Knight Without Armour (23 page)

The change was made, and on the seventh day, very early in the morning,
they left the forests. The sky was fine, but clouds were already massing on
the horizon for a thunderstorm that would doubtless Tiring to an end the long
spell of fine weather. It was still hard to make more than the sketchiest
plan of campaign. Amidst those lonely Ural foothills there had been an
atmosphere of being out of the world, removed from many of its bewilderments
and troubled by nothing more complicated than the elemental problem of the
hunted eluding the hunter. In the plains, however, all problems were subtler
and more intricate—as intricate, at least, as the political and
military situation of the country generally. At Saratursk, before the escape,
A.J. had tried to visualise what was happening as a whole, and not merely
locally, but it had been difficult owing to the wildness of the rumours that
gained credence. Every morning there had come a fresh crop of them—that
the German Kaiser had committed suicide, that Lenin had been shot in Moscow
by a young girl, that a British army was invading from Archangel, that the
Japanese were approaching from the east along the line of the Trans-Siberian;
there had been no lack of such sensational news, much of which was always
more likely to be false than true. It seemed, however, fairly probable that
Czecho-Slovak detachments were by this time in full occupation of great
lengths of the Trans- Siberian, and it was also possible (as rumour alleged)
that they had pushed up the Volga and captured Sembirsk and Kazan. The
repulse of the Whites from Saratursk would appear, in that case, to have been
a merely isolated and local affair—as local, in fact, as the Red Terror
that had followed it. But then, all Russia was seething with such local
affairs, and the history of the whole country could scarcely be more than the
sum-total of them. A village here might be Red, or there White, and a
stranger could hardly tell which until he took the risk of entering it. The
Czechs, despite their imposing position on the map, held merely the thin line
of the railway; a few versts on either side of the track their sway ended,
and the brigandage of Red and White soldiery went on without
interruption.

So much A.J. had in mind, though there was little he knew for certain. If
there had been any fixed battle-line between Red and White, it would have
been a straightforward task, despite the danger of it, to make for the
nearest point of that line and cross over. As it was, however, there could be
no advantage in joining up with some small and local White colony which, in a
few days or weeks, might surrender to the Reds and be massacred.

The two of them talked the matter over during that early morning descent
to the plains, and she said at length, putting it far more concisely than he
would care to have done: “The whole question is really—am I to
escape alone, or are you to come with me? You are to come with me, of course,
and that means we must go right away—out of the whole area of these
local wars.” Then she looked at him and laughed rather queerly.
“Oh, it all comes to this, I suppose, that what I want more than
anything in the world is to be with you. Can’t You believe me? In a way
I’m enjoying every minute of all this—it’s an adventure I
don’t want ever to end; but if it must end, then let anything end it
rather than separation. Promise that wherever we go and whatever happens to
us, it will be together!”

“That is all I hoped you would say,” he answered. “We
will make south for the railway, then, and take a train, if there are trains,
towards Kazan. And there, if the situation remains the same, we can join the
Czechs.”

The hill country ended with disconcerting abruptness; by noon they were
crossing land so level that it looked like a sea, with the horizon of hills
as a coastline in the rearward distance. It was dizzily hot; the threatened
storm had passed over with a few abortive thunderclaps. The earth was caked
and splitting after weeks without rain; dust filled eyes and nostrils at the
slightest breath of wind; the crops were withering in the unharvested
fields.

As distance increased between themselves and the mountains, they found
tracks widening into roads, and roads becoming more frequented. Every side-
track yielded its stragglers, most of whom were peasants carrying all their
worldly goods on their backs. Where they had come from and where they were
bound for were problems that were no more soluble after, as often happened,
they had unburdened their secrets to the passing stranger. But many were too
ill and dejected even to give the usual greeting as they passed, and some
showed all the outward signs of prolonged hardships and semi-starvation.

