Five pitiful little cubs had flown through the air; five bloody corpses now lay on the ground. Chen scooped them into a dustpan and stared up into the sky, hoping that Tengger had accepted their souls.
Dorji seemed exhilarated by what he’d done. He bent down and wiped his hands on the toes of his boots and said, “You don’t get many chances to kill five wolves in one day. They’re better at this than we are. Given the chance, a wolf will kill a hundred, even two hundred sheep at a time. I only killed five, big deal! It’s getting late. I have to go round up my cattle.” He walked over to pick up his wolf cub.
“Don’t go yet,” Chen said. “Help us skin these.”
“No problem,” Dorji said. “It’ll only take a minute.”
Standing guard over the dead cubs, Erlang snarled at Dorji and tensed. Chen wrapped his arms around the dog’s neck to give Dorji a chance to skin the cubs, which he did as if he were skinning a lamb. They were so small he didn’t need to skin the legs. After the five cubs were skinned, he spread their pelts over the rounded top of the yurt and pulled them taut. “These are fine pelts,” he said. “If you had forty of them, you could make a wonderful coat-light, warm, good-looking. You couldn’t buy one for any amount of money.”
Dorji cleaned his hands with snow and walked over to the wagon to get a spade. “You guys are useless,” he said. “I have to do everything. Dogs won’t eat a wolf, so we have to bury these right away, and deep, to keep the mother from picking up their scent. That would be the end of your flocks and herds.” They picked a spot west of the yurt and dug a four-foot hole. After tossing in the five skinned cubs, they filled in the hole and tamped down the surface. Then they spread medicinal stomach powder over the grave to cover the smell of the corpses below.
“Should we make some sort of den for our cub?” Yang Ke asked Dorji.
“No, dig a hole for it.” So Chen and Yang dug a hole a dozen or so paces southwest of the yurt. It was a foot or so deep and a couple of feet across. They covered the bottom with well-worn sheepskins, leaving a spot of muddy ground uncovered, and put the little male cub inside.
It came to life the moment it touched the muddy ground, surveying its surroundings with its nose and its eyes, as if it thought it might be back home. It calmed down slowly and curled up on a sheepskin in the corner, still sniffing and looking around, as if trying to find its brothers and sisters. Chen was about to put the second cub in the hole to keep the first one company, when Dorji scooped it up and held it close; he jumped onto his horse and galloped off. Gao Jianzhong cast a cold look down at the cub in the hole, then climbed onto his horse and rode off to round up his cattle.
Chen Zhen and Yang Ke, weighed down with anxieties, crouched beside their new wolf den and stared at the cub. "I don’t know if we’re going to be able to do this,” Chen said. "There are troubles ahead.”
“With him on our hands,” Yang said, “the good can’t get out the door; the bad goes on forever. You just wait. The whole country’s singing ‘We won’t stop fighting until all the jackals are dead,’ and here we are, raising a wolf, treating an enemy like a friend.”
“Out here,” Chen said, “heaven is high and the emperor is far away. Who will know what we’re doing? What worries me is that Bilgee won’t let us do it.”
“The cows are back,” Yang said. “I’ll go get some milk. This guy must be starving.”
Chen waved him off. “Dog’s milk is better,” he said. “We’ll give him Yir’s milk. If a tiger cub can live off dog’s milk, a wolf cub is a sure bet.” Chen picked the cub up out of the hole and held it in both hands. Its belly had caved in with hunger and its paws were cold, like little icy stones. It was trembling. Chen quickly held it close, under his coat, to warm it up.
As dusk was falling, the time for Yir to return to her pups, Chen and Yang went over to the dog pen, dug a hole, and lined it with a thick layer of old sheepskins. A stiff, untanned horsehide curtain kept the den warm for Yir and her three puppies. After Yang fed her a soupy mixture of meat and millet, Yir ran back to the den, muzzled aside the horsehide curtain, and lay down gently against the wall. Her pups found her nipples and sucked greedily.
Chen approached Yir warily, crouched down, and rubbed her head to block the view down below. Happy as always when someone rubbed her head, Yir licked Chen’s hand while Yang pushed one of the pups away and squeezed some milk into his palm. When he saw there was enough, Chen took the wolf cub out from under his coat and Yang smeared milk on its head, back, and paws, the way herdsmen tricked ewes into feeding orphaned lambs. But dogs are smarter than sheep, their sense of smell keener. If Yir’s pups had died or been taken from her, she might have accepted the wolf cub. But with three of her own, that would not happen. As soon as she detected the presence of the wolf in her den, she tried to raise her head to make sure she could see her own pups. Using force and guile, Chen and Yang kept her down.
When the cold, hungry little wolf was laid down next to one of Yir’s teats and could smell the milk, he stopped playing dead and, as if detecting the scent of blood, opened his mouth and bared his fangs, instinctively displaying an attitude of “If there’s milk, she’s my mother.” Born a month later than the dog pups, the cub had a tinier head and was smaller overall. But he was already stronger than the little dogs, and his skill at latching on to the closest teat was superior to theirs. There were two rows of teats, some larger than others, so the supply of milk varied. Chen and Yang watched with amazement as the little wolf seemed less interested in drinking than in finding the largest teat, in pursuit of which he nudged the puppies out of the way. An intruder, a thug, a brigand had been introduced into a peaceful den. His wild nature was revealed as he sent the puppies reeling on his search for the largest teat. He sampled one, spit it out, and tried the next, over and over until he settled on the largest, fullest nipple right in the middle, and began sucking greedily. As he drank, he spread his paws over neighboring teats, as if eating out of a bowl and guarding the pot, hoarding the best for himself. The three docile puppies were kept away.
The two friends could not believe their eyes. “Wolves are scary,” Yang remarked. “This little bastard’s eyes aren’t even open and he’s already a tyrant. Now we see what it means to be the pick of the litter. I’ll bet he’d have acted the same around his brothers and sisters.”
Chen, mesmerized by the sight, was deep in thought. “We’ll have to study him closely,” he said finally. “There’s a lot we can learn from this. Our dog pen is a microcosm of world history. I’m reminded of something Lu Xun once wrote. He said that Westerners are brutish, while we Chinese are domesticated.”
Chen pointed to the cub. “There’s your brute.” Then he pointed to the pups. “And there’s your domestication. For the most part, Westerners are descendants of barbarian, nomadic tribes such as the Teutons and the Anglo-Saxons. They burst out of the primeval forest like wild animals after a couple of thousand years of Greek and Roman civilization, and sacked ancient Rome. They eat steak, cheese, and butter with knives and forks, which is how they’ve retained more primitive wildness than the traditional farming races. Over the past hundred years, domesticated China has been bullied by the brutish West. It’s not surprising that for thousands of years the Chinese colossus has been spectacularly pummeled by tiny nomadic peoples.”
Chen rubbed the cub’s head and continued. “Temperament not only determines the fate of a man but also determines the fate of an entire race. Farming people are domesticated, and faintheartedness has sealed their fate. The world’s four great civilizations were agrarian nations, and three of them died out. The fourth, China, escaped that fate only because two of the greatest rivers-the Yellow and the Yangtze-run through her territory. She also boasts the world’s largest population, making it hard for other nations to nibble away at her or absorb her, but maybe also because of the contributions of the nomadic peoples of the grassland… I haven’t satisfactorily thought out this relationship, but the more time I spend on the grassland-and it’s already been two years-the more complex I think it is.”