The old man helped the gazelle to her feet and nudged her out onto the snow, in a spot where the tips of a few weeds poked through the surface. The hungry pregnant gazelle bent down and gobbled them up. Chen hurriedly pulled up the felt. The gazelle took a few wobbly steps, spotted the tracks of other gazelles, and ran off toward the ridge without looking back; she quickly vanished in the mountains.
Batu and Gasmai also brought up a live animal, a half-grown gazelle. Gasmai muttered, “Huolehei, huolehei” (Mercy, mercy), as she picked it up in her arms, set it down on the snowy ground, and sent it off running toward the ridge with a pat on its rump.
Chen gave Gasmai a thumbs-up. She laughed and said, “Its mother fell into a hole in the snow, and it just kept running around, not wanting to leave. We had a terrible time trying to catch it, until we managed to hold it down with our poles.”
The other snow boats drew near, and the surviving gazelles on the snow lake eventually formed a small cluster that went over the mountain ridge and disappeared. The old man said, “Those animals have learned something here. In the future, the wolves won’t be able to bring them down.”
4
Finally, the people were able to claim their well-deserved New Year’s provisions. The freezing air over the snow lake was becom-ing heavier, the snow on the surface harder. The old man said to the hunters, “Tengger is urging us to move quickly.” So the men ran to their spots, and the hunting ground once again steamed with exuberance. Bilgee led Chen Zhen to an average-sized depression in the snow, where they stopped. “Don’t look for the largest depressions,” he said, “because they usually contain seven or eight suffocated gazelles, and all that heat keeps them from freezing right away. As the heat builds up overnight, the animals get bloated, their legs turn rigid, and the skin over their abdomens turns purple. As much as half the meat on them is bad by the time they finally freeze. So what you get is a frozen gazelle with half its meat inedible. At the purchasing station, you’ll get less than half the price of a whole gazelle, money for the hide only, not a cent for the meat. But rotting meat is the wolves’ favorite, and the gazelles buried here will be on their mind all winter. So we’ll leave the choice wolf food for the wolves.”
The old man lay down on the felt and thrust his hooked pole into the depression, which was at least six feet deep. He probed and probed until he abruptly jerked the pole upward. “I’ve hooked one,” he said to Chen. “Help me pull it up.” They began raising the animal, dropping it back a little between pulls to let the displaced snow fill the gap beneath it. They stood on the felt, bending over to pull the pole up; before long, the snow-covered head of a dead gazelle broke the surface. The hook had caught the animal in the throat, which preserved the integrity of the hide. Chen bent over, grabbed the gazelle (which weighed fifty or sixty kilos) by the head, and pulled it onto the felt. It was completely frozen, its abdomen neither distended nor purple; it had died and frozen quickly. “A perfect specimen,” the old man said. “It’ll bring the highest price.”
“There are more down there,” he said, taking a deep breath. “You try to snag one. It’s like hooking a bucket at the bottom of a well. When you’ve found the right spot, pull with all your might. Don’t hook it where you’ll spoil the pelt and lower the price.” Chen agreed eagerly, took the pole, thrust it into the depression, and began to probe. He could feel two or more gazelles down there but kept moving the pole around to outline the shape of one of them. When he felt the throat, he jerked the pole upward until it felt well snagged. At long last, Chen had caught a “big fish” in a snow lake on the Mongolian grassland. It too weighed in at fifty or sixty kilos, a quarry that could outrun even the fastest horse. Filled with excitement, he shouted to Yang Ke, who was still on the lakeshore, “Look, I caught one, a great big one! It was quite a fight!”
“Come back here, would you?” Yang Ke replied, fit to be tied. “Come back and let me have a shot at it! And let Papa get some rest.”
Excited shouts rose on the lake and on the slope as large gazelles with plenty of meat and unbroken hides were brought to the surface and, one after the other, snow rafts sped to the shore. Some of the fastest workers were already out on their second voyage. The raft manned by Batu, Gasmai, and Lamjav was the most efficient. They snagged the largest gazelles unerringly and with amazing speed. When they pulled up medium or small-sized animals, or full-grown ones with distended or purple abdomens, those that would not bring in good prices, they tossed them back down into the empty depression. A rich harvest, normally only seen in the springtime, when baby lambs are born, spread across the barren, snowy plateau. Even predators sometimes turn into prey, Chen thought with grim satisfaction.
Chen and the old man sailed their raft, now weighted down with two large gazelles, back to shore, where Yang Ke and Bayar helped Bilgee step off. Chen pushed the two gazelles off the raft, and the four men dragged them over to their carts. There Chen discovered that the two carts were already piled high with large gazelles, and asked why that was. Yang Ke said, “Bayar and I bagged one of them. The rest are gifts from some of the other families. An Olonbulag custom, they said.” He laughed. “Hanging around Papa has brought dividends.”
Bilgee joined in the laughter. “You’re citizens of the grassland too,” he said. “So learn our customs and stick to them.” The old man, clearly tired, sat cross-legged alongside the cart to smoke his pipe. “You two go out,” he said, “but be careful. If you happen to fall in, spread your legs and stick out your arms immediately, and hold your breath. That way you won’t be in too deep. Whoever’s on the raft, stick in the pole, but be careful not to hook the person in the face. That will ruin your marriage prospects.” He choked on his laughter. Then he told Bayar to find some kindling for a cook fire.
Bursting with excitement, Chen and Yang walked over to the felt raft, and as they neared the deep snow by the shore, Chen spotted a hole that looked like a tunnel to the depths of the snow lake. Yang Ke said with a laugh, “I didn’t want to say anything a moment ago, because Papa was there beside us, but this hole in the snow, Bayar and I dug it, it’s where we found that big gazelle. I tell you, that Bayar may be small, but he’s got guts. When he saw you out there, he opened his fur coat and, because he weighs so little, crawled out on the snow without falling in. He found a depression before he’d gone more than five or six yards, so he crawled back and we dug a tunnel in the snow. We didn’t have to dig far to reach the gazelle, so he went down and tied a rope around one of its legs. When he came back, I pulled the animal out of the snow. He was fearless, but the whole time he was down there I was worried the snow might cave in and bury him.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Chen said. “Anyone who isn’t afraid to grab hold of a wolf with his bare hands isn’t going to be scared by a hole in the snow. Now you know what a Mongol kid is capable of doing. Just think what he’ll be like when he grows up!”
“When I told him not to go down into the snow,” Yang said, “he said that when he was seven, he crawled into a wolf’s den and stole a litter of cubs, so a snow cave is nothing! You’ve talked about wanting a wolf cub, haven’t you? Well, take Bayar along and get one.”
“Not me,” Chen replied. “These Mongols, all I can do is stand back and admire them.”
As the two students rode their Mongolian snow raft, Yang’s face was joyfully wrinkled. “I can’t believe how great it is to hunt on the grassland. Shepherding is so boring. As soon as wolves entered the picture, our lives got a lot more interesting and a lot more exciting.”