The tabunshick lives in constant dread of the horse-stealer, and yet there is hardly a tabunshick on the Steppe that will not steal a horse if occasion presents itself. The traveller, who has left his horses to graze during the night, or the villager, who has allowed his cattle to wander away from his house, will do well to ascertain that there be no taboon in the vicinity, or in the morning he will look for them in vain. The tabunshick, meanwhile, takes care to rid himself, as soon as possible, of his stolen goods, by exchanging them away to the first brother herdsman that he meets, who again barters them away to another; so that in a few days, a horse that was stolen on the banks of the Dniepr, passes from hand to hand till it reaches the Bug or the Dniestr; and the rightful owner may still be inquiring after a steed, which has already quitted the empire of the Czar, to enter the service of a Moslem, or to figure in the stud of a Hungarian magnate. The tabunshicks have constantly little affairs of this kind to transact with one another, for which the Mongolian tumuli, scattered over the Steppe, afford convenient places of rendezvous.
Accustomed to a life of roguery and hardship, and indulging constantly in every kind of excess, the tabunshick comes naturally to be looked upon, by the more orderly class, as rather a suspicious character; but his friendship is generally worth having, and his ill-will is always dreaded. His very master stands a little in awe of him, for a tabunshick is not a servant that can be dismissed at a day’s notice. When the taboon has once become accustomed to him, the animals are not easily brought to submit to the control of a stranger. The tabunshick, moreover, has learned to know his horses; can tell the worth of each, can advise which to sell and which to keep, and knows where the best pasture ground may be looked for. Such a fellow, therefore, if intelligent and experienced, whatever his moral character may be, becomes necessary to his master, and, feeling this, is not long without presuming upon his conscious importance. He plays his wild pranks with impunity, and looks down with sovereign contempt upon the more decent members of society, particularly upon the more honest shepherds and cowherds, whom he considers, in every point of view, as an inferior race.