Honghuzi

Shortly after one of the coolies rushed back, so frightened he could hardly articulate, and reported that a party of mounted Hung-hutzes had swooped down on the Sikhs, who had carelessly neglected to take their arms, and had carried them off and stolen their ponies.

[6] It was "boots and saddles," and in less time than one can write it, the Royal Bengal Lancers, Beluchis, and Gurkas were swarming over the hills in a vain hunt for their comrades and the Boxers.

In this infernal device the unfortunate Sikhs had been forced, one after another, and as the screw was tightened and the flesh of the victim protruded between the bars, these fiends had sliced it off with their swords until the end came, and it came quickly.

Kneeling in a field of kiaolang stubble, alone and unsupported, he deliberately picked off the men with his Mauser until the Russians pulled themselves sufficiently together to end his sharp-shooting with a volley.

He still remembers the massacre at Blagovestchensk when nearly 8,000 unarmed men, women, and children were driven at the point of the bayonet into the raging Amur, until—as one of the Russian officers who participated in that brutal murder told me at Chin-Wang-Tao in 1900— 'the execution of my orders made me almost sick, for it seemed as though I could have walked across the river on the bodies of the floating dead.'

We hoped to see for ourselves something of the characteristics and methods of those 10,000 or more guerrillas that on the west infest the border of the fighting zone in Manchuria, harrowing the rear and right flank of the Russian army, compelling it to quadruple its Cossack guards in that region in order to protect its supply-trains, as well as the refugees from Port Arthur in their efforts to reach Mukden by way of Hsin-Min-Tung.

General Ma is the commanderin-chief of the Chinese troops in that region and by an envious turn of fate is the commander of the 10,000 Hung-hutzes now wearing the imperial uniform of China as part of her army.

The Hung-hutzes are excellent horsemen, well mounted and armed, who for centuries have lived as outlaws and brigands, defying the authority of the Imperial Government, roaming at will, levying tribute, and hesitating at nothing in the calendar of crimes in the accomplishment of their nefarious purposes.

The adoption of bandits into the army has not changed their habits in robbing and murdering, if need be, and occasionally the soldiers keep up their work as individuals, when they are not plundering Russian refugees en route to Siberia, or worrying the Cossacks.

It is when the crops are nearly full grown, and the kaoliang, a kind of broom corn, is from twelve to fifteen feet high, that the peasant turns marauder and outlaw.

This staple crop, kaoliang, affords a perfect cover for troops or cutthroats, and one has a frightful ordeal in riding through it in August, with the thermometer in the nineties and its high growth cuts off the free circulation of air.

The allied[22] armies, among whom were the American troops, realized this in 1900 in their toilsome march from Taku to Tien-Tsin and Peking, when many dropped on the way from heat prostration.

With the kaoliang to hide his movements, the peasant abandons his legitimate calling and, arming himself with any convenient weapon, starts out either alone or in the company of a few congenial companions to plunder on the highway, or to rob the little villages near where they live.

When danger threatens, the peasant bands scatter in every direction in the high kaoliang or return to their homes, just as the Filipinos used to do when sharply pursued by American troops, when they cast aside such uniforms as they wore, and became "amigos," for practical advantages.

Russian soldiers still patrolled the streets at irregular intervals, and at times the town was filled with refugees coming from Port Arthur, Chefoo, or Tien-Tsin in special trains from the south, en route to Mukden or Siberia.

With its luxuriant crop of kaoliang it looked like a scene in the corn belt of Iowa or Kansas; but a little rain in the greasy, mucky soil, mixed by the passing of a few Chinese carts, makes these roads resemble quagmires, often impassable.

They dry quickly however, but it was a pathetic sight to see long trains of two-wheeled carts, dragged by five or seven donkeys or mules, each piled high with the belongings of the refugees, often surmounted by women with little ones, while the men walked and endeavored to cheer one another with songs over the dreary twenty miles to Mukden.

There we were with Cossacks on the north and east,|[26] Japanese on the southeast, Chinese soldiers under General Ma to the west and northwest, and Hung-hutze robbers all around us, and we unable to speak a dozen words of any of the languages that those several people use.

Captain Boyd, however, suggested that the explosion of so large a number might cause the neighboring belligerents to swoop down on the place in the belief than an infantry engagement was going on and that we might be gobbled up.

The Chinese are antagonistic to the Russians, and this indulgence in fun-making resulted most fortunately for us, for the following afternoon a party of Cossacks who in some way had heard of our presence, and suspected us to be Japanese spies, went through the town in search of us, but not one word as to our hidden whereabouts could they secure from the natives.

We found the General a handsome fellow, lithe and graceful, and as mild a mannered man as ever slit a throat or sent a soul to heaven.

He made us entirely at home in his luxurious yamen, and many drafts of excellent tea were brewed in his exquisite old Pekinese cloisonne teapot and served in cups to match, while we admired some fine examples of Chien Lung Fuing and other porcelains.

My fancy was especially taken by two priceless Ming polychrome pear bottles that stood by his velvet-covered kong, or brick bed, resembling a flat Dutch oven.

Captain Boyd soon had the General and his cavalry and infantry guards lined up for the kodak, after which he told us we were his guests, and were at liberty to range through the country at will, only we must never go unattended or unarmed.

He told us much of Chung, saying that until a few years ago he ruled all this territory with an iron hand, as a bandit, doing as he pleased west of the Liao River.

Their guerilla warfare caused serious embarrassment to Kuropatkin's army, robbing supply-trains, and compelling double guards on lines of communication, and additional protection to his right flank and rear.

The plan was to visit one of the neighboring bands, but we were interrupted about five miles northeast of HsinMin-Tung by the appearance of several Cossack scouts, and we promptly retired in an opposite direction.

A Japanese officer told Fred Arthur McKenzie that "Sometimes the robbers come and fire shots into our houses at night time.