Wolf of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  Bassanghor Khan was not among the nine.

  The Khirghiz chieftain leaned against the horse which Sheillil rode and sheathed his sword.

  “By the bones of mygrandsire,” he said solemnly, “by the grave of my father and by the faith of a hillman of the Black Khirghiz, I swear an oath. Witness, Tatars. The passes of the hills and the caravan paths shall be closed to the breed of the Yellow Hats. Their enemies will be my friends. I and my men will bring death and dishonor upon Dongkor Gelong and those who have betrayed us and slain Bassanghor Khan.”

  Sheillil leaned toward him shyly, yet with a trace of her customary boldness. Her voice was light, in spite of weariness, for Iskander Khan, who was the chieftain of her people, had said that she would be his wife and have honor for the service she had done him at Kashgar.

  “It was the plan of Dongkor Gelong,” she said softly, “to make war between the Jun-gar and the Khirghiz. It was for that he summoned Khlit, the Kha Khan, and you to Kashgar. Your safety lies in an alliance. So much I learned in the towns, for men spoke freely before me. Why not have peace between the hillmen and the Tatars?”

  Iskander Khan was silent in thought. Then he left Sheillil and went to where Khlit and Chagan were standing a little apart. He held up his hand.

  “Treachery has made bad blood between your people and mine, Khlit,” he said bluntly. “But the blood that was shed today has made that as naught. We have fought together, you and I, and my quarrel has been yours. Henceforth, if it is your will, the boundary between our lands shall be inviolate and there will be a welcome for you and the khans of the Jun-gar in my tent. I swear it.”

  Khlit nodded. By his tone Iskander Khan did not suspect how much the words he had spoken meant to the Cossack. From the time when the two from the Jun-gar had waited for the Khirghiz outside Kashgar, Khlit had hoped that they could come to an understanding.

  “The boundary will be inviolate, Iskander Khan,” he repeated gravely. “And I shall tell the kurultai of the Jun-gar there is peace.

  I give the pledge for myself and my people.”

  He went to his horse and loosened one of the saddlebags on the beast's back. He took the bulky bag to Iskander Khan.

  “Here is a gift,” he observed briefly, “to seal our new peace.”

  Chagan watched silently. But as the moonlight faded some hours later and the first tinge of dawn colored the peaks at their backs, a thought came to the sword-bearer, and he turned to Khlit, who was sitting beside him, nursing his sword.

  “Ho, lord,” he muttered sleepily, rubbing his sore legs, “it was a good day's work. But when we ride back to the kurultai how will you explain the oracle of the Dalai Lama that sent you to Talas?”

  Khlit laughed like one newly freed from care.

  “We will tell the truth, Chagan. Has not the oracle come true? It was the word of the Dalai Lama that we should find aid for the Jun-gar in the fifth moon of the Year of the Ape. Have we not found it?”

  As Khlit said, so it proved. Iskander Khan kept his word. Some said this was because of the wisdom of his wife, Sheillil of Samarkand; others, because Khlit had been his companion in battle. But others, who were wise, whispered that it was because Iskander Khan found in the saddlebag Khlit gave him the newly severed head of Dongkor Gelong.

  The Star of Evil Omen

  When a man touches the thread of Fate, he is like the blind who feel their way in darkness. His wisdom is less than the grain of sand in the Great Desert.

  When a warrior ventures into the unknown, he also is like to the blind. If he is foolhardy, his grave is dug before the close of the first day’s journey.

  Yet if a warrior is brave, he sees his path clearly. For even in the dark there are stars, some of good omen, some of evil.

  Chinese proverb

  At the mountain pass above the river Kerulon, Khlit, the Cossack, reined in his horse. It was the early seventeenth century, when the Kerulon marked the boundary between Chinese territory and the land of the Tatars, the scene of many hard-fought battles.

  In spite of his sixty-odd years, Khlit, known as the Cossack of the Curved Saber to his enemies, was not accustomed to waste thought upon his past. As he looked back, however, down the dark gorge to the river and the level steppe beyond, still warm under the rays of the setting sun, he rested his scarred hands on the peak of the saddle.

  It was his last look at the steppe that had been his home for several years. Such places were few in Khlit's life. Yet this Tatar steppe, just south of the waters of Lake Baikal, was much like the plains of his Cossack days, and therefore Khlit was meditative.

  He had chosen. And, having chosen, he had no regret. Of his own will he had given up the leadership, his place as Kha Khan, of the Jun-gar Tatars, who were the last survivors, except for some bandit tribes of the frontier, of the race of Genghis Khan.

  To Khlit's mind that had been the only way. He was a Christian, and the men of the Jun-gar were followers of Natagai or of the Dalai Lama. He had made enemies among the priests and the other khans. So long as there was fighting, his shrewdness, born of a dozen campaigns, won him respect.

  Now, he mused, the paladins of Tatary waxed fat as well-fed hunting dogs. They had horses and cattle in plenty. He had nothing.

  “There will be a kurultai,” Khlit had told the khans one evening, “a council of the chiefs.”

  Because they were curious, the khans had come to his kibitka without exception. Khlit, during his rule as Kha Khan, had never called a council unless an important event was forthcoming. So the khans had come, grim fighters of a warlike race, who had found kinship in the Cossack who had in his veins the blood of Genghis Khan and who wore the sword of a dead Tatar hero.

  He had done right. Khlit had no doubt about that. Once before this he had been the victim of jealousy in the Cossack encampment, and he had gone forth alone. Wandering, he had obeyed the call of his race—of men born to the saddle, accustomed to roving.

  Khlit's words to the Jun-gar chiefs had been few. He would not be the leader, he said, of men who had it in their heart to choose another. Let them select a younger man for Kha Khan.

  He had given back to them the metal ornaments of rank— the gold neckband and silver-chased belt and scabbard. They had taken them. Khlit, they knew, was old. There were deep lines in his lean face, although his back was straight when he sat in the saddle. The flesh was spare on his sloping shoulders.

  In Khlit's thoughts was the memory of those who had been his close companions in the battles with Chinese and Kallmarks. But Berang was the new Kha Khan. And burly Chagan, the sword-bearer, was hereditary attendant of the Kha Khan of the Jun-gar.

  Truly, he reasoned, it was well. He had ridden from the encampment that same night. Emotion and talk were for women. Yet Chagan had filled the beakers of the khans with tarasun. They had drunk with him the tarasun.

  “He is of our blood,” Berang swore, “and he has shared our meat and kumiss. Let him choose the best of our horses, men of Tatary, and riders to attend him.”

  Khlit had accepted no more than the one horse Chagan brought him—a mettled steppe pony. He was accustomed to go his way alone.

  It did not escape him that Berang, flushed with his new dignity, had been silent when he left the Tatar yurts. And Chagan had been moodily drunk. Not too drunk to hold his stirrup and touch his knee to his own breast in farewell, after the manner of the Tatars. Then it was that Khlit made the speech that lingered in the mind of the khans.

  “I have shared your bread and wine,” he said, “and one tent has sheltered us both. I have become rich in the kinship of brave men. When snow comes to the steppe, you shall have a gift from me. Such a gift as shall honor our friendship.”

  Word of Khlit's promise passed through the encampment. For, thought the khans, how could he send to them a gift after he was gone from the steppe? He had taken neither men nor gold. How was a gift to be gleaned from the bandit tribes of the borderland, or the sands of the Great Desert?

  The khans k
new that Khlit was not given to idle words. And, with the coming of snow, they remembered what he had said.

  Khlit, they supposed, would return to the territory of the Cossacks. He turned his horse, however, to the east—to the northern edge of the Great Desert which is called Gobi, beyond which is China. This was a new land, and he entered upon it with a light heart.

  Khlit started, as he sat his horse, noting that the sun had left the distant steppe. The cold of night gripped the gorge, and the Cossack dismounted. Tethering his horse in a thicket, he gathered some brush for a fire. Wrapping himself in his sheepskin cloak and saddlecloth, he sat by the fire, munching the dried beef that had been warmed against his horse's back under the saddle.

  This, with a drink of kumiss from the flask in his saddlebags, completed his meal.

  Truly, thought the Cossack dreamily, it was well to be afoot again. What other life was fit for a man than that with a horse's barrel between his knees, a pipe in his mouth, and open plains before him! Slaves sat by the hearths in the yurts. Swine lay in their wallow. To be at large was best. In this manner he had gone from the steppe to the mountains and to another steppe.

  Aye, it was good to feel the night wind in the face!

  China, he mused drowsily, was the land of treasure. He had heard there were khans who numbered followers by the thousand. Here there would be fighting, the sharp clash of swords, the taking of rich spoil. Here were men of wisdom who played high stakes—life and fortune. Soon he would see, with his own eyes, the Dragon Emperor that travelers had described—the land of the hat and girdle. Of the Yellow Banners, where even the gongs were gold and warriors traced their blood a thousand years.

  The way from Tatary to China lay along the hinterland of the desert of Gobi—a space peopled by wandering tribes of both races. Through this Khlit pushed as rapidly as possible, avoiding the caravan routes and keeping to the open steppe.

  Thus it was that he came abreast of the Togra Nor and its ravines. The Togra Nor, a mist-shrouded lake, lay among the defiles overlooking the northern caravan route. From the defiles a convenient point was offered for the barrancas—raids—of the steppe clans. Khlit, guiding his horse straight to the east, found himself among the rocks of the Togra.

  These were no ordinary rocks. Veiled in the customary blue haze of the Mongolian plains, they formed a waste of defiles, barren of the tufts of steppe grass, with occasional lakes in which were mirrored cold white mountain peaks. Unwilling to turn back, Khlit kept to his course, wending deeper in the purple ridges in spite of the uneasiness of his horse.

  It was the second day of his entrance into the Togra defiles that he saw the first human occupant of the place. On a rock peak a horseman stood outlined against the sky. A glance identified him to Khlit as one of the outlaw riders of the steppe. Khlit took no further notice of the man, who appeared not to have seen him, but reined in his horse at sight of smoke rising in a gorge near at hand.

  It was Summer, but the Mongolian steppe is never warm, and the Togra was chilled by its rock heights. No game was to be seen, and the Cossack had had no opportunity to replenish his stock of smoke-dried meat by use of his pistols. His horse had sensed the presence of an encampment, indicated to Khlit by the smoke, and, where an encampment was, forage might be obtained.

  Hence it was that Khlit trotted up the defile and came upon a yurt of rather more than the usual size. It was cleverly located in a bend in the ravine—some two dozen felt tents ranged in a clump of stunted larch. A woman, laying milk curds to dry upon a flat stone, ran to the tents at his approach.

  Khlit noted that a large number of horses were grazing in a grassy stretch further along the defile—a number too large for the size of the yurt. The fact that they were watched by an armed rider tended to confirm his suspicion that the beasts had come to their present position not altogether lawfully. This, however, was a common matter on the steppe, where horses were wealth.

  It was the appearance of the khan who stepped from the tent into which the woman had run that excited his interest. The man was of medium height but so broad that he seemed of unusual size. His heavy hands hung well to his booted knees. A black silk cap trimmed with fur and a red shawl around the waist of his horsehide coat indicated that he was a plainsman of Khirghiz descent. His broad head had a lopsided air, owing to a missing ear, probably carved off by an unlucky sword stroke.

  The khan's slant eyes were set wide apart, and his heavy features indicated mingled good nature and dangerous temper. All this Khlit, who was wise in the ways of men, noted as the other came forward and took his stirrup. When he dismounted, the khan touched him courteously on the chest.

  “Greeting, brother rider of the steppe,” his voice rumbled forth in enormous volume. “Why have you come to the yurt of Dokadur Khan? Ha! May I feed the devil's swine, but you have a good horse. How came you past my sentries?”

  His glance, good-natured and shrewd, swept Khlit. The Cossack had discarded his Tatar clothes for sheepskin coat, leather belt, and horsehide boots. Even the owl's feather denoting his descent from Genghis Khan he no longer wore. In the eyes of Dokadur Khan he might be a well-to-do horseman of Tatar speech but unknown descent. Wherefore the Khirghiz was curious. Khlit had heard of his companion, a bandit of the Togra.

  “The sentries were drunk if they saw me not,” he responded carelessly. “I wish to see the noted khan whom men call Dokadur. Hence I am here.”

  Other men had gathered around the two, with some women in the background that Khlit guessed to be captives. The burly khan surveyed him agape.

  “Ho!” he muttered loudly. “That is a good jest. For the fools of the caravans will travel a day's detour to keep from my yurt. Your name?”

  “Matters not.”

  The khan's black eyes sparkled with curiosity.

  “You came from Tatary, eh?” he hazarded clumsily. “Perchance you can find ripe picking in the caravans. Camels can be cut out by one rider, and the Manchu guards are fools.”

  “It may be. The Togra is not far from the China frontier?” “Two days fast riding is the Liao River, and a hunting pavilion of the emperor. When the World Honored One—may his arrival in purgatory be speedy—hunts, there is rare spoil for the plucking.” Dokadur Khan ushered Khlit into his tent and seated his guest by the side of the fire, sunk in the center of the earth floor. At his side a woman poured out the tarasun—fermented mare's milk— from a barrel. The other warriors crowded the enclosure. But

  Khlit, familiar with the ways of the steppe, knew that he had nothing to fear as long as he was in the yurt of the khan. A guest by the fireside is inviolable.

  “You like not the Dragon Emperor?” He tugged at his long mustache thoughtfully.

  “Nay; how should I?” roared the other. “When his guards cut us down as if we were leper beggars by the highway.”

  “Yet your yurt is near the Liao.”

  “The Togra is a rare nest for the outlaws. Plundering is good. Nay, there is talk of a new hunt of the Lord of Ten Thousand Years—may he die without honor!” Dokadur Khan glanced sidewise at Khlit, as if to observe the effect of his speech, as he fondled a hooded falcon on a perch beside him. “I have sent the word to the outer districts of the Togra.”

  “Hey,” laughed Khlit, for it was his custom to learn what others knew, “then your men wax fat on the slain game?”

  “And on the hunters,” chuckled his companion. “A plump mandarin adorns himself with more silks and jewels than a dozen merchants.”

  “Stripped of his clothing,” added Khlit shrewdly, “the mandarin fetches a good ransom.”

  “Eh, that is true,” grinned the khan.

  The suspicion had faded from his eyes, which had become moist from the heady drink. Here was a meet soul to drink with, whatever his name. He ordered the kettle of mutton, which had been preparing, to be placed between himself and his guest. Around them grouped the listening warriors and behind them the women. The dirty urchins sought place as best they could, while the dogs whined
expectantly against the tent felt.

  It was the evening meal of the yurt.

  Khlit was accustomed to observe his surroundings keenly.

  Hence it was that he still lived in a time when few men survived middle age. His wits, sharpened by conflict with many races, had grown more alert with the years that weakened the vigor of his sword-arm.

  So, before the boys who had brought water and cloths to cleanse their hands had departed, he had assured himself that the followers of Dokadur Khan were men above the average of the steppe bands, that the khan himself enjoyed complete mastery over them; that his rule embraced the entire Togra, and that, for all his protestations of enmity to the Chinese, his loyalty was for sale to whoever paid best.

  From Khlit and the khan the mutton kettle had passed to the men and then to the women. By the time it reached the urchins, there was little but bones and sinew. Khlit noticed that one boy had armed himself with a bare thigh bone and was fighting the dogs with it for the morsels they had ravished from the mess. On an impulse the Cossack tossed the child his half-consumed portion.

  The boy caught it eagerly, laying about him sturdily to drive away the dogs, and vanished through the tent flap with a surprised glance at his benefactor. Dokadur Khan grunted. But the act had caused Khlit's pistols to flash in the firelight.

  “Those be good weapons,” observed Dokadur Khan, scanning them enviously. “I will buy them.”

  “Nay,” Khlit laughed. “I will not sell.”

  “There be two, of Turkish workmanship. I will give a horse for them.”

  The Cossack shook his head. He was not willing to part with the serviceable weapons—and still less willing to have them in the hands of the Khirghiz. The other growled.

  “Then you are one without wit. I have said I desire the pistols. Is my will a light thing to be put aside?”

  “And I have said I will keep them.”

  Dokadur Khan puffed at his pipe sulkily. Khlit regarded him calmly.

  “So long as you are within the yurt,” muttered the other, “I cannot lay hand on you. It is written. But, when you leave the