For every passer-by in the opposite direction there were at least a dozen,
bound, like themselves, for the railway twenty miles to the south. The chance
of getting aboard a train did not, in such circumstances, seem very
promising, and still less attractive was the prospect of camping out for days
or weeks on the railway platforms, as thousands of refugees were doing. A.J.
learned this from a youth with whom, along the road, he effected an exchange
of a couple of eggs in return for a small quantity of butter made from
sunflower- seeds. The boy—for he was scarcely more—seemed so
knowledgeable and intelligent that A.J. was glad enough to agree when he
suggested pooling resources for a small roadside meal. The stranger hardly
got the better of the bargain, since his own provender included white bread
(an almost incredible luxury) and part of a cooked chicken; but he only
laughed when A.J. apologised. He was a merry, pink-checked youth, eager to
treat A.J. with roguish bonhomie and the woman with a touch of gallantry. He
was eighteen, he said, and his life had been fairly adventurous. At sixteen
he had been a cadet in an Imperial training-school for officers, but the
Revolution had happened just in time to fit in conveniently with his own
reluctance to die in a trench fighting the Germans. He seemed also to have
quarrelled with his family, for he said he neither knew nor cared what had
happened to them. He had joined the revolutionaries at the age of seventeen,
doubtless to save his own skin, and in a single year had risen to be a
military commissar. But even that, in the end, had become too tedious and
exacting, for in his heart he had always pined for something more
individually adventurous. Presently the had found it. He had become a
train-bandit. He admitted this quite frankly, and with a joyous taking of
risks in so doing. “It suits me,” he explained, “because
I’m a bad lot—I always was.”

It appeared that he had been the leader of a group of bandits operating on
the Cheliabinsk-Ufa line before the advance of the Czechs had put an end to
such enterprise. His colleagues had since dispersed, and he himself was now
at a loose end, but he rather thought there was a good chance of successful
banditry on the Ekaterinburg-Sarapul line, which was still to a large extent
in the hands of the Reds. All he needed were ’a few suitable
companions; the rest would be easy. There was a steep incline not far away
where west-bound trains always slowed down. One man could jump into the
engine-cab and make the driver pull up; the others would then go through the
train, coach by coach and compartment by compartment. It was the usual and
almost always successful method. A.J. expressed surprise that the passengers,
many of whom were doubtless well armed, did not put up a fight. The boy
laughed. “You must remember that it’s in the middle of the night,
when most of them are asleep and none of them feel particularly brave.
Besides, some of them do try their tricks, but we try ours first. If you
shoot straight once you don’t often have any trouble with the
rest.” He spoke quite calmly, and not without a certain half-humorous
relish. “After all,” he then went on, as if feeling instinctively
some need to defend himself, “it’s not a bad death—being
shot. Better than starvation or typhus. A good many people in this country, I
should reckon, have got to die pretty soon, and the lucky ones are those that
get a bullet through the heart.” Looked at in such a way, the situation
undoubtedly showed him in the guise of a public benefactor. And he added:
“I suppose you don’t feel you’re the sort of fellow to join
forces with me?”

When A.J. smiled and shook his head, the boy smiled back quite amicably.
“That’s all right—only I thought I’d just put it to
you. You look the sort of man I’d like to work with, that’s all.
Anyhow, I can help you with a bit of advice. There’s not a thousand to
one chance of your getting on board a train at Novochensk. The
station’s already cram-full. But if you go about three versts to the
east you’ll come to that incline I was talking about—where the
trains all slow up. There you might manage it.”

“I suppose the trains are full too.”

“Absolutely, but they’ll make room for you and your lady if
you shout that you’ve got food. Show them a loaf of bread and
they’ll pull you into the cars even if they murder you
afterwards.”

