: An inexperienced hunter meets a young sable in the Sayan Mountains. A year later, a hunter kills a grown animal.

Stepan and Askyr

At dawn, in the dense taiga of the Sayan Mountains, by the fire, the Yaroslavl Stepan sat all alone. He was not lucky in his native land, and Stepan went to Siberia, where, according to rumors, there are a lot of gold in streams, and it is advantageous to rafting the forest along rivers. Stepan began to uproot the forest in order to clear the place for arable land, but would you defeat the taiga together with his wife. Stepan wanted to go home to Yaroslavl.

And so affable my native village was remembered. And the sun is brighter, and the trees look differently. And the street - all the houses are smiling.

He stuck with the prospectors in order to get money for a ticket to the house, but he was not given gold either. Soon, Stepan remembered his wife, who remained on the forest plot, and went to her through the taiga.

Stepan's thoughts interrupted mouse squeak. The mouse darted right to the fire, and behind it - "a big-headed dark animal, no more than a kitten." Stepan caught the animal and recognized in it a sable - Askir, as locals called Kerzhaki called the commercial sable.

While Stepan was examining a flexible animal with a white “stocking” on the front foot, the sable managed to bite a man by the finger and run away. Stepan realized that you can earn money by hunting for sable, you just need to get a gun, a dog and stick to the hunting artel of Kerzhakov.

In native taiga

Kerzhaki did not want to accept an inexperienced novice without a gun, dog and trap. In such a remote place as the Sayans, no one dared to go into the taiga with a stranger - "who knows what is on his mind." In the fall, when the Kerzhaks went hunting for sable and squirrel fur that grew in winter, Stepan stayed with his wife at the hitch.

Askir, meanwhile, grew up in his native taiga. When Stepan caught him, Askyr was still an unreasonable cub who first went hunting without a sable mother. Now the memory of his ancestors has awakened in him. The instinct told Askyr that you can eat, how to hunt and "use an invisible fur coat", what to be afraid of. He became a dexterous and fast predator.

If the beast is weaker than you - catch and eat. If he is of the same strength with you - fight with him, drive him away or kill him. And if stronger than you, take your legs.

By the fall, Askyr had acquired beautiful fur and not every owl or hawk decided to attack him.

One morning, Askyr sensed someone else's sable and decided to "catch and exterminate" him. The sable mother turned out to be a stranger. Askyr still vaguely remembered her smell, but the predator did not know how to “feel sorry and think”. He overtook a sable and entered into battle with her. A dog scared the fighting sables, after which a hunter appeared, Askyr, who managed to hide, saw the hunter kill a sable from a gun.

A hungry winter came. Mice and chipmunks disappeared, there was little game left, and Askyr had to learn to hunt partridges, climbing up to them under the snow. When the partridges disappeared, the sable came down from the mountains to the taiga and once decided to attack the musk deer - a small hornless deer. Musk of musk deer Askir was enough for ten days.

Then spring came again, a lot of booty appeared, "Askir was full and happy." By spring, Stepan had eaten the last piece of bread and entered the workers to the rich Kerzhak.

On the road

In the fall, with the owner of Stepan, thick-skinned, looking like “the stump of a hundred-year-old fir”, the old man became seriously ill and could no longer hunt, and he did not have sons. As the head of the Kerzh hunting artel, he gave Stepan a dog, a gun and sent for autumn hunting in his place. For this, Stepan had to pray in Kerzhatsky and "of the three sables obtained, give two to the owner."

And then the artel, heavily loaded with supplies, went to the far taiga for a month and a half or two, where the hunters had their place.

By shiver

The hunters pulled the boats along the river against the current - the only way to pass the roaring rapids - shivers.On the first shiver, an inexperienced Stepan almost died: the becheva on which the boat was held swept over his head and turned him facing the shore.

At the top of the nearest cliff, Stepan caught a glimpse of a human head outstretched by a cucumber, overgrown with wool, with a leaking left eye. While Stepan was getting out of the becheva, his head disappeared. He decided what he thought, and Kerzhakov said nothing.

