The sunset had disappeared and the early-winter cold had settled over the land like a net when the horses, the people, and the dogs- hungry, tired, and cold-returned sadly to camp, heads down, like a defeated ragtag army. No one knew how the gray wolf king had managed to lead his pack out of the fire and through the encirclement. There was plenty of talk, with competing views, but all were convinced the wolves had flown to safety. “There was a fatal flaw in this encirclement, ” Uljii said. “The people and dogs made too much noise before we were in place. The gray wolf led his pack out before the fires were even set.”
The horse herders raced anxiously to their herds. Chen Zhen and Yang Ke, who had been worried about their wolf cub, signaled Zhang Jiyuan and Gao Jianzhong to leave the hunting party with them and take a shortcut back to camp as fast as they could get there. As they rode along, Yang muttered, “Before we left, I gave the cub a couple of pieces of overcooked lamb, but I don’t know if he’s ready to eat meat yet. Dorji says he won’t be weaned for another month or more.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Chen said. “Last night he ate so much I thought his belly would pop. He won’t starve even if he doesn’t eat the meat. What worries me is that we’ve been away all day, leaving the place unguarded. If the mother found him, you know what that means.”
It was midnight by the time they made it back to camp. Erlang and Yellow were waiting for their food in front of the empty dog trough. Chen rolled out of his saddle and gave the dogs some meaty bones, while Zhang and Gao went into the yurt to wash up, boil some water for tea, and get some sleep after they ate. Chen and Yang ran out to the wolf burrow, where they removed the boards over the top and trained flashlights into the hole. The little wolf was curled up in a corner, fast asleep. The little bitch, on the other hand, was whining from hunger and trying to claw her way up the walls to find her mother’s teat. Yir was anxiously pacing the area, so Chen reached down, brought the pup up, and handed her over to Yir, who picked her up with her teeth and carried her away.
Chen and Yang examined the burrow carefully. The two pieces of lamb were gone; the cub’s belly bulged in both directions and spots of grease dotted his nose and mouth. As he slept, his mouth curled up at the corners, like he was enjoying a wonderful dream. Yang was thrilled. “The little bastard gobbled up all that meat,” he sighed. “Apparently, his mother is busy elsewhere.”
14
Rays of long-absent sunlight streamed into the yurt through the wood-framed opening at the top. Chen Zhen opened his eyes and looked up into the blue sky of a cold spring morning. He jumped out of bed, dressed hurriedly, and ran outside, straight to the cub’s burrow, squinting from the sting of bright sunlight.
Gombu had already led the lambs out of their pen; they made their slow way over to the hillside grazing land. Another cluster of sheep, those that had recently lambed, were grazing nearby. All but a few of the ewes had lambed by now; the flock moved at a glacial pace. Chen saw that Yang Ke hadn’t gone out and that he and Zhang Jiyuan were learning from Gombu how to stuff wolf pelts, two of which were draped over the empty oxcarts. Chen walked over to watch. The elderly Gombu had carried an armful of hay from a nearby stack and was now stuffing it gently into the pelts, which slowly took the form of the wolves. “This is how you keep it from shrinking and prevent the inside surfaces from sticking together,” he said. “That lowers their value.” Once he’d finished stuffing the pelts, he bored a hole through the nostrils and strung a thin rope through it.
Then he asked Zhang Jiyuan if he had a spare birch rod for use as a lasso pole. Zhang said he did and led the old man over to an oxcart, where Gombu picked out the longest and straightest of the four or five birch poles, one that measured some twenty feet in length. He then tied the rope he’d strung through the nose of the pelt to the tip of the pole, dug a hole several feet deep in front of the yurt, and planted the pole securely in it. When he had finished, two stuffed wolf pelts waved in the wind high above the ground like signal flags.
“That’s how you dry them,” Gombu said, “and at the same time announce to passersby that successful hunters live in this yurt. In olden days, pelts like those would keep robbers and bandits away.” Chen, Yang, and Zhang stared at the wolf flags put in motion by the wind, which flattened out the fluffy fur and turned the pelts into the image of a pair of live wolves charging into battle.
Yang sighed. “The wolves are dead, but not their form or their souls. They’re up there in full attack, spirited as always. It gives me the creeps.”
Chen too felt his emotions rise. “Seeing those pelts up there reminds me of the Turkish flags gilded with wolf heads that ancient horsemen carried into battle, galloping across the grassland, wolf blood coursing through their veins, filled with the courage, ferocity, and wisdom they’d learned from those very wolves, to become conquerors of the world.”
“You know,” Zhang said, “I now share your view that the wolf is a very complex subject, one that touches on many important issues. No wonder you’re so fascinated by them.”
“The way I see it,” Yang Ke said, “the three of us should forget about studying university courses on our own and concentrate on the far more interesting wolfology.”
The wind billowed the wolf pelts and combed the fur until it was soft and shiny, the dark wolf hairs emitting a lustrous glow in the sunlight, like banquet attire. The pair of wolves frolicked in the blueness of Tengger, embracing one another and tumbling over and over, the relaxed behavior of a freed creature. To Chen, the wolves were stuffed not with straw but with the passion of life and a joyful fighting spirit. Swathed in the white smoke of the yurt’s chimney, they appeared to be dancing in the clouds or breaking through the mist. They were flying up to Tengger, up to Sirius, up to a Paradise they had revered all their lives, taking the souls of grasslanders with them.
Chen realized that what he was doing, standing and gazing skyward, was itself a sort of ritual; without being aware of it, he was standing at the foot of a totem, in a place where respect and admiration reigned. The spirit and faith of the grassland envelops you like the air, and to sense them you need only possess the anxieties and yearnings of the soul…
Chen said to Zhang, “Come with me to look in on the cub.”
They walked over to the new burrow, where Chen removed the rock and slid back the wooden cover. The little female pup was sleeping lazily in a corner, with no thoughts of a morning meal. The wolf cub, on the other hand, sat in the middle of the burrow, looking up hungrily, impatiently. As soon as the bright sunlight lit up the burrow, he stood on his hind legs, energized, and began clawing at the wall. He climbed no more than a couple of inches before tumbling back down, then scrambled to his feet and tried again, digging his claws into the dirt and pulling himself up with all his strength, like a little lizard. When the dirt gave way, he landed like a fur ball and began growling at his own shadow on the wall, angry at it for not helping him out of the hole.
Zhang, who’d never seen a live wolf cub before, felt like reaching down to pick him up and study him closely.
“Hold on a minute,” Chen said. “Let’s see if he can get out on his own. If he can, I’ll have to make the burrow deeper.”
After falling back twice more, the cub gave up on that part of the wall and began moving around the burrow, sniffing here and there, as if trying to devise a new escape plan. All of a sudden, he discovered the presence of the little bitch and, without wasting a second, clambered onto her back and from there onto her head. He started climbing again, sending loose dirt raining down on the pup; awakened from her sleep, she stood up, whimpering, and shook the dirt from her back as the cub fell yet again. Now in full anger, he wrinkled his nose at the pup, bared his fangs, and howled. “The little bastard has plenty of wolf in him already!” Zhang exclaimed with a laugh. “He looks pretty smart to me.”