The Prologue: The Trail to Tibet, 1922

A man who can succeed is always the one sent. If there is nothing to be done, it does not matter who goes.
--Tibetan Proverb

            The Tibetan governor's emissary caught Dr. Albert Shelton's caravan waiting beside the swollen Yangtze River. They were in the eastern Tibetan borderlands of Kham, a day's ride west of the Batang mission. Shelton was leading the caravan to Gartok to finalize his travel papers for Lhasa, the forbidden capital of Tibet.

The messenger explained that Lhasa sent new instructions, and the governor instructed his friend Shelton to turn back from the border. It was February 15, 1922. That night the group camped beside the turbulent river. The next morning Shelton turned his mule back toward Batang, accompanied by two Chinese soldiers, his Tibetan major domo, Gezong Ongdu, the deposed Prince of Batang's scion, Gwei Tsen Chi, and the Tibetan cook, Demnbajangtsen. Tibetan horsemen herded the pack mules with the jewels for the governor.

              A land of soaring Himalayan mountains and deep river canyons, Kham was the fractious frontier between China and Tibet. Almost exclusively populated by bellicose Tibetan Khampa tribesmen, the California-sized region was the centuries-old battleground between the rulers of two ancient imperial cultures--the Manchu Emperor in Beijing's Forbidden City and the Dalai Lama in his thousand-room Potola Palace in Lhasa.

The Khampas were the holy warriors of Tibetan Buddhism. Until the imperial Chinese army invaded, Kham was an assemblage of more than thirty independent Tibetan kingdoms, principalities, and tribal and lama states. The unending conflict made Kham a wild and dangerous land where brigandage and battle were inextricably woven into an   unique culture of warriors and monks. Decapitated heads ornamented the trees and gateposts. Severed hands festooned the government buildings. The Chinese and Tibetans skinned men alive, chopped them into chunks, boiled them to death in giant cauldrons.  

            In 1904 the Chinese launched a massive imperial offensive into Tibet. Dr. Albert Shelton and his schoolteacher wife Flora followed the Chinese bayonets into the eastern Tibetan borderlands, sent by a Christian missionary society. He was the first American doctor to serve the Tibetans, the only surgeon for many hundreds of miles. The Shelton daughters, Dorris and Dorothy, were born in the borderland, reared by Khampa nurses to speak Tibetan almost as their first language. Though Tibetan children were their playmates in the isolated Himalayas, the beribboned and primly starched Shelton girls were indistinguishable from their Midwestern counterparts half a world away.

             In 1908 the Sheltons pioneered a mission in Batang, the town in west China nearest to Tibet. It was the most remote Christian mission on earth--six months' hard travel up the Yangtze River into the Himalayas from America. The mission post was also among the most dangerous, as Kham had long proved deadly to Christian missionaries. Incited by hostile Buddhist lamas, Tibetan tribesmen repeatedly attacked the mission stations. Time and again the Khampas tore the missions to the ground, leaving murdered missionaries in their wake.

            But Dr. Albert Shelton was more than an extremely rural doctor with a very rough practice. He was also a famous adventurer. A homesteader boy who grew up in the frontier conflicts of the Great Plains, Shelton found the lawless hinterlands of Kham to be an oddly familiar environment. A native of Indiana, he descended from the rugged Scotch-Irish who pioneered both the bloody borderlands of the British Isles and America's violent Appalachian frontiers, another warrior tribe whose religion buttressed their martial zeal.

With his Stetson hat, Dr. Albert Shelton rode his faithful mule, Abe, more than fifteen thousand miles across Kham on journeys of exploration and medical relief. He and his entourage traveled heavily armed with rifles and revolvers. "Men not armed lose caste in Tibet," he said. All the while he chafed to get to the sacred city of Lhasa, barred to Christian missionaries for hundreds of years. Lhasa, nearly a thousand miles west of Kham, was the great unattainable goal of the foreign missionaries, "the last redoubt of Satan" where they ached to preach the Gospel.

            By the time Shelton returned to the United States on furlough in 1910, the American public had already acclaimed him as an exotic missionary-explorer, comparing him to Africa's Dr. David Livingstone. While he lectured across America, throngs toured New Jersey's Newark Museum to view an exhibition of Tibetan "curios" that he acquired in war-ravaged Kham. The artifacts formed a stunning collection of Tibetan objects and religious art. Emboldened by the popular enthusiasm, the museum purchased Shelton's collection, inspiring him to continue his ethnologic work.

            Following the Sheltons' return to Kham in 1913, the Batang mission grew to be a sprawling walled compound, anchored by the only hospital within seven hundred miles. It was a bastion of Western ideas in the heart of central Asia. Serving Chinese and Tibetans alike, Dr. Albert Shelton's gregarious nature and medical skill won him respect in both antagonistic camps. He counted as friends Chinese mandarins, Lhasa officials, and revered Tibetan lamas.

However, in the maelstrom of the borderlands, Albert Shelton still faced dangers. Tibetan bandits ceaselessly plundered travelers. Chinese brigands plotted abductions. Opium dealers whom Shelton had thwarted muttered threats of revenge. Cliques of Tibetan lamas were jealous of his growing power. British authorities in India plotted to keep missionaries out of Tibet at any cost. Endemic warfare between the Chinese and Tibetans threatened all in its range.

