CHAPTER IX

TO THE SAYANS AND SAFETY


Dense virgin wood surrounded us. In the high, already yellow grass the
trail wound hardly noticeable in among bushes and trees just beginning
to drop their many colored leaves. It is the old, already forgotten Amyl
pass road. Twenty-five years ago it carried the provisions, machinery
and workers for the numerous, now abandoned, gold mines of the
Amyl valley. The road now wound along the wide and rapid Amyl, then
penetrated into the deep forest, guiding us round the swampy ground
filled with those dangerous Siberian quagmires, through the dense
bushes, across mountains and wide meadows. Our guide probably did not
surmise our real intention and sometimes, apprehensively looking down at
the ground, would say:

"Three riders on horses with shoes on have passed here. Perhaps they
were soldiers."

His anxiety was terminated when he discovered that the tracks led off to
one side and then returned to the trail.

"They did not proceed farther," he remarked, slyly smiling.

"That's too bad," we answered. "It would have been more lively to travel
in company."

But the peasant only stroked his beard and laughed. Evidently he was not