One day, an aza came to the hunters' tent. He sees the housewife busy at the hearth. Asked:
[Aza – damn. ]
-Where is your son? I have to eat it... The hostess was scared. And no one was nearby - the husband and son were hunting and were about to return. Aza found out about this and said that he would come again and deal with the owner’s son as it should. He said and immediately disappeared. The woman began to cry and sob.
The good spirit, the owner of Mount Dag-Eezy, learned about the misfortune of the young hunter’s mother with his perspicacious mind; he always helped people, wishing them only well-being. And he sends his assistant Bugulday to the woman’s husband to warn about the misfortune.
Bugulday turned into a frisky foal and rushed faster than the wind through the mountains and valleys, finding both hunters, father and son, in the taiga. They were already returning to their camp.
Father and son found out about everything that happened in their plague and hurried. Thinking that it will be difficult for the two of them to deal with the devil, the son sends his old father, just in case, for help to a neighboring nomad, and he himself goes to his tent: maybe he will outwit the basics.
The mother was not in the plague, she ran away to the neighbors, and the terrible aza sat by the empty cauldron and waited for his victim, hiccupping from hunger. The devil saw the young guy, was delighted and told him to get into the cauldron, and quickly.
But the young hunter was not very confused: what a disaster, because he is not afraid of a living bear, but here... And he says with a resigned look:
- Oh, venerable aza, you see - the cauldron is small, but I am big and cannot fit in it. After all, it’s only you devils who know how to shrink in size. Now, if you showed me how this is done, then maybe something would have worked out for me.
Aza decided to show this fool how to get into the cauldron. He instantly wrapped his tail around him, shrunk to the size of a cauldron, tucked his hooves and jumped into the cauldron.
The guy immediately covered it with a heavy lid, took his bow and arrows - and instantly left the chum. Not far from the camp, he climbed a tree and began to wait. As soon as Aza appeared under the tree, the young man inserted an arrow and pulled the bow string. The first arrow pinned the devil's tail to a tree, the second arrow pierced his front paw, sewing it to a thick twig, and the third hit his second paw. Aza screamed in pain, but could not escape.
The old hunter's son calmly climbed down from the tree and went after his father and comrades.
“Sit here, wait,” he said, as if addressing the devil. - However, you have nowhere to rush...
There were already people in the plague. The mother was delighted and did not know where to sit and what to feed her son. According to the ancient custom of hunters, it was rude to loudly show their feelings, curiosity and impatience. The people sat in deep and respectable silence. They slowly ate red deer meat soup.
The father-hunter wiped his lips with the hem of his deer jacket and only now, after eating, asked his son how he fought with the aza and how it ended.
“Aza is waiting for us here not far from the camp,” said the young man. “His paws and tail are sewn to the tree by your son’s arrows, father.”
Everyone immediately got up, thanked the hostess for the treat and moved together to where the guy had left the basics. When the old man saw the captive devil, he thought to himself that it was the owner of the mountain, Dag-Ezza, who was helping people, otherwise the lousy one would have escaped somehow. But the son thought something completely different: a person cannot be afraid of the devil. And you shouldn’t be afraid of him at all.
Aza saw the hunters, rushed about, and realized that the end had come for his tricks. And the old hunter said:
“Now you know, aza, that people are stronger than you, and you will leave these places, never to return, never to do harm to people.”
The old man took out his trusty hunting knife, with which his ancestors had gone bear hunting, and looked at his comrades. They silently nodded to him and prepared their bows with well-aimed arrows. The hunter raised his knife and, in three strokes, cut off his paws and tail in the places where they were nailed by his son’s arrows. The devil flew into the air with a scream. The lowered bowstrings of the hunting bows began to ring and rustle, and several arrows hit the devil in the backside. The devil with this plumage of arrows, tucking his stump of his tail, rushed to run away further through the taiga. He was followed by the laughter of young and old hunters. For a long time he still disturbed the surrounding mountains.
Since then, the old people say, no one was anymore afraid of Aza and did not see him, only in memory of him the name of the mountain remained, where now the summer plagues stand and deer graze - Devil's Mountain.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru