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.

I found them behind the first mountain saddle. Father gently tried to stand Arsylang on his legs, but the dog was no longer up to it. So we laid him on his side instead. His legs stretched outward as if he was trying to flee from the poison and the death that had already nested in his belly. His tail stood up straight. Although the only sign of life was a quiet rattle, we tried to force milk into him. Since his teeth were clenched, Father stuck the tip of his knife into a gap behind his fangs to pry his jaws open. But the teeth pressed hard against each other and would not be parted. Foaming slime oozed from the gaps, and when we wiped it off, something that was a very dark red, almost black, became visible. It must have been his tongue.