Bao Shungui’s knitted brow relaxed. “Thanks to this inspection tour,” he said, “I can see that the wolves are formidable opponents. Weather predictions help us withstand the ravages of weather, but predictions are useless where wolves are concerned. Those of us who come from farming communities have no idea what they’re capable of. This incident was indeed beyond human control. The inspection teams will understand.”
“To get a clear picture, they’ll need to know everything,” Uljii said.
“But that doesn’t alter the fact that we’re going to have wolf hunts. If not, our pasture will quickly become their canteen. I’ll request a supply of ammunition from headquarters.”
Off to the side, some of the students were having a heated discussion. A Team Three middle school student, a minor Red Guard leader of the Beijing Dongjiu faction named Li Hongwei, said emotionally, “Wolves are the true class enemies. Reactionaries throughout the world are all ambitious wolves. Wolves are cruel. Putting aside their slaughter of people’s property-our horses, cows, and sheep-they even slaughter their own. We need to organize the masses to hunt them down and apply the proletarian dictatorship against all wolves. We must resolutely and thoroughly wipe them off the face of the earth! We must also subject all old ideas, customs, and habits-such as sympathy for wolves, appeasement of wolves, and feeding wolves with the corpses of our dead-to severe criticism.”
Certain that the fellow was about to point the finger of accusation at Bilgee, Chen cut in before he could finish: “That’s taking things a bit far, isn’t it? Class distinctions apply to two-legged animals. If you insist on bringing wolves into the class system, then what are you, man or wolf? Aren’t you afraid of including our great proletarian leaders in the same category as wolves? When men kill other men, isn’t that slaughtering your own kind? Men kill other men far more often than wolves kill other wolves. World War I, World War II, the dead numbering in the tens of millions. The habit of creatures killing their own kind began with Peking Man. Viewed from the perspective of natural instincts, man is crueler than the wolf. I advise you to catch up with your reading.”
The Red Guard angrily pointed his whip at Chen and said, “You think you’re so clever just because you finished high school! Those books you read, filled with capitalist, feudal, revisionist garbage. Nothing but poisonous weeds! You’re like that dog-father of yours. At school you kept to yourself, a member of the leisure class, but out here in the most primitive, backward spot in the world, you’re like a fish in water. You fit right in with the stinking Four Olds!”
Feeling the blood rush to his head, Chen wanted to run over and, like a wolf, sink his teeth into the Red Guard and drag him down off his horse. But, reminded of the wolves’ unswerving patience, he merely glared at the man, slapped the sides of his boots loudly, turned, and rode off.
Dusk was setting in, and the students, who had grown accustomed to meat and tea in the morning and a full meal in the evening, were half starved and shivering in the cold. The leaders of the headquarters inspection team and most of the militiamen and students had fallen in behind the cart with the dead wolves to head back to camp. Chen Zhen, Batu, and Laasurung went searching for Batu’s treasured lasso pole, at the same time looking for more wolves that had been killed or wounded by flying horse hooves.
7
Most wolf hunts on the Mongolian grassland take place in early winter. By then, the marmots have begun their hibernation. Fatter and more nutritious than rabbits, marmots are among the wolves’ favorite foods. But once the marmots go down their holes, the wolves turn their attention to domestic livestock, forcing the pasture residents to launch counterattacks. At this time of year the wolves have new winter coats, supple, unmarked, bright, and thick. Pelts from this season command the highest prices. Early-winter wolf hunts were the primary source of income, outside of work points, for livestock herders, and an excellent opportunity for young hunters to display military skills and courage; they honed their scouting abilities, choosing the right place and time to fight. In the past, early-winter wolf hunts were used by tribal heads, barbarian leaders, khans, and Great Khans to train and drill their people. This tradition, passed down over the millennia, has been followed in modern times. Preparations for the hunt were completed after the first big snow of the year, when the tracks of wolves in the snow were the clearest. Even with their long legs, wolves cannot run particularly fast in fresh, wet snow, which gives the advantage to horses, whose legs are so much longer. Early winter, with its new snow, is the season of death for wolves, and the herders use it to repay the wolves for their arrogance and allow the people to take revenge for a year of hardships.
The customs of the grassland are understood by people, and by wolves. As this hunt would make clear, the wolves had gotten smarter in recent years, for as soon as the first snow settled on the ground, and the grassland turned from yellow to white, the wolves either crossed the northern border, went deep into the mountains to hunt gazelles and wild rabbits, or remained in the wild country once the snows had sealed up the mountains. They endured despite their hunger, getting through the days by gnawing on animal bones or the dried, rotting skins of earlier kills. Then, once the ground hardened, they became fast runners again and, sensing that the people had lost their fighting spirit, returned to plunder and loot.
At the headquarters meeting Uljii said, “In early-winter hunts over the past few years, we’ve brought back mainly half-grown and small animals, few big ones. So from now on, we need to be more like the wolves and abandon conventional tactics. We hunt when and where we feel like it and take them by surprise, stopping for a while, then hunting some more, winning the fight by being random and unpredictable. That way the wolves won’t be able to spot patterns and cannot guard against us. We don’t normally hunt in the spring, so I suggest we break with tradition and have a spring hunt, mounting a surprise attack. The pelts might not be as fine as those in early winter, but it’ll be a month before they begin to molt, and even if we don’t get the highest prices, we’ll be rewarded with an additional supply of ammunition.”
It was decided at the meeting that, in order to lessen the terrible impression left by the wholesale slaughter of horses, and to carry out orders from above to eradicate the evil Olonbulag wolves, all able-bodied headquarters personnel would be mobilized for a major antiwolf campaign. “Since it’s springtime, I understand that you’re all busy with the birthing of livestock, and that it won’t be easy to take you away from your work,” Bao Shungui said, “but if we do not take the offensive against the wolves, we’ll have failed to carry out our responsibilities.”
“It’s been our experience,” Uljii said, “that after a major battle, the main body of the pack leaves the area, since they know we’ll retaliate. I’m guessing they’re in the border region somewhere, and as soon as they think something’s up here, they’ll rush across the border. We need to wait awhile, at least until the horseflesh they gorged themselves on is only a memory, and they start thinking about all the frozen meat they left behind. The marmots and field mice haven’t come out of their holes yet, so there’s nothing else for the wolves to eat. They’ll risk a confrontation to return for more horsemeat, I’m sure of it.”