III   THE FIRING SQUAD

AFTER Captain Shimilin’s demand for a million rubles for the Ataman Zorogoff, Katerin and her father knew that they were no longer safe. They had a fortune hidden in the old log house. It consisted of packets of Imperial rubles which had been smuggled from Kirsakoff’s bank before the looters had begun their raids in the city. The soldiers would come now and strip the house of all its contents to find the money. And if they did find the money, Michael and Katerin would be accused of opposing Zorogoff’s government and dealt with as many of the friends of the Kirsakoffs had already been dealt with—a secret firing squad in a prison yard at dawn.

As Michael had said, to surrender the fortune would not mean safety. Others had done that, only to be destroyed so that no embarrassing claims might be made against Zorogoff in the future. Zorogoff was but a brigand chief, maintaining an army at the expense of the wealthy people in his district and using the peasants and former workmen to build up his new autocracy—destroy the aristocrats with the workers and then enslave the workers who had done the business for him. Thus he played the poor against the rich and controlled both. And it was his purpose to leave none living who understood his aims.

In Michael’s room there was a stove of tile built into the wall. It reached to the ceiling, and stuck out into the room like the half of a supporting pillar—a great black column faced with blackened zinc sheets of half-cylinders. At the bottom was a small iron door to admit the wood, with a circular damper through which the flames might be seen when there was fire in the stove. But the Kirsakoffs did not use this stove. They used their scant supply of fuel in the stove in Katerin’s room, not only to conserve their heat in the most comfortable room, but to reduce the amount of smoke visible from the chimneys outside during the day.

The stove in Michael’s room had been selected as the hiding place for the Imperial notes which had been smuggled from the bank weeks before. It was Katerin’s idea that the packets could be stacked against the tiles on the outside of the stove, and the sheets of zinc replaced. And unless a fire was maintained in the stove for a time long enough to heat the tiles to the danger point, the paper money would not be injured. If the Cossacks came to search for the money, she planned to light a smoldering fire in the stove. And by night, a couple of candles in behind some pieces of charred wood, would throw out light through the damper so that it would appear that the stove was burning.

The packets of rubles were now concealed in a lot of discarded peasants’ clothing. The various garments had been distributed through the house, but Katerin had gathered them in her father’s room, and was ripping them open, while Michael was preparing the stove for the money by removing the zinc facing against the tiles.

It was the evening of the day on which Shimilin had visited them. Katerin was ripping open old gray coats which smelled of stables and were covered with patches, breeches contrived out of cloth and the old skins of animals, uncouth jerkins which had originally been padded with cotton against the cold of many long-gone Siberian winters.

The windows were blanketed to keep the candlelight from being seen in the street below, and father and daughter talked in low tones as they worked, while Wassili and the old woman below in the kitchen kept a sharp watch against intruders.

Michael stood on a bench and worked out the screws which held the zinc plates in place against the wall. It was now so cold in the room that his breath showed white in the light of the candles, for they had let the fire in his room die early, and the door to Katerin’s room was kept closed so that the heat might not escape from it.

“Be careful lest the metal sheets fall and make a clatter,” warned Katerin as she stripped open an old coat, and released a shower of packets of rubles of large denomination, from which the face of the dead Czar smiled up at her wistfully from the engraving. The rubles made a colorful pile at her feet—blues, crimsons, and yellows, some worth a hundred rubles, some worth a thousand.

“Now!” said Michael, as he lifted off the top plate. “We are ready for the hiding—and my back is nearly broken, too. May Zorogoff break his neck if he ever finds where it is hidden!”

Katerin got to her feet and looked up at the rude clay tiles and the stone blocks mortared in behind them. The fire did not touch the tiles—they merely retained the heat and radiated it slowly into the room. And between the stone blocks and the tiles there was an air space, wider in some places than in others, so that the thickness of the packets of money would have to be gauged for the crevices they were to fill.

Katerin began filling the spaces under the zinc plates above the stove door. Then the plate above was put into place, and the aperture behind it packed with money. They worked more than an hour before they had disposed of the bulk of the packets. They could hear the calling of the sentries in the streets. At times Michael and Katerin stopped and listened to the cracking of the frost in the timbers of the house, and once they put out the candles when they thought they heard the gate to the courtyard being opened cautiously. But the noise proved to be but a whim of the wind with the boards hanging loosely from the roof of the old wagon-shed.

