This lead Father now wanted to give him as a present! We knew as much even before Father reached the guest with his leadless bridle and before anything was said. It was another one of Father’s quirks that he gave away pieces of leather he had dressed himself. The darga greeted Father curtly and in Mongolian, and got a reply in the same manner and language. But then he had to listen to Father lecture him with a story in Tuvan. We learned only years later why that happened and what it was all about, but its gist shall be offered here ahead of time.

The darga was not really a darga at all but rather a teacher. He was called Düktügbej, and was the son of Dandisch from the Hara-Sojan tribe. Once when Father was young, he and his herd of horses tried to escape from a snowfall which over the course of several days buried much of their pasture lands. At the end of their flight he found himself on the land of the Hara-Sojan people, whose herders did not—as he had feared they would—drive him away with his starving and exhausted herd, but instead gave him a friendly welcome and invited him to stay as long as his own pasture remained under snow. And the eldest of these friendly herders was Dandisch. Father would later seek his company whenever he got a chance. He stayed overnight in his yurt, drank from the same pot of tea and ate from the same kettle of meat as his family, and carried Dandisch’s children on his back and sometimes even let them ride his own horse. And Düktügbej was the oldest of Dandisch’s children.

Blushing, Düktügbej now listened to the story and watched Father take the reins from his hands, swing them over the pommel, and tie one end of the lead to the snaffle ring and the other to the band around the yurt.

That done, Father led the teacher into the yurt as if the head of the yurt, Uncle Sama, was not at home. Uncle Sama himself still crouched where he had earlier made himself comfortable, still in his tattered dshargak and now again on all fours like a child or a dog. He viewed the guest from bottom to top with tiny, sly-slanting eyes that were narrowed to two lines, and with an idiotic and yet cunning smile on his face that was also marked with two brown trails of sweat.

The teacher greeted him immediately in Tuvan, but the uncle replied in Mongolian, or at least in something meant to be Mongolian, and pulled the same face he pulled when he tried to draw his wife into a new round of fighting.