A.J. thanked him for the excellent-sounding advice, and after a little
further conversation the eighteen-year-old bandit shouldered his bundle and
departed. Following his suggestion, they reached the railway late that
evening at a point a few miles east of the railway station. It was too dark
to see exactly where they were, and they were just preparing to sleep on the
parched ground until morning when, from the very far distance, came the sound
of a train. It was a weird noise amidst the silence of the
steppes—rather like the breathing of a very tired and aged animal. Once
or twice, as the wind veered away, the sound disappeared altogether for a
time, and they listened for it intermittently for nearly half an hour before
they first saw the tiny sparkle of a headlight on the horizon. They perceived
then that they were on the ridge of some low downs, which the train would
have to surmount—that, presumably, being the incline they had been told
about. And soon, to confirm this assumption, the breathing of the engine
became a kind of hoarse pant as the rising gradient was encountered. More and
more asthmatic grew the panting, until, with a sudden sigh, it ceased
altogether, and a sharp jangle of brakes showed that the train was locked at
a standstill.

“Let’s walk down,” A.J. said, rapidly gathering up the
bundles. “They might take us on board—at any rate, we can
try.”

They walked along the track down the noticeable slope; evidently the
builders of the line had been unable to afford the evening out of the
gradient by means of cutting and embankment. The train, as they approached
it, looked in some commotion, and to avoid being seen too clearly in the
glare of the headlight they made a detour into the fields and returned to the
track opposite the third vehicle. They could see now that the train was
composed of some dozen box-cars of refugees and a single ordinary
passenger-coach next to the engine.

Scores of heads peered at them through the slats of the cars, and several
occupants, evidently taking A.J. for some wayside railway official, enquired
why the train had stopped. A.J. said he thought it was because the engine
could not manage the hill, and then, feeling that nothing was to be lost by
broaching the matter immediately, added: “I have a little bread and
some tea and sugar—could you make room for just the two of
us?”

“We cannot,” answered several, which did not sound
unreasonable in view of the fact that men were even perched on the buffers
between the cars. One or two voices, however, began to ask how much tea and
sugar he had.

The whole colloquy was then sharply interrupted by the sound of shots
proceeding from the passenger-coach. At once women began to shout and scream,
and a few of the men standing on the buffers actually dropped to the ground
and hid themselves beneath the cars. Other shots followed in rapid
succession; then suddenly a group of men appeared out of the darkness,
brandishing weapons and shouting. One carried a lantern and flashed it in
A.J.’s face, exclaiming in had Russian: “What are you doing here?
Didn’t you hear the order that no one was to get out?”

A.J. explained with an appropriate mixture of eloquence and simplicity
that they hadn’t got out, and that, on the contrary, they were a couple
of poor peasants trying their best to get in.

Another man then joined in the argument; he was clearly for shooting the
two of them out of hand, but first man restrained him with some difficulty.
“They are only peasants,” he said, and turning to A.J., added:
“You say you were only looking for a place on the train?”

A.J. assured him that this was so, and just as he had finished, a soft,
rather plaintive voice from the car above them cried out: “Yes, he is
speaking the truth, your honour—they were offering us tea and sugar if
we would make room for them.”

The man with the lantern grunted sharply. “Tea and sugar, eh? Come
on—hand them over.” Obedience seemed advisable in the
circumstances, and A.J. yielded up his precious commodities; after which the
men, with a few final shouts, hurried away into the darkness, leaving the
couple standing there by the side of the train, unharmed, but bereft of their
most potent bargaining power.

After a judicious interval the occupants of the train took courage and set
up a chorus of loud and indignant protests. The engine-whistle began a
continuously ear-piercing screech, while from the passenger-coach sprang half
a- dozen Red soldiers, armed with rifles and fixed bayonets. It soon became
known that the bandits had run off with a large quantity of money and had
also killed two Red guards on the train. The survivors, to excuse themselves,
estimated the number of bandits at twenty, but A.J. did not think there could
have been more than half that number.

Rather oddly the crowd of harassed and scared refugees were now inclined
to show sympathy towards A.J. and his companion. “They were going to
share their tea and sugar with us,” said the man with the plaintive
voice. And another man said: “It’s all very well to kill the
soldiers and steal the money, but to take away a poor man’s food is
something to be really ashamed of. Climb up, friends, and we’ll make
room for you somehow.”