Yet another war erupted between the Chinese and the Tibetans in 1918. Trained and equipped by the British, the Dalai Lama's Tibetan army marched to the Chinese border to the wail of Scottish bagpipes. New Enfield rifles and mountain guns glistened in the high Himalayan sun. The tattered Republican Chinese frontier army proved no match for the fierce and well-equipped Tibetan forces.

After a horrendous battle in the north of Kham, high Tibetan officials asked Shelton to hurry north to treat hundreds of wounded Chinese and Tibetan soldiers. Scores of surviving amputees soon testified to Shelton's marathon surgeries. He also helped facilitate a cease-fire between the warring sides. In recognition of his service, the thirteenth Dalai Lama sent a message permitting him to set up the first Western-style hospital in Lhasa--Dr. Albert Shelton's great dream.

            Before Shelton could make his momentous journey to Lhasa, he needed to accompany his family to the China coast. Chaperoned by Flora, his now-adolescent daughters were returning to the United States for schooling. He also needed to escort his treasure trove of Tibetan artifacts through the anarchy of west China for shipment to America. After saying goodbye to his family in Shanghai, Dr. Albert Shelton intended to head to his destiny in Lhasa, but fate intervened.

During the family's months-long caravan trip through the disorder of Warlord-era western China, bandits kidnapped Dr. Shelton for ransom. As the Chinese army pursued the brigands through the Yunnan mountains, the kidnapping became an international sensation, front-page news around the globe.

When he returned to the United States for medical treatment, he was an international media star. The press and public acclaimed him a hero. Following his rehabilitation, he lectured to overflowing halls coast to coast, including enthusiastic audiences at the National Geographic Society. His book, Pioneering in Tibet, sold briskly, and the National Geographic made plans to publish Shelton's article, "Life Among the People of Eastern Tibet," illustrated with thirty-six of his photos. When hundreds of Shelton's magnificent Tibetan objects arrived in New Jersey, the Newark Museum's curators planned an extravagant new exhibit. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. invited Shelton to a family dinner at his palatial Manhattan mansion, and Shelton capped the episode by selling the industrialist a thousand dollars worth of Tibetan jewelry.

The country feted Dr. Albert Shelton as an adventurer and explorer, an ethnologist and connoisseur, a devoted missionary and father--in short, a type of warrior-saint who embodied the sort of rough-and-ready, middle-class missionary militancy that America idealized. He was Daniel Boone, Wyatt Earp, and the apostle Paul rolled into one.

            Financed in part by the sale of his collections, the Sheltons purchased an imposing home in the sunny southern California town of Pomona. Against the wishes of his wife, Albert Shelton again returned to Tibet, determined to reach Lhasa. Inspired by his example, four new missionaries traveled with him. After another arduous journey, Shelton's caravan reached Batang in late 1921.

Within a few weeks Shelton contacted the Tibetan governor, the Teji Markham, to arrange his Lhasa expedition. When Albert Shelton traveled to the governor's compound in Gartok, he hoped to get the final papers for his long-awaited trek to central Tibet. But Shelton never went where he wasn't permitted. When the Teji Markham instructed him to return, Shelton led his caravan back toward Batang.

            Albert Shelton was at home again in the saddle, wearing his battered Stetson and old yak-skin riding pants, the seat worn from riding and the right knee polished from prayer. Ever ready for an impromptu hunt, his rifle rested in its worn leather scabbard. Sauntering along the high mountain trails, Shelton's big red mule scuffed up puffs of dust, now and again sending a stone skittering off the cliffs. In spite of the danger from bandits lurking on the mountainsides, the day wore on with the languor of a long ride. The local tribesmen valued his medical work, and Shelton had little fear of ambush.

Albert Shelton's life was in fine shape as he ambled along. Flora had overcome her initial terrors to forge a new life in Tibet. Nurturing a bond with Gezong Ongdu, she had devoted herself to Tibetan translation and was now in India to publish her work. Their daughters were safe in America getting an education. Only the day before he wrote an excited note to them about his upcoming Lhasa adventure, signing it, "love, Pappy." With his missionary work, journalism, and Tibetan artifact-dealing, his family's finances were on a firm footing. The purchase of the southern California house gave the Sheltons a haven for retirement.

America was giving her best to him, groups secular and religious jostling to pay tribute. With the arrival of fresh missionaries, the future of his Tibetan Christian Mission was secure. Foremost on that day in February, Albert Shelton's obsession of ministering in Lhasa was soon to become a reality.

            The caravan rode through the day, punctuating the ride with rest stops. About two o'clock they neared Khuyuk La pass, about six miles from Batang. After a stop, Albert Shelton mounted first and rode ahead of Demnbajangtsen. The trail started up the mountain, narrowing to a slender wisp high along a cliffside. As Albert Shelton climbed the mountainside to Khuyuk La pass, Demnbajangtsen wound through the little horseshoe-shaped Paimokou Valley below, about ten minutes behind.

            Dr. Albert Shelton turned and whistled to Demnbajangtsen, waving for him to catch up. Demnbajangtsen signaled back and rode forward, but Shelton disappeared around a blind curve on the mountain. A minute later Demnbajangtsen heard three shots echo through the valley. Thinking the doctor had bagged some wild game on the mountainside, Demnbajangtsen cantered forward to help.