried into the post-house, and though he was crying bitterly, he wondered if the almanacs had come from Moscow after all.

Next he knew he found himself in the sandy snow of the Sofistkaya, passing his own little hut, and saw the white smoke rising from the crude stone chimney. He thought of the samovar inside singing on a shelf, of the warmth and comfort that he would never know again, of his beloved father who somehow, by some terrible fate which had descended upon him out of the skies, was gone forever from the bench and the stitching-frame.

The two soldiers drove Peter on and in time they went over the wooden bridge across the frozen Ingoda, and up a hill. The tears on his face and frozen in his lids gave him great pain from cold. But he brushed his eyes clear of the ice particles and looked ahead. Before him were the yellow upright logs of the great prison stockade—and the great gate waiting to receive him into the Gethsemane of the Valley of Despair.

I

TWENTY YEARS AFTER

KATERIN was awake before dawn. She lay still, listening in the dark for sounds of conflict in the city. For months she had been accustomed to the rattle of rifle-fire through day and night, and now she found it hard to realize that the looting and burning had ceased.

The windows of Katerin’s room were hung with heavy blankets to conceal the candlelight by night, even though in the winter the glass of the panes was always nearly covered with heavy frost. She had no way of knowing how near it was to dawn, or if the day had come.

Katerin Stephanovna Kirsakoff—that was her full name. And she was hiding in an old log house with her father, who had been retired from the army of the Czar with the rank of general. And her father was Michael Alexandrovitch Kirsakoff, once Governor in the Valley of Despair, as it was known in the exile days before the revolution. And the log house was in Chita, where Kirsakoff had ruled his Cossacks, but Kirsakoff and his daughter were now hiding from the Cossacks.

Katerin rose from her bed, and guided by the dim, shaded flame burning before the icon in the corner of the room, she held out her arms to the image of the Virgin Mother, and whispered, “Save us, Mother of God, again this day, from those who beset us, and bring to us help from our enemies in our time of danger!”

She continued to whisper her prayers while she dressed in the dark. Then she went to one of the windows and pulled aside the blanket. She scraped a tiny hole in the frost so that she might look down into the courtyard, to the end of the street and out over the plains which stretched away from the city toward the border of Manchuria, many versts away. In that direction lay safety, but Katerin knew that she could not get out of the city, much less cross those frozen plains.

The subdued light of morning coming in through the white frost on the panes revealed her as a woman of medium height, of figure slender and supple, and clad in a trailing velvet house-dress of wine-red. Thrown over her shoulders, and partly covering the faded velvet of the dress, was a sleeveless coat of sable. She had the oval, high-bred face of the untitled nobility of Russia. The Kirsakoffs were one of the old boyar families who had always served their emperors as officers and administrators in the empire which spanned half the world.

Katerin had inherited all the best qualities of her race and her class. As the daughter of General Kirsakoff she had grown up like an Imperial princess. Educated by tutors from Paris and Petersburg, she had also learned to ride like a Cossack. And as her mother had died when Katerin was a small girl, she had the poise of a woman, who, though still young, had presided over her father’s table in the Governor’s palace—the Government house. So all her life she had been accustomed to a deference which was akin to that granted to royalty.

Now Katerin and her father were fugitives. The fighting between the various factions in Chita was over; the Cossacks were in control of the city—and controlling the Cossacks was a Mongol chieftain who had set himself up as the ruling prince and ruled with firing squads.

Months of terrorism in the city had made Katerin pale and wan. Her blue eyes were sad and deep set, and she had an expression of melancholy. The pallor of her cheeks was accentuated by her black hair, which was drawn down over her ears tightly. Her long neck, with its delicate lines, suggested pearls. She had pearls, but she did not dare wear them in these days. They were buried in the courtyard of the old log house.

When she walked it was with a slow and languorous grace. The carriage of her beautiful head was reminiscent of the portraits of the members of the Imperial family which had once hung on the walls of the home from which she had fled. It was now only a charred ruin.

