began making such statements as:

"We have now seven Colonels, who all want to be in command and are all
quarreling among themselves. They all ought to be pegged down and given
good sound thrashings. The one who could take the greatest number of
blows ought to be chosen as our chief."

It was an ominous joke that proved the demoralization of the Russian
detachment.

"It seems," my friend frequently observed, "that we shall soon have the
pleasure of seeing a Council of Soldiers here in Uliassutai. God and
the Devil! One thing here is very unfortunate--there are no forests
near into which good Christian men may dive and get away from all these
cursed Soviets. It's bare, frightfully bare, this wretched Mongolia,
with no place for us to hide."

Really this possibility of the Soviet was approaching. On one occasion
the soldiers captured the arsenal containing the weapons surrendered
by the Chinese and carried them off to their barracks. Drunkenness,
gambling and fighting increased. We foreigners, carefully watching
events and in fear of a catastrophe, finally decided to leave
Uliassutai, that caldron of passions, controversies and denunciations.
We heard that the group of Poletika was also preparing to get out a few
days later. We foreigners separated into two parties, one traveling by
the old caravan route across the Gobi considerably to the south of Urga
to Kuku-Hoto or Kweihuacheng and Kalgan, and mine, consisting of my
friend, two Polish soldiers and myself, heading for Urga via Zain Shabi,
where Colonel Kazagrandi had asked me in a recent letter to meet him.
Thus we left the Uliassutai where we had lived through so many exciting
events.

On the sixth day after our departure there arrived in the town the
Mongol-Buriat detachment under the command of the Buriat Vandaloff and
the Russian Captain Bezrodnoff. Afterwards I met them in Zain Shabi. It
was a detachment sent out from Urga by Baron Ungern to restore order
in Uliassutai and to march on to Kobdo. On the way from Zain Shabi
Bezrodnoff came across the group of Poletika and Michailoff. He
instituted a search which disclosed suspicious documents in their
baggage and in that of Michailoff and his wife the silver and other
possessions taken from the Chinese. From this group of sixteen he sent
N. N. Philipoff to Baron Ungern, released three others and shot the
remaining twelve. Thus ended in Zain Shabi the life of one party of
Uliassutai refugees and the activities