“Well, middle brother Ram,” asked Purring Cat, “have you a tough head? Just try it against the gate!”
The Ram took a run and hit the gate with his head: the gate shook, but did not open. Then rose the elder brother Billy-Goat, took a run, hit the gate and it flew open.
The dust rose in a cloud, the grass bent to the ground, while the Goat and Ram were running, and the grey-browed Cat was hopping after them on three legs. He grew tired, and he begged his plighted brothers: “Elder brother and middle brother! Don’t abandon your younger brother a prey to the wild beasts!”
So the Goat stopped and took him on his back, and again they raced over hills, and vales, and drifting sands. And they came to a steep hill and a standstill. Under that steep hill was a mowed meadow, and on that meadow there was a whole town of haystacks. The Goat, and Ram, and Cat stopped to take a rest; it was a cold autumn night. Where were they to get some fire? The Goat and the Ram were still thinking about it, when the Purring Cat got some twigs with which he tied the Goat’s horns, and he told the Goat and the Ram to strike each other’s heads. They hit each other with such a might that sparks flew from their eyes: the twigs crackled.
“That’ll do,” said the grey Cat. “Now we will warm ourselves.” No sooner said than he put a haystack on fire.
They had not yet gotten warm, when lo! there was an uncalled guest, a Peasant-in-gabardine, Mikháylo Ivánovich. “Let me,” he said, “warm myself and take a rest; I don’t feel well.”
“You are welcome, Peasant-in-gabardine, Ant-eater! Good fellow, where do you come from?”
“I went to the beehives and had a fight with the peasants; so I am sick now, and I am on my way to the Fox to get cured.”
They passed the dark night together: the Bear under a haystack, Purring Váska on the haystack, and the Goat and the Ram by the fire.
“Ugh, ugh!” said the White Wolf, “it is not Russian flesh I smell. What manner of people may they be? I must find out!”