An old man and an old woman lived on the banks of a large river. They had a son. His name is Mokchu Kechikte.
They lived by hunting and preparing fish.
One day an old man sailed on a boat upstream of the river. As he swam, one person watched him from the shore. I stood and watched. Then he shouted:
-Where is the old man going?
The old man replied:
— Set up networks. I will catch fish.
Well, the old man swam to the bend of the river. He went ashore, unloaded his property, and then set up his nets.
By evening I caught a lot of chum salmon.
When it got dark, the old man lit a fire. I sat, rested, and ate chum salmon.
Suddenly people came out of the forest. With bows and arrows.
The old man stood up and asked:
-Where do you go at night?
They said:
“We’re not going anywhere, we came to you.”
“Since you’ve come, help yourself to some fish,” the old man suggested.
“And we’ll take it all from you.” And we'll take the networks. And the boat too. Everything will become ours.
Those people grabbed the old man and tied his hands behind his back.
- Do you want to kill me? For what? - said the old man. - How will you live after that, have you thought?
Those people didn’t answer anything. They threw the old man into the river.
The old woman waited for her husband for a long time. I was worried, thinking: “Why isn’t he coming back, what happened? Are you sick? Is the boat leaking?”
The old man’s sister came from another village. She told the terrible news:
- My brother, your husband was killed.
After this, the old woman lived alone with her son, Mokchu. Now he was catching fish, and she was drying it. He also became a good hunter - he brought home all kinds of animals. My son grew up quickly. And so he asked the old mother:
- People killed my father, or what? Who are they? Tell.
The mother told everything she knew.
Well, Mokchu thought: “You killed my father, and I’ll try you. The time will come.”
Soon Mokchu got married. His wife gave birth to a son. And the old mother, having become quite old, died. I buried my mother and decided: it’s time to go to those people.
I went at night. He walked and walked, sat down halfway, and straightened the string of his bow. And he went again. And he found himself in front of the hero’s house. That house was surrounded by a high fence, three times the height of a man. But Mokchu easily and silently climbed over the fence. And he crept up to the window. He stood up and listened to what those people in the house were talking about. And they talk about him, about Mokchu. From somewhere they found out that he was going to take revenge on them for his father.
The shaman said:
- You will defeat Mokcha! You will kill him!
I licked the window with my tongue to better see what was going on inside the house. And he sees: his figure is standing, and people are chopping it with daggers and shouting:
- This is how Mokchu and I will get rid of it! That's how it is!
Then Mokchu took out his dagger. And the hero heard the noise, grabbed the bow - and went to the door.
Mokchu managed to run to the fence and sat down, covering his chest with his knees. “Let the arrow hit the leg,” he thought. “The chest will remain intact.”
Indeed, the arrow hit me in the leg. Mokchu endured terrible pain. He didn't even move. You couldn't even hear his breathing. And the hero said:
- Wow! Why did I start shooting at the fence?
And he left.
Mokchu took the arrow out of his leg, hid the tip in his bosom, thinking: “You didn’t kill me, but now I’ll kill you with the tip of your arrow.” He bandaged the wound with deerskin, climbed over the fence and returned home.
“I went to get wounds,” he told his wife. - I will undergo treatment.
A month later he was cured. And at that time those people surrounded his house. Mokchu approached the door, looked through the hole - it was dark all around. But he saw the hero. He put the arrow in the hole and fired. The hero collapsed. And people fled.
But in the morning it turned out that this was the younger hero, and the older one, the one who shot Mokcha there, at the fence, was at home. “Okay,” thought Mocchu, “I’ll find the elder one.”
And the eldest got ready to go to the river. Zhenya said:
— I’ll go set up the nets.
The wife replied:
- Go and get to work.
The elder hero, having gone down to the river, raised his boat with both hands above his head and laid it on the water. He threw the net at her. And so he swam. When the pole rested on the bottom, his armpit was visible. I wet that armpit and shot.
- Here! - said. - I’ll give you your arrow!
The hero fell into the water and drowned in the place where Father Mokchu once died by his evil will.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru