by Harold Lamb
The great mound rose about two hundred feet from the plain—steeper and higher on the west, whence they had approached, than elsewhere. The summit, roughly circular, measured sixty paces across. All round it the ground rose and fell, as if a gigantic mole had burrowed there. Gurka counted nine distinct small mounds, so old that tamarisk trees grew on their slopes.
In the center lay the fallen stones of a small, square structure whose inner dome, built on more solid foundations, stood intact, although the entrance gaped open.
"What birds roosted here?" Gurka asked curiously.
About the dome gray, weather-cracked poles leaned crazily. Bits of ragged clothing hung from their tops. By the entrance strange objects had been placed—a dried-up goatskin, some tarnished silver armlets, bones of animals, and even a broken pistol coated with rust. Gurka entered the round chamber under the dome and found nothing at all. The stone flags of the floor were bare; the wall had no windows and the hollow of the dome revealed nothing except the traces of whitewash.
"It's not a watchtower," he remarked to Koum. "No man could stand on that dome."
Koum shook his head. He had been staring intently at the array of curios by the door without touching them.
"It was made for the dead," he said, striking a stone slab with his boot. "A grave, here—lots outside."
"But they call it a kurgan."
"A Tartar word—means a tomb or old castle. You ride by these mounds all over the steppe. No one knows who built them. This here is the grave of a holy man."
He motioned for Gurka to come out, and carefully rubbed over the print of their boots at the entrance.
"The men of the caravans left these gifts—" he pointed to the rags and the objects on the stones. "Some have been here a long time—the bowl of barley only a few days. Don't touch them—it's said to bring bad luck."
And, after sampling the water in the well by the tomb, he led the pack-horse out of the mounds. A stone's throw down the slope of the Kurgan, in a sandy depression screened by tamarisks, he dumped the loads.
"We'll have to carry the water down here, and we can't watch the road," Gurka objected. "Up there, the tomb is dry and warm—a better place."
"Worse," grunted Koum, opening the packs.
"How worse? What the devil ails it?" The Hungarian waited in vain for a reply. "The dead won't bite us, will they?"
"They might." Koum began to root up tamarisk brush for the fire. "Vampires do—aye, and the spirit wolves."
Gurka only swore fiercely, and Koum went on preparing supper quietly. He could not explain to the Hungarian why he would not sleep within the mounds of the Kurgan, because it was not clear in his own mind.
"Look here," Gurka remarked when they were eating the barley soup. "Don't you think your guardian, Saint Nicholas, could watch out for your tender skin if you slept up there?"
Koum turned this over in his mind.
"Well, he could. But I'd be a fool to go into trouble."
The big hunter did all the work that evening, roping and currying the horses and setting up the small tent before the fire went out. He felt at peace with his surroundings, secure and drowsy. The uneasiness that had troubled him in Sarachikof had vanished. When he had finished he arranged his blanket in the sand and got out his saddle pack.
Gurka did not want to sleep. He went up to the Kurgan's summit, pacing restlessly among the mounds. The sickle of the new moon stood behind the domed tower. Off in the west a yellow gleam marked the line of the plain. The throbbing drone of insects came up from the grass—hushed at times by the whisper of a breeze.
He stretched himself on a mound, picking out the form of the Great Bear among the stars. They glowed like living eyes. The tomb looked larger than in the day. It was a strange place, the Kurgan, he thought. He knew that Moslems often were buried close to the grave of a holy man. But these mounds did not look like a cemetery. Whatever men lay under him had been buried all at the same time, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. Was this where Tamerlane had fought a battle? Or unknown pagans?
In the black entrance of the tower he thought that something moved. At once his ears strained to catch a sound.
And near him he heard a subdued snuffling and breathing. As if some animal were trying to free itself, and come out of the ground.
Suddenly a wailing and moaning burst upon his ears. Gurka sprang to his feet and ran down the slope of the mound, out of the Kurgan. The weird melody was coming from the tent, and at his sudden approach it ceased.
"What's the matter?" asked Koum's voice.
"Nothing," Gurka laughed.