At noon they made a halt. A man came out to the fire in which Stepan recognized the one-eyed. Ipat, the senior in the artel, called him Nefedych and began to question whether there was anyone on Mount Gorely, where the artel usually hunted. Nefodych reluctantly admitted that Gorely was already taken.

In Cabaret East

Over the summer, the taiga healed the wounds inflicted by people, and Askyr no longer met the hunters. All summer, sable feasted on eggs and helpless chicks. In the fall, "his dark coat became even more magnificent and luxurious than last year." Askyr hunted at night, and during the day he slept in secluded places. When the peaks of the low mountains were covered with snow, the sable again sensed people and went into the mountains.

The people who Askyr sensed were from the Ipatova artel. Climbing along the river to the Kabaroch Vostryaki, the hunters built temporary housing, stocked up with meat, firewood and went in different directions in search of a fur-bearing beast.

On the first day of the hunt, Stepan was lucky. With the help of a well-trained dog, Pestry, he got two sables, six squirrels and a red taiga ferret. In the evening, showing the booty to the artisans, Stepan learned that sable skins are divided by grades. Dark skins - "heads" - are valued above all, and for the most expensive variety of "heads", a black sable, you can gain so much that more than enough for a ticket home.

Unexpected meeting

Stepan’s luck was over; he didn’t get a single sable anymore. Winter was approaching. Stepan knew: as soon as the deep snow fell, the artel would return to the village, and therefore every day went higher and higher into the mountains, trying to get the coveted “head”.

Once Stepan had to spend the night in the mountains. A flurry of hurricane with icy rain subsided only in the morning. Stepan was cold all night, and in the morning he tried to make a fire from wet needles.

Askir, who lived in the same area, could not hunt all night. In the morning, a hungry sable attacked a huge capercaillie. A strong bird lifted the animal up into the air and collapsed right next to Stepanov's bonfire.

The dumbfounded Stepan saw how a creature that fell on him fell into two. One was a dead wood grouse, and the other a sable.

Sable was all black, and only at the tip of the left forepaw a narrow white spot shone.

Stepan immediately recognized Askyr by his white paw. He could not jump to his numb legs, missed the sable and sent to his trail to Sister. The dog almost caught up with Askyr, but at the last moment he managed to escape along the tops of the dense young.

At first Stepan was annoyed, but then he realized: here are Askir’s hunting grounds, someday he will return, and faithful Pestra will help to catch the treasured prey.

Friend of the motley

Stepan was tormented not only by the opportunity to get big money, but also by failure - Askyr met twice on his way and twice he was stupid. For a whole week he came to the place of their last meeting, but Pestrya could not attack the sable’s trail, and the Kerzhaks were already talking about returning to the village.

It occurred to Stepan that Askyr had flown on top of the capercaillie from above, which means that his hunting grounds were somewhere in the mountains. Stepan guessed - the sable really returned to his site. There, Pestrya tracked him down and drove him under the crowbars - a pile of empty forest. It was impossible to drive the sable from under a huge heap, and Stepan decided to keep watch near the crowbars all night, hoping that Askir would come out when he was hungry.

At night it snowed and fell asleep the trace of Askyr, who had slipped out from under the crowbars. Kerzhaki were about to leave. Stepan had one day left to catch Askyr. Pestra again took the sable track, drove it for a long time and drove it high up in the mountains under a stone placer. Okot had to stop.

Dream and reality

That day, Stepan noticed three suns in the sky - one present and two “mirages”. From the Kerzhaks, he learned that this was a sure sign of frost. Artel hurried home. As he lowered the boat along the fast river, Stepan started to gape, ran into a rocky scythe and damaged the bottom. Artels had to spend the night here on the spit.

In the morning the riverbanks were covered with ice, Kerzhaks with difficulty pulled the boats onto the still not frozen rapids and by the evening were in the village. There the hunters were already waiting for the cunning buyer. Long negotiations began. The buyer tried to cut the price of the skins, and the hunters tried to sell the loot at a higher price. Stepan also sold his share - two sables.

