“If I hadn’t known you had all those ‘crackling cannons,’ I’d have ordered everyone and all the dogs to come to your rescue,” Bilgee said.
“Why didn’t they attack the sheep or try to snatch the cub away?” Chen asked.
The old man took a drink of tea and puffed on his pipe. “I think it could be that your little cub wasn’t speaking real wolf language, and the dogs were barking, which confused the wolves.”
“You’re always telling me that wolves have a spiritual connection. So why didn’t Tengger tell them the truth?”
“Of course the three of you and a few dogs would have been no match for them,” the old man said. “But all the people and dogs here were geared up for a real battle, and if the wolves had decided to mount a frontal attack, they’d have been in serious trouble. Director Bao may be able to trick others, but not Tengger. Tengger didn’t want the wolves to be trapped, so he ordered them to withdraw.”
Chen and Yang laughed. Yang said, “Tengger is very wise.”
“Scientifically speaking,” Chen said to Uljii, “why didn’t the wolves attack?”
Uljii thought for a moment. “I haven’t seen or heard anything like what happened last night before. I think the pack might have considered the cub to be an outsider. The grassland wolves have their own territory, and those without territory leave sooner or later. Territory is more important than their lives. The local wolves often engage in mortal combat with wolves from other areas. Maybe your cub speaks a language unintelligible to the pack, and they didn’t think it was worth their while to fight over an alien cub. The alpha male was here last night, and he’s not easy to trick. He must have seen through the trap, since he understands that deception is the battlefield norm. He grew suspicious when he saw how close the cub was to humans and dogs. He won’t take a risk unless there’s a seventy percent chance of success, and he never touches anything he doesn’t understand. He treats the females well and doesn’t want them to be tricked either, which is why he came to check things out for them. He led them away when something didn’t look right to him.”
Chen and Yang nodded in agreement.
They saw their guests out. Still despondent and visibly thinner, the cub was sprawled on the ground, resting his chin on the back of his paws, staring straight ahead. He looked as if he’d had both good and bad dreams the night before and was still unable to return to reality.
The old man stopped when he saw the cub. “Poor little wolf. The pack didn’t want him and his parents couldn’t recognize him. Will he live the rest of his life attached to a chain? When you Chinese came to the grassland, you broke down our established rules. My heart aches when I see you shackle a clever little wolf like a slave. Wolves are very patient. Just you wait and see. He’ll escape one of these days; you’ll never win him over, not even if you feed him a fat little lamb every day.”
No wolf howls sounded around the camp on the third night, or on the fourth, except for the lonely and forlorn howls of the cub rising above the quiet grassland and echoing in the valley. There was no response. After a week, he all but stopped.
For some time after that, no wolves came to attack the sheep or cattle in Yang and Chen’s care, or any livestock belonging to the two nearby production teams. The women on night shift all smiled and said to them, “Now we can get a good night’s sleep, all the way through to milking time.”
During those days, when they talked about raising wolves, the herdsmen went easier on Chen. But none of them expressed any interest in raising a cub themselves, not even to scare away a wolf pack. Some old herdsmen in Section Four said, “Why not let them do it? We’ll see what happens when the cub grows bigger and turns wild.”
27
During this period, the cub had plenty to eat, thanks to Zhang Jiyuan’s supply of horsemeat. Whenever he was reminded of how the mother wolves took care of their young in the pack, Chen felt he should give the cub better and even more food, and walk him more often. But even though he reserved all the meat for the cub, the supply eventually ran out and the entrails were barely enough for one more meal. Chen was concerned.
One evening Gao Jianzhong told him that an ox grazing on a slope had been struck by lightning, so early the next morning Chen went up the hill with his knife and a gunnysack, but he was too late. Nothing but the skull and some of the hardest bones remained; the wolves hadn’t left a shred of meat behind. He sat down to check out the bones and saw tiny tooth marks left by cubs in the cracks. Working together, the adults had gobbled up great chunks of meat while the cubs had eaten the shreds, finishing off the ox completely. Even the flies buzzed in anger and flew away after a nibble or two. An old cow herder in Section Three came up while Chen sat there; the pile of bones appeared to have belonged to an animal in his herd. He said to Chen, “The wolf pack didn’t dare come for the sheep, so Tengger killed an ox for them. See, Tengger even picked the right moment, at night, when the workers couldn’t be here to haul it back for its meat. Young man, Tengger sets the grassland rules and punishes people who break them.” With a dark face, he closed his knees around his horse’s sides and rode slowly down the hill toward his herd.
The rules the old herdsmen talk about are the natural laws of the grassland, Chen was thinking, set by heaven, that is, the universe. Raising a wolf under nomadic, pastoral conditions clearly disrupts the mode of production. The cub has already caused the grassland trouble, and who knows what new troubles it might cause in the days to come. He returned empty-handed, his head a jumble of thoughts. Gazing up at Tengger, he thought of lines of poetry: “The sky covers the earth like a terrestrial roof,” and “The sky is dark, the wilderness vast / The grass bends when the wind blows / No wolf can be seen.” Out there, a wolf pack is like a will-o’-the-wisp, coming and going in a flash; people often hear the wolves and are witness to the damage they do, but they seldom see them in the flesh, which is why, in the minds of the people, they are so mysterious, so cunning, so magical. That was also why Chen could not control his own curiosity, his desire to learn and to study. With the cub, he knew he had a living wolf that was surrounded by a belief in a wolf totem. He’d gone through so much trouble, had endured so much pressure, and had risked so much that he felt he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to.
He went over to the laborers’ camp, where he paid a steep price for some millet. Without meat, all he could do was add more grain to the cub’s food, hoping the diet would sustain it until the next time a sheep was slaughtered. Then he’d be able to give the dogs some meat too. Back in the yurt he was about to take a nap when the three puppies yelped happily and ran off. Chen went out and looked to the west; it was Erlang, Yellow, and Yir returning from the mountains. Both Erlang and Yellow held their heads high, holding large prey in their mouths. Constant gnawing hunger had driven Yir and Yellow to follow Erlang up into the mountains to hunt. Obviously, they’d had a pretty good day; not only had they taken care of their own bellies, but they were able to bring some home for the puppies.
Chen rushed up to greet the dogs, as the puppies fought for the food in their mouths. Erlang laid down his catch to chase the puppies away, then picked it up again and ran toward home. Chen’s eyes lit up, for Erlang and Yellow each carried a marmot and Yir had a foot-long prairie dog, its head the size of a turnip. It was the first time Chen had seen his dogs bring prey back, and he happily ran up to take it.
Eager for Chen’s praise, Yellow and Yir quickly laid their catch at his feet and jumped up and down, yelping and wagging their tails and running in circles around him. Yellow even did a split with his front legs, with his chest and neck nearly touching the dead marmot, something completely new to Chen. He appeared to be telling him that it was he who’d caught it. A row of pink, swollen nipples on the marmot’s belly showed that it was a nursing female. Chen patted both dogs on the head. “Good dogs,” he said. “Good dogs.”