They walked back to the opening, where emerging wisps of smoke were thick with the smell of gunpowder.
Yang stuck his head in and looked around. “The cubs ought to be crawling out after an explosion like that. Do you think the smoke killed them?”
“I’ve been wondering that myself. If the cubs are dead, where does that leave us?”
Yang could only sigh. “If Bayar were here, he could crawl in.”
Chen echoed the sigh. “I couldn’t take the chance of bringing him along. Can anyone guarantee there aren’t more adult wolves in there? These things are never easy for the Mongols. Gasmai only has the one son, and still she didn’t stop him from grabbing a wolf’s tail or crawling into a den. The old Chinese saying ‘Don’t fight wolves if you’re unwilling to sacrifice your son’ must have come from the grassland. Don’t forget, the Mongols ruled China for nearly a century. I used to think it meant using your son as wolf bait, believe it or not. Now I realize it means letting your son risk crawling into a wolf’s den to get the cubs. Only a youngster could handle a tunnel this deep and this narrow. If Mongol women doted on their children the way Han women do, their race probably would have died out long ago. But they don’t, so Mongol youngsters grow up strong and fearless.”
Chen went to his horse, took down the canvas bag, and brought it back to the opening. Yellow spotted the bag and ran over, wagging his tail and panting greedily. It was the bag in which Chen had put food for the dogs. He opened it, took out the smaller of two pieces of meat, and gave it to Yellow. The other piece was for Erlang. But he hadn’t returned, and Chen was worried. In the winter and spring, reeds are the wolves’ domain, and if this wolf had enticed Erlang into the middle of the pack, that probably spelled trouble. He was the mainstay where keeping the sheep safe was concerned. Things had not gone well on this outing, and losing their canine general would be the worse thing he could imagine.
Yellow’s tail wagged feverishly as he ate. He was a clever animal, bold and fearless around rabbits, foxes, and gazelles. But with wolves he took care to size up the situation. If there were more dogs than wolves, he attacked. But without strong backup, he had no interest in showing off his fighting skills. Moments earlier, he’d stopped short of coming to Erlang’s aid when the fight was at hand, afraid of running into the pack in the reeds. He was good at protecting number one, which was how he survived. Chen was fond of Yellow, who seemed quite human, and didn’t blame him for his lack of loyalty. But since the onset of spring, he’d grown increasingly fond of Erlang, whose brutish nature was intense and who didn’t seem human at all. He stood up and trained his telescope on the reeds in the northwest, hoping to get a glimpse of the dog.
But there was no sign of him. Chen reached inside his coat and took out a little sheepskin bag. It was a waterproof, oil-resistant food pouch Gasmai had given him. Under his coat it had stayed warm and hadn’t soiled his clothes. He took out some flat bread, some fatty meat, and two chunks of curds. He handed half the food to Yang, and as they ate, they tried to devise a new plan.
Tearing off a piece of the flat bread and putting it in his mouth, Yang said, “This den is full of tricks and dodges, a real maze. They always keep their cubs in places we’d never think of. We went to a lot of trouble finding this one, and I’m not ready to quit, not yet. Since we didn’t smoke them out, let’s see how we do with water. If we brought up nine or ten water wagons, we could drown every last one of those little bastards.”
“In this sandy soil?” Chen replied with a sneer. “You could bring an entire reservoir up here, and it’d all seep into the ground.”
“Got it!” Yang exclaimed after a moment. “The adult wolf is gone, so why not send Yellow in there and have him bring the cubs out in his mouth, one at a time?”
This time Chen had to laugh. “That dog has already developed human traits and lost half its wolfishness. He’s got such a keen sense of smell he can sniff out any wolf that’s nearby. If a dog could bring cubs out like you say, then all we’d ever have to do is wait for the mother to leave the den and send in the dogs. That, of course, would spell the end of the wolves on the grassland. What kind of morons do you take the herdsmen for?”
“We could try,” Yang said defiantly. “What would it cost us?” He called Yellow over to the entrance, where the smell of gunpowder was nearly gone. He pointed to the tunnel and called out, “Go get ’em!” Yellow knew exactly what Yang wanted, and backed off in fear. Yang straddled the dog and closed his knees around his middle, grabbing his front legs and dragging him back to the entrance. Yellow tucked his tail between his legs and whined as he struggled to break free, casting a pleading look at Chen Zhen, begging him to rescind the command.
“See what I mean?” Chen said. “You’re wasting your time. Progress is hard; regression is harder. Dogs have regressed far from their wolfish origins. These days dogs are weak, or lazy, or stupid. Just like people.”
Yang let Yellow go and said, “Too bad Erlang’s not here. He’d go in.”
“Of course, but he’d kill every cub he found. I want a live one.”
“I know what you mean. That dog wants to kill every wolf he sees.”
After finishing the meat he’d been given, Yellow walked off to check things out. He sniffed around and lifted his leg to leave his mark on the ground, drifting farther and farther away. Erlang, meanwhile, had still not returned, and Chen and Yang sat by the entrance waiting and watching, not knowing what else to do. No signs of life in the tunnel, yet the cubs couldn’t all have died. At least one or two would have survived the smoke, and they should be trying to get out. But another half hour passed, and none emerged. Either they were dead, the two men surmised, or there hadn’t been any in there to begin with.
While they were getting ready to head back to camp, they suddenly heard Yellow barking-now loud, now soft-somewhere behind the hill to the north, sounding like a hunting dog that had found its prey. They jumped onto their horses and rode as fast as they could up to the top of the hill; they couldn’t see Yellow but could still hear him, so they followed the sound until the rocky ground made it too hard for their horses to run and they were forced to rein them in. Crisscrossing gullies stretched out in front on the weedy, rock-strewn ground. The snowy surface was covered by the tracks of animals-rabbits, foxes, corsacs, and wolves-all of which had passed by the spot at one time or another. A profusion of waist-high cogon grass, brambles, and other underbrush filled the spaces between splintered rocks, all dried-out and withered, presenting a scene of desolation to match an abandoned Chinese graveyard. The riders kept a tight grip on the reins as the horses slipped and stumbled on the dangerously uneven ground. No cow, sheep, or horse ever grazed there; neither Chen nor Yang had ever been there.
Yellow’s barks were getting closer, but there was still no sight of him. “With all the tracks around here,” Chen said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s caught a fox. Let’s speed up a little. At least the trip won’t be a total waste.”
Finally, after skirting the brambles, they reached the bottom of a ravine, where, as soon as they turned the corner, they spotted Yellow and were stunned by what they saw. Yellow, his tail sticking up in the air, was haranguing the entrance to an even larger, and much darker, den. The ravine was gloomy, the presence of wolves palpable. As a cold wind blew past, Chen felt his skin crawl. He wondered if they had stumbled into a wolf-pack ambush, with lupine eyes burning holes in him from their hiding places, and his hair stood on end.
The men dismounted, fettered their horses, and ran to the entrance, weapons in hand. The opening, which faced south, was at least three feet high and a couple of feet wide. Chen had never seen one bigger, not even one of the wartime tunnels he’d seen as a high school farm laborer in Hebei Province. It was so well hidden in a tiny gully, and so protected by needle grass above and rocky ground below, that it was visible only close-up. Delighted to see them, Yellow jumped and ran around Chen, as if wanting to be rewarded for his discovery. “I think we’ve found what we were looking for,” Chen said. “The way Yellow’s strutting around, he might actually have seen some cubs here.”