I was furious to find that the flock was no longer where Father had left it. The animals had wandered toward the ail and the hürde. Now I ran faster and Father called after me: “Don’t wait for me. Run and tell Mother to get some milk.” I ran fast. Downhill was easy.

I caught up with the flock by the edge of the ail. When I saw the hürde and then the yurt, I started to roar: “Ihi-iiij! Ihi-iiij!” Mother was nowhere to be seen, and I was about to explode with rage because she wasn’t coming out of the yurt and walking toward me with her milk pail. Suddenly I heard her voice on the other side, over where the small flock was, and saw her hobbling toward me. She was suffering from the pain in one of her legs that would eventually force her to use a cane. “What’s up?” she called. “A disaster has happened, a disaster!” I yelled back. I continued to gallop toward the yurt. Luckily, I found a wooden bucket filled with milk in the yurt. I grabbed it and ran back. In the meantime, Mother had made quite a bit of headway, but rather than wait for her to arrive I began to dash back to Father. But Mother called, “Wait for me, will you? Wait!” So I had to stop and wait for her to make it all the way to me. She seemed to take an eternity. I was seething with rage and shouting: “Faster, faster! Hara mola!” The latter was a rather harmless curse which many people used in a kindly teasing manner, but in our family it was only used in the most extreme cases. Now I used it on my own mother.

At long last she arrived. “What has happened, Deedis?” she asked. She was panting, and her voice shook. “Arsylang has swallowed poison,” I cried with tears in my voice because I had lost so much time waiting for her. Again I reached for the bucket.

“And where is Father?”

“On his way, with Arsylang.”

As I dashed off, I heard Mother call, “Oh, my rich Altai!” She sounded joyful.

I was offended by her joy. I was offended because Arsylang was perhaps already dead. I tore off and did not respond to what she shouted next.