through internal strife among the officers. The Bolsheviki took
advantage of this situation, increased their forces to one thousand men
and began a forward movement to recover what they had lost, while the
remnants of Colonel Kazagrandi's detachment were retreating on Khathyl,
where he determined to make his last stand against the Reds. The
inhabitants were loading their movable property with their families into
carts and scurrying away from the town, leaving all their cattle and
horses to whomsoever should have the power to seize and hold them.
One party intended to hide in the dense larch forest and the mountain
ravines not far away, while another party made southward for Muren Kure
and Uliassutai. The morning following our arrival the Mongol official
received word that the Red troops had outflanked Colonel Kazagrandi's
men and were approaching Khathyl. The Mongol loaded his documents and
his servants on eleven camels and left his yamen. Our Mongol guides,
without ever saying a word to us, secretly slipped off with him and left
us without camels. Our situation thus became desperate. We hastened to
the colonists who had not yet got away to bargain with them for camels,
but they had previously, in anticipation of trouble, sent their herds
to distant Mongols and so could do nothing to help us. Then we betook
ourselves to Dr. V. G. Gay, a veterinarian living in the town, famous
throughout Mongolia for his battle against rinderpest. He lived here
with his family and after being forced to give up his government work
became a cattle dealer. He was a most interesting person, clever and
energetic, and the one who had been appointed under the Czarist regime
to purchase all the meat supplies from Mongolia for the Russian Army on
the German Front. He organized a huge enterprise in Mongolia but when
the Bolsheviki seized power in 1917 he transferred his allegiance and
began to work with them. Then in May, 1918, when the Kolchak forces
drove the Bolsheviki out of Siberia, he was arrested and taken for
trial. However, he was released because he was looked upon as the single
individual to organize this big Mongolian enterprise and he handed
to Admiral Kolchak all the supplies of meat and the silver formerly
received from the Soviet commissars. At this time Gay had been serving
as the chief organizer and supplier of the forces of Kazagrandi.

When we went to him, he at once suggested that we take the only thing
left, some poor, broken