AN OLD FORTUNE TELLER
From this point we began traveling along the ourton road. In this region the Mongols had very poor and exhausted horses, because they were forced continuously to supply mounts to the numerous envoys of Daichin Van and of Colonel Kazagrandi. We were compelled to spend the night at the last ourton before Van Kure, where a stout old Mongol and his son kept the station. After our supper he took the shoulder-blade of the sheep, which had been carefully scraped clean of all the flesh, and, looking at me, placed this bone in the coals with some incantations and said:
“I want to tell your fortune. All my predictions come true.”
When the bone had been blackened he drew it out, blew off the ashes and began to scrutinize the surface very closely and to look through it into the fire. He continued his examination for a long time and then, with fear in his face, placed the bone back in the coals.
“What did you see?” I asked, laughing.
“Be silent!” he whispered. “I made out horrible signs.”
He again took out the bone and began examining it all over, all the time whispering prayers and making strange movements. In a very solemn quiet voice he began his predictions.
“Death in the form of a tall white man with red hair will stand behind you and will watch you long and close. You will feel it and wait but Death will withdraw. . . . Another white man will become your friend. . . . Before the fourth day you will lose your acquaintances. They will die by a long knife. I already see them being eaten by the dogs. Beware of the man with a head like a saddle. He will strive for your death.”
For a long time after the fortune had been told we sat smoking and drinking tea but still the old fellow looked at me only with fear. Through my brain flashed the thought that thus must his companions in prison look at one who is condemned to death.
The next morning we left the fortune teller before the sun was up, and, when we had made about fifteen miles, hove in sight of Van Kure. I found Colonel Kazagrandi at his headquarters. He was a man of good family, an experienced engineer and a splendid officer, who had distinguished himself in the war at the defence of the island of Moon in the Baltic and afterwards in the fight with the Bolsheviki on the Volga. Colonel Kazagrandi offered me a bath in a real tub, which had its habitat in the house of the president of the local Chamber of Commerce. As I was in this house, a tall young captain entered. He had long curly red hair and an unusually white face, though heavy and stolid, with large, steel-cold eyes and with beautiful, tender, almost girlish lips. But in his eyes there was such cold cruelty that it was quite unpleasant to look at his otherwise fine face. When he left the room, our host told me that he was Captain Veseloffsky, the adjutant of General Rezukhin, who was fighting against the Bolsheviki in the north of Mongolia. They had just that day arrived for a conference with Baron Ungern.