“Where are you going? You help Czecho-slovak—yist?”
“I was only traveling on the train—Petrograd to America!”
The panther-like young fellow jabbered to the man in the lambskin hat. A dozen others tried to harangue each other at once. Nathan looked death in the face. A dozen bayonets were ready to finish him without further ado, for Nathan heard that sickening word “shteek!” Finally the Cossack prevailed.
“You go with us. Do not run away. We ask you question afterward!”
A dozen maniacal hands gripped him. Down the incline on the south side of the horrible furnace he was hustled, out of range of the bullets.
The bullet fire was subsiding, however. The flames were roaring in triumph over the long line of splintered cars where a few luckless human beings were roasting horribly.
Nathan was half-dragged, half-carried to the bottom of an embankment. There were hordes of stampeding horses there. One had a bullet through its nose and was shrieking in agony. There is no earthly cry like the shriek of a wounded horse. It was dispatched with a shot in the head and broke a man’s leg in its writhing.
The attacking crowd which had engineered this holocaust was a tattered, unruly, blood-crazed mob.
“You climb up!” ordered the tall Cossack grimly. He indicated a scrubby pony that three men were holding by the head.
Nathan had no choice. He was living by minutes now. The Cossack threw his pipe-stem leg over another pony. His act was followed by a dozen. There was a howling argument over something. Then southward from the roaring, roasting horror, serpentine along the trackage, a cavalcade started abruptly down into deeper southern fog. Nathan had to grip the high Siberian saddle tightly to preserve his balance. It was like riding atop a moving fence post. The Cossack had the reins of the pony’s bridle.