A.J. was soon asleep again and did not wake till the sunlight was pouring through the narrow window. Dorenko was already up and preparing a breakfast meal. He did not refer to the matter he had broached during the night, and after a homely meal the two travellers thanked him and set out to continue their journey. A.J. would have liked to offer him money, but that such generosity would not have suited the story of being poor.
Dorenko had given them directions before starting, telling them how they might travel so as to avoid the village which the soldiers had raided, and reach another less dangerous one by the end of the day. The route led them through the forest for several miles and then along a narrow winding track amidst the hills. It was again very hot in the middle of the day. They slept for a time in the shade of the pines, and then, towards evening, walked into a small town named Saratursk, whose market-place was full of Red soldiers, bedraggled and badly disciplined after long marches. It was hardly likely that they could be bothering about a casual forest murder, for much more serious events had happened during the past twenty-four hours. The Whites and the Czecho-Slovaks, acting together, had crossed the Urals and were reported in rapid invasion; the entire Revolution seemed in danger. All day long a steadily increasing stream of refugees had been entering Saratursk from the east; A.J. and Daly were but two out of thousands, and quite inconspicuous. They found it impossible to obtain any food except black bread at an extortionate price, and every room in the town was full of sleepers. Fortunately the night was warm, and it was not unpleasant to spread out one’s bundle on the cobbled stones and breathe the mountainy air. Sleep, however, was interrupted by the constant noise and shouting; fresh detachments of soldiers were entering the town from the west and south and reuniting with their comrades already in possession. They were a fierce-looking crowd, all of them, dressed in shabby, tattered, and nondescript uniforms—dirty, unkempt, heavy with fatigue. They had no obvious leaders, but throughout the night they held meetings in the market-square to elect new officers. There was much fervid oratory and cheering. The news of the White advance had put them in considerable consternation, for they themselves were badly armed—only one man in five or six possessing a rifle. The rest carried swords, knives, and even sticks. Some of them had been dragged out of hospitals too soon, and still wore dirty red-stained bandages. This curious, slatternly throng was, for the moment, all that stood between Moscow and counter-revolution.
All night long the hubbub proceeded, and soon after dawn something—but it was not clear exactly what—was decided upon. A few squads of men marched out of the town to the east; the rest, apparently, were to follow later. But shortly afterwards came a sharp outbreak of rifle-fire among the hills behind the town, and in less than an hour the original squads returned in a condition bordering on panic. The hills, they reported, were already in the hands of White outposts; Saratursk must be abandoned instantly. Whereupon soldiers, civilians, and refugees immediately gathered up as many of their personal possessions as they could and took part in a furious stampede to the west. The road was narrow—no more than a mere track—and military wagons jammed and collided into an immovable obstruction during the first quarter-mile. The wagons were full of ammunition and other military equipment, and after a vain attempt to disentangle the chaos the soldiers unloaded the stores and carried them forward on their backs. The sun rose blindingly on weary men staggering ahead with glazed and desperate eyes, straining the utmost nerve to put distance between themselves and a relentless enemy. Some of them, tired of scuffles in the roadway, took to the open fields and blundered on, with no guide to direction save the blaze of the sun on their backs. All through the morning came intermittent bursts of rifle-fire, each one rather nearer, it seemed; and there was a fresh outbreak of panic when a small child, fleeing with her parents, was struck and slightly injured by a spent bullet. Towards noon the rout was already becoming more than many could endure; refugees and even soldiers were collapsing by dozens along the roadside, throwing themselves face downwards in the dust and writhing convulsively. Some of them seemed to be dying, and there were rumours that White spies in Saratursk had put poison in the drinking-water from which many of the fugitives had filled their bottles.
A.J., hastening onwards, felt suddenly very ill himself. Severe internal pains gripped him, and at last he guessed that he was on the verge of collapse. He staggered and fell, tried to rise again, but could not; all the earth and the wide sky swam in circles before his eyes. He had to say: “I can’t go on any further. I’m ill.” And to himself he added that Fate, after all, was giving her the chance she had been wishing for; she could escape now, quite easily, and he had no power to stop her.
He knew that she was raising his head and staring into his eyes. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.
“Nothing at all for me. But for yourself—well, you have only to go back into Saratursk and meet your friends.”
“They’ll find me here if I stay.”
“Yes, but in that case they’d find me, too, and I don’t fancy being taken prisoner. Besides, there’s bound to be firing along this road. Take the papers out of my coat—they’ll prove who you are.”
“And yourself?”
“I shall manage, I daresay, with luck.”
“You want me to leave you here?”
“I think you ought to take the chance that offers itself. If you stay, there’ll only be greater danger to both of us. So go now—and hurry. Don’t forget the papers.”
“You are letting me go, then?”
“Circumstances compel me, that’s all.”
“It—it is—good of you. I hope you manage yourself all right.”
“Most probably I shall if I’m not found with you. Take the papers.”
“Good-bye.”
“Yes, but the papers—the papers—in the lining of my coat.”
He felt her hands searching him; he heard her say something, but he could not gather what—he was fast sinking into unconsciousness. Ages seemed to pass; at intervals he opened his eyes and heard great commotion proceeding all around and over him. Successive waves of pain assaulted and left him gasping with weakness. It was dark when he finally awoke. Pain was ebbing by then, and his strength with it. Queer sounds still echoed in his ears—murmurs as of distant shouting, distant rifle-fire. The starlight shone a pale radiance over the earth; he saw that he was lying in a sort of gully and that, a few yards away, there was something that looked like another man. He called ‘Hello!’ but there was no answer. Perhaps the fellow was asleep. He was suddenly anxious to meet somebody, to speak a word to somebody. There had been a battle, he guessed, and it would be interesting to learn whether the Whites or the Reds had been victorious. It hardly seemed to matter very much, but, just out of curiosity, as it were, he would like to know. And Daly, his prisoner, had she by now been safely received and identified by her friends?…God, how thirsty he was—he would offer that man some money in return for a drink of anything but poisoned water. Slowly, and with greater difficulty than he had expected, he crawled along the gully towards the huddled figure. Then he perceived that the man was dead—killed by a smashing blow in the face. That, for all that he had seen so many dead bodies in his time, unnerved him a little; he stared round him a little vaguely, as if uncertain how to interpret the discovery. Then he rose unsteadily to his feet and began to stagger about. He climbed on to the roadway and up the sloping bank on to the pale stubble fields. He walked a little way—a few hundred yards—and then saw another dead man. Then another. A man with his head nearly blown off at close range. A man huddled in the final writhings of a bayonet-thrust through the stomach. A man covered with blood from a drained and severed artery. Most of the dead, from their uniforms, were Reds; a few only could have belonged to the other side. Sickly qualms overspread him as he wandered aimlessly among these huddled figures. Then he suddenly heard a cry. It seemed to come from a distance; he turned slightly and heard it again. “Brother!” it called. He walked towards it. “What is it?” he whispered, and the reply came: “Are you not wounded, brother?”—“No,” he answered, and the voice rejoined: “Neither am I. Come here.”