Panteley

The oldest of the wool-wagon drivers, a slow, superstitious, kindly old man entrusted with Yegorushka's care for the several-days' wagon-train leg of the journey; he tells half-believed tales of robbers and buried treasure around the campfire and walks unmoved beside the wagons through the novel's central overnight thunderstorm while the terrified Yegorushka mistakes the other drivers, lit by lightning, for giants. A fictional character of "The Steppe," not a real person; distinct from other Chekhov characters and historical figures named Panteley or Panteleyev elsewhere in this corpus.