When all the zinc plates were back in place, Katerin took a piece of candle, and putting charred sticks of wood back into the stove, she so arranged the candle that when she lighted the wick and closed the iron door, a flickering light appeared through the holes in the door.

“We have a fire in the stove,” she said to her father. “Who is to look for paper rubles in a burning stove? When the soldiers come to search, you have a fire going in an instant. And the wood can burn and not harm the rubles.”

“We could not do better,” said Michael. “Your wits will save us yet. And that money is all that stands between you and beggary—even I, alive, without the fortune, could not save you from hunger and cold. There is your treasure! It must be saved to you, my daughter, at all cost.”

“I care only for you, my father,” said Katerin. “And now you are tired and worn—to bed, for we must keep our strength and have our sleep, even though disaster crouches in the future.”

She kissed him, and went to her own room to get behind the blankets which curtained the window and to blow a tiny hole in the frost coating the pane. Outside, the night was brilliant, with a haloed moon throwing a silvery sheen over the glistening plains, with a tree here and there doubly black from its shadow on the powdery snow. Out in the end of the street the fire of the sentries was burning redly. It threw into heavy relief the black forms squatting about the glowing coals.

“Merciful God!” she whispered in prayer. “Are we to be saved? Help must come to us, or we perish!”

She closed the blankets and went back to her father’s room. She made sure that he was properly covered, kissed him tenderly, and took away the candle, for she had known him to lie all night smoking cigarettes till the dawn by candle light.

In her own room once more, she prayed before the icon, and prepared for bed. Worn out with the worry of the day and anxiety for what the new day might bring, she finally fell asleep.

But the next day came and went without any word or sign from the Ataman that he was dissatisfied with the report of Captain Shimilin. Several days passed, and still there was nothing to indicate that Zorogoff would annoy them again. Michael began to have hopes that something would happen which might distract the attention of the usurper from them. But every hour they lived in expectation of another visit from Captain Shimilin—and no news came that the American troops were moving up the railroad to give protection to the people.

Michael seemed to grow weaker as time passed. He fretted under the restraint of what was practically imprisonment. He worried constantly about the future for Katerin’s sake. He devised many a scheme by which they were to escape from the city, only to abandon each one when Wassili returned from buying food in the market and reported that Zorogoff’s soldiers were guarding every outlet from Chita.

Among other plans, Michael had thought of getting a droshky or a sledge and attempting to dash through fog or darkness, down the line of the railroad to the Manchurian border. He thought it might be possible to get into some Manchurian city, or to board a train bound toward Vladivostok at some point along the railroad which was outside the zone controlled by Zorogoff.

But while it might be possible to get through the cordons of Cossacks around the city, either by eluding them or bribing them, Michael knew that he might be betrayed before leaving the house at all. To carry out such a plan, it would be necessary to take a droshky driver into confidence, and though he might accept a large sum in payment, he might also betray Michael. For Zorogoff’s spies were everywhere.

Then it was that Captain Shimilin returned to the house where the Kirsakoffs were concealed. His soldiers came pounding at the gate of the courtyard one day just before noon, and the Cossack captain once more faced Michael and Katerin in the room with the blue carpet, the silver samovar, and the battered candelabra.

Shimilin was frankly arrogant now, and he looked at Katerin with an air of bold assurance that, no matter what she might say, it would be of no avail to her. His pair of Mongol soldiers came with him, their eyes hungrier than ever for the things in the room. Katerin involuntarily pulled her sable coat closer about her when she saw the greedy gaze of the precious pair upon it. She had decided to be outwardly gracious as long as she could. But she was ready to stand out against the demands of the Ataman, as expressed by Shimilin, as long as she could, and then abide by the consequences.

Shimilin entered without a word, threw off his coat, and lighted a cigarette. It was plain that his course of action was settled, and that he knew perfectly what he would do from first to last. And his air indicated that he would stand no trifling.

Michael sat by the table. He had been playing at solitaire when Shimilin arrived, and the cards were still spread out on the board. Katerin had agreed with her father that she should handle the situation, for the old man might be trapped by Shimilin into saying something which would be used by the Cossack as an excuse for arresting the old general. Zorogoff had his own methods for giving a tinge of legitimacy to his unwarranted actions and justifying himself in the eyes of his soldiers. And Shimilin knew what Zorogoff demanded now.

“And what have you come for this time?” asked Katerin, as Shimilin continued to sit silently and smoke his cigarette.

