At that moment, Chen was reminded of his lasso pole, which he picked up off the ground. One look, and Yang knew what Chen had in mind. “That’s it,” he said. “We’ll get a rope around her.” Chen loosened the noose at the end of the pole so that he could hang it in the entrance to the den. When she poked her head out the next time, he’d jerk the pole up and tighten the noose around her neck, then drag her out. Once that was done, Yang Ke’s club and the two dogs would finish her off in short order. Chen was so nervous he could hardly breathe. But he’d no sooner set his trap than Erlang was driven out of the den again, his rear legs knocking the noose askew. Seconds later, the wolf, her head bloodied from fighting the dog, emerged again, but she stepped down on the noose, and when she saw the lasso pole, she fled back inside as if hit by a jolt of electricity.
Chen stuck his head in the hole, seeing a steep downslope, thirty-five degrees or so, for the first couple of yards, then a turn, making the remainder of the den a mystery. Yang screamed at the entrance in anger, the sound quickly swallowed up by the tunnel, while Chen sat down, disheartened. “I’m an idiot,” he said. “If I’d thought of the lasso pole first, that wolf would be dead by now. You have to be on your toes when you’re fighting a wolf,” he added. “And make no mistakes.”
Yang Ke, even more disheartened, jammed the end of his club into the ground and said, “Shit, the wolf won because we didn’t have a rifle. If I’d brought one along, I’d have blown off the top of her head.”
“Headquarters says we’re in a heightened state of battle preparedness, and no one is permitted to fire a weapon. A rifle wouldn’t have done us any good.”
“At this rate,” Yang said, “we’re going nowhere. What do you say we light off some double-kick firecrackers?”
“What’s the difference between that and a rifle?” By this time Chen had calmed down. “If we frighten off the wolves up north, the hunt plans will be ruined, and you and I will be in hot water. Besides, you can’t kill a wolf with firecrackers.”
“So?” Yang said, apparently disgruntled. “We can scare the hell out of her, smoke her out. We’re a good ten miles from the frontier, so the wolf pack won’t hear a thing. But if you’re still worried, how’s this? I’ll take off my deel, and after I throw some crackers inside, I’ll hold the deel over the entrance to muffle the sound. You won’t hear a thing.”
“What if the wolf doesn’t come out?”
“She will, trust me,” Yang said as he untied his belt. “A herdsman told me that wolves are terrified of gunfire and the smell of gunpowder. I’ll throw in three double-kicks, six explosions, and the sound reverberating in that enclosed space will be much louder than outside. It’ll scare the hell out of her. And since the entrance is so narrow, she’ll choke on the thick smoke. I’m betting that three is all it will take to drive her right into your arms. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole litter of cubs followed her out. A windfall.”
“Okay,” Chen said, “go ahead. But let’s be prepared for anything. I’ll look around for more holes in the area. Even rabbits make three escape routes, so she must have more than one entrance. Wolves are crafty, and no matter how clever we are, we could still come up short.”
Chen climbed into the saddle and circled the area several times with the dogs, assuming that dark holes would be easy to spot in the snow. They found nothing within a hundred-yard radius, so he dismounted, led the horses off a ways, and fettered them. Then he walked back to the entrance and laid out the lasso pole, the spade, and the club. Erlang was trying to stanch the flow of blood from his chest with his tongue; the wolf had torn off a chunk of flesh the size of two fingers, and the flesh was still twitching. In obvious pain, he didn’t make a sound. The men had not brought along any ointment or gauze, so all they could do was watch Erlang employ the dog’s traditional healing method of sterilizing the wound, stopping the bleeding, and lessening the pain with his own saliva. They’d take care of it when they were back at camp. The other scars on Erlang’s body looked to have been caused by wolf bites, which was why his eyes turned fiery red at the mere sight of a wolf.
Yang was ready. His deel draped over his shoulders, he held three double-kick firecrackers as thick as tubular hand grenades; a lit cigarette dangled from his lips, a sight that drew laughter from Chen. “You look more like a Japanese tunnel rat than a hunter,” he said.
“Just going local,” Yang replied, “dressed like a barbarian. I’m betting this wolf is ill-prepared for a gas attack.”
“Okay,” Chen said. “Throw them in. We’ll see what happens.”
Yang lit one of the fuses, watched it sizzle for a moment, and then flung it as far inside the tunnel as he could. He did the same with the second cracker. After throwing in the third one, he watched briefly as all three rolled down the steep slope of the tunnel before covering the entrance with his deel, just in time to hear a series of six muffled explosions that made the ground shake. Inside the tunnel, the sound must have been earsplitting, the concussion powerful, the smoke suffocating. No grassland wolf den had likely ever witnessed explosions of that magnitude. Unfortunately, the men did not hear agonizing howls from the wolf deep down in her tunnel, and that was not good news.
Yang hugged himself to keep from freezing. “So, when do we open it up?”
“Let’s give it some time. We’ll open a little hole and wait till some smoke comes out, then we can open it all the way.”
Chen peeled back a corner of Yang’s deel but replaced it when he saw only a wisp of smoke. Seeing how cold Yang was, he offered to wrap his deel around them both. But Yang waved him off. “Stay focused. The wolf will be coming out any minute! Loosening your belt will restrict your movements. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be okay.”
They were still talking when Yellow and Erlang jumped to their feet and looked off to the northwest. Soft whines marked their tension. Chen and Yang quickly turned to see pale blue smoke emerge from the ground some twenty yards away. “Uh-oh,” Chen blurted out. “There’s another hole over there. Stay here; I’ll go take a look.” He picked up his spade and ran over, followed by the dogs. Smoke burst from the hole; so did a very big wolf, like a guided missile, bounding off toward the reedy area at the foot of the mountain. She was out of sight before Chen could react. Erlang followed her into the reeds, the rustling moving northward. Stunned, Chen shouted, “Come back here!” Erlang ignored the command. Yellow ran over to the edge of the reeds but lacked the nerve to go in. After a symbolic bark or two, back he came.
Wrapping his deel around himself, Yang walked up to the second hole, where Chen was standing. It was, they were surprised to see, newly dug, a hidden emergency exit.
Yang was so enraged that the tendons in his neck stood out. “That damned wolf has made a fool of us!”
Chen sighed. “No matter how many escape routes a rabbit has, they’re fairly easy to find. But there’s no way to tell how many escape tunnels this crafty wolf has. This one’s perfectly planned. See, there’s a steep falloff beyond the opening, and from there straight to the reeds. The wolf can reach them in no time. This one hole is more useful than eight or ten rabbit escapes. Bao Shungui says that wolves are skilled in close fighting, night fighting, long-range raids, guerrilla fighting, mobile fighting, all sorts of things. The next time I see him, I’m going to have to tell him they’re not bad at tunnel warfare and camouflage either, and can even combine the two. Soldiering is the art of deception, and wolves are the world’s finest soldiers.”
But Yang’s anger lingered. “Movies go on and on about tunnel warfare and camouflage in North China, like that’s where they were invented. Well, here’s some news: wolves were the inventors, about ten thousand years ago.”