RUSSIAN SOLDIERS CLEARING THE TRACK
AFTER A WRECK ON THE TRANS-SIBERIAN
JAPANESE OFFICERS TALKING WITH AN
AMERICAN OFFICER
That is an impartial description of what happened. But there was every reason to believe that the engineer, working with a confederate aboard the train, knew the train would be split at the proper place to allow the engine to get away, and then come back with the most disastrous results. And I believe that Red Sweater split the train, for when a wrecking train came the next morning to clear the tracks, the engine of our train and such cars as would travel, going ahead to the next station to allow the wreckers to get in at the smashed cars, Red Sweater rode away with the first load of battered cars pulled out.
During that day, and the best part of that night, the Russian wrecking crew worked and talked and drank tea, on a job that would have taken an American wrecking crew, two hours. Before a pair of broken trucks could be ditched, there must be a discussion which suggested the Duma in action against the Czar. But the Japanese, stoical and silent, were not fooled—they recognized as fine a piece of sabotage as had ever been produced.
When we resumed our journey, we three were nearly famished for want of food. We had brewed tea, and consumed a string-load of pretzels, and as the Japanese had not noticed that we were short of supplies, we had refrained from asking for any of their food.
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.