Last fall, Tanabay came to the collective farm office, and the foreman said to him: “We picked you, aksakal, a horse. It’s a bit old, but it’ll do for your work. ” Tanabai saw the pacifier, and his heart sank painfully. “So we met, it turns out, again,” he said to the old horse, completely hackneyed.

The first time he met with a pacer Gulsara after the war. After being demobilized, Tanabay worked at the forge, and then Choro, a longtime friend, persuaded him to go to the mountains as a herder. It was there for the first time that I saw a mule-and-a-half round, round like a ball. The former herdman Torgoy said: "For such a thing, in the old days they put heads in fights at the jump."

Autumn and winter passed. The meadows stood green-green, and above them white-white snow shone on the tops of the ridges. Bulaniy turned into a slender strong stallion. Only passion possessed him - a passion for running. Then the time came when he learned to walk under the saddle so swiftly and evenly that people gasped: "Put a bucket of water on it - and not a drop will splash out." That spring, the star of the pacer and his master rose high. Both young and old knew about them.

But there was no case that Tanabay allowed anyone to mount his horse. Even that woman. In those May nights, the pacifier began some kind of nocturnal lifestyle. During the day, he grazed, courting the mares, and at night, driving the collective farm herd into the hollow, the owner rode on it to the house of Byubyuzhan. At dawn, they again raced along the inconspicuous steppe trails to the horses left in the hollow.

Once there was a terrible night hurricane, and the Gulsars and the owner did not have time for the herd. And Tanabaya’s wife, even at night, rushed to help her neighbors. The herd was found, kept in the spring. But Tanabay was gone. “Well,” the wife said quietly to the returning prodigal husband. “The children will soon be adults, and you ...”

The wife and neighbors left. And Tanabai crashed to the ground. He lay face down, and his shoulders shook with sobs. He cried with shame and grief, he knew that he had lost the happiness that had fallen for the last time in his life. And the lark tweeted in the sky ...

In the winter of that year, a new chairman appeared on the collective farm: Choro passed the case and was in the hospital. The new boss wanted to ride the Gulsary himself.

When the horse was taken away, Tanabay went to the steppe, to the herd. I could not calm down. Orphaned herd. Orphaned soul.

But one morning, Tanabay again saw his pacifier in the herd. With a hanging fragment of a halter under the saddle. He escaped, therefore. Gulsars were drawn to the herd, to the mares. He wanted to drive away rivals, take care of foals. Soon two grooms arrived from the ail, took the Gulsars back. And when the pacer ran away for the third time, Tanabay was already angry: there would be no trouble. He began to dream restless, heavy dreams. And when we drove into the ail before a new nomad, he could not stand it, he rushed to the stable. And he saw what he was so afraid of: the horse stood motionless, a huge, the size of a jug, tight inflamed tumor was heavy between the hind legs. Lonely, emasculated.

In the fall of that year, the fate of Tanabay Bekasov suddenly turned. Choro, now a party organizer, gave him a party assignment: to move into shepherds.

In November, early winter broke out. Swollen uterus strongly lost from the body, ridges bulging. And in the barns of the collective farm - everything is a broom.

Lambing time was drawing near. Flocks began to move to the foothills, in the foothills. What Tanabai saw there shocked him like thunder in a clear day. He did not count on anything special, but for the koshara to stand with a rotten and sunken roof, with holes in the walls, without windows, without doors - he did not expect this. Everywhere there is mismanagement, no light that has ever been seen, there is practically no feed or litter. But how can this be so?

They worked tirelessly. The hardest part was cleaning the nightmare and chopping rose hips. Unless at the front so happened to work hard. And one night, leaving the stretcher with a stretcher, he heard Tanabay, as he noticed a lamb in the corral. So it has begun.

Tanabay felt a catastrophe approaching. The first hundred queens roamed. And the hungry cries of the lambs were already heard - the exhausted queens did not have milk. Spring came with rain, fog and south. And the shepherd began to make a few pieces of the blue corpses of lambs for a nightmare. A dark, terrible malice arose in his soul: why raise sheep if we cannot save? And Tanabay and his assistants barely kept their feet. And the hungry sheep already ate wool from each other, keeping no suckers.

And then the bosses approached the nightmare. One was Choro, the other was the district prosecutor Segizbayev. This one began to reproach Tanabay: the communist, they say, and the lambs die. Pest, tearing plans!

Tanabai furiously grabbed the pitchfork ... The aliens barely carried away the legs. And on the third day, a bureau of the district party committee was held, and Tanabay was expelled from its ranks. Came out of the district committee - at the Govsary hitching post. He embraced the horse’s neck and only complained to him of his misfortune ... Tanabay recalled all this now, many years later, sitting by the fire. Gulsary lay motionless nearby - life left him. Tanabai said goodbye to the pacer, told him: “You were a great horse, Gulsary. You were my friend, Gulsars. You take my best years with you, Gulsars. ”

It was morning. On the edge of the ravine the embers of the fire smoldered a little. Nearby stood a gray-haired old man. And Gulsary moved into the herds of heaven.

Tanabai was walking along the steppe. Tears flowed down his face, wet his beard. But he did not wipe them. Those were the tears for the pacifier of Gulsara.