Page:Ossendowski - Beasts, Men and Gods.djvu/138

 CHAPTER XIX

WILD CHAHARS

FTER our return to Uliassutai we heard that disquieting news had been received by the Mongol Sait from Muren Kure. The letter stated that Red Troops were pressing Colonel Kazagrandi very hard in the region of Lake Kosogol. The Sait feared the advance of the Red troops southward to Uliassutai. Both the American firms liquidated their affairs and all our friends were prepared for a quick exit, though they hesitated at the thought of leaving the town, as they were afraid of meeting the detachment of Chahars sent from the east. We decided to await the arrival of this detachment, as their coming could change the whole course of events. In a few days they came, two hundred warlike Chahar brigands under the command of a former Chinese kunghutze. He was a tall, skinny man with hands that reached almost to his knees, a face blackened by wind and sun and mutilated with two long scars down over his forehead and cheek, the making of one of which had also closed one of his hawklike eyes, topped off with a shaggy coonskin cap—such was the commander of the detachment of Chahars. A personage very dark and stern, with whom a night meeting on a lonely street could not be considered a pleasure by any bent of the imagination.

The detachment made camp within the destroyed