Suddenly Zhang heard Batu shout, “Get off your horse!” and saw him rein his horse to a stop in a sort of maneuver that roundup horses do better than any other. It is what they are trained to do for catching wild horses, a skill that served the hunters well at this moment. Both horses skidded to a stop so sudden that their riders were thrown out of the saddles and over their heads. Batu executed a perfect somersault as he landed; he then sprawled on the ground, held his breath, and took careful aim at a spot on the hilltop. Zhang sprawled beside him, rifle at the ready.
The wolf, no longer hearing hoof beats, alertly stopped running. Grassland wolves have such short necks that to look behind them, they must turn around completely to see the location of their pursuers and the direction they’re headed. When this one turned, the outline of its figure stood out against the sky on the hilltop, appearing three times the size it had been when running in a straight line, like a firing-range target. While this can give the hunter a clear shot, most of the time the wolf will still manage to get away. But by bringing his horse to a sudden stop, Batu had made the wolf suspicious, forcing it to stop and look back to see what he was up to.
The wolf had taken the bait, and Batu’s rifle rang out. The animal fell forward, and its outline disappeared above the hilltop. “He was too far away,” Batu said. “I didn’t hit a vital spot. But he won’t get away now. Let’s go!” They remounted and spurred their horses up to the crest of the hill, where they spotted a pool of blood on the grass and rocks, but no wolf, not even when they swept the area with their spyglass. That meant they’d have to follow the trail of blood.
“Too bad we didn’t bring dogs along,” Zhang remarked with a sigh.
They rode slowly and in silence for a while, until Batu said, “My bullet broke one of its front legs. See how there are only three paw prints? This one won’t get away.”
Zhang replied, “No three-legged wolf can outrun a four-legged horse.”
Batu looked at his watch. “Don’t be so sure,” he said. “This is a pack leader. What if he finds a deep den? We’ll never get him then. Let’s speed it up.”
They followed the sporadic trail of blood another hour or more, until they came to a grassy knoll, where they were amazed by what they saw: there on the ground was the wolf’s front leg, with tooth marks on the coat, the tendons, and the bone. “See there,” Batu said, “the wolf knew that his leg was slowing him down, dragging along on the ground, so he chewed it off.”
Zhang felt his stomach lurch. “I’ve heard people say that a warrior will cut off his arm if it’s been hit by a poisoned arrow, though you couldn’t prove it by me. But this makes the third time I’ve seen a wolf chew off its own leg.”
“People differ from one another,” Batu said, “but wolves are all alike.”
They continued on, noting that the trail of blood was lessening, while the strides were getting longer. What worried them most was that the wolf seemed to be looking for a shortcut to the border, just north of an off-limits military area. “That’s one remarkable pack leader,” Batu said. “We can’t let it lead us wherever it wants us to go.” They sped up and took a shortcut to the border.
The farther north they traveled, the higher the grass grew, a gray vastness like an enormous wolf pelt. It was going to be harder to find their wolf than to dig up a lamb in a mountain of newly shorn wool. Heaven and man do not easily come together, but a wolf and the grassland merge like water and milk. For all they knew as they rode along, the crippled animal could be right under their noses. Zhang was once again made keenly aware of the close relationship between wolf and the grassland, and between wolves and Tengger. When it’s a matter of life or death, the grassland provides an avenue of escape; when they’re in peril, the grassland supplies wings for them to fly away like birds. It keeps them under its wing. The vast expanse of Mongolian grassland favors and protects its wolves. They are like an old couple, devoted to one another for life. Even Mongols, who are loyal and steadfast to the grassland, cannot reach the exalted position the wolves occupy.
The horses, after stopping from time to time, had regained their strength and were able to increase the pace. The mountain range to the north drew closer; that was where the grassland ended. According to the herdsmen, the mountains, with their barren and cold deep valleys, are the wolves’ last base on the Olonbulag, a place where they have no enemies. But even if the crippled wolf somehow reached that refuge, how would it live? That thought no sooner occurred to Zhang than he realized he was measuring the wolf by his own standards. In the end, man has the capacity to kill a wolf, but not its spirit.
Finally, the horses stepped onto the public highway, which was actually a dirt or, at best, gravel road used for military patrols. The wheels of all-terrain vehicles and transport trucks had created a wide hollow nearly three feet deep, until the road, from one end to another, was a winding trough, like a sandy dragon, rising and falling. The fragility of the grassland, the terrifying reality of the land beneath the thin grassy surface, was exposed by this road. The top layer of grass was moist, but the sandy roadway had been blown bone-dry by winds from the west, creating a dragon hundreds of miles long. The hooves of passing horses raised a storm of sand that flew into the faces of the riders and their mounts, choking them and burning their eyes.
The two hunters headed east; there were no wolf tracks to follow. But when they crossed a gentle rise in the road, a wolf appeared out of nowhere some thirty yards ahead, struggling to climb out of the rut in the middle of the road, something a healthy animal could have done easily; but it was the final barrier for this wolf. It fell back, causing excruciating pain when the wounded stump hit the ground.
