Train schedules were so upset, that I figured I might as well go on to Khabarovsk, and get the next train out again to Bira. In the meantime I might pick up the trail of Red Sweater among the railway detachments strung along the line. So we made a long stop at a station called Poperoffka, some fifteen versts from Khabarovsk. There was a platoon of Americans there, commanded by a lieutenant, quartered in box-cars. D----, my interpreter and myself lost no time in getting to the kitchen-car, where we bought canned tomatoes, potatoes, bread and coffee, and bribed the cook to prepare a meal. There we learned that the Commanding General had passed through, bound north in a private car, with a private engine. And just as I had attacked a mess-kit full of corned beef, my first square meal in a week, soldiers came to inform the lieutenant in command, that the Commanding General was returning, and that he was leaving his private car with his staff. General Graves was making a tour of inspection. He visited our kitchen-car, with a dozen or more officers. He was puzzled because he had just visited a station where the commanding officer had not heard of my presence in that part of the country. He was very wroth because he had found some commanding officers away from their commands on hunting excursions, and as it turned out, one of these officers had talked to me on the up trip, and later left in command one of his subalterns who had recently joined from Vladivostok, and naturally could not know I was prowling about in that part of Siberia. I preferred to leave General Graves puzzled as to ignorance at that place about me, for if I had made too full an explanation, the officer concerned, already in the bad graces of his Commanding General, might have been disciplined. And General Graves, travelling in a special train with right of way over everything, appeared to have no appreciation of the difficulty of travel on intermittent passenger trains. And some members of the personal staff, accustomed to travel in such special trains, persisted in regarding the trans-Siberian line as if it were part of, say, the New York Central system. Being a Commanding General has its disadvantages under such circumstances. General Graves suggested that I go back to Bira. As I had lost considerable sleep and worn out several time-tables figuring out how I could go back to Bira, I was in hearty accord with the General’s wishes on the subject. And I eventually carried them out. And certain officers, fully aware of what had happened, told the General some time later that trains on the trans-Siberian line could not be trusted to make the time between different points which the time-tables promised. And up to the time I left Siberia, those in the know generally greeted me at mess, with: “Go back to Bira,” which always gave us a good laugh--at my expense.