“I’ve lived a long time, but I’ve never seen this many wolf prints in one place.”
“This wasn’t a wolf pack; it was a gang of fiends.”
“The numbers are scary.”
"Forty or fifty at least.”
Batu, you’ve got guts, going up against this pack. If it’d been me, I’d have been scared off my horse and straight into the bellies of those wolves.”
“It was dark that night, and snow was falling; I couldn’t see a thing. How was I to know how big the pack was?” Batu said.
“This will make things tough on our pastureland from now on.”
“The women won’t dare go out walking at night.”
“Damn those idiots at headquarters for pillaging the food the wolves had put away for the lean days of spring. That’s why they were on the trail of revenge. I’d have done the same thing if I’d been their alpha male. But I’d have gone after their pigs and chickens.”
“Headquarters can do something right for a change by organizing a wolf hunt. If we don’t kill them now, we’re next on their menu.”
“I vote for fewer meetings and more wolf hunts.”
“The way they gorged themselves this time, it looks like we might not have enough animals to satisfy their appetites.”
“People from farmlands have been shipped in as leaders of our pastureland, and everything they do is wrong. Tengger sent the wolves as a lesson to us.”
“Watch what you’re saying, or the next criticism session will be for you.”
Bao Shungui examined the path with Bilgee and Uljii, stopping to talk with the two local men as he took pictures. His face gradually relaxed, and Chen Zhen suspected that Bilgee had said some things relaxed, and Chen Zhen suspected that Bilgee had said some things to undermine his concept of "man as the primary element.” Was man able to successfully resist this killer wolf attack, this natural disaster? You can send all the inspection teams you want, but one look at the carnage here is enough to convince you that man was powerless to keep this from happening, especially when you factor in the blizzard. Chen’s concern for Uljii and Batu gradually lessened.
He turned to a closer scrutiny of the wolf path. The strange circular shape made his hair stand on end; it wrapped itself around his heart, as if a pack of wolf sprites were racing inside his chest, until he could hardly breathe. Why a circle? What were they trying to do? What was their goal? Grassland wolves were impossible to figure out. Every clue to their behavior presented a new puzzle.
Was it to keep out the cold? Did running somehow warm them?
Or was it to aid their digestion? Burning off excess energy might have increased their need for horseflesh. That too was possible. Unlike other grassland creatures, such as ground squirrels and golden prairie dogs, wolves do not store up food. What they can’t eat from a kill, they leave, so in order to get the most out of their kills, they gorge themselves until they can eat no more. Then they run to facilitate digestion and store up as much nutrition as possible, emptying their stomachs to go back and eat more.
Or was it a dress parade for future battles? Even that was possible. The tracks made it clear that the wolves were organized and highly disciplined. From end to end the path was a little more than a yard in width, and there were hardly any tracks outside it. If that wasn’t a march of troops in review, what was it? Chen was thinking. Wolves often fight alone, though they also hunt in small packs of three to five or do their plundering in families of eight to ten. What occurred here, with a small army of wolves, was rare. They had decided to organize themselves into a field army for mobile warfare. During the war years in China, the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies underwent a large-scale makeover, a Herculean task. Did this sort of reorganization come naturally to wolves?
Then again, was it a victory celebration? Or signs of wild ecstasy preceding a grand feast? That was even more likely. In this murderous attack, they’d butchered every horse. Not one got away. Revenge. Slaking hatred. Total victory. An unburdening. How could they not celebrate the killing of so many horses? The level of excitement must have been fanatical as they surrounded the large cluster of trapped horses and performed their death dance.
Chen discovered that by considering wolves’ behavior from a human perspective, some of the puzzling behaviors could be reasoned out logically. Dogs display human characteristics, men display wolf characteristics, or vice versa. Heaven, earth, and man are a unity; it’s impossible to categorically separate men, dogs, and wolves. Otherwise, how does one explain the fact that there were so many overlapping latent human traces found at the site of this horrible carnage? When confronting one another, all humans turn into wolves as an article of faith.
As the line of men and horses followed Batu north away from the scene of the incident, Chen drew up next to Bilgee. “Papa,” he asked, “why did the wolves make that path?”
The old man looked around and reined in his horse so they could fall back behind the other members of the party. “I’ve lived more than sixty years on the Olonbulag,” he said softly, “and I’ve seen wolf circles like that a few times before. I asked that same question of my father once. He told me that Tengger sent wolves down to the grassland as protectors of the Bayan Uul sacred mountain and the Olonbulag. Tengger and the sacred mountain are angered anytime the grassland is endangered, and wolves are sent to kill and consume the offenders. Every time they receive this gift, they joyfully run circles around it until they’ve tramped out a path as round as the sun and the moon. That circular path is their acknowledgment to Tengger, a sort of thank-you note. Once the acknowledgment has been received, the feast begins. Wolves are known for baying at the moon, which is their call to Tengger. If a halo appears around the moon, a wind will blow that night and the wolves will be on the move. They are better climatologists than we are. They make circles to mirror those in the sky. In other words, they are in perfect sync with the heavens.”
Chen Zhen, a fan of popular legends, was delighted. “Fascinating,” he said, “utterly fascinating. The sun can be ringed by a halo, so can the moon, and when herdsmen signal to someone far off they make a circle in the air with their arm. The circle does seem to be a spiritual sign. What you’re telling me makes my hair stand on end. That the wolves out here are so mystical they make circles as signs to Tengger is downright creepy.”
“They are supernatural,” the old man said. “I’ve dealt with them all my life and I’ve always come out second best. But even I never anticipated something like this. Wolves appear when and where you least expect them, and often in overwhelming numbers. How can anyone think they could be so potent without the help of Tengger?”
The men up ahead stopped; some dismounted and began digging in the snow. Chen and Bilgee spurred their horses to catch up. There were more carcasses, but scattered helter-skelter in fours and fives. Suddenly, someone shouted, “Wolf! There’s a dead wolf here!”
“According to Batu, this must have been where the wolves made their suicidal attack on the horses’ bellies,” Chen surmised, “and where the tide of battle turned, the beginning of the end for the horses.” His heart began racing, faster and faster.
Bao Shungui waved his whip in the air and shouted from the saddle, “Don’t go running off. Come back here, all of you. Dig up a couple of these horses. Horses first, wolves last.”
They all gathered around and began digging.