“The Ataman will take no more excuses,” said Shimilin. “I talked with him about you and your father, but he would heed neither me nor your protests that you have no money for him.”

“You mean that the Ataman expects us to provide a fortune for him? And that having taken all we possess, you come back wanting more money?” demanded Katerin.

“That is what I have come for. I am sorry that I have to put you to the trouble, but——”

“Perhaps if I should talk to Zorogoff,” suggested Katerin.

“You can only talk to the Ataman with money,” said Shimilin. He spoke without belligerency, almost apologetically, yet there was no doubt that he was completely in earnest.

“My answer to that—I am dumb,” said Katerin. She sat down near her father, and folded her hands in an attitude of helpless resignation.

“You know of some of the things that have happened here since the Ataman began to rule,” replied Shimilin. “I can tell you that the dumb have been made to speak for Zorogoff. This is a matter that you would do well to consider with great care.”

Michael picked up one of the cards before him, and resumed his game, as if what was being said held no interest for him.

Katerin leaned forward from the bench and looked into the black eyes of the Cossack.

“This is a matter that I have considered,” she said slowly. “I have given thought to it much longer than you suppose—and I have considered that you, who are a Cossack, might even kill Russians by order of a Mongol chief. I am wondering if you have thought of that, Captain Shimilin, and——”

Shimilin sprang to his feet, his face flushed and his eyes menacing.

“Take care what you say about the Ataman!”

Katerin smiled.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I also understand what you seek. It is to have it to say that we insult the Ataman. If calling him a Mongol is an insult, that is his affair—we only speak the truth, and if the truth be against him as he sees it and he resents it, we have nothing to do with that. I am not making little of him for his blood or his race. There have been many great men among his people, and he is of royal line. But it is to you, Captain Shimilin, that I am speaking. My father and I have always been friends of the Cossacks. Now you put a Mongol into power here. Do you expect him to give you what we Russians have always given you? The rank of free men? Even our Czar was Ataman of all the Cossacks. Have you not learned to rule in your own way?”

As Katerin went on, her confidence grew. She saw that there was shame as well as anger in Shimilin.

“We Cossacks held up the throne on the ends of our lances,” said Shimilin doggedly. “We have our own master now, and we ask no advice from you or your father.”

“Your own master?” Asked Katerin with gentle irony. “If you are your own masters—why not a Cossack?”

“This is our country, and we shall rule it as we wish.”

“As you wish now? And how long before the Mongol will be ready to dispense with Cossack lances and turn your country, as you call it now, over to those who are closer to him in blood?”

“You forget,” raged Shimilin, “that the Ataman protects you—and that you must give him help with money, as there is none in your family who can aid him with a sword!”

“Tribute or death!” cried Katerin. “Is that protection? And if a Russian cannot pay, the Mongol gets a Cossack to kill us! Do you think that if I could wear a sword I would take service under Zorogoff at those terms—and help to destroy my own race?”

“Your father ruled here with the help of Cossacks,” retorted Shimilin. “We paid for the bread of majesty with our lives and our service—and killing Russians is no new business for us—eh, Michael Kirsakoff? How of that, old one? Did we not get well schooled in killing Russians in your time?”

“True!” cried Michael, turning to look at Shimilin. “But you were in the service of Russians. Think well of that. And those you killed broke the law, or had killed in their own turn, with their hand lifted against their fellow Russians or against the throne. The law is the law and justice is justice. Men are not all just, as we were not always just. But what law have we broken here in this house against your Ataman, that you should threaten us because we have no fortune?”

Shimilin gave no reply.

“Do you see no difference between the Czar and a Mongol princeling?” asked Katerin.

Shimilin turned to his soldiers. “Wait outside for me,” he commanded with a gesture of dismissal. “I will call you when you are needed.”

The two men with rifles went outside and closed the door behind them.

Shimilin sat down again in an effort to compose himself. “I did not wish my men to hear the Ataman insulted,” he began. “I have come here by order of Zorogoff to take your money—all of it. It is only to be a loan and you will lose nothing in the end. This is my advice—give your money to me. I will promise you safety.”

He was frankly conciliatory. It appeared that he wished to cover his chagrin over what Katerin and her father had said and to put himself in a better light with them by a tacit agreement with them that he had no stomach for the business.

“And if we had money and we gave it,” said Katerin, “how do we know that we would not be destroyed to hide the debt, as has happened to others?”