For a whole month Stepan worked for the owner, and then the artel again went to the taiga, for winter hunting. This time they went skiing, dragging heavy sledges in the thirty-degree frost. With great difficulty, Stepan got to the Cabaret Vostryaki.

Steel jaws

Askir remained to live in the stone placer passages. Once an enemy woke up there - a taiga polecat ferret. Chasing him, Askir came across traces of a lynx. This big cat was dangerous for sable. To this was added the smell of man, emanating from strange, strip-like tracks and terrible metal jaws that caught the column. Troubled times have come for Askyr.

Stepan surrounded the placer with traps, but Askir cleverly walked around them, and there was no assistant, faithful Pestry, with the hunter - the dog could not chase the game in deep snow. Then Stepan decided to lure the sable and built a trap with bait - hazel grouse. The cunning Askyr carefully pulled the hazel grouse by the wing, the trap slammed shut, and the sable caught a trace. Since then, Askir went around everything that smelled of man.

Stepan decided to use the last remedy and begged the Kerzhaks for “scum - hunting net”. He was given a shame for three days. Then the Kerzhaks were going to send furs to the village with one of the artisans and buy food from the one-eyed Nefodych.

Networks

At night, Askyr discovered that the placer was surrounded by a network. Now he could not go hunting, which Stepan hoped for. Neither Asyr could jump over the net, nor undermine under it. Trying to get out of the trap, the sable fell into an unexplored part of the placer, where it came across a colony of rodent-senostavtsev. Now Askir was provided with food and "no siege was terrible for him."

Two days later, Stepan took off the boot and the artel went to Nefedych. Ipat paid for the products with skins. One-eyed wanted to buy the rest of the hunters' booty, but Ipat refused: the village is already waiting for his buyer, to whom Ipat's brother, Ryaboy, will take all the furs he got. When in the morning the hunters left the house of Nefedych, Stepan noticed how the one-eyed man went off somewhere with a gun.

In the taiga

During the hunt, Stepan learned to distinguish the traces of different animals, but he was wary of the taiga: "who knows whose eyes are looking from there on the traveler." He began to fear the taiga as soon as it got dark, and in the afternoon with a smile he recalled his fears. Kerzhaki reinforced Stepan’s fear by telling terrible tales about the taiga in the evenings.

Returning from Nefodych, Stepan saw that Askyr still lives in the placer, and overlaid it with traps, boiled in a beating of the smell of man and iron, from a bark of fir bark and slivers.

The end of the hunt

The long taiga winter ended. Going around all the traps, Askyr left the stone placer and went into the taiga. Spring violated all bestial laws, and Askyr not only hunted, but sought the opportunity to fight with a rival.

As soon as the sable found a narrow path trodden in the snow by another sable, he forgot both hunting and fights, and ran in the footsteps until he overtook his opponent.

Hunting a hare once, Askyr sniffed the trail of another sable and fasted in pursuit. The track led him to the placer and led further up the snowy plain. There, Askyr was seized by terrible steel jaws. So Stepan achieved his cherished goal - he caught a black sable.

Recently, Stepan was unlucky again. Crows and mice spoiled the sables trapped in it.The pockmark had not yet returned from the village, and the worried Ipat fell off on Stepan, taking on the duties of the missing brother.

As soon as the ice broke on the river, the hunters fashioned boats and headed home. Stepan "it seemed that he was flying, flying up - out of a deep dark well" - Sayan. We stayed for the night in the place where Stepan got confused in the rope and almost died. Under the rock, where the one-eyed one appeared then, Stepan found Ryabogo’s icy corpse. The bags in which he carried the skins were empty.

Puffy was shot in the back of the head, and a bullet could fly only from a cliff. Stepan told Ipat that in the fall he saw Nefeditch on a rock. Ipat examined the top of the cliff, and then whispered for a long time with the artisans. The hunters returned home, after which they learned in the village that Nefedych had been killed.

Stepan, on the other hand, sold Askyr's skin and left with his wife in their native lands.