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But the Chahars passed peacefully out and only when they met a caravan carrying Chinese wine about six miles from town did their native tendency display itself again in pillaging and emptying several containers.
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.
On the very day of their arrival the Chahars pillaged a Chinese dugun or trading house not half a mile from the fortress and also offended the wife of the Chinese Commissioner by calling her a "traitor."
Only then did I notice that his cheekbones and eyes had lines strange to the Mongols of Central Asia. He looked more like a Tartar or a Kirghiz. We were silent and smoked our pipes. "How soon will the detachment of Chahars leave Uliassutai?" he asked. We answered that we had not heard about them.
The Chahars, like the Mongols, were quite right in their stand, because the Chinese Commissioner Wang Tsao-tsun had on his arrival in Uliassutai followed the Chinese custom of demanding a Mongolian wife. The servile new Sait had given orders that a beautiful and suitable Mongolian girl be found for him.
But the Chahar was in the saddle in a second without a murmur and galloped to his place in the file. During this exit of the Chahars all the people were hidden in their houses, anxiously peeping through cracks and corners of the windows.
Our guest explained that from Inner Mongolia the Chinese authorities had sent out a strong detachment, mobilized from among the most warlike tribe of Chahars, which wander about the region just outside the Great Wall.
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.
At their head rode the one-eyed hunghutze chief with three horsemen behind him in white overcoats, who carried waving banners and blew what may have been meant for music through great conch shells. One of the Chahars could not resist and so jumped out of his saddle and made for a Chinese shop along the street. Immediately the anxious cries of the Chinese merchants came from the shop.
Burglaries, squabbles and drunken orgies of the Chahars followed, so that Wang Tsoa-tsun exerted all his efforts to hurry the detachment westward to Kobdo and farther into Urianhai. One cold morning the inhabitants of Uliassutai rose to witness a very stern picture. Along the main street of the town the detachment was passing.
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