Chen saw that in two short days, the membranes covering the cub’s eyes had become much thinner; still quite watery, the eyes looked almost diseased. Nevertheless, the cub appeared able to make out some hazy shapes and react to hand gestures. When Chen opened his hand and held it out, the wolf followed it with his eyes. So as to begin conditioning the cub’s reflexes, Chen said slowly, “Little… Wolf… Little Wolf… food… food.” The wolf cocked his head, pricked up his catlike ears, and listened with a mixture of fear and curiosity.
“I’d like to see if he has any memory of his original den,” Zhang said as he cupped his hands over his mouth and made wolf sounds. The cub moved nervously, then leaped back onto the dog’s body and clawed madly at the wall, falling back once, twice, until he curled up in a corner as if seeking the safety of his mother. The men knew they’d done something cruel by letting the cub hear sounds from the realm of wolves.
“Raising this one isn’t going to be easy,” Zhang said. “This isn’t the Beijing Zoo, where he could be taken out of his natural habitat and gradually shed some of his wildness. Out here in these primitive surroundings, when night falls, we’re surrounded by baying wolves, and I don’t know how he’s going to change under those conditions. He’ll hurt someone once he’s fully grown. Be very careful.”
“It’s never been my intention to rid him of his wildness,” Chen said. “What would be the point? I just want to be in contact with a living wolf, to stroke him and hold him, to get closer to him each day, and see if I can figure him out. You can’t know wolves without going into their den. Which means you can’t be afraid of getting bitten. My only concern is that the herdsmen won’t let me raise him.”
The cub was still trying to get out of his burrow, so Chen reached down, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and lifted him out. Zhang cupped the little animal in his hands and studied him closely as he rubbed his coat. He tried to smooth it down, but when he lifted his hand, the wolf hairs stood up wildly. “I’m embarrassed to admit that here I am, a horse herder who has to come to a sheep’s pen to touch a living wolf. Lamjav and I went out looking for litters twice but came back empty-handed. I’ll bet not one in a hundred thousand Chinese has ever actually touched a living grassland wolf. We hate them, which means we hate whatever they’re good at. Just about the only people who have learned from wolves are the nomads.”
“In world history,” Chen continued the thought, “nomads have been the only Easterners capable of taking the fight to the Europeans, and the three peoples that really shook the West to its foundations were the Huns, the Turks, and the Mongols. The Westerners who fought their way back to the East were all descendants of nomads. The builders of ancient Rome were a pair of brothers raised by a wolf. Images of the wolf and her two wolf-children appear on the city’s emblem even today. The later Teutons, Germans, and Anglo-Saxons grew increasingly powerful, and the blood of wolves ran in their veins. The Chinese, with their weak dispositions, are in desperate need of a transfusion of that vigorous, unrestrained blood. Had there been no wolves, the history of the world would have been written much differently. If you don’t know wolves, you can’t understand the spirit and character of the nomads, and you’ll certainly never be able to appreciate the differences between nomads and farmers or the inherent qualities of each.”
“Don’t worry,” Zhang said. “I understand why you want to raise this wolf, and I’ll talk to the herdsmen for you.”
Chen held the cub under his coat and walked over to the dog pen. When Yir saw that a wolf was feeding on her milk, the moment Chen let down his guard, she stood up and turned to bite it. But the cub held on to the nipple and wouldn’t let go, hanging from her belly like a leech, like an empty milk bottle. Yir turned around and around, swinging the wolf with her, trying but failing to bite him. To Chen and Zhang it was comical yet maddening. Chen reached down and pried open the cub’s mouth to make him let go of the teat. “A real bloodsucker,” Zhang said with a laugh.
Chen held Yir down and stroked her gently to get her to let the little wolf drink. When the cub was full, Chen stood up and said, “I think we should let the youngsters play together.” So they carried the puppies over to dry grass, where Chen set the wolf down among them. The instant his paws touched the ground, he took off as fast as he could, away from the puppies and the men. With his belly rubbing the ground and his bowlegs churning, he looked more like a hairy tortoise than a wolf. One of the male puppies tried to run with him, but the wolf showed his fangs and snarled.
Chen was surprised. “When he’s hungry,” he said, “anyone with milk is his mother, but when he’s had his fill, there’s no such thing as mother. His eyes aren’t fully open, but his nose is working fine. It’s a wolf’s best weapon.”
Zhang said, “I can see he already knows this isn’t his real home, that the bitch isn’t his real mother, and that those pups aren’t his brothers and sisters.”
“When we found him out there,” Chen said, “he already knew how to play dead.”
They stayed four or five paces behind the cub, following to see what he would do. He crawled several yards over ground covered with patches of snow and dry grass before stopping to sniff the area. He smelled horse dung, cow patties, cow and sheep bones, and whatever else happened to be there-territory-marking dog piss, maybe. His nose led the way, and it wasn’t until they’d followed him several hundred feet that they realized he wasn’t wandering aimlessly, but had a clear objective in mind: he was running away from the yurts, the camp, the pens, and the aura of humans, dogs, smoke, and livestock.
The cub had a natural stubborn streak, Chen realized. He possessed a nature that was more fearsome and more worthy of respect than other animals. Chen had always held sparrows in high regard, for they were impossible to domesticate. As a child, he’d caught many of them and brought them home as pets. But as soon as they were in captivity, they stopped eating and drinking, refusing to adapt to their new surroundings. Their answer to the loss of freedom was death every time. He never once succeeded in keeping a captured sparrow alive. Wolves were different, he realized. They cherished their freedom, but they cherished life as well. A captured wolf ate and slept as always. Instead of fasting, it gorged itself and slept as much as possible to store up energy. Then it escaped at the first opportunity in a quest for renewed freedom and a new life. Chen felt he was witnessing the rare character and human qualities one saw in gladiators. A people who adopted the wolf’s temperament and made it their totem-beastly ancestor, god of war, and sage-would always be a victorious people.
Chen was grateful to the cub, whose sturdy little body had the power of transporting him all the way to the heart of a mystery.
Gombu rode up and told Chen to come with him to pair up the newborn lambs with their mothers. It took the two men no more than an hour to match all the ewes and their lambs, which nursed twice a day, morning and afternoon. Lambs that could not find their mothers would quickly starve. Pairing also gave the shepherds the opportunity to count their flock. To avoid the blistering sunlight, newborn lambs often curled up in marmot burrows, and shepherds could easily lose them if not for the pairings. Chen once went looking for missing lambs after a count and found three of them in marmot burrows.
Gombu was satisfied with the flock. “We have good grass and water here on the Olonbulag,” he said, “so the sheep have plenty of milk and they know their own lambs. That makes things easy for us. If the grass and water quality were poor, the sheep wouldn’t have enough milk and they’d reject even their own lambs. We’re lucky we have good leaders who understand the grassland and understand wolves. They don’t focus their effort on the flocks, but on the grass and on the pastureland. When people take care of the important business, the lambs pretty much tend themselves. Shepherding is carefree work on the Olonbulag. In a few days, I’ll be able to pair the sheep and lambs by myself.”