Katerin remained at the window, peering out with anxious eyes. A trio of Cossack soldiers were huddled about the glowing remnants of their night-fire in the street. These were men in the army of the Ataman Zorogoff, the half-Mongol, half-Cossack _hetman_ who ruled the Valley of Despair. The Ataman, in spite of his pretensions to leadership, was only a brigand with an army of adventurers and conscripts at his back, bent upon enriching himself by levying upon the fortunes of all the rich people in his territory. And he collected the tribute which he exacted from them under threats of death—and by executions.

Katerin watched the gray light of the new day grow over the frozen and desolate landscape. A thin mantle of snow covered the plains below the hills which walled in the valley on three sides. There were a few rude peasants’ huts out on the flats, with white smoke rising up from stone chimneys. A long column of staggering telegraph poles ran off beyond a spur of hill and marked the line of the railroad in this direction.

She saw a small band of Cossacks come galloping in toward the city. They were racing to the warmth of the barracks after a night spent on patrol. These men belonged to the outer cordon—the chain of mounted soldiers which Zorogoff kept about the city to make sure no one entered without his knowledge, and to insure that none escaped. Before he had organized his power, some of the wealthy citizens had escaped by the railroad, but now the Ataman had his troops on guard at the railroad station. And his spies were busy in the city. It was impossible to leave if he did not grant permission. The Kirsakoffs did not dare to ask for it.

The room in which Katerin stood looking out of the window was filled with a queer mingling of rich furnishings and crudely built peasant household goods. The floor was covered with a thick blue carpet, thrown down hastily after being smuggled by night from her old home before the building had been burned. Faithful servants had brought it, but there had been no attempt to put it down properly—it was merely tucked in at the sides of the room in order to make the fabric fit.

The walls were covered with an ancient and faded paper. The ceiling had once been covered with colorful decorations, but now the plaster was cracked, and leaks in the roof had turned the paint of the figures into grotesque patterns.

The bed was hidden by a Chinese screen of carved leather, also saved from the old home before the looters had plied the torch; a great samovar of chased and filigreed silver stood upon an old wooden bench brought from the kitchen on the floor below; a table of rough boards was covered by purple silk, and on it stood an ornate candelabra of marble and bronze with the arms sadly bent, so that the candles could not stand erect; blankets of fur covered chairs rudely cut with an ax and fashioned with a primitive hammer; and a monstrous black stove built into the wall reached to the ceiling.

Katerin pulled the blanket away from the window and made it fast to the casing with a string. Just then a gentle tapping came at one of the doors of the room. She laughed cheerily and opened the door. Her father stood before her.

General Kirsakoff was tall, but thin and bent with age. His face was gaunt, but the bones of his cheeks were partly concealed by a white beard which was indifferently trimmed to a point at the chin. His gray eyes were dim, yet held some of their old fire and the look of an eagle—stern eyes looking out from under gray brows and a forehead furrowed by worries and his years. His head was covered with sparse white hair, which had a tendency to stand straight up, and waved when he moved his head quickly.

“Ah, the cold is like a wolf!” said Michael, his hands clasped together as he shivered. “Has not Wassili come up with the fire? My teeth ache from the cold!”

Katerin gave him a look of solicitude, and then took his hands and rubbed them.

“I thought you would sleep longer, so I did not call for Wassili. And here you are dressed—but you should have a blanket over your shoulders.”

“It is only my feet and my hands—and my teeth—that are cold. Let us have the samovar singing, and something hot. My poor old bones cannot stand the cold so well as they did. And this old house is damp—we must have a good fire to-day, happen what will.”

He looked at Katerin closely, searching her face for signs of anxiety, but her whole manner had changed at his entrance to the room, and now as she went to the door to the hallway to call down to Wassili, the servant, she hummed a tune. She knew her father well enough to understand that his spirit must be kept up. He had been giving way recently to long spells of despondency.

Michael was wearing one of his old uniforms of a general. It had been Katerin’s idea that he resume the discarded garments of authority, for she knew that he gained some comfort from it and that it helped him to forget the dark days which had come upon them. But Michael was only a shadow of his former self. His knees bent under him, his attenuated form did not fill the tunic, his hands were white and withered. They shook, as did his head at times, with the palsy of his age and feebleness. Yet the old general was still a striking figure in the gray tunic with the white cross hanging from its collar, the wreath and sword of another order of the Czar on his breast. A leather strap crossed his shoulder and came down athwart the front of the tunic. The heavy gold straps on his shoulders marked his rank. His trousers were blue with a pair of narrow gold stripes at the sides, and the belt about him had a silver buckle in front with the double-headed eagle of the Romanoffs.

“So this is another day, little daughter,” said Michael, as he sat down upon a bench and stroked his beard. “Another day of waiting—waiting till these devils have lost their power to the army of the Emperor.”

“Another day of hope, my father,” said Katerin. “What! Does not the day at the windows give you courage. Perhaps the Americans will come up from Vladivostok and save us. It is then that Zorogoff will have to change his ways.”

“Poof! The Americans will not come,” said Michael wearily. “Do not put your hopes in the foreigners. Nothing will happen from that direction which will be of any good to us.”

“Something is bound to happen that is good for us,” insisted Katerin. “The forces of evil cannot always be in power. Have we not sent word to our friends who escaped? Will they not get our letters? Will they not do something to get us away from the city? All we must do is to have patience and be brave. God is with the brave.”

“Yes, the young are brave,” said Michael. “And it is you who are brave, my daughter. I am too old to have much heart left. But there are two things against us—one of them is our accursed money. I wish we had never saved it, but for that you will need it.”

“And what is the other thing that is against us?” asked Katerin with surprised eyes, as she turned to the door to look below for Wassili.

“Your beauty, Katerin Stephanovna,” said her father. “How many times in the old days have I thanked the holy saints for your beauty! Yet I mourn now that you are so beautiful, for it may be your curse. I have had a dream of evil omen, yet I cannot remember it—though it left me downcast. If these devils of Zorogoff dare lay a hand upon you——”

Katerin ran to him and kissed him hastily.

“Oh, nonsense! I will not be so beautiful, and you will not be so depressed as soon as the samovar sings and you have had your tea. You make much of little things—and you must not keep dreams in your mind. Now! Here comes Wassili with the fire for the samovar!”

Wassili came in, a whiskered _moujik_ in clumsy boots, bearing fire on a shovel. Some of the burning coals he put into the stove, and with the scattered remnants fired the samovar and went below again for water.

“It is more dangerous to give the money than to keep it,” went on Michael musingly. He seemed bent on studying out the problems which confronted him, as if the dream which he had mentioned had driven him into making some decision.

“If we could buy our way out of the city,” suggested Katerin, “I would be willing to give it up to see you in comfortable surroundings.” She was before a little mirror on a table, combing out her hair.

“Once Zorogoff had the money, he would destroy us so there would be no witness against him—no claim against him in future,” said Michael. “That is what happened to Rioumines—he gave up his money willingly—and then he was killed. So there is no safety for us in beggaring ourselves. By the Holy Saints! I would rather burn all the rubles than give them to Zorogoff—but even then he would not believe that they had been destroyed, and would kill us for refusing to surrender them. And I would sooner die a beggar than have your fortune fall into the hands of this Mongol!”

“Come! Sit by the fire and warm yourself,” said Katerin, pushing a bench toward the front of the stove, which was now crackling merrily with the wood. “We are safe enough here till the Americans come.”

“Oh, the Americans will never come,” said Michael, as he settled himself before the fire and held out his hands to the heat. “We must use our wits and get away from Chita—to Harbin or Vladivostok. Others have done it. We might send Wassili to Harbin for help.”

“That would do no good. Our friends cannot come back here to help us. If they did, they could not fight Zorogoff’s army. We must keep up good hope for whatever the future holds for us, and——”

There came a hammering at the outer gate of the courtyard. Katerin checked her words and stood immovable, her eyes on her father in sudden fear of what the summons below might mean. The noise outside stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and then was resumed—insistent, compelling, ruthless. It sounded like the thumping of rifle butts against the planks of the gate. Whoever it was that demanded admittance was not to be denied. There was in the noise a peremptoriness which indicated that if there happened to be any appreciable delay in opening the gate, it would be smashed down without further ado.

“What is that?” asked Michael. “By the Holy Saints! The soldiers of the Ataman have come upon us!”

He sprang up and went to the window, where he put his eye to the hole in the frost, and looked out. Katerin pressed close to him.

“Soldiers at the gate!” whispered Michael, and as he stood staring at his daughter, they heard Wassili shouting in the hall below.

“Master! Master!”

Katerin crossed herself and bowed her head in the direction of the icon as she ran to the door and called down to Wassili, asking what it was that he wanted.

“The soldiers are outside—pounding to get in!”

“Then let them in,” commanded Katerin. “We cannot fight them.” She ran back across the room to the window and looked down to the court—she could see the tops of the tall Cossack caps over the upper edge of the paling. There were at least a dozen of them, and above them here and there was the glittering point of a bayonet.

“We are in God’s hands!” cried Katerin.

“We shall know what fate holds for us now,” said her father, drawing up toward the stove. “We have been in doubt long enough. It was the smoke from our chimney which drew them, without doubt.”

“They will want the money,” said Katerin. “It may as well go to them—enough to stop their greed.”

Michael went to her and put his hands upon her shoulders. He looked into her face, tears in his own eyes. “We will not give them the money,” he whispered. “Let them kill me if they will. I doubt that they will dare to do it—but my time is short at best. This is my dream! But you must think of yourself and know that if they take all we have, you will be helpless—a beggar in a land that is beggared, to die of hunger or by your own hand. Make no bargain with them between me and the money! I command you! Do not give a ruble of it to keep me alive a minute!”

“If you die, I shall not live,” said Katerin, and taking his face between her hands, kissed him tenderly on the forehead and threw her arms about his neck, dry-eyed in her anguish.

“I should like to reach the sky, but my arms are too short,” said Michael, expressing his helplessness by the old Russian proverb. “I think of having an army at my back—I, an old man, weak and already looking into my own grave. It is of you I think, Katerin Stephanovna! I would sell my soul to save you—yet the money must be kept if you are to live!”

“I can hear the soldiers in the yard,” said Katerin. “What can we do? We have a few rubles in the Chinese casket—five thousand in fives and tens. They make a fat bundle. We can give them up—and say they are all we have.”

“Do not be too ready to surrender the money,” said Michael. “But that is what we shall do. If they demand more——”

“Hush! They are coming up the stairs. Come! Quick! Sit here by the table! And take your saber! Be bold with them, as befits your rank and your old place, but remember that we cannot resist!”

As she talked, Katerin grabbed from a chest her father’s saber and snapped it into the old general’s belt. Then she pulled him to the table and sat him on a bench so that he faced toward the fire. This was no more than done when a man could be heard mounting the top of the stairs, and presently the visitor looked in cautiously at the open door.

The intruder was a Cossack officer. He wore a tall cap of white, shaggy wool, thrust back on his head. A lock of his black hair hung down athwart his forehead. His eyes were black and small, his mouth heavily lipped, his cheeks inclined to swartness from exposure, though the cold of the morning had given his skin a ruddy glow. He wore a long greatcoat with the cream-colored skin of the sheep outside and the wool inside visible at the edge in front and at the bottom of the skirt. On his shoulders were tin stars—he was a captain in Zorogoff’s army. From the skirt of his coat on one side hung the toe of a heavy saber-scabbard.

The captain stepped into the room after a sharp glance at Katerin and her father. Then he looked about the room suspiciously, and having made sure that no others were present, he bowed politely, at the same time clicking the spurred heels of his black boots.

“You are Kirsakoff,” said the officer abruptly. “I am Captain Shimilin, and I have come from the Ataman Zorogoff.”

Michael, his hand on the hilt of his saber, sitting erect, turned his head and surveyed the Cossack coldly. Finally, he said, “Captain, you are speaking to General Kirsakoff.”

Shimilin shrugged his shoulders, and a smile lurked on his lips. “You were once a general—but the Czar is dead. I do not have to be told who you are, Kirsakoff.”

“Oh, you have heard of the Czar!” said Katerin.