behind the rocks and disappeared.  The firing continued more and more lively and I did not know what to do.  From our side we shot rarely, saving our cartridges.  Watching carefully the enemy, I noticed two black points on the snow high above the Reds.  They slowly approached our antagonists and finally were hidden from view behind some sharp hillocks.  When they emerged from these, they were right on the edge of some overhanging rocks at the foot of which the Reds lay concealed from us.  By this time I had no doubt that these were the heads of two men.  Suddenly these men rose up and I watched them flourish and throw something that was followed by two deafening roars which re-echoed across the mountain valley.  Immediately a third explosion was followed by wild shouts and disorderly firing among the Reds.  Some of the horses rolled down the slope into the snow below and the soldiers, chased by our shots, made off as fast as they could down into the valley out of which we had come.

Afterward the Tartar told me the Soyot had proposed to guide them around behind the Reds to fall upon their rear with the bombs.  When I had bound up the wounded shoulder of the officer and we had taken the pack off the killed animal, we continued our journey.  Our position was complicated.  We had no doubt that the Red detachment came up from Mongolia.  Therefore, were there Red troops in Mongolia?  What was their strength?  Where might we meet them?  Consequently, Mongolia was no more the Promised Land?  Very sad thoughts took possession of us.

But Nature pleased us.  The wind gradually fell.  The storm ceased.  The sun more and more frequently broke through the scudding clouds.  We were traveling upon a high, snow-covered plateau, where in one place the wind blew it clean and in another piled it high with drifts which caught our horses and held them so that they could hardly extricate themselves at times.  We had to dismount and wade through the white piles up to our waists and often a man or horse was down and had to be helped to his feet.  At last the descent began and at sunset we stopped in the small larch grove, spent the night at the fire among the trees and drank the tea boiled in the water carried from the open mountain brook.  In various places we came across the tracks of our recent antagonists.

Everything, even Nature herself and the angry demons of Darkhat Ola, had helped us:  but we were not gay, because again before us lay the dread uncertainty that threatened us with new and possibly destructive dangers.

CHAPTER XIV

THE RIVER OF THE DEVIL

Ulan Taiga with Darkhat Ola lay behind us.  We went forward very rapidly because the Mongol plains began here, free from the impediments of mountains.  Everywhere splendid grazing lands stretched away.  In places there were groves of larch.  We crossed some very rapid streams but they were not deep and they had hard beds.  After two days of travel over the Darkhat plain we began meeting Soyots driving their cattle rapidly toward the northwest into Orgarkha Ola.  They communicated to us very unpleasant news.