“Then it is that you do not trust Zorogoff,” said Shimilin.

Katerin laughed lightly. “Those who have trusted him are dead. He has taken fortunes before—and then the firing squad. What need has he to destroy us? We should be safe because we are poor.”

Shimilin glanced at the door. He leaned forward and whispered, “Then trust me. Turn over your money to me—and I promise safety. On my word as a Cossack! Come!”

Michael turned quickly and looked at Shimilin in surprise, but Katerin gave her father a glance of caution. She suspected that Shimilin was trying to trap them.

“You must trust us, Captain Shimilin. We have no fortune for Zorogoff or any other man.”

Shimilin scowled in disappointment, and seemed to have more to say, but evidently thought better of it.

“You will have a glass of tea with us,” said Michael. “My house is poor, but no man goes from it without——”

“No!” shouted Shimilin. “I will not have it from you. You do not trust me!” and he stepped to the door and flung it open. The two soldiers came back into the room.

“Kirsakoff, you must go with these men,” said Shimilin.

“What!” cried Michael. “I am to go? Where am I to go?”

“Before the Ataman. It is his orders,” said Shimilin quietly, and folded his arms.

“Does this mean that my father has been arrested?” gasped Katerin, staring in horror at the Cossack.

“Call it what you like,” grunted Shimilin.

“But arrested for what? For being poor? You mean that my father is to be taken away by soldiers and no charge is made against him?” pressed Katerin, now aware that disaster had come.

“Get ready to go, and say no more, Kirsakoff,” said Shimilin. “I shall stay here with your daughter.”

“But I shall go with my father,” insisted Katerin, doing her best to conceal the agony which possessed her. She knew that if her father were taken she might never see him again. “Please! I shall go with my father! Surely, there can be nothing against my going.”

“Have no fear,” said Shimilin. “Zorogoff wishes to talk with your father, that is all. No harm will come to him. And I shall see that no harm comes to you here while we wait. It will be better for you, and easier for your father if you do not make any trouble about it. You will only have to submit in the end.”

“I shall go,” said Michael, rising unsteadily to his feet. “I have no wish to oppose the Ataman if he desires to talk with me. Come, my daughter—fetch me my coat and my cap. The sooner this is over, the sooner we shall know what the Ataman expects of me.”

Katerin hesitated, scanning the face of Shimilin as if hunting out some secret motive behind the taking of her father from her. Then with sudden resolution she went and brought her father’s cap and coat from his room, and put them on him with loving care. When she had pulled the fur cap down about the old general’s ears, she threw her arms about his neck and kissed him, her heart torn with anguish at the parting, but determined not to give way to her fears and doubts before him.

“God go with you and may you return to me soon,” she said. “And do not worry for me, my father.” She smiled at him.

“And God be with you, Katerin Stephanovna, the brave one,” said Michael. Then turning to Shimilin, he said, “I am ready to obey your commands and I submit myself to your soldiers.”

“Take Michael Kirsakoff to the Ataman,” said Shimilin to his men, and they fell in on each side of Michael. Between the two, Michael marched across the room, doing his best to keep his weak old legs from betraying the unsteadiness of his age. At the door he crossed himself twice, and turning back, said to Katerin, “Hope is mightier than fear—remember that you are the daughter of a soldier and that we do not fear death, but only the loss of honor. Think not of me, but of yourself, and God’s blessing and mercy upon you.”

He turned and was gone, leaving Katerin standing with folded arms staring at the open door through which he had passed. Her face was white, her lips drawn tightly together. She remained thus, listening to the footfalls of her father and of the soldiers going down the stairs. When she could hear them no more, Wassili came up and peered in at the door, his eyes full of terror, and by his look silently questioning the truth of the scene he had just witnessed below.

“See that the doors are properly closed, Wassili,” said Katerin, and the moujik went below again. She walked to a bench and sat down facing the stove, partly turned away from Shimilin who stood in the center of the room. She ignored his presence, but sat watching the flames dancing inside the stove behind the iron door, her hands gripped together in her lap.

Shimilin walked to the window and smoothed away the frost to look into the courtyard and the street. Soon he turned from the window and looked at Katerin.

“You may as well tell me where the money may be found,” he said. “There is nothing to be gained by keeping it—and much to lose. I gave you your chance, but you preferred to trust Zorogoff. You would not give it to me—Zorogoff will take it. Where is the money to be found?”

“Where?” she asked, speaking as if in a dream, and not looking at him. “Where is the money to be found? That is a question.”

“I do not enjoy this business,” said Shimilin, cajolery in his voice. “If you would trust me——”

“I trust only in God,” she said. “We trusted the Cossacks and they have turned against us. We are in your hands.”

Shimilin walked across the room, passing behind Katerin, and drew a glass of water from the samovar and poured into it some tea from the pot on the top of the samovar. He stood examining the things on the table, drinking the hot tea noisily.

There came the sharp crack of a board being broken in the courtyard below. Katerin turned her head in an attitude of listening, startled by the noise, and conscious that its meaning might hold some import of terrible significance. She had supposed that her father had gone from the house with the soldiers. She stood up to go to the window.

Shimilin stepped quickly in her way. “You are not to look out,” he said calmly. “All that you are to do is to tell me where the money may be found. Why do you make all this trouble about it? I tell you it is bad. You could be happy and gay if you would trust me.”

“Perhaps you will have another glass of tea,” suggested Katerin. She returned to the bench and sat down to mask her worry over the noise she had heard in the court.

“Do you wish to see your father again?” asked Shimilin.

Katerin looked at him, unable to conceal the swift terror which struck at her heart with the Cossack’s words. He returned her look with steady eyes.

“I wish to see my father again, if it be God’s will,” she said.

“Zorogoff is God,” said Shimilin.

She gave no reply.

“I warn you—you must submit to Zorogoff’s will.”

Still she gave no answer. The frost from the upper part of the window had melted away in the heat of the room, and the ridge of ice across the bottom of the panes was dripping water to the floor, like the ticking of a clock.

Katerin turned to the fire again. Her face was drawn as if she were crying but her eyes were free from tears and she made no sound.

There came the sound of dull thuds from the courtyard. Something was striking frozen ground with regular blows, and soon could be heard the sharp rasping of metal on stone.

Katerin moved as if she would get up to look out of the window, but seeing Shimilin standing in front of her as if he intended to block the way, she sank back on the bench. Her terror grew as she began to understand the meaning of the sounds outside.

“What is that?” she whispered to Shimilin. “Tell me! What is happening?”

“Come and see for yourself,” said Shimilin, and moved aside so that she might pass to the window.

She got up and started to cross so that she might look out. But she had not gone half the distance, when she stopped at hearing Wassili screaming below stairs.

“Mistress! Mistress! The soldiers are——”

But Wassili’s cries were checked. There were sounds of a scuffle, followed by harsh warnings from soldiers that the moujik must be still.

Katerin ran to the window. As she looked below, she gave a gurgling cry as if she had been struck in the mouth, and put her hands up to her face to shut out the sight of what she saw. For below in the courtyard her father was working with a shovel and throwing up broken, frozen, brown earth. A soldier was breaking the ground with a pick. And about the workers stood a large group of soldiers with their rifles, watching Kirsakoff dig a grave!

Katerin backed away from the window, sobbing, and threw herself upon a bench.

“You submit to Zorogoff or you die—both of you!” said Shimilin. “There is yet time to save your father.”

Katerin stood up and faced Shimilin.

“You have betrayed us!” she cried. “There is no truth in you, you are not worthy of trust! Death is better than life where there is no honor, no truth, no faith in any man!” She turned her back upon the Cossack, and held out her arms to the icon of the Virgin Mother. “Mercy on the soul that goes to greet you—mercy, mercy, oh Mother of God!”

A whistle broke shrilly on the cold air outside. Shimilin leaped at Katerin, and grasping her by the shoulders, swung her round and thrust her at the window.

“Look!” he commanded. “If you can be so stubborn! Look, and see if you still wish to disobey the orders of the Ataman!”

Katerin saw her father standing with his back to the old wall of the court and six soldiers before him with their rifles upraised and aimed at the old general.

She fell back against Shimilin, half fainting, but recovering herself, staggered away from the window and fell upon her knees, her head bent toward the icon, moaning prayers.

“Your father can be saved,” warned Shimilin. “Would you send him to execution? Tell me where the money is hidden—or when I lift my hand to the window, the soldiers will fire!”

“We are ready for death. I commend my soul and the soul of my father to God! Better death than life under the cruelty of a Mongol and the treachery of our Cossacks!”

“You will not trust me,” said Shimilin. “I could save you both. Fools! I am ready to risk my own life to save you, yet you will not believe!” He raised his hand to the window.