He had forgotten Koum's cherished possession, carried about in the hunter's saddlebag. Koum had not played the bagpipe for weeks, but now he sat with one leg outstretched, the leather bag pressed in his arms.
In the full light of the next day the Kurgan looked both dusty and desolate, and Gurka wondered why he had fancied that it held life within it. Koum, who had wasted no thought at all on the mounds during the night, now wandered around on foot, to look at the sites where caravans had made camp. He pointed out that they formed a kind of ring about the Kurgan, because all were just beyond arrow shot from the grave mounds.
"They had to water many horses, many camels," he said. "Aye, they carried the water rather than sleep up there."
"Then they were fools. Look here. This Kurgan is older than Islam— the mounds were not made by Moslems at all. Why should they fear it and make offerings to it?"
Koum shook his head. Why did the men born in the steppe fear the old and unseen? Why did they make gifts to the spirits of this barren place?
"Well," he observed, "what made you run away after the last light?"
"You lie, you cow-herder," Gurka flushed. "I was half asleep when your accursed pipe sounded."
"Don't go to sleep up there, after sundown. You wouldn't wake up."
The next day the two Cossacks rode east along the caravan trail to look for signs of the tribes. They found nothing except the monotonous track outlined by round camel pads and dung. After twenty miles the road turned south, toward the blue line of distant hills. Here they crossed the dry bed of a river, and beyond it they came upon the scene of a fight.
Scattered among the gray bushes and sprawled between boulders lay the bodies of two dozen men—tatters of wool and fragments of leather hanging upon bleached bones. Except for the skeletons, only some bits of rope and sacks were to be seen. Everything else had been carried off. Tracks of wolves and the claw marks of scavenger birds on the ground showed why the flesh had vanished from the bodies.
Koum went over the ground with interest, explaining that this had been a raid on a party of horsemen or a caravan camped by the river before the late Summer heat had dried it up. The raiders had taken away everything, except the worthless garments of the slain. Even boots and belts were missing.
"Tartars did not do it," he said. "They would bury the dead toward Mecca."
"Who was it, then?"
"I don't know. Someone from afar."
Nothing more was to be seen at the river, and after breathing their horses they rode back to the Kurgan—Koum pointing out how other caravans had circled wide of the place of the massacre.
Several days passed without a sign of other men in the plain. At Sar-achikof the Cossacks had been told that two caravans were on the way from Khiva, but they were not sighted from the Kurgan. Gurka began to grow restless, and Koum took him off antelope hunting.
They rode into the grasslands toward the north, where the antelope grazed—gray shadows drifting along the brown earth. The animals would not let them come within range, but Koum turned aside on his pony and disappeared into a gully.
Gurka, on the swift-paced white horse, circled back to get behind the herd. He rode in toward them at a gallop and the antelope, instead of running straight away, fled in a wide circle that brought them closer to where Koum had hidden himself with the musket. Usually the hunter, firing from a rest, would bring down an antelope, and
when Gurka came up he would be cutting its throat with his long knife.
"Eh," he sighed, "if we only had a golden eagle and dogs, that would be sport."
"An eagle will not pull down a running deer."
"Nay, it flies over the antelope's head, beating with its wings. The antelope turns and twists to escape, and the dogs come up and pull it down. That is the way!"
To Gurka this chasing of foolish antelope seemed a child's sport, and he would not have done it if they had not needed the meat. When Koum showed him tracks of wild horses, he only shrugged indifferently, and in the camp at the Kurgan he did nothing. This did not trouble Koum, who was accustomed to making the fires and cooking. The experienced hunter knew that if trouble or hardship came, Gurka would take the lead at once, and would do the work of three men. But he knew that the younger man was growing weary of sitting in one place and staring at the sky. If only Gurka could have a frolic with the sword—a long ride and a brisk fight. Since there was nothing of the kind to be done the old hunter tried craftily to draw Gurka into talk about the wars in Europe.
"It can't be," he remarked, "as you say. Now at that battle--what is it called?"
"Austerlitz."
"Well, you say thousands and thousands of soldiers were crowded together on your side, in companies and brigades and the like. And they marched ahead against the other fellows, the French, all in step in brigades like that. Then the French pounded them with cannon, all the day, until half of them turned their toes up. What kind of soldiers were these soldiers of yours?"
"Good men." Gurka thought of the dogged gray infantry, and especially of the horse guards, all noble-born, all mounted on black horses who had cast away their lives before the lines of French guns.
"Then why did they act like duraks, like chuckleheads? If the other fellows were too strong, they ought to have looked around and found some shelter and pounded with their muskets."
"How could they, when they were ordered to advance?" Gurka smiled.
"They could do it in Cossack fashion—ride to the side and dismount and clear the way with muskets. Then get to the saddle and chase the other fellows."
"Our cavalry had no muskets, only sabers and pistols. Besides, we could not turn off, because we were all crowded together. You've never seen a battle, Koum. The generals make plans, and maneuver the masses of soldiers. If every man did what he wanted and never obeyed an order, the army would become a mob—running away."
"Well," Koum pondered this. "Your generals did make plans and you obeyed orders, but you ran away like a mob."
"Bonaparte was leader of the French—he's a magician. Our generals made mistakes."
"Weren't they Cossacks?"
"Cossacks! Don't you know that three emperors commanded at Auster-litz? Bonaparte, and the Emperor of Austria, and Alexander of Russia."
"Nay." Koum nodded understanding. "Well, that's why forty thousand were killed. A little officer, a sotnik out here can get forty men killed if he makes a mistake. An emperor can do a thousand times as much."
Gurka did not laugh. Sometimes at night visions of that foggy day of Austerlitz seized upon his mind and drove away sleep.
"Weren't the Cossacks there at all? They didn't march in step crowded together like cattle."
"No—" Gurka smiled—"they were on the wings, and they got off well enough."
"That's it. They are better than the soldiers because they're wolves— they strike and slash, and you can't corner them in front of cannon. If an army of Cossacks went against this Bonaparte of yours, they would tear at him, and pull him down, even if he is a magician." Koura fingered his bagpipe reflectively. "Aye, if you had given the command at Austerlitz to the Cossacks, you would not have lost all your lands. But why didn't you stay in the army, instead of coming out to the frontier?"
"I came—" he laughed—"to look for a pot of gold under a rainbow. Count Gurka of Zaratz, fortune seeker—now occupied in killing flies on a dusty grave. Requiescat in pace!"
"I've seen rainbows," Koum observed, "but the gold is all back in the cities."
As if to ridicule both of them, the steppe itself answered them that afternoon, when a veil of dust raised by distant winds hung over the plain. Upon the particles of sand in the air the strong sun beat, and above the haze forms began to take shape. White domes appeared against the glare of the sky, and light flashed upon the waves of a mighty river. Shadows of beasts and men seemed to walk upon the waves. They were like a procession of dead souls, making their endless way through the elements without a Charon to guide them. The Cossacks came out to stare at the pageant in the sky. They saw laden camels and masses of horsemen threading through the blue river.
"It is the myzga," said Koum. "Eh, there is your rainbow; but down under it you would find the carrion we saw by the dry river."
Gurka gazed in silence. It was his first encounter with a mirage, and this impalpable city with its river rushing through the air stirred him deeply. Koum, who believed that the myzga was a procession of dead souls moving from one resting place to another in the sky, tried to decide if the omen meant good or evil.
"Hard to tell," he mused. "We'll meet men and camels, and we'll go to a city by a river."
The next morning, however, revealed nothing more than the familiar gray plain. The Cossacks went off after antelope and bagged one far to the north. It had been a hard chase and they rode back slowly. When they rounded the last hillocks and glanced at their camp, they drew rein quickly. A caravan had come up and occupied the Kurgan.
The new arrivals were camped within the mounds, about the dome of the tomb. Below the slope groups of camels knelt, heavy bales rising on either side of them. Close to the tomb the round summit of a desert tent showed.
"From the east," muttered Koum. "By God, they've gone into the Kurgan."
Going forward at a foot pace, he studied the men working about the camels. Instead of turbans or kalpaks, they wore round caps, and their voices sounded in a meaningless sing-song.
"Kitaians," the big Cossack muttered. "Men from China."
The loads of the caravan seemed to be tea or rice, and since Koum could not speak with the Chinese camel men, he dismounted to go up the Kurgan to the tent. As he did so, he heard Gurka hiss softly, and looked up. Between two of the mounds lounged a half dozen men with long muskets. They wore long cotton and quilted khalats, and the toes of their short riding boots curled up. In their shawl girdles were thrust long curved knives, and Koum bristled like a dog at sight of wolves--for these tall warriors were Turkomans, the most treacherous breed in the steppes.
"Too late to ride off," Gurka whispered. Nothing was more certain than that the tribesmen might shoot down two Cossacks who turned their backs to flee. "Go on up. We'll talk with the chieftain."
"Take the horses," Koum assented. And he hailed the men above. "Ohai, my brothers. Where is the bimbashi?"
One of the Turkomans spat with deliberation and leaned forward.
"What do you seek, Kozaki?"
"We are guards," Gurka put in swiftly, "of this place. We were sent here by the Agha Khan of the Russians, and over there is our camp."
Someone shouted within the Kurgan, and the warriors motioned the Cossacks to come up. The small eyes of the tribesmen fastened greedily on the white horse with the red leather saddle. They made no effort to stand aside, and Gurka, who was leading, thrust one out of his path. The man's retort was an oath like the flicker of a knife, but as Gurka went on without turning his head, he followed with his hand on his knife hilt.
Koum saw that more Turkomans were gathered about the Cossacks' tent, ransacking it, but he said nothing. Gurka was approaching the caravan tent--a great pavilion of white felt with the entrance flap tied down. At least a dozen guards stood about this at regular intervals, and one of them motioned the Cossack away angrily.
"Over there is the bimbashi."
The leader of the caravan was sitting on a rug in the shadow of the tomb, with a score of Turkomans lying around him, sle
eping or pretending to. He wore a striped silk khalat and his shaven head bore no covering of any kind. His broad face, pitted with smallpox scars, turned to one side, like a vulture's, because he had one blind white eye. A necklace hung down upon his greasy bare chest—a strange necklace made of dried human fingers and women's ears strung between boar's tusks and huge gleaming opals. His broad leather belt was studded with flashing emeralds and rubies of great size.
Gurka, walking up to him, noticed that he carried these tokens of his victims, and evidence of his wealth for all to see. His weapons were two long pistols, the stocks inlaid with silver and ivory, laid on the rug upon the side of his good eye. A man, evidently, who liked to make display of his power.
"Keifunuz eyi-mi, bimbashi?" Gurka greeted him. "How is thy health, O Chieftain?"
The man on the rug responded in the same fluent Turkish. "It is good. What are you doing here, Cossack?"
"By command of the Agha Khan at Sarachikof, we watch the caravans. We seek news of raiders, for the Agha Khan wishes to protect the Khiva merchants."
"With two men—with one gun?" The pock-marked face twisted in a sneer. "Look. I have sixty men and I fight, many times."
"Yes. What is thy name?"
"Who does not know Ismail Bey the Bokharian?"
"What goods hast thou, Ismail Bey? Tea?"
"Tea, and other things. Rich—more than gold." The Bey waved his hand at the white felt tent.
"What is in it?"
Ismail smiled.
"How foolish are thy words, Cossack! Shall I tell thee what is only for the ear of the Agha Khan? Nay, I think you are scoundrels!" He considered a moment. "But be at peace—go to your tent."
Gurka turned indifferently to stroke the soft muzzle of his horse and in doing so he glanced inquiringly at Koum.
The big Cossack looked thoughtful. Many things about the caravan struck him as curious—the Chinese camel men, the camels themselves half again as many as the loads, the strong force of lawless Turkomans, the camp within the usually inviolate Kurgan, and the violation of his own quarters. He was worried about his bagpipe, which he had seen the warriors passing from hand to hand with interest. Reaching back, he freed the carcass of the antelope from his saddle and laid it before the knees of Ismail Bey.