While the men were gobbling up pancakes, they were interrupted by a shout from Gasmai outside. “Aha, all that good food and you didn’t invite me over!” She opened the door, walked in with Bayar, and pushed the dogs out of the way. Chen and Yang made room for them in the seat of honor.
Chen handed them both some pancakes and said, “I didn’t think herdsmen ate stuff like this. Here, try it.”
“I smelled this all the way over at my place, a good thousand feet away, and it made me drool. So here I am, my little mutt and all. Not eat these? I sure do.” She picked up a pair of chopsticks and dug in. “They’re delicious,” she said. Bayar wolfed his down, never taking his eyes off the stove, worried there wouldn’t be more. Herdsmen eat a morning meal of curds, meat, and tea, then don’t eat again until the main meal in the evening. So mother and son were hungry.
“This is really good,” Gasmai said, “like eating ‘restaurant food,’ without having to go into town. Today I’m going to stuff myself.”
“I’ve got a bucketful here,” Gao said with a little laugh. “If we run out of broken eggs, we’ll cook the whole ones. You won’t leave hungry, I guarantee it.” Putting the broken eggs to one side, he cracked open half a dozen whole ones and made pancakes just for Gasmai and Bayar.
“But Papa won’t eat these,” Gasmai said. “He says that eggs belong to Tengger and should be left alone. What that means is, I’ll have to come over here to eat.”
Chen said, “Last year I was there when Papa asked the family of someone at headquarters for a dozen chicken eggs. What was that for?”
“One of the horses was sick,” Gasmai said. “Too much internal heat. He pinched the animal’s nose closed so it would raise its head, then broke a couple of eggs against its teeth and poured the contents down its throat. After he did that a few times, the horse was cured.”
Yang Ke leaned over and whispered to Zhang Jiyuan, “Now we’ve done it. Thanks to us, the herdsmen will start eating things they never used to eat. In a few years, not only swans but even wild ducks will disappear from the grassland.”
Bayar’s spirits rose with each bite. With grease running down his chin, he said, “I know where there are more of these. Make us one more serving, and tomorrow I’ll take you there. You’ll find plenty in abandoned marmot holes on hillsides. I saw some by a stream when I was looking for stray lambs this morning.”
“Great!” Gao Jianzhong exclaimed. “There’s a hillock near the stream with lots of holes in the sand, which means the horses will stay clear of the place.” While he was frying the pancakes, he told Chen to break open a few more eggs. In no time, a new thick, oily egg pancake came out of the pan. Gao cut it in two and gave half to Gasmai and half to her son. Sweat beaded their heads as they ate. Oily smoke rose from the pan, into which the next bowlful of eggs was dumped with a sizzle.
After Chen took out the spatula, he said, “Now I’m going to treat you to something different.” First he put in some sheep fat, then broke a couple of eggs, frying them until they were lightly cooked. Gasmai and her son got up on their knees to look into the pan. They stared wide-eyed at what they saw. Chen gave each of them one of the fried eggs, over which he sprinkled a bit of soy paste.
“This is even better than the pancakes,” Gasmai said. “Two more, please.”
“In a minute,” Yang said with a laugh, “I’ll fry you some eggs with leeks, and when you say you’re full, we’ll have old Zhang make a bowl of egg-drop soup. We all have our special dishes.”
Fragrant, oily smoke filled the yurt as the six people ate until they could eat no more and laid down their chopsticks. The wildwood feasters had gone through more than half of the eggs in the bucket.
Gasmai said she had to leave; there was much to do in the wake of the recent move. She belched contentedly and said with a laugh, “Don’t breathe a word about this to Papa. Come over to my place in a few days, and I’ll treat you all to a meal of curds mixed with fried rice.”
Gao reminded Bayar, “Don’t forget to take me looking for more eggs tomorrow.”
Chen ran out and stuffed a big piece of egg pancake into Bar’s mouth. Bar spat it onto the ground; but after inspecting it, sniffing it, and licking it, he decided it was edible. Beaming happily, he picked it up and ate it slowly, wagging his tail in thanks to Chen.
Once their guests had left, Chen ran over to see how his cub was doing.
It was gone! Chen broke out in a cold sweat. Panicked, he ran up close, where he discovered that his cub was hiding in the tall grass. He figured that the two strangers and all those unfamiliar dogs had frightened him. Obviously, he knew instinctively how to hide from danger. Chen breathed a sigh of relief. The cub looked around and, seeing that the strangers were gone, jumped to his feet and began sniffing Chen’s body, heavy with the aroma of fried eggs. He licked Chen’s oily hands.
So Chen went back inside, asked Gao for half a dozen eggs, which he threw into the pan with plenty of oil, and made egg pancakes for the cub and the dogs. That wasn’t nearly enough to fill them, but he felt a need to at least let them have a taste. Grassland dogs seemed to prefer snacks over regular meals, and giving them snacks was one of the best ways to bond with them. When he was finished, Chen divided the pancakes into four large pieces and three smaller ones. The large pieces were for the three dogs and the cub, the three smaller ones for the puppies. The dogs were still hanging around the doorway, refusing to leave, so Chen held back the piece for the cub, crouched down, and tapped each dog on the head with his spatula to have it wait its turn and not take food from one of the other dogs. He gave the biggest piece to Erlang, who took it in his mouth and wagged his tail spiritedly.
After the dogs had left to frolic in the grass, and the pancakes had all cooled down, he put the last big piece in the cub’s bowl and walked over with it. Yang Ke, Zhang Jiyuan, and Gao Jianzhong followed, all wanting to see if the cub would eat the egg pancake, something no grassland wolf had ever seen or eaten. “Little Wolf,” Chen called out, “Little Wolf, time to eat.” He’d no sooner placed the bowl into the pen than the cub came running as if it were chasing down a newborn lamb, grabbed the oily pancake in its mouth, and gobbled it down; it took no more than a second.
The men looking on were disappointed. “I feel sorry for the thing,” Zhang said. “He’s content just to have food in his belly. Look up wolf in the dictionary, and you won’t find the word savor.”
Looking pained, Gao said, “All those good duck eggs gone to waste.”
“Who knows,” Chen explained to ease their disappointment, “maybe wolves’ taste buds are in their stomach.”
That got a laugh out of them.
Chen went back into the yurt to straighten things up after the move. His friends decided to go tend to their animals, but before they left, Chen said to Zhang, “Want me to grab your horse by the ears to help you climb into the saddle?”
“No need,” Zhang replied.
He picked up some clean clothes, borrowed a copy of Jack London’s The Sea Wolf, and went outside.
He mounted up and led the horses in the direction of the mountains to the southwest.
21
Chen Zhen saw that several clusters of sheep had left the lakeshore ahead, so he rounded up his flock and led them to the lake. Once they were on the move, he rode over ahead of them. A small herd of horses, having drunk their fill, was standing in the water, resting with their eyes closed, unwilling to return to dry land. Wild ducks and a variety of waterbirds were swimming on the lake, a few of them actually sporting around the horses, flitting beneath their bellies and between their legs. Swans cruised on the surface in the center of the lake away from the horses and on the opposite shore, where reeds still grew.