Part 6

Shimilin said nothing, but stood looking at her with every sign of being on the verge of complying with her command. But he did not put hand to pistol. Instead, he shrugged his shoulders and smiled, went to the bed behind the screen and pulled off a blanket. He threw it to her but she let it fall upon the floor.

“Take the blanket,” he said gruffly. “You may have death if you want it, but not by my hand. Take the blanket and come with me to the soldiers below.”

Katerin kicked the blanket aside.

“I do not fear the cold any more than I fear death,” she said quietly, and moved to the door. “Come! I will show you how a Russian woman can die!”

Shimilin followed her down the stairs to the hall below. The old woman in the kitchen who did the cooking was crying in a room beyond the kitchen, out of sight. Katerin felt impelled to call a farewell to the old woman, and to Wassili, but she refrained because she suspected that the two servants might protest to the soldiers and draw ill treatment and probably death.

So she passed down the hall and out through the double doors into the courtyard. The place was full of soldiers, and her eyes lit at once upon a pile of fresh, brown earth near the wagon-shed. That, she knew, was her father’s grave. She walked straight to the mound, and stopping beside it, turned and faced the soldiers.

The heavily clad men stood about with their rifles, looking like great beetles, their heads topped with big caps, their faces wrapped in fur or rags, their bodies rotund with many garments, and the breath from their nostrils making what might have been inverted white horns as the air they breathed out turned to steam and spurted out from their faces behind the straps over their noses. They were not in ranks, these men, but gathered in groups as if waiting for some one to tell them what they should do next.

Captain Shimilin followed Katerin halfway across the yard, where he stopped to speak to a tall soldier in a long coat. The pair talked together quietly, looking at Katerin. Shimilin carried a towel which he had snatched up as he had passed out of the hall. He whipped the towel against his coat while he talked with the other soldier, and it was plain that the Cossack was in bad humor.

Katerin glanced at the spade and the old pickax which had been cast aside from the mound of earth. She lifted her eyes to the upper windows of the house. Then she threw open her sable coat, revealing the dull crimson of her velvet gown and the white of her throat. Gray and white and crimson, she made a striking picture against the dull background of the old buildings. The morning breeze which whipped in gustily over the courtyard wall and rattled the dead vines along its top, lifted wisps of her hair about her ears. The cold tortured her, but she gave no indication of her suffering. She looked like a beautiful flower which had grown in a drab garden now infested by wild things which had broken in for destruction and hated all things beautiful.

She let her hands fall to her sides. The cold was numbing her.

“I am ready!” she called to Captain Shimilin.

The Cossack moved to her, and held out the towel. “I shall cover your eyes so that you shall not see the rifles,” he said.

“Please do not touch me,” she begged. “It is all I ask. Let them shoot!”

The soldier who had been talking to Shimilin walked up to Katerin and peered into her face. His features were concealed by a strap of fur. Katerin knew by his manner that he must be an officer, though he wore no insignia. After a casual glance at him, she looked beyond him and fixed her gaze upon the house.

“Do you understand that you can save your life if you will follow the advice of Captain Shimilin?” asked the stranger.

“I do not seek the advice of Captain Shimilin—nor any other person,” said Katerin.

“You prefer to die?”

“I have done with life.”

“You talk like a brave woman,” went on the stranger.

“Oh, be done! I am cold!” said Katerin. She noted that a group of soldiers had fallen into line before her, and that the others about the yard gathered closer, regarding her with curious eyes.

The tall officer drew apart again with Shimilin, and they carried on a low conversation once more. The men in line began to examine their rifles to be in readiness. Both Shimilin and the other officer returned and stood before her again.

“Because your father, General Kirsakoff, was Governor here in the old days, is no reason why you should expect to oppose the new ruler,” said the officer.

Katerin did not answer.

The officer threw open his long coat, showing a uniform of gray tunic 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.