180

p In which a dark spot appears on the horizon and
turns out to be, on closer inspection, Lieutenant of
the Guards Govorukha-Otrok

p It is seventy versts from the well of Djan-Geldi to the well of Soi-Kuduk, and another sixty-two to the spring at Ushkan.

p “Halt! Pitch camp!" said Yevsukov in a frozen voice, pointing to some saksaul roots with his rifle butt.

181

p They made a camp-fire of saksaul twigs. Sooty resinous flames leapt up, and a dark circle of dampness appeared on the sand round the fire.

p The men took rice and fat out of their packs. Soon the mixture was boiling in the iron pot, giving off a strong smell of mutton.

p Silent, their teeth chattering, the men huddled round the fire, pressing close to one another to keep out the icy fingers of the wind. They warmed their feet by pushing them into the very fire, and the hardened leather of their boots began to crackle and hiss.

p Through the white blur of snow came the dismal tinkle of the bells on the hobbled camels.

p Yevsukov rolled a cigarette in trembling fingers.

p “Got to decide, comrades, where we re to go from here,” he forced out in a cloud of smoke.

p “Where can we go?" came a lifeless voice from the other side of the fire. “It’s all the same. Everything’s clear. We can’t go back to Guryev—the bloody Cossacks are there. And outside of Guryev there ain’t no place to go to.”

p “What about Khiva?”

p “Ho, Khiva! Six hundred versts across the Kara Kum in the dead of winter? What’ll you use for food? Or are you going to make a stew of the lice in your pants?”

p There was a burst of laughter.

p “Everything’s clear. We’re through,” the same lifeless voice summed up.

p Yevsukov’s heart contracted under his crimson armour, but he gave no sign of it.

p “You slobbering louse!" he burst out furiously. “Plenty of time before we’re through. Any fool can kick the bucket! But you’ve got to use a bit of gumption to stay alive.”

p “We could make for Fort Alexandrovsky. Our own sort lives there. Fishermen.”

182

p “No good,” put in Yevsukov. “I got word Denikin made a landing there. The Whites are at Alexandrovsky and at Krasnovodsk too.”

p Somebody groaned in his sleep.

p Yevsukov brought a strong hand down on his fire-hot knee.

p “Stop yammering!" he barked. “There’s only one place to go—to the Aral Sea. We’ll go to the Aral and march round it to Kazalinsk. We’ve got headquarters at Kazalinsk. It’ll be like going home to go there.”

p He barked it out and was silent. Even he did not believe they could make it.

p The man lying next to him raised his head.

p “And what’ll we eat on the way?”

p “Got to pull in our belts,” snapped Yevsukov. “We ain’t the Princes Royal. Maybe it’s beefsteaks and honey you’d like? You’ll do without. We’ve still got some rice left and a little flour.”

p “Won’t last more than three days.”

p “Why not? What of it? It won’t take us more than ten to get to Chernysh Bay. We’ve got six camels. Soon as we’ve eat up all our supplies we’ll kill ^the camels. They’d be no good to us anyhow. We’ll kill one, load the meat on the others and move on. We’ll get there somehow.”

p Nobody said anything. Maryutka lay at the fire with her head in her hands, gazing into the flames with unwinking, cat-like eyes. Yevsukov suddenly felt uncomfortable. He got up and shook the snow off his jacket.

p “So that’s that,” he said. “Orders is, up and off at daybreak.” His voice rose jerkily like a startled bird. “Maybe we won’t all make it, but we’ve got to try, because you see it’s revolution, comrades. It’s for the workers of the world.”

p The commissar looked each of his twenty-three men in the eye in turn. The light he was accustomed 183 to seeing in those eyes had gone out. Their gaze was dull and averted. Doubt and despair glinted between narrowed eyelids.

p “First we’ll eat the camels, then each other,” murmured someone.

p Silence.

p Suddenly Yevsukov shrieked like a hysterical woman.

p “Shut your mouth! Have you forgot your revolutionary duty? Silence! An order’s an order. If you don’t shut up you’ll get stood up against the wall!”

p He coughed arid sat down. The man who was stirring the rice with a ramrod suddenly called gaily into the wind:

p “Stop carping and eat your supper. What do you think I’ve been sweating here for?”

p They spooned out big clumps of the greasy swollen rice, burning their throats in their hurry to gobble it down before it got cold. But even so a crust of wax-like fat froze on their lips.

p The fire was dying down, throwing up showers of orange sparks against the black curtain of the night. The men huddled closer, drowsed off, snored, moaned and swore in their sleep.

p It was almost morning when Yevsukov was shaken out of his sleep. Forcing his frozen lashes apart, he sat up and reached instinctively for his rifle.

p “Take it easy.”

p Maryutka was bending over him. Her cat-like eyes glittered through the yellow-grey murk of the storm.

p “What’s up?”

p “Get up, Comrade Commissar. While you was asleep I took a ride on a camel. There’s a Kirghiz caravan coming from Djan-Geldi.”

p Yevsukov rolled over on his side.

