After our return to Uliassutai we heard that disquieting news hadbeen received by the Mongol Sait from Muren Kure. The letterstated that Red Troops were pressing Colonel Kazagrandi very hardin the region of Lake Kosogol. The Sait feared the advance of theRed troops southward to Uliassutai. Both the American firmsliquidated their affairs and all our friends were prepared for aquick exit, though they hesitated at the thought of leaving thetown, as they were afraid of meeting the detachment of Chahars sentfrom the east. We decided to await the arrival of this detachment,as their coming could change the whole course of events. In a fewdays they came, two hundred warlike Chahar brigands under thecommand of a former Chinese hunghutze. He was a tall, skinny manwith hands that reached almost to his knees, a face blackened bywind and sun and mutilated with two long scars down over hisforehead and cheek, the making of one of which had also closed oneof his hawklike eyes, topped off with a shaggy coonskin cap--suchwas the commander of the detachment of Chahars. A personage verydark and stern, with whom a night meeting on a lonely street couldnot be considered a pleasure by any bent of the imagination.

The detachment made camp within the destroyed fortress, near to thesingle Chinese building that had not been razed and which was nowserving as headquarters for the Chinese Commissioner. On the veryday of their arrival the Chahars pillaged a Chinese dugun ortrading house not half a mile from the fortress and also offendedthe wife of the Chinese Commissioner by calling her a "traitor."The Chahars, like the Mongols, were quite right in their stand,because the Chinese Commissioner Wang Tsao-tsun had on his arrivalin Uliassutai followed the Chinese custom of demanding a Mongolianwife. The servile new Sait had given orders that a beautiful andsuitable Mongolian girl be found for him. One was so run down andplaced in his yamen, together with her big wrestling Mongol brotherwho was to be a guard for the Commissioner but who developed intothe nurse for the little white Pekingese pug which the officialpresented to his new wife.

Burglaries, squabbles and drunken orgies of the Chahars followed,so that Wang Tsoa-tsun exerted all his efforts to hurry thedetachment westward to Kobdo and farther into Urianhai.

One cold morning the inhabitants of Uliassutai rose to witness avery stern picture. Along the main street of the town thedetachment was passing. They were riding on small, shaggy ponies,three abreast; were dressed in warm blue coats with sheeps............