And at every station Peter found mobs of refugees fighting to get aboard anything that moved. Some were trying to get to Vladivostok, some wanted to go in the opposite direction to Perm, or Ufa, or Samara. They wanted to get anywhere but where they were. Long strings of box cars in the sidings were packed with men, women, and children, ragged, filthy, hungry, dying, dead. Those alive threshed grain by hand from the rotting piles in the fields, or fished in the rivers with wooden spears. And there were trains coming back from the front filled with human derelicts—in cattle cars festooned with crimson icicles! Yet the people seemed patient in their misery. They waited patiently while first one faction rose to power only to fall again. And usurpers gambled for power with bands of brigands which their leaders called armies. The people had destroyed one government. Now they waited for some one to create another for them. Lieutenant Peter Gordon watched day by day in silence. At times, his eyes flamed with anger. But he smiled sometimes, too, when he mixed with peasants in the station restaurants and ate cabbage soup with a wooden spoon. For the peasants had many queer and amusing things to say about the _Americansky_ after they had assured themselves that the stranger could speak but a few words of Russian, and understood less. But Peter understood enough to know that these peasants were not at all friendly to officers, no matter what country they came from. They wanted no aristocrats in Siberia, American or otherwise. They were going to kill all the aristocrats, and be free men. They were not going to leave all the land to aristocrats, and pay taxes so that their rulers could make slaves of them. Not any more. One evening Peter strolled up toward the engine while the train was stopped in a station. “When will we get to Chita?” he asked the engineer. “Perhaps to-morrow.” “Are you sure we won’t go through Chita sometime to-night?” “No, not to-night. Not till long after daylight.” “Thank you,” said Peter, and walked away. The Russian engineer stared after the American officer in bewildered surprise, for the American officer was speaking in perfect Russian. There was something queer about it, the engineer knew—but, of course, Americans are educated and speak all languages. Still, that was the first one the engineer had ever heard who could speak the Czar’s Russian—as good as the conductor. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ III THE FIRING SQUAD