Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories Part 20

They babbled for a long time; then the swarthy Tartar jumped up and walked over to Zhilin:

"Uruss," he said, "dzhigit, dzhigit Uruss!"

Dzhigit in their language means a "brave." And he laughed; he said something to the interpreter, and the interpreter said:

"Give one thousand roubles!"

Zhilin stuck to what he had said:

"I will not give more than five hundred. And if you kill me, you will get nothing."

The Tartars talked awhile and sent the labourer somewhere, and themselves kept looking now at Zhilin and now at the door. The labourer came, and behind him walked a fat man; he was barefoot and tattered; he, too, had on the stocks.

Zhilin just shouted, for he recognized Kostylin. He, too, had been caught. They were placed beside each other. They began to talk to each other, and the Tartars kept silence and looked at them. Zhilin told what had happened to him; and Kostylin told him that his horse had stopped and his gun had missed fire, and that the same Abdul had overtaken and captured him.

Abdul jumped up, and pointed to Kostylin, and said something. The interpreter translated it, and said that both of them belonged to the same master, and that the one who would first furnish the money would be the first to be released.

"Now you," he said, "are a cross fellow, but your friend is meek; he has written a letter home, and they will send five thousand roubles. He will be fed well, and will not be insulted."

So Zhilin said:

"My friend may do as he pleases; maybe he is rich, but I am not. As I have said, so will it be. If you want to, kill me,--you will not gain by it,--but more than five hundred will I not give."

They were silent for awhile. Suddenly Abdul jumped up, fetched a small box, took out a pen, a piece of paper, and some ink, put it all before Zhilin, slapped him on the shoulder, and motioned for him to write. He agreed to the five hundred.

"Wait awhile," Zhilin said to the interpreter. "Tell him that he has to feed us well, and give us the proper clothes and shoes, and keep us together,--it will be jollier for us,--and take off the stocks." He looked at the master and laughed. The master himself laughed. He listened to the interpreter, and said:

"I will give you the best of clothes,--a Circa.s.sian mantle and boots,--you will be fit to marry. We will feed you like princes. And if you want to stay together, you may live in the shed. But the stocks cannot be taken off, for you will run away. For the night we will take them off."

He ran up to Zhilin, and tapped him on the shoulder:

"You goot, me goot!"

Zhilin wrote the letter, but he did not address it right. He thought he would run away.

Zhilin and Kostylin were taken back to the shed. They brought for them maize straw, water in a pitcher, bread, two old mantles, and worn soldier boots. They had evidently been pulled off dead soldiers. For the night the stocks were taken off, and they were locked in the barn.

III.

Zhilin and his companion lived thus for a whole month. Their master kept laughing.

"You, Ivan, goot, me, Abdul, goot!"

But he did not feed them well. All he gave them to eat was unsalted millet bread, baked like pones, or entirely unbaked dough.

Kostylin wrote home a second letter. He was waiting for the money to come, and felt lonesome. He sat for days at a time in the shed counting the days before the letter would come, or he slept. But Zhilin knew that his letter would not reach any one, and so he did not write another.

"Where," he thought, "is my mother to get so much money? As it is, she lived mainly by what I sent her. If she should collect five hundred roubles, she would be ruined in the end. If G.o.d grants it, I will manage to get away from here."

And he watched and thought of how to get away.

He walked through the village and whistled, or he sat down somewhere to work with his hands, either making a doll from clay, or weaving a fence from twigs. Zhilin was a great hand at all kinds of such work.

One day he made a doll, with a nose, and hands, and legs, in a Tartar s.h.i.+rt, and put the doll on the roof. The Tartar maidens were going for water. His master's daughter, Dina, saw the doll, and she called up the Tartar girls. They put down their pitchers, and looked, and laughed.

Zhilin took down the doll and gave it to them. They laughed, and did not dare take it. He left the doll, and went back to the shed to see what they would do.

Dina ran up, looked around, grasped the doll, and ran away with it.

In the morning, at daybreak, he saw Dina coming out with the doll in front of the house. The doll was all dressed up in red rags, and she was rocking the doll and singing to it in her fas.h.i.+on. The old woman came out. She scolded her, took the doll away from her and broke it, and sent Dina to work.

Zhilin made another doll, a better one than before, and he gave it to Dina. One day Dina brought him a small pitcher. She put it down, herself sat down and looked at him, and laughed, as she pointed to the pitcher.

"What is she so happy about?" thought Zhilin.

He took the pitcher and began to drink. He thought it was water, but, behold, it was milk. He drank the milk, and said:

"It is good!"

Dina was very happy.

"Good, Ivan, good!" and she jumped up, clapped her hands, took away the pitcher, and ran off.

From that time she brought him milk every day on the sly. The Tartars make cheese-cakes from goat milk, and dry them on the roofs,--and so she brought him those cakes also. One day the master killed a sheep, so she brought him a piece of mutton in her sleeve. She would throw it down and run away.

One day there was a severe storm, and for an hour the rain fell as though from a pail. All the streams became turbid. Where there was a ford, the water was now eight feet deep, and stones were borne down.

Torrents were running everywhere, and there was a roar in the mountains.

When the storm was over, streams were coming down the village in every direction. Zhilin asked his master to let him have a penknife, and with it he cut out a small axle and little boards, and made a wheel, and to each end of the wheel he attached a doll.

The girls brought him pieces of material, and he dressed the dolls: one a man, the other a woman. He fixed them firmly, and placed the wheel over a brook. The wheel began to turn, and the dolls to jump.

The whole village gathered around it; boys, girls, women, and men came, and they clicked with their tongues:

"Ai, Uruss! Ai, Ivan!"

Abdul had a Russian watch, but it was broken. He called Zhilin, showed it to him, and clicked his tongue. Zhilin said:

"Let me have it! I will fix it!"

He took it to pieces with a penknife; then he put it together, and gave it back to him. The watch was running now.

The master was delighted. He brought his old half-coat,--it was all in rags,--and made him a present of it. What could he do but take it? He thought it would be good enough to cover himself with in the night.

After that the rumour went abroad that Zhilin was a great master. They began to come to him from distant villages: one, to have him fix a gun-lock or a pistol, another, to set a clock a-going. His master brought him tools,--pinchers, gimlets, and files.

One day a Tartar became sick: they sent to Zhilin, and said, "Go and cure him!" Zhilin did not know anything about medicine. He went, took a look at him, and thought, "Maybe he will get well by himself." He went to the barn, took some water and sand, and mixed it. In the presence of the Tartars he said a charm over the water, and gave it to him to drink.

Luckily for him, the Tartar got well.