In one village there lived two thieves; one of them was called Kaituko, and the other Sheraluko. The latter had a son of eighteen years old named Kuchuk. One day, Sheraluko experienced misfortune: while he was leading out a horse, he was wounded; he died from the consequences of the wound. After the death of his father, Kuchuk appeared to his comrade Kaytuko and said:
“My father was friends with you; you stole together and shared the spoils like brothers, and I would like to continue my father’s work; just let me learn the craft of a thief from you!
- Okay, I’m ready to teach you some sense. Come visit me today!
Kuchuk came to visit him, but the owner was not at home: he was away somewhere on business. Entering him, Kuchuk asked the old woman Kaytuko’s mother:
– Is my friend at home?
- Kaituko is not at home; but if he is your friend, then please be a guest!
Kuchuk is glad to have a chance to chat; he sat down on a bench and began to tell the old woman all sorts of tall tales. The old woman liked the guest, and she began to treat him with lamb and buza. Meanwhile, Kuchuk’s keen eye noticed that there was dried lamb hanging under the ceiling of the sakli, which looked very fatty and must have been very tasty. The eyes of the future thief lit up, and he decided to steal it the next night. Having chatted enough with the old woman, Kuchuk left. A little later, Kaituko appears in a bad mood. Wanting to cheer him up, the old woman immediately reports to him that Kuchuk was their guest.
- Did he drink buza? - asked Kaituko.
- Yes, I drank! - answered the old woman.
– And when he drank, didn’t he look up?
- Yes, I looked!
- So he saw dried lamb under the ceiling?
- I must have seen it.
“He will definitely steal it next night!”
- But he’s your friend!
“A friend is a friend, but he’s the kind of guy who would take the last shirt off his body.”
After thinking for a moment, Kaituko said to his mother:
- You know what, mother? Take off the lamb, hide it in a chest and put it under your pillow at night; maybe he won’t find it!
As the son said, so the mother did. The son went to sleep on the bed, and the mother lay on the floor and put a chest of dried lamb under her pillow. Almost every hour at night, Kaituko asked his mother if the chest was intact.
- Yes, intact! - the mother answered, and Kaituko calmed down for a while.
Towards morning, Kaituko was overcome by drowsiness, and finally he fell soundly asleep. Kuchuk crept up; seeing that the door was tightly locked, he climbed onto the roof of the saklya, and from there climbed inside through the pipe. He began to feel the place where the lamb hung, but, to his chagrin, he found nothing. The thief guessed that the experienced owner understood his intentions and took precautions.
- Meow-meow! - a barely intelligible meow is heard throughout the sakla, and you can even hear the cat scratching with its paws.
- To hell with this lamb! - the dissatisfied old woman grumbles. - They won’t let me sleep! They used to say that the thief would come after her, but now the cat is creeping up.
- Meow-meow! – the cat’s loud meow was heard again. The old woman began to grumble, and now she could no longer restrain herself.
- Well, really, why is she bothering? After all, I hid the lamb in the chest and put it under the pillow. It’s a fatty piece, but it’s not reserved for you!
And that’s all Kuchuk needed. The cat's meowing stopped, and the annoyed old woman, having calmed down somewhat in her anxiety, fell into an old woman's sleep. Kuchuk took advantage of this moment, quietly pulled out a chest from under the pillow, quietly crawled into the pipe and was like that...
Two or three minutes passed. Kaituko woke up and asked his mother:
- Mother, is the chest in its place?
- How? What? Now there was a cat! - muttered the dumbfounded old woman, noticing the loss of the chest.
Kaituk didn't need to say it twice: he knew what kind of cat it was! Now he jumped out of bed, put on his mother’s dress and ran straight through the garden to Kuchuk’s hut, where he found himself before the owner. Kuchuk enters after him, and his old mother meets him on the threshold.
- Poor son! - says Kaytuko, imitating the voice of Kuchuk’s mother, but whether it was really her was difficult to find out in the darkness of the night. -You worked all night. Give me what you have in your hands, and go to bed and rest!
- Yes, I’m really tired! - said Kuchuk; he has no idea that this is not his mother. He gave Kaituko the chest and went to the stable to see if his horse was safe. Taking advantage of this, Kaituko disappeared behind the saklya and went home the same way.
In the morning Kuchuk woke up, and since his sense of smell was still tickled by the pleasant smell of dried lamb, the first thing he did was ask his mother to bake the lamb that he got at night.
-What are you weaving? - asked the mother. “You didn’t give me anything.”
Now Kuchuk realized what was going on: Kai-tuko had outwitted him!
- How? - shouted Kuchuk, touched to the quick by this. - Kai-tuko, what the hell, he’ll think that I’m no match for him. No matter how it is! I will prove to him that there are worse thieves in the world than him.
The next day, Kuchuk took with him two red dudes of his mother and went to Kaituko. He received him friendly, as if nothing had happened, without making the slightest hint about their mutual exploits. Needless to say: neither one nor the other lost face in the dirt! Kuchuk invited Kaytuko to go stealing together; Kaituko agreed. They left the village and walked along the high road. A peasant is carrying hay on a cart.
“Come on,” says Kuchuk, “let’s bring the bulls to the owner!”
– Is this possible? - says Kaituko.
“For a good thief, anything is possible.” Here are two dudes for you: put one here on the road, and the other there - further away! The peasant will see one dude first, jump off the cart and run to pick it up, and there is another one ahead; In the meantime, we will unharness the oxen and hide them in the nearest forest.
And indeed, when the peasant saw the first dude, he jumped off the cart and ran to pick it up. Having picked one up, he saw another dude lying at a distance and ran after him; Picking up this one too, he took off his old leaky boots and began trying on new ones. He suffered for a long time, trying to put them on, but he could not succeed: the women's boots did not fit on the man's leg. The peasant was so carried away by his work that he completely forgot about the bulls, not supposing, of course, that anything could happen to them. Meanwhile, the thieves did not blame their hands: they immediately unharnessed the bulls and drove them into the nearest forest. There they quickly cut off their heads, stuck these heads into a swampy swamp so that only the horns stuck out, and they themselves hid with the carcasses of the bulls.
Having fussed with the dudes to his heart's content and finally abandoned them, the peasant noticed, to his horror, the disappearance of the bulls. Now he rushed to follow fresh tracks to look for them. He ran to that swamp, where in the swampiest place bull heads with spreading horns stuck out. It seemed to him that his bulls were stuck in a swamp. He decided to get them out of there. The peasant undressed and, leaving his clothes on the shore, climbed into the swamp. Meanwhile, Kuchuk jumped out of the ambush, grabbed the peasant’s clothes and again disappeared into the thicket. The poor man, having pulled the heads of his bulls out of the swamp, thought that he had somehow carelessly torn them from the body, and began to cry. To add insult to injury, when he crawled out of the swamp, he did not find his clothes.
There was nothing to do: the poor man went in his mother's clothes to the cart with hay that he had left behind, but found neither the cart nor the hay. Here he finally lost his head:
- Well, the thieves robbed me: there was no cart, no hay, no bulls - and they even took my shirt off my body!
The miserable pshitl trudges home with gloomy thoughts; he arouses laughter in everyone he meets, since no one is used to seeing a completely naked person on the road, with only a twig in his hands. A little later, about twenty horsemen came across him. When they saw him, they burst out laughing.
-What happened to you, weirdo? - they ask him.
- Beware: a thief has appeared in this area, who stole my bulls, clothes, and in addition a cart with hay; He'll probably steal your horses! – The riders began to laugh even more:
- How is this so? Tell me again! Oh, you damned one! The peasant did not talk to them anymore and went his way. Having traveled several miles, the riders settled down near the forest for the night: they pitched a tent, threw off their cloaks and weapons, and, having hobbled their horses, let them graze under the supervision of two guards. When it became completely dark, they lit a fire and began to fry shish kebab and cook lamb in a cauldron. Sitting by the fire, they remembered the warning of the naked pshitl and began to tell each other about the various exploits of thieves known for their dexterity; the guards kept a watchful eye on the horses. Suddenly, Kuchuk, wrapped in a burka, approaches the guards and says:
– Go to the fire: the kebab is already ready; I'll watch the horses for now!
Suspecting nothing, the guards went to the fire.
– Who did you leave the horses with? - their comrades ask.
- Like who! Why, you invited us to eat barbecue, sending a guard to replace us!
It was only then that everyone realized that the thief, about whom the peasant they had met had warned them, had remained on guard. Everyone rushed after the horses, but Kuchuk had already managed to hide them in the forest, and in the meantime, while they were looking, he, leaving them under the supervision of his comrade Kaytuko, rushed into a tent in which there was no one; there he took all the cloaks, hoods, the riders’ silver-bound weapons and saddles, stole the already fried kebab and the lamb boiling in the cauldron, throwing in his old tattered cloak in exchange, and disappeared into the darkness of the night.
Meanwhile, the riders, after a vain search, returned to the fire to at least refresh their strength with shish kebab and boiled lamb. But what was their amazement when they found nothing here either, except for the cauldron in which the tattered cloak was boiled.
- What a thief! - one of the victims burst out. But what could the riders do but return on foot to their village!
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru