That appealed to Yang Ke, who said with a laugh, “I think I’ll get potted! Everyone’s been waiting to see what will happen to us for raising a wolf cub. So what happens? We get to laugh at somebody else. They don’t know it, but a wolf can teach people not only how to steal a chicken but also how to keep the rice you used to lure it.”
That made them all laugh.
The cub lay sprawled beside his food basin, so stuffed he couldn’t move. But Chen noted how he guarded the meat remaining inside the basin-like a wild animal guarding its prey. It was, in a way, a meal provided by his wolf kin as disaster relief, Chen thought wryly.
29
It took Batu and Zhang Jiyuan two whole days, during which they each switched horses four times, to drive their herd of horses to a mountaintop northwest of the new grazing land. Given the strong winds, there was no need to worry that the horses would turn back and gallop into the wind. The men were so tired that their legs felt fused to their saddles, and they weren’t sure if they could even dismount. But after taking several deep breaths, they managed to roll out of their saddles and lay immobile on the ground. They opened their deels at the neck to let the cool mountain air rush in and dry their sweat-soaked tops.
The wind blew from the northwest; the lake lay in the center of the southeastern plains, where the herd was spread across the gently rounded mountaintop. The horses, choosing water over running into the wind to rid their bodies of blood-sucking mosquitoes, took off running toward the wild-duck lake, thousands of pounding horse hooves driving hordes of mosquitoes up out of the tall grass; these new, and very hungry, insects fell upon the sweaty hides of the running horses, biting so savagely that the terrified animals, trying to drive the assailants away with their hooves and their teeth, stumbled crazily.
Seeing their herd running down the mountain, Batu and Zhang fell asleep, not even buttoning up the collars of their deels. Mosquitoes spotted the openings and attacked the men’s necks, but even their stinging bites did not waken them.
In their mad dash for the wild-duck lake, the herd carried the mosquitoes with them like a coat of dust. Their blood nearly sucked dry, they were so thirsty that hardly any sweat oozed from their pores. They leaped into the water, more desperate to wash the mosquitoes from their hides than to quench their thirst, and fought to make it to deep water. The cool water killed the insects and stopped the itching; the horses whinnied their excitement and shook off the dead bugs, which covered the surface of the lake like a layer of chaff.
Men and horses all awoke at about the same time. None had eaten for several days, so Batu and Zhang rode over to the nearest yurt, where they drank as much tea and soupy yogurt and ate as much meat as they could. Then they slept again. The hungry horses climbed onto the bank to graze. The high sun baked their hides, opening up cracks in the protective mud, which attracted new swarms of mosquitoes. Grass alongside the lake had already been heavily grazed by cattle and sheep, so in order to keep from starving and to regain their strength in case of a wolf attack, the horses returned to their original slope, where they suffered anew the agony of mosquito assaults as they grazed the tall grass.
An all-cadre meeting was under way at Bilgee’s home. "The clouds are neither thick nor especially thin,” said the old man, "so don’t expect any rain. In this muggy weather, the mosquitoes will probably eat our horses alive. We don’t have enough people to watch our livestock properly, and since the disaster that hit the flock of sheep, we can’t spare anyone to go out and relieve the horse herders.” Bao Shungui and Bilgee decided to assign the brigade cadres to tend the sheep.
Zhang Jiyuan, though weakened by unrelieved exhaustion, knew that once he made it past the current calamity, he’d be permitted to herd horses alone on the grassland. Chen and Yang gave him a great deal of encouragement, out of the hope that one of the students from the yurt where the wolf cub was being raised would produce a first-rate horse herder.
The afternoon turned muggier still; with no prospect of a heavy rain in sight, even the hope for a drizzle was dashed. Grasslanders look forward to rain but fear it as well. Heavy rains keep the mosquitoes from flying, but afterward more insects are born, and when increasing numbers are sated with wolf blood, they produce offspring that are more wolfish and more prone to attack. The Olonbulag was transformed into hell on earth, and Zhang Jiyuan was prepared to go down into that hell, joining the other horse herders in riding out to the marshy grassland.
But Bilgee, in company with Batu and Zhang, drove the herd out to a desert region some sixty or seventy li to the southwest, where there was a scarcity of both grass and water, resulting in fewer mosquitoes. The spot was a buffer zone about a hundred li from the border. The other three brigade herds followed Bilgee’s example, driving their horses as rapidly as possible to the arid land.
“This desert was once fine Olonbulag grazing land,” Bilgee said to Zhang, “with streams and lakes and some of the best grass anywhere. Cattle and sheep could fatten up slowly without having to stuff themselves with diminishing amounts of grass.” He looked up into the sky and sighed. “And this is what it’s become in only a few short years. Sand has even filled in the dry riverbeds.”
“How did it happen?” Zhang asked.
The old man pointed to the herd. “They grazed it into ruin, them and the migrants from down south. The country had only recently been liberated, and there weren’t many motor vehicles. The army needed horses; so did farmers and the people who transport material, including loggers in the northeast. The whole country, it seemed, needed horses. Where were all these fine horses to come from? Inner Mongolia, of course. We were ordered to set aside the best grassland for horses. People from down south came here to try out, select, and buy horses, and before we knew it, the place had been turned into a racetrack of sorts. Over the centuries no ruler would have had the heart to turn this land into an area for raising horses. It didn’t take many years to create a wasteland. Now, as a desert, it has one virtue; there are relatively few mosquitoes, so we can bring the horses out here during a mosquito plague. Uljii has given the order that this sandy spot is only to be used when it’s the sole means of keeping the herds alive. He wants to see how long it will take for the grassland to reassert itself in the sandy soil. But he has to give in this year.”
“Papa,” Zhang said, “now that trucks and tractors are so common, and tanks have taken the place of cavalry during wartime, there won’t be as great a need for horses. Will the grassland be able to make a comeback?”
The old man shook his head. “Men and tractors are even worse, and with the increased preparations for war, the authorities decided to establish a production and construction corps on the grassland. People and tractors are on their way.”
Zhang was speechless. He hadn’t expected the establishment of the corps to occur so soon.
“In the old days,” the old man continued, “the farmers’ hoes and fires were our greatest fear. Now it’s tractors. A few days ago, Uljii and some old-time herdsmen wrote a letter to the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region authorities asking them not to turn the Olonbulag into a farming region. Who knows if it will do any good? Bao Shungui has been in a terrific mood lately. He says it’s a terrible waste for all this land to go unused, when it could support farms, and sooner or later, it’s going to be used to… expand… expand the production of grain.”
A silent moan arose in Zhang’s heart. Now that the age of tractors had arrived, a conflict between those who lived off the grassland and those who lived by leveling it was nearing its end game.