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The Tourguts, an adjoining Kalmuck tribe, were so imperilled by the enmity of the Eleuths that they took the important resolution of migrating to Russia, marching across the Kirghiz steppes and becoming faithful subjects of the czar, who gave them a new abiding-place on the banks of the Volga.
I did not allow my men to shoot but instead I raised a white flag and started forward with the Kalmuck for a parley. At first they fired two shots at us but then ceased firing and sent down a group of riders from the ridge toward us. We began the parley.
He looked up into the pitying face, grown old and worn in the service of the young King and his heart thrilled, as it ever thrilled, at the sight of the long, cruel scar he remembered so well the scar which the Kalmuck had received in the service of his Queen, long years before.
These being viewed as the advanced parties of Traubenberg's army, the Kalmuck chieftains saw no hope of safety but in flight; and in this way it happened that a retreat, which had so recently been brought to a pause, was resumed at the very moment when the unhappy fugitives were anticipating a deep repose without further molestation, the whole summer through.
Here they would have been well content to remain but for the arts and designs of one man, Zebek-Dorchi by name, who, ambitious to be made khan of the tribe, and not being favored in his desires by the Russian court, determined to remove the whole Kalmuck nation beyond the reach of Russian control. This was no easy matter to do.
The head of the poor Kalmuck rolled to the feet of the Commandant. The traitors shouted to us "Don't fire. Come out to receive the Tzar; the Tzar is here." "Children, fire!" cried the Commandant for all answer. The soldiers fired a volley. The Cossack who had the letter quivered and fell from his horse; the others fled at full speed. I glanced at Marya Ivánofna.
Either way they would have pretty nearly the same distance to traverse, but with this difference that, forwards, their rout lay through lands comparatively fertile backwards, through a blasted wilderness, rich only in memorials of their sorrow, and hideous to Kalmuck eyes by the trophies of their calamity.
A marked sympathetic interest surrounded the Kalmuck, who could speak a bit of Chinese, and my box of medicines. Everywhere we found many ill people, chiefly afflicted with eye troubles, rheumatism and skin diseases. For three days we were winding through the endless ravine-like valleys of these mountains and ascending the high passes.
Treated ever so kindly the Cossack will sigh when he remembers the freedom with which he once roved the steppes, lance in hand, on his shaggy little steed; and the Kalmuck also when he thinks of his hut half buried in the sands on the shore of the Caspian, whence he was wont to sally forth with his falcon on his fist, and letting it fly at the heron, followed himself almost as swiftly on the gallop.
And, however it might have happened, certain it is, that already, when as yet no syllable of the conspiracy had been breathed to any man whose very existence was not staked upon its concealment, nevertheless, some vague and uneasy jealousy had arisen in the Russian Cabinet as to the future schemes of the Kalmuck Khan: and very probable it is that, but for the war then raging, and the consequent prudence of conciliating a very important vassal, or, at least, of abstaining from what would powerfully alienate him, even at that moment such measures would have been adopted as must for ever have intercepted the Kalmuck schemes.
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