"I am going out to look for firewood," said he very decisively; and at that took up the ax and started. He returned after an hour with a big section of a telegraph pole.
"You, Jenghiz Khans," said he, rubbing his frozen hands, "take your axes and go up there to the left on the mountain and you will find the telegraph poles that have been cut down. I made acquaintance with the old Jagasstai and he showed me the poles."Just a little way from us the line of the Russian telegraphs passed, that which had connected Irkutsk with Uliassutai before the days of the Bolsheviki and which the Chinese had commanded the Mongols to cut down and take the wire. These poles are now the salvation of travelers crossing the pass. Thus we spent the night in a warm tent, supped well from hot meat soup with vermicelli, all in the very center of the dominion of the angered Jagasstai. Early the next morning we found the road not more than two or three hundred paces from our tent and continued our hard trip over the ridge of Tarbagatai. At the head of the Adair River valley we noticed a flock of the Mongolian crows with carmine beaks circling among the rocks. We approached the place and discovered the recently fallen bodies of a horse and rider. What had happened to them was difficult to guess. They lay close together; the bridle was wound around the right wrist of the man; no trace of knife or bullet was found. It was impossible to make out the features of the man. His overcoat was Mongolian but his trousers and under jacket were not of the Mongolian pattern. We asked ourselves what had happened to him.
Our Mongol bowed his head in anxiety and said in hushed but assured tones: "It is the vengeance of Jagasstai. The rider did not make sacrifice at the southern obo and the demon has strangled him and his horse."At last Tarbagatai was behind us. Before us lay the valley of the Adair. It was a narrow zigzagging plain following along the river bed between close mountain ranges and covered with a rich grass.
It was cut into two parts by the road along which the prostrate telegraph poles now lay, as the stumps of varying heights and long stretches of wire completed the debris. This destruction of the telegraph line between Irkutsk and Uliassutai was necessary and incident to the aggressive Chinese policy in Mongolia.
Soon we began to meet large herds of sheep, which were digging through the snow to the dry but very nutritious grass. In some places yaks and oxen were seen on the high slopes of the mountains.
Only once, however, did we see a shepherd, for all of them, spying us first, had made off to the mountains or hidden in the ravines.
We did not even discover any yurtas along the way. The Mongols had also concealed all their movable homes in the folds of the mountains out of sight and away from the reach of the strong winds.
Nomads are very skilful in choosing the places for their winter dwellings. I had often in winter visited the Mongolian yurtas set in such sheltered places that, as I came off the windy plains, Ifelt as though I were in a conservatory. Once we came up to a big herd of sheep. But as we approached most of the herd gradually withdrew, leaving one part that remained unmoved as the other worked off across the plains. From this section soon about thirty of forty head emerged and went scrambling and leaping right up the mountain side. I took up my glasses and began to observe them.
The part of the herd that remained behind were common sheep; the large section that had drawn off over the plain were Mongolian antelopes (gazella gutturosa); while the few that had taken to the mountain were the big horned sheep (ovis argali). All this company had been grazing together with the domestic sheep on the plains of the Adair, which attracted them with its good grass and clear water. In many places the river was not frozen and in some places I saw great clouds of steam over the surface of the open water. In the meantime some of the antelopes and the mountain sheep began looking at us.