“Dismount,” Batu said as he stepped down. Zhang followed, nervously watching to see what Batu was going to do and reaching out for the herding club hanging from his saddle. But instead of reaching for his club or approaching the wolf, Batu let his horse move over to a grassy spot to graze, after which he sat down on the ridge of the road, took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and quietly smoked. Through the haze of smoke, Zhang saw a complex set of emotions in the man’s eyes. Freeing his horse to graze, he sat down next to Batu and bummed a cigarette.
The wolf struggled to its feet and sat down, listing to one side, yellow sand stuck to its bloody chest. Defiantly, it stared at its enemies, not for a minute forgetting its dignity. It vigorously shook the sand and grass from its body as if tidying its battle attire. But all its attempts to stop the stump of its missing leg from shaking failed. A look of savage righteousness emerged from its eyes; it breathed deeply, reaching down for whatever strength was left in its body. Zhang Jiyuan lacked the courage to look into the wolf’s eyes; standing on the ancient grassland, that is, looking from the standpoint of the grassland, the wolf had wrenched justice and righteousness from the humans.
Batu held the cigarette in his fingers, gazed thoughtfully at the struggling wolf, the look in his eyes was one of a student who has just beaten his teacher and has begun to feel remorse and a growing sense of unease. Seeing that its enemies had not made a move for a long time, the wolf turned and began to claw at the dirt with its remaining front paw. The black topsoil on the exposed section of ground beside the road was no more than an inch or two thick. Below that was a layer of sand and tiny pebbles. The digging eventually opened up a gap, releasing sand that crumbled on the floor of the rut and made it possible for the crippled wolf to jump and crawl out onto the grass. Then it hopped on three legs in the direction of the distant firebreak and boundary marker.
The firebreak was a wide tractor-leveled lane parallel with the border, a hundred or more yards across. Replowed once every year, it was nothing but sand, without a blade of grass anywhere, and was intended to stop the spread of wildfires from the other side of the border and small fires from this side. It was the only plowed land on the Olonbulag tolerated by the herdsmen. Old-timers said it constituted the only benefit farming brought to their land.
The wolf ran until it had to sto
p and rest, then ran again, eventually disappearing in the tall grass. There would be no more obstacles.
Batu stood up to look but said nothing. Then he bent down, picked up the cigarette butt Zhang had left on the ground, and spit on it. He dug a small hole in the moist grassy surface with his fingers and buried the two cigarette butts. “Get used to doing that,” he said. “The grassland cannot tolerate carelessness.” He stood up. “Let’s go,” he said. “We’ll go back for the wolf we killed.”
They mounted their horses and rode off toward the hillside with the circle grass. The snow on the ground was clean, the horses’ hooves light. They didn’t talk.
16
A heavy, unpleasant odor rose from the hillside near the birthing camp, warmed by the sun after a spring rain. The rotting remains of weak animals that had frozen to death over the long winter, along with those of livestock killed by wolves, were exposed on the grass, which was stained with dark blood. Yellow and black fouled water oozed from decaying autumn vegetation. Liquefying animal dung discolored the grassland.
The stenches of an early-spring day did nothing to dampen Chen Zhen’s spirits. Foul water was necessary on the grassland. “Inspection teams and poets from the cities like the smell of spring flowers on the grassland,” said Uljii, “but I prefer the spring stench. One sheep expels fifteen hundred catties of dung and urine each year. Do you know how much grass that feeds? Cow manure is cold, horse manure is hot, but sheep manure equals two years of manual labor. If you control the quantity of livestock, not only will they not deplete the grassland, but they’ll actually enrich it. The best tribal leaders of the past were able to turn sandy soil into rich grassland.”
In the spring the water on the Olonbulag was rich with nutrients, and the grass grew in front of people’s eyes. After a couple of weeks of sunny days, the new green grass completely covered the decaying grass of the previous year. The hillside grazing areas were green, all green. Plants and flowers bore up through the fertile ground, making the topsoil denser and tougher, and keeping the desert at bay. Chen was on Old Man Bilgee’s big yellow horse, trotting across the land and joyfully taking in the green rebirth. To him, the vast grassland, the stage on which men and wolves held their cruel battles, was transformed into a place where Mother Earth received loving tribute.
The ewes’ teats swelled, the lambs’ coats whitened, the cows lowed loudly, and the horses’ heavy coats fell away; the livestock had made it through another year with the return of fresh green grass. It was going to be a fine year on the Olonbulag. Even though the spring cold spell had killed many lambs, the brigade’s birthing rate, buoyed by a high percentage of twin births, had increased dramatically.
Still, the shepherds were filled with foreboding. With the spectacular increase in the sheep population, the Olonbulag was in danger of being overgrazed. If the shepherds sold a large quantity of newborn lambs, they would later fail to meet their production quota. So the brigade held a series of meetings. Uljii could see only one solution, which was to open up a new grazing land.
Chen Zhen accompanied Uljii and Bilgee to inspect the chosen site. Bilgee had lent him a good horse, fast, with exceptional stamina. Uljii carried a semiautomatic rifle, Bilgee brought Bar along with him, and Chen brought Erlang, leaving Yellow back at the yurt to watch over things. The two dogs, avid hunters, were on the lookout for anything to chase along the way. Like Chen, they were in high spirits. “You shepherds and sheepdogs have been bottled up for more than