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.
Shimilin stared at her, and then took off his cap. He seemed willing to ignore her irony, but his look conveyed an appreciation of her beauty, and he allowed his eyes to linger upon her. But there was no disrespect in his manner.
Katerin met his steady gaze without any indication that the Cossack captain’s scrutiny meant anything more than the usual deference and adulation due her person and position as in the old days. She made a pretty picture, standing beside her father—the superb carriage of her head, the slashes of red velvet of her sleeves, the gray of the sable coat and the swirl of the red trailing skirt about her feet. She suggested a queenly consort at an audience by royalty.
Shimilin stood as if waiting for something to happen. In a short time two men came in with rifles. Their faces were rotund, their noses short and flat, and they were dark enough to be full-blood Mongols—Buriats, these were, descendants of the men who had followed Genghis Khan as his conquering hordes swept over Asia. They were poorly dressed in ragged, old coats, with boots reinforced with skins and furs wrapped about their tops. But they wore the high caps of Cossacks, which made them appear to be taller than they really were. This pair appraised the contents of the room, and having judged the value of its visible loot, turned their beadlike eyes upon Katerin—eyes full of menace, eyes like the eyes of wolves upon a quarry.
“Have you come with a message from the Ataman?” asked Katerin, when she saw that the Cossack did not seem to know how to proceed with his business. She wanted to hold the situation in her own hands as well as she could, and so far she felt that Shimilin had not shown himself to be particularly dangerous. She did not intend to betray to him that she and her father were in any way perturbed by an informal call on the part of soldiers from the Ataman Zorogoff. To show fear would be fatal and only her wits could save her.
The Cossack did not reply at once, but strode across the room, threw off his greatcoat, and sat down on a bench opposite Michael. Shimilin seemed in no hurry, but acted as if he wished to impress father and daughter with his own importance as expressed in his uniform. He wore a gray tunic with gold shoulder straps, a brace of pistols in his belt, a fine saber with a hilt of silver, and blue riding breeches.
“Yes, I bring a message from the Ataman,” he began, elbows on knees, and leaning forward and staring at the floor. “You know, of course, that the Ataman’s army has been protecting the city from looters.”
“Beggars are always safe from robbers,” said Michael.
Shimilin lifted his head and looked at the general in surprise.
“Beggars! I like a joke, Kirsakoff.”
“It is no joke being a beggar,” put in Katerin.
“You have millions of rubles,” said Shimilin.
“It is easy to count the money in the pockets of other people,” said Katerin. “We were robbed of all we had long before the Ataman Zorogoff began to rule.”
Shimilin’s face took on a sly look. “Is it that you do not like the Ataman Zorogoff? Are you opposed to his rule?”
“I suppose Zorogoff would give up his power if we said we preferred another ruler,” retorted Katerin. “If you came here to trick us into saying anything against Zorogoff, it will not be said. And it takes little of your breath to talk of millions of rubles. Does the Ataman expect us to hand over to him a fortune which does not exist?”
“You talk like all the others,” said Shimilin wearily. “Partridges are killed with silver bullets—and so are robbers. An army cannot live on air. The Ataman needs money.”
“Protection from bandits! What difference does it make whether bandits and looters take our money, or Zorogoff?” asked Michael sharply. “If we had the money—what would it matter to us who got it if we lost it?”
“The Ataman asks a loan,” said Shimilin. “His government will repay you. Am I to tell the Ataman that you regard him as a robber?”
“We have but a few rubles,” said Katerin hastily, to prevent her father from saying something which would draw the wrath of the captain, for the old man was showing his anger and was ready to defy Shimilin. “It is all the money we have left.”
“How much?” asked Shimilin.
“Probably ten thousand rubles,” said Katerin. “I have not counted it lately, but it is all we have to buy our food. What shall we eat if you take it?”
Shimilin smiled. “That is not my problem. You can find more money, or borrow. But we know you have plenty. Ten thousand rubles will not satisfy the Ataman. I will take it, but only with the understanding that it is mine—to intercede with the Ataman for you. You might find it difficult to argue with his soldiers—in his military prison.”
Katerin shrugged her shoulders. “True. If the Ataman should want to send us to prison, we could not prevent him. At least, he would have to feed us there.”
“And is that the way Zorogoff will protect us from robbers?” demanded Michael. “If we have no more money, we must go to prison, eh! And that is what Zorogoff calls ruling, I presume. Hah!”
Katerin went behind the screen which shielded her bed and returned with a large lacquered cabinet. She opened it and took out several packets of rubles of the old Imperial issue.
“This is our fortune,” she said, with a gesture at the casket, and turned away.
“Do you expect the Ataman to believe that?” asked Shimilin, as he stood up and looked into the casket.
“I cannot do the Ataman’s thinking,” she retorted. “I do not give it—you must take it.”
Shimilin got into his greatcoat, and leisurely stuffed his pockets with the packets. When he had taken the last, he bowed to the glowering Michael in a show of politeness.
“I will do what I can with the Ataman in your behalf,” he said. “But I doubt if I will be able to alter his intentions toward you—and I am sure that we shall meet again.”
And Shimilin made a gesture to his two soldiers, walked through the door, and the trio clumped down the stairs.
“This means war with the Ataman,” said Michael, as they heard the gate creak on its ancient hinges as their visitors went into the street. “Before prison, we shall take the poison together, my daughter.”
“We shall not die by our own hands till the last minute,” said Katerin. “We must pray that the Americans will come.”
“If they come at all it will be too late,” said Michael. “We, who have conquered Asia, will be destroyed by Asia—we shall be lost in a yellow flood. The Mongol rules now.”