sent their herds to distant Mongols and so could do nothing to help us.  Then we betook ourselves to Dr. V. G. Gay, a veterinarian living in the town, famous throughout Mongolia for his battle against rinderpest.  He lived here with his family and after being forced to give up his government work became a cattle dealer.  He was a most interesting person, clever and energetic, and the one who had been appointed under the Czarist regime to purchase all the meat supplies from Mongolia for the Russian Army on the German Front.  He organized a huge enterprise in Mongolia but when the Bolsheviki seized power in 1917 he transferred his allegiance and began to work with them.  Then in May, 1918, when the Kolchak forces drove the Bolsheviki out of Siberia, he was arrested and taken for trial.  However, he was released because he was looked upon as the single individual to organize this big Mongolian enterprise and he handed to Admiral Kolchak all the supplies of meat and the silver formerly received from the Soviet commissars.  At this time Gay had been serving as the chief organizer and supplier of the forces of Kazagrandi.

When we went to him, he at once suggested that we take the only thing left, some poor, broken-down horses which would be able to carry us the sixty miles to Muren Kure, where we could secure camels to return to Uliassutai.  However, even these were being kept some distance from the town so that we should have to spend the night there, the night in which the Red troops were expected to arrive.  Also we were much astonished to see that Gay was remaining there with his family right up to the time of the expected arrival of the Reds.  The only others in the town were a few Cossacks, who had been ordered to stay behind to watch the movements of the Red troops.  The night came.  My friend and I were prepared either to fight or, in the last event, to commit suicide.  We stayed in a small house near the Yaga, where some workmen were living who could not, and did not feel it necessary to, leave.  They went up on a hill from which they could scan the whole country up to the range from behind which the Red detachment must appear.  From this vantage point in the forest one of the workmen came running in and cried out: 

“Woe, woe to us!  The Reds have arrived.  A horseman is galloping fast through the forest road.  I called to him but he did not answer me.  It was dark but I knew the horse was a strange one.”

“Do not babble so,” said another of the workmen.  “Some Mongol rode by and you jumped to the conclusion that he was a Red.”

“No, it was not a Mongol,” he replied.  “The horse was shod.  I heard the sound of iron shoes on the road.  Woe to us!”

“Well,” said my friend, “it seems that this is our finish.  It is a silly way for it all to end.”

He was right.  Just then there was a knock at our door but it was that of the Mongol bringing us three horses for our escape.  Immediately we saddled them, packed the third beast with our tent and food and rode off at once to take leave of Gay.