184

p “A caravan?" he repeated excitedly. “Sure you’re not dreaming?”

p “Sure as fish-pox. Forty camels.”

p Yevsukov was on his feet in a trice and whistling through his fingers.

p The twenty-three found it hard to get up and stretch their stiffened bodies, but on hearing of the caravan they livened up.

p Only twenty-two got up. The twenty-third stayed where he was, wrapped in a horse-cloth that shook with the convulsions of his body.

p “He’s got the blackfire,” said Maryutka when she had thrust a finger inside his collar.

p “Damn it all! What are we to do? Throw another blanket over him and let him lie. We’ll come back for him. Where did you say the caravan was?”

p Maryutka pointed to the west.

p “Not far off. About six versts. Packs this size on the camels.”

p “Sounds fine. See you don’t let them get away, men! Soon as we set eyes on them, close in on all sides. Don’t spare your legs. Half to the left, half to the right. Get going!”

p They wound their way in single file between the sand-hills, bent almost double, their spirits rising, their bodies warmed by the quick march.

p From the crest of a hill they caught sight of the camels strung out like jet beads on a takyr as flat as a hand. The beasts were swaying under the weight of their packs.

p “The Lord’s sent them. He took pity on us,” murmured a pock-marked youth named Gvozdyov.

p “The Lord me foot!" burst out Yevsukov. “How many times have you got to be told there ain’t no Lord; everything’s got its own law of physics.”

p There was no time to argue. The order was given to advance in quick rushes, hiding in every hollow, 185 behind every gnarled bush. They clutched their rifles so tightly that their fingers ached. They knew they dared not let the caravan escape, that with the caravan would go their hope, their salvation, their lives.

p The caravan advanced leisurely. The men could already make out the bright saddle-bags on the backs of the camels and some men in quilted robes and wolfskin caps walking beside them.

p Suddenly Yevsukov, resplendent in his crimson jacket, rose out of the top of a hill and stood with pointed rifle.

p “Tokhta\" he shouted at the top of his lungs. “If you’ve got any guns, throw them down! No tricks or it’ll be the end of you!”

p No sooner had he opened his mouth than the frightened camel-drivers started back and fell down in the sand.

p The Red Army men, breathless from their swift march, rushed down on all sides.

p “Take the camels, fellows!" shouted Yevsukov.

p His voice was drowned out by a round of rifle fire coming from the caravan. The angry bullets yelped like puppies, and someone beside Yevsukov hit the sand with arms outstretched.

p “Lie down, men! Give it to the bastards!" shouted Yevsukov, ducking behind a sand-hill.

p There was another burst of rifle fire.

p The shooting—too accurate for Kirghiz—was coming from behind the camels, which had been made to lie down. The bullets pelted the sand all about the Red Army men, filling the desert with their noise. But gradually the shooting died down.

p The Red Army men stole up in little dashes. When they were about thirty paces away Yevsukov saw a head in a fur cap and a white Caucasian hood 186 protruding above one of the camels. Then he caught sight of the shoulder, and there was a gold shoulderstrap on it.

p “Maryutka! Look! An officer!" he said, turning his head to Maryutka, who was crawling behind, him.

p “I see him.”

p Leisurely she took aim. The rifle cracked.

p Perhaps her fingers were frozen, or perhaps she was trembling with excitement or from running. Whatever the cause, scarcely had she said, “The forty-first, a fish-pox on him!" when the man in the white hood and the blue coat rose up from behind the camel and waved his rifle over his head. From the bayonet fluttered a white handkerchief.

p Maryutka hurled her gun down on the sand and burst out crying, smearing the tears over her dirty, wind-burnt face.

p Yevsukov ran up to the officer. He was overtaken by a Red Army man who twisted his bayonet as he ran, the better to plunge it in.

p “Hands off! Take him alive!" shouted the commissar hoarsely.

p The man in the blue coat was seized and thrown down.

p Five others who had been with him lay dead behind the camels.

p The Red Army men, laughing and swearing, pulled the camels about by the rings in their noses and tied them together in groups.

p The Kirghiz camel-drivers followed Yevsukov about and tugged at his sleeve in a hang-dog way. He shook them off, darted away from them, shouted at them, and pointed his revolved at their broad faces—though not without qualms of pity.

p “Tokhtal Keep off! Orders is orders.”

187

p A greybeard in a rich robe caught him by the belt.

p “Ui, bai," he murmured quickly, ingratiatingly. “Bai take camels—very bad. Kirghiz live by camels. No camels—Kirghiz die. No take camels, bai. Bai want money? Here, take money. Silver money—tsar money. Paper money—Kerensky money. How much you want, bai? No take camels.”

p “Why, you bloody idiot, can’t you see it’s finish for us without these camels? I’m not stealing them. I’m taking them for the revolution. Orders is orders! Just temporary. You fellows can. walk back home from here, but it’s death for us.”

p “Ui, bai. Very bad. No take camels. Take abas. Take money,” pleaded the Kirghiz.

p Yevsukov shrugged him off.

p “I told you what’s what. No more talk. Here, take this receipt and be off with you.”

p He handed the Kirghiz a receipt scribbled in indelible pencil on a scrap of newspaper.

p The Kirghiz threw it away, fell to the ground and buried his face in his hands, moaning. His companions stood silent, and silent tears trembled in their slanting black eyes.

p Yevsukov turned away and saw the captured officer; he was standing nonchalantly between two Red Army men, a cigarette in his mouth, his eyes following the commissar contemptuously.

p “Who are you?" asked Yevsukov.

p “Lieutenant of the Guards Govorukha-Otrok. And who might you be?" the officer asked in his turn, blowing out a cloud of smoke.

As he raised his head Yevsukov and his men were struck by the blazing blueness of his eyes, as if two balls of the finest French bluing were floating in snow-white suds.