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At every third ourton, without leaving his saddle, he received a cup of hot green tea with salt and continued his race southward. After seventeen or eighteen hours of such riding he stopped at the ourton for the night or what was left of it, devoured a leg of boiled mutton and slept. Thus he ate once a day and five times a day had tea; and so he traveled for nine days!
When the old Mongol showed my papers to them, they submissively acquiesced and substituted four of their men for those who had come with me thus far. In this manner the Mongols travel, not along the ourton or station road but directly from one herd to another, where the fresh horses are caught and saddled and the new owners substituted for those of the last herd.
Only Philipoff did not know that his Mongol guide was armed with a bomb and that another Mongol had been sent on ahead with a letter to Baron Ungern. He did not know that Poletika and his brothers were shot at the same time in Zain Shabi. Philipoff was in a hurry and wanted to reach Van Kure that day. I left an hour after him. From this point we began traveling along the ourton road.
I did not think myself in the wrong and the feeling of fear had long since ceased to occupy a place in my menage. On the way a Mongol rider who overhauled us brought the news of the death of our acquaintances at Zain Shabi. He spent the night with me in the yurta at the ourton and related to me the following legend of death. "It was a long time ago when the Mongolians ruled over China.
It was the man "with the head like a saddle," against whom I had been warned by the old fortune teller at the last ourton outside Van Kure! "Who is this officer?" I inquired. Although he was already quite a distance in front of us, the Cossacks whispered: "Colonel Sepailoff, Commandant of Urga City." Colonel Sepailoff, the darkest person on the canvas of Mongolian events!
Armed with a special document called a tzara, which gave him the right to receive at all post stations the best horses, one to ride and one fully saddled to lead as a change, together with two oulatchen or guards to accompany him and bring back the horses from the next station or ourton, he made the distance of from fifteen to thirty miles between stations at full gallop, stopping only long enough to have the horses and guards changed before he was off again.
It perceptibly increased when some Mongols from a distant ourton to the east came in and announced that in various places along the post road to Urga they had discovered the bodies of sixteen of the soldiers whom Wang Tsao-tsun had sent out with letters for Urga. The mystery of these events will soon be explained.
The following morning I set out anew from Zain Shabi, having in my pocket the laissez-passer of Bezrodnoff for his outposts. Once more we traveled along the now known places, the mountain from which I espied the detachment of Bezrodnoff, the stream into which I had thrown my weapon, and soon all this lay behind us. At the first ourton we were disappointed because we did not find horses there.
The old host of the ourton, knowing me from my previous trip to Narabanchi, welcomed us very kindly and regaled us with stories during our evening meal.
In this region the Mongols had very poor and exhausted horses, because they were forced continuously to supply mounts to the numerous envoys of Daichin Van and of Colonel Kazagrandi. We were compelled to spend the night at the last ourton before Van Kure, where a stout old Mongol and his son kept the station.
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