Page:Ossendowski - Beasts, Men and Gods.djvu/236

220 They had just that day arrived for a conference with Baron Ungern.

After luncheon Colonel Kazagrandi invited me to his yurta and began discussing events in western Mongolia, where the situation had become very tense.

"Do you know Dr. Gay?" Kazagrandi asked me. "You know he helped me to form my detachment but Urga accuses him of being the agent of the Soviets."

I made all the defences I could for Gay. He had helped me and had been exonerated by Kolchak.

"Yes, yes, and I justified Gay in such a manner," said the Colonel, "but Rezukhin, who has just arrived today, has brought letters of Gay's to the Bolsheviki which were seized in transit. By order of Baron Ungern, Gay and his family have today been sent to the headquarters of Rezukhin and I fear that they will not reach this destination."

"Why?" I asked.

"They will be executed on the road!" answered Colonel Kazagrandi.

"What are we to do?" I responded. "Gay cannot be a Bolshevik, "because he is too well educated and too clever for it."

"I don't know; I don't know!" murmured the Colonel with a despondent gesture. "Try to speak with Rezukhin."

I decided to proceed at once to Rezukhin but just then Colonel Philipoff entered and began talking about the errors being made in the training of the soldiers. When I had donned my coat, another man came in. He was a small sized officer with an old green Cossack cap with a visor, a torn grey Mongol overcoat and with his right