He seemed really very anxious and his trouble fortunately prevented him from paying much attention to us.  I began to calm him and promised on the morrow to arrange this matter with the Soyots.  The officer was a coarse brute and a silly man, desiring strongly to be promoted for the capture of the Cossack officers, and feared that the Soyot could prevent him from reaching the Seybi.

At daybreak we started together with the Red detachment.  When we had made about fifteen kilometers, we discovered behind the bushes two riders.  They were Soyots.  On their backs were their flint rifles.

“Wait for me!” I said to the officer.  “I shall go for a parley with them.”

I went forward with all the speed of my horse.  One of the horsemen was the Soyot Governor, who said to me: 

“Remain behind the detachment and help us.”

“All right,” I answered, “but let us talk a little, in order that they may think we are parleying.”

After a moment I shook the hand of the Soyot and returned to the soldiers.

“All right,” I exclaimed, “we can continue our journey.  No hindrance will come from the Soyots.”

We moved forward and, when we were crossing a large meadow, we espied at a long distance two Soyots riding at full gallop right up the side of a mountain.  Step by step I accomplished the necessary manoeuvre to bring me and my fellow traveler somewhat behind the detachment.  Behind our backs remained only one soldier, very brutish in appearance and apparently very hostile to us.  I had time to whisper to my companion only one word:  “Mauser,” and saw that he very carefully unbuttoned the saddle bag and drew out a little the handle of his pistol.

Soon I understood why these soldiers, excellent woodsmen as they were, would not attempt to go to the Seybi without a guide.  All the country between the Algiak and the Seybi is formed by high and narrow mountain ridges separated by deep swampy valleys.  It is a cursed and dangerous place.  At first our horses mired to the knees, lunging about and catching their feet in the roots of bushes in the quagmires, then falling and pinning us under their sides, breaking parts of their saddles and bridles.  Then we would go in up to the riders’ knees.  My horse went down once with his whole breast and head under the red fluid mud and we just saved it and no more.  Afterwards the officer’s horse fell with him so that he bruised his head on a stone.  My companion injured one knee against a tree.  Some of the men also fell and were injured.  The horses breathed heavily.  Somewhere dimly and gloomily a crow cawed.  Later the road became worse still.  The trail followed through the same miry swamp but everywhere the road was blocked with fallen tree trunks.  The horses, jumping over the trunks, would land in an unexpectedly deep hole and flounder.  We and all the soldiers were covered with blood and mud and were in great fear of exhausting our mounts.