Once upon a time, there lived a hunter in the taiga. He made his living by catching wild deer, sheep and elks. He hunted in summer and in winter, in any weather, without fatigue. In a big village, he swapped the skins of captured game for salt and sugar, gunpowder and bullets, flour and clothes.
Over time the man got married. He had a beautiful wife and a beloved son. His wife worked all day long: she embroidered clothes, fabricated skins, picked berries and nuts. They dwelt in happiness in a little choom (a sort of house), and were pretty well off.
However the years went by. The hunter became old, got sick eyes, and then completely lost his eyesight. In the beginning, the man behaved as though nothing had happened, but it was not so easy. He could not hide the blindness from his wife and she thought:
"If he cannot kill even a lamb, what should I do?"
The old man became a burden to the woman, and she began to think about how to get rid of him.
One day, when they nomadized in the forest, a roe deer rushed to the right side from their way. The woman told her husband:
"Listen, man, there is a deer running right now! What a pity that you can't get it!"
Although the old man was blind, he took a gun and asked the wife to help him to take aim. The old woman helped him to aim so that a bullet should surely hit the wild deer. The old man shot, and the wife shouted at her husband:
"Oh, damn! Why did you miss the aim?" - But the hunter guessed by the sound of the shot that he has hit the target, and he actually hit.
They passed a mile and the old woman decided to stay for a night. They found a suitable place in the woods, put up a tent and built a fire. The old man lay down in the tent and fell asleep from fatigue. Unbeknown to the man, his wife had found the dead deer in the forest, skinned it, brought to the night's lodging and prepared to cook the meat. When the meat was cooked, the woman began to eat meat together with her son, but the husband got nothing.
The old woman used to cook the meat secretly and eat it every day with her son. The hunter would not eat and had to drink only plain tea with no sugar.
One day he hearkened to the noise and heard that there was something, sizzling in a pan. The old man asked his son:
"Sonny, what is it that your mother is cooking?"
"The meat is roasting in the pan - venison from the deer that you killed." - answered the son.
The old man got extremely angry: he realized that his wife was cheating. He said to his son:
"Sonny, go into the forest and search out a large anthill. And when you find it, come here and tell me."
The boy found the anthill, came back and told his father where it was. Then the hunter sent him to look for a rope. The boy brought the rope and gave it to his father.
The old man slowly crept up to the sleeping wife, fell on her and bound her hands and legs. She cried and begged to forgive her. But the old man took her into the forest, brought to the known place and threw her on the anthill.
The ants were crawling on the woman, climbing under her clothes and biting her. The unhappy woman began writhing and wincing in pain. The ants strangled her and gnawed at her body. She had died in a great agony, lying on the anthill. Nothing but white bones remained from her.
Thereby the old man took revenge on his wife. Then he and his son left the taiga and came to people in the nearest hamlet.
![The Tale of the Blind Hunter [Славянский Владимир Владимирович]](/img/s/slawjanskij_wladimir_wladimirowich/thetaleoftheblindhunter/thetaleoftheblindhunter.jpg)