Chen breathed in a mouthful of air with more wolf smell than oxygen, and he knew he’d been defeated, that there would be no cub for him today. But he wasn’t ready to head back quite yet; he wanted to get a closer look at the construction of the opening, hoping to at least catch a glimpse of a cub or two. He put what little remained of his strength in the service of this last desire: sticking his head and right arm through the narrow opening, he shone his flashlight inside. What he saw was demoralizing: just beyond the opening, the passage continued on upward and out of sight. Up there somewhere was a drier, cozier spot for the wolf to raise her litter and protect them against flooding. She’d put a great deal of thought into creating a complex den for her offspring and, he was amazed to see, a roadblock for him.
He cocked his head to see if he could hear anything. No sound; either the cubs were asleep or they’d already developed the ability to hide from danger, keeping absolutely still in reaction to unfamiliar sounds. Suddenly feeling dizzy, he summoned up the strength to jerk his tethered leg. Worried and excited at the same time, Yang pulled with all his might and managed to drag Chen back out of the hole. His face covered with dirt, Chen sat weakly in the opening sucking in big gulps of air. “No way,” he said to Yang. “It’s a fiendish cave that goes on forever.” With a look of disappointment, Yang draped Chen’s deel around his shoulders.
After Chen had rested, they scoured the area within a couple of hundred yards for half an hour, and found only one large exit, which they stopped up with rocks. Once they’d sealed up both openings, they stuffed dirt into the cracks and packed it in tight. Just before returning to camp, Chen, still fuming over his failure, stuck the business end of his spade in the dirt around the main entrance as a sign to the female: They’d bring more people back the next day, and more effective methods.
The sun was going down, and Erlang still hadn’t returned. The dog’s courage and ferocity might not have been sufficient to deal with a wolf so sinister and so cunning, and the two men were anxious and concerned. But they couldn’t wait, and would have to head back with Yellow. Just before they reached camp, when the sky was pitch-black, Chen handed his tools to Yang, telling him to take Yellow home and let Gao Jianzhong know that everything was okay. Then he reined his horse to the side and rode off to Bilgee’s yurt.
10
The old man smoked his pipe and said nothing as he listened to Chen Zhen relate their adventure. Then he reproached him angrily, mainly over their use of the firecrackers, unaware of how powerful and effective they were. After tapping the cover of his pipe bowl, he stroked his beard and said, “That was cruel, unforgivably cruel. You drove her out of her den. You Chinese, with your powerful firecrackers, didn’t even give her time to stop up the entrance with dirt. Mongolian wolves fear gunpowder more than anything. If you’d used those things in a den with a litter of cubs, they’d have tried to escape, and you’d have caught them all, and at that rate it wouldn’t take long for all the wolves on the grassland to vanish. We kill wolves, but not like that. If we did, Tengger would be angry, and that would be the end of the grassland. Don’t ever do that again, and don’t tell the horse herders or anybody else what you did. I don’t want them learning such terrible things from you.”
Unprepared for the tongue-lashing, Chen realized the possible consequences of their action. With widespread use, the concussion waves and smoke from the explosions would overwhelm even the impregnable den fortifications. “We don’t celebrate holidays with fireworks out here,” Bilgee continued. “The migrants and you students brought them with you. We have strict controls over ammunition, but we were unprepared for an influx of firecrackers, for which there are no restrictions. A large-scale introduction of firecrackers, gunpowder, pepper powder, and tear gas could threaten the survival of the wolves, which have dominated the grassland for thousands of years. Out here, where nomadic existence is the norm, there’s nothing more destructive than gunpowder. And once a people’s totem is demolished, their spirit dies. The grassland, on which we rely for our very existence, could easily perish.”
Chen wiped his sweaty brow, alarmed by what he was hearing. “Don’t be angry, Papa. I swear to Tengger that we’ll never again use explosives in a wolf’s den, and I promise we won’t teach anyone else how to do it. On the grassland, a man’s word counts for everything.”
The muscles in the old man’s face relaxed. “I know you fight the wolves to protect your flock and the horses,” he said to Chen, “but protecting the grassland is more important than protecting livestock. Youngsters and horse herders seem to be having a contest to see who can kill the most wolves. They don’t understand what they’re doing. All you hear on the radio is how heroic the wolf killers are. Things are only going to get worse for us from here on out.”
Gasmai handed Chen a bowl of lamb noodles and made a special point of placing some pickled leek buds in front of him. She knelt by the stove and handed the old man a bowl of noodles. “People these days pretty much turn a deaf ear to what Papa has to say,” she said. “He tells them not to kill wolves, but then does it himself, and that keeps them from putting stock in what he says.”
The old man smiled bitterly and took the bowl from his daughter-in-law. “How about you?” he asked Chen. “Do you put stock in what I say?”
“I do, I honestly do. Without the wolves, the grassland dies. There’s a country far, far off to the southeast, called Australia. They have grassland there too, and there never used to be any wolves or rabbits. But then someone introduced rabbits into the country, and since there were no wolves, the rabbits reproduced like mad, littering the countryside with their burrows, holes all over the place; eating up most of the vegetation; and creating enormous losses for the livestock farmers. The government tried everything they could think of to fix the problem, but nothing worked. Finally they began covering the ground with steel-wire netting that allowed the grass to grow but kept the rabbits from digging out, hoping to starve the rabbit population in their underground burrows. This plan also failed. The grassland was too vast, and the government couldn’t lay out enough netting to cover it all. I used to think that the Mongolian grasslands were so lush that there must be vast numbers of rabbits. But then I came to the Olonbulag and saw that the rabbit population was actually quite small. A major contribution by the wolves, I take it. When I’m tending my flock, I often see them catch rabbits, and when there are two working together, they never miss.”
The old man seemed caught up in his own thoughts, but his eyes grew gentle as he murmured, “Australia, Australia, Australia. Bring a map with you tomorrow. I want to see this place for myself. Then the next time someone says they want to wipe out our wolf population, I’ll tell them about Australia. Rabbits are a scourge. They have many litters a year, far more than wolves. When winter comes, marmots and field mice close up their burrows and hibernate, but rabbits never stop looking for food. Still, they feed the wolves during the winter and thereby keep the wolves from killing our sheep. Wolves can’t eat all the rabbits, but they eat enough so that we’re not stepping in a rabbit hole every three paces.”