25
Two Schemes
Just at that time Djantemir unexpectedly summoned Jaisak.
“Now listen,” he said to the young herder, after making sure that nobody was eavesdropping on them. “In a month or a month and a half Shauken will bear me a child. If it is a son, I will hold a big toi and baiga. Pick the best two-and three-year-old horses out of the herd and start breaking them, and then train them to run long quick races. I pin my hopes upon you. But mind you — let not a single soul guess that you are preparing the horses for a baiga. We will announce it not months but just weeks before it starts. Everybody will enter his mount just like it is, while we …he-he-he! Then my horses will be the first to finish, and my fame will again spread across the whole steppe.”
“All right, I will do it,” Jaisak
