CHAPTER 1

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This is the story of the Lamut, Turgen, who lived alone high in the hills of northeastern Siberia and had for friends a herd of mountain rams.

Turgen, whose name means “fleet-of-foot” in the Lamut tongue, was a lonely man. It had not always been so. When he was younger he had had a wife and a son whom he loved. But both had died of an illness that burned like fire, and rested now in a single grave under the larch tree outside his door. He had also had the liking and trust of the Yakuts who were his neighbors in the valley below. Among them he was famed for his knowledge of medicine. Knowing him for a kindly, generous man, they came to him for healing grasses, and were never refused. He, in turn, visited them and sat by their _komeleks_, or fire-places, to exchange the latest news.

All this was in the past. Turgen no longer received callers or went into the valley, except to take fish to the widow Marfa and receive milk for his own use. Marfa and her two children, a son Tim and a daughter Aksa, were Turgen’s only friends. For the most part he stayed close to his _yurta_, a simple hut perched between two cliffs above a mountain stream. On sunny days, when he was not hunting or fishing, he loved to sit on a rough bench under a great larch tree and smoke his pipe while watching the activity in the valley below. The mountains were full of mystery and peace. Because of them he could think of the past without regret.

You wonder why the people of the valley shunned Turgen. The reason, you will say, was no reason at all. Word had spread among them that he was friendly with the wild rams who lived in the mountains. “Who ever heard of friendship between a man and mountain rams?” the Yakuts asked. It was impossible. And if it was impossible, then Turgen was a sorcerer--a partner of the devil.

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