Chen Zhen felt the old man nudge him with his elbow and saw him point to the snow-covered slope. Chen trained his telescope on the spot. The gazelles were still grazing nervously. He watched as one of the wolves left the pack and ran off to the mountain west of them. Chen’s heart sank. “I guess they aren’t going to attack,” he whispered. “Apparently, we’ve let ourselves freeze for nothing.”
“The pack won’t pass up an opportunity like this,” Bilgee said. “The leader must have felt there are too many gazelles, so he sent a runner to bring more troops. An opportunity like this comes maybe once every five or six years, and it seems they’ve got quite an appetite. They’re getting ready for a major battle. You’ll see that this was worth the wait. As I said, patience is the key to a good hunt.”
2
Six or seven new wolves quietly joined the encirclement, its three sides formed and ready. Chen Zhen covered his mouth with the horseshoe-shaped sleeve of his heavy fur deel and said softly, “Are they going to close the circle now?”
“Not quite yet,” Bilgee replied softly. “The alpha male is waiting for the right moment. Wolves are more meticulous about their encirclement formations than we are. See if you can figure out what he’s waiting for.” Each time the old man’s bushy white eyebrows twitched, shards of frost fell to the ground. A frost-covered fox-fur cap with flaps that fell to his shoulders covered his forehead and much of his face, but not his light brown eyes, which gave off a heavy sheen, like pieces of amber.
They had been hiding in their snow cave for some time already, and now they turned their attention to the gazelles grazing on the slope. The herd numbered as many as a thousand, of which several large males, with long black horns, kept watch as they sniffed the air. The others were grazing the land under the snow.
The area was a winter reserve pastureland for the Second Production Brigade, a defense line against natural disasters. Measuring roughly twenty square miles, it was a large mountain pastureland where, protected from the wind and relatively free of snow, fine grass grew tall and thick.
“Watch carefully, and you’ll understand,” the old man whispered. “This is an ideal spot, open to the northwestern winds that keep the snow from piling up. When I was eight years old, the Olonbulag was hit by the largest snowstorm in centuries, a true white scourge. The snow covered our yurts. Fortunately, under the leadership of some old-timers, most of the people and animals managed to get out. When the snow was still only up to our knees, our several thousand horses were brought out to trample a path in the snow. Then several dozen oxen tamped it down more, opening up a trough through which our sheep and carts could travel. It took three days and nights to reach this pastureland in safety. Here the snow was only a foot or two deep, allowing the tips of the long grass to push through. Cows and sheep and horses, all half dead from the cold and hunger, made a dash for it as soon as it came into view. As for the people, they threw themselves down onto the snow and wept, then banged their heads on the ground in thanks to Tengger, until their faces were covered with snow. The sheep and the horses knew how to move the snow out of the way to get to the grass, while the more passive cows simply followed along behind them to forage. It was enough to sustain the greater half of the animals until the snow melted in the spring. People who hadn’t moved their animals in time lost them. They themselves made it to safety, but their animals were buried in the blizzard. If not for this stretch of pastureland, every inhabitant of the Olonbulag, human and animal, would have died. We stopped being afraid of white scourges after that; we knew that if one came along, we could move to this pastureland and take refuge here.”
The old man sighed. “This spot is a gift to the Olonbulag people and animals from Tengger, our sustenance. In the past, herdsmen made an annual trek to the top of that mountain to worship Tengger and the Mountain God. But with the current political situation, no one has dared go up for a couple of years. But we still worship in our hearts. This is our sacred mountain. Even if there’s a drought and no grass to forage, the mountain is off-limits to herdsmen from spring to autumn. Preserving it is particularly hard on people who tend horses. The wolves also preserve the mountain, and once every five or six years they go on a killing spree of gazelles, their sacrifice to the Mountain God and Tengger. The mountain doesn’t only save people and their animals; it also saves the wolves, who are cleverer than both. In the past the wolves arrived ahead of the people and their animals, and during the day they hid among the rocks on the mountaintop or behind the mountain, where the snow had turned to ice. They came down at night to dig up cows and sheep that had frozen to death. Wolves won’t bother people and their animals as long as they have food to eat.”
Patchy clouds floated above. The old man gazed up into the icy blue of Tengger, a look of devotion on his face.
The snows had come early this year and had stuck, covering the bottom half of the grass before it turned yellow; now the grasses were like greens trapped by ice. The subtle fragrance of tasty grass emerged from the hollow stalks and the cracks in the snow. The smell of grass drew starving gazelles across the border from the blizzard-ravaged neighbor to the north; to them the spot was a wintry oasis-they ate until their rounded bellies looked like drums, making running all but impossible.
Only the alpha male and Bilgee knew that the gazelles had made a tragic mistake.
It was not a particularly large herd. During his first year on the grassland, Chen had often seen herds of ten thousand or more. A cadre at brigade headquarters had said that during the three difficult years in the 1960s, soldiers from northern military regions had come in vehicles and mowed down vast numbers of gazelles with machine guns to supply food to their troops; as a result, they drove the surviving gazelles out of the area. But in recent years, given the tense military situation in the border regions, large-scale hunts had ceased, and the Olonbulag had witnessed the return of gazelles in spectacular numbers. Chen frequently encountered large herds when he tended his flock, a vast sea of yellow close to the ground, passing by his sheep, relaxed and carefree, but causing his animals to huddle together in fear, watching bug-eyed with a mixture of alarm and envy as their wild cousins raced past, free as the wind.
Mongolian gazelles ignore unarmed humans. On one occasion, Chen Zhen had ridden down the middle of a dense herd with the idea of roping one to get a taste of gazelle meat. He failed. The fastest four-legged animal on the grassland, the gazelle can outrun hunting dogs, even wolves. Chen whipped his horse and charged the herd, but they kept passing on both sides, no more than ten or twelve yards away, then flowed back together ahead of him and continued on their way. He could only watch in awe.
The gazelles they were observing now may have comprised no more than a medium-sized herd, but Chen was sure it was too big for a pack of wolves numbering in the dozens. People had told him there is no animal more determined than a wolf, and he was eager to see not only how great the wolves’ appetite and determination might be but also what kind of hunters they were.
For the wolves, this was too great an opportunity to miss. Their movements were slight and slow. When the male gazelles looked up, the wolves flattened out and did not move; even the steam in their breath was light and gentle.