It was nearly noon, and the sun had wilted the hollow green needles. Time for the cub to suffer again. His mouth hung slack and he panted nonstop, drops of liquid falling to the ground from his lolling tongue. Chen had opened the felt covering the yurt all the way to the top. Mongol yurts are open to the air on eight sides, like a pavilion or an oversized birdcage. That way he could keep an eye on the cub from inside the yurt, where he’d gone to read.
Unable to think of anything that might help the cub cool off a bit, Chen settled for observing the young animal to determine his level of tolerance for heat. The breezes entering his yurt were getting hotter; cows out in the basin had stopped grazing and were lying in the mud of the riverbank, while most of the sheep were sleeping in a mountain pass to catch the relatively cool winds. Three-sided white tents were going up on the mountaintop, as shepherds fended off the unbearable heat by sticking their lasso poles into marmot holes, then draping their thin white deels over them and anchoring the edges with rocks. These makeshift tents kept them out of the harsh sunlight. Chen had tried that, and had found it effective in keeping cool. Two occupants shared the tents, one sleeping while the other kept watch over the flock.
But as he baked in the merciless heat, the cub suffered whether he lay down or remained standing. Waves of heat rose from the sandy ground, scalding his paws and making it impossible to keep all four paws on the ground at one time. He kept looking around for his puppy playmates, and when he saw one of them lying in the shade under a wagon, he strained at his chain in exasperation. Chen ran out of the yurt, convinced that if he didn’t do something soon, the cub would be roasted like a chestnut. If the animal suffered heatstroke, the pasture vet would not lift a finger to save him.
So Chen scooped out a panful of water from the water wagon and laid it out for the cub, then watched as he thrust his head in and didn’t stop drinking until there was none left. He then ran up and hid from the sun in Chen’s shadow. Like a little orphan child, he stepped on Chen’s feet to keep him from leaving. So Chen stood there until he felt the back of his neck prickle, and he knew that his skin would begin to crack if he didn’t move. After walking out of the pen, he dumped half a bucketful of water onto the sandy ground, sending clouds of steam into the air. The cub, seeing that the ground temperature had fallen at that spot, ran over and lay down to rest. But the ground soon heated up, and the torment returned. Chen was out of options. He couldn’t keep watering the ground, and even if he could, what would happen when it was time to go out and tend the flock?
Back inside the yurt, Chen didn’t feel like reading; he could not shake the fear that the cub would get sick, or lose too much weight, maybe even die in the cruel summer heat. By chaining him, he realized, he was preserving the safety of people and their livestock, but not the life of the cub. If there were only an enclosure in which the cub could run free, he could at least find shelter at the base of a wall.
All Chen could do was keep an eye on his wolf and try to figure out something; nothing came to mind.
The wolf walked around and around, his brain apparently doing the same. The cub seemed to realize that the grassy ground outside the pen was cooler than the sandy ground inside. He turned and stepped on the grass with his hind legs; finding that it was, in fact, cooler, he lay down on the grass, leaving only his head and neck on the scalding sand inside the pen. With the chain pulled taut, he could finally stretch out and get some rest, part of his body no longer baked by the sun. Chen was so happy he could have kissed the young wolf; this manifestation of the cub’s intelligence gave him a thread of hope. Now he knew what to do. As the temperature continued to climb, he’d make a new pen for the wolf, this time with grass, and each time the cub trampled it down and exposed the sand, he’d move him again. A wolf’s power to survive was greater than that of humans. Even without a mother’s guidance, a young wolf solves the problems it faces, in a pack or alone. With a sigh, Chen lay back against his bedroll and began to read.
A flurry of hoofbeats resounded on the road some sixty or seventy feet outside the yurt; assuming it was horse herders galloping by, Chen wasn’t particularly curious. So he was caught by surprise when two horses left the road and headed for his yurt, then veered off toward the wolf pen, where the startled cub stood up on his hind legs and straightened out the chain. The rider in front looped his lasso pole noose over the cub’s neck and jerked it back, lifting him off the ground. The force of the man’s movement left no doubt that he wanted the wolf dead, expecting the pull of the chain to decapitate him. The cub had no sooner fallen back to the ground than the second man used his lasso pole as a whip, hitting him with such force that he rolled over. Meanwhile, the first man halted his horse, grabbed his herding club, and was about to dismount and kill the cub with his club when Chen let out a shriek, picked up his rolling pin, and ran out like a madman. Seeing the defiant look in Chen’s eyes, the two men spun their horses around and rode off in a cloud of dust. Chen heard one of them shout, “Wolves killed our fine horses, and you think you can raise one of them! Well, sooner or later, I’m going to kill that wolf!”
Yellow and Yir ran after the men, barking ferociously, and both were struck by lasso poles as the men headed off to where the horse herds were grazing.
Chen could not see who the attackers were, but he assumed that one of them might have been the shepherd whom Bilgee had rebuked and the other a member of the horse herders’ Unit Four. They clearly had come with murderous intentions, and Chen was witness to the fearful blitzkrieg tactics of Mongol horsemen.
He ran over to where the wolf lay, his tail between his legs, nearly frightened to death. His legs were so wobbly he couldn’t stand, and when he spotted Chen, he tumbled into his arms like a chick running for the mother hen after escaping the clutches of a cat. Chen, who was also trembling, held him tight, man and wolf a chorus of shaking. He anxiously felt the cub’s neck and was relieved to see that it was still intact, though some of the fur had been pulled off by the hemp noose and a bloody gouge circled his neck. The cub’s heart was racing. Chen did what he could to calm the young wolf down; it took some time, but eventually they both stopped quaking. Chen then went back to the yurt, where he took down another strip of dried lamb. That had a soothing effect on the cub. Picking him up again, Chen held him in his lap and pressed his face up against the cub’s face while he rubbed his chest until his heartbeat was back to normal. But the cub’s fears lingered, and he wouldn’t take his eyes off Chen. Suddenly he licked Chen on the chin; it was the second time the wolf had done so but the first time that the gesture was an expression of gratitude. As Chen saw it, the story of a rescued wolf showing its gratitude with the gift of seven rabbits had not necessarily stemmed from someone’s imagination.
The thing Chen had feared the most had finally occurred, rekindling his concern. His decision to raise a wolf had offended most of the herdsmen, and the coolness of their attitude toward him was palpable. Even Bilgee had nearly stopped coming to visit. In the eyes of the herdsmen, it seemed, there was little difference between him and Bao Shungui and his laborers, all outsiders who had no respect for grassland customs. The wolf is their spiritual totem, but a physical enemy. Raising one like a pet is something a herdsman could not condone; it was a blasphemy in the spiritual sense and consorting with the enemy in the physical realm. He had broken one of the grassland’s prohibitions, violated a cultural taboo-of that there was no doubt. He was no longer sure if he could continue to protect the cub or even if he ought to keep raising it. Sincere in his desire to record and investigate the secrets and value of the “wolf totem” as the “soul of the grassland,” he saw this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; he needed to be unyielding, to grit his teeth and carry on. So he went looking for Erlang. When that dog was watching over things, no one but herdsmen in Chen’s unit would dare to come near without being invited. Erlang was capable of driving away an unfamiliar rider by nipping at the man’s horse and sending it off in a panic. The two attackers must have seen that Erlang was not around before making their move.