‘Where do you want to go?’ the man asked.
‘Where I please,’ I replied sharply. ‘Keep your curiosity to yourself, or take another master. I want a guide, not a partner.’
This rebuke had the desired effect. The police agent, for such of course he was, was obliged to come with me on my own terms. Doubtless he reported me to his bureau as a headstrong man who could not be controlled by any means save open force.
At the same time I lost no opportunity of impressing the authorities with my assumed character. The Prefect of the town called on me, and I explained to him that Siberia was regarded in Paris as one of the richest mineral regions of the earth, and that I was merely the pioneer of a swarm of prospectors who would be invading it before long. I made his mouth water as I talked of shares and syndicates, and conveyed to him that by a judicious use of his opportunities he might become one of the millionaires of the future.
To the westward of the town, in the direction from which the train had brought me, there was visible a range of low hills, a conspicuous landmark in the desolate plain. It was towards these hills that I ordered my guide to conduct me, as soon as the preparations for the march were completed.
The rascal was cunning enough to hide his reluctance, and we set out. But after we had gone a day’s journey I noticed that our march was steadily veering away from the line of the railway, and taking a northerly direction. I said nothing, determined to counteract these tactics at the right moment. At the end of the third day, after a slow progress compared with the speed of the train, we pitched our camp at the foot of the range, about forty miles, as near as I could judge, from the point where it was pierced by the railway.
The next morning the caravan wound its way to the summit of the ridge, and I looked down on a broad valley, watered by a river, and broken up by small spurs jutting out from the main watershed. As the guide was about to plunge down, so as to cross the stream, I checked him abruptly.
‘We are not going that way. I shall turn southward now, and keep along the summit of the ridge till we come to the railway.’
The man’s face turned as black as a thunder-cloud.
‘You cannot go that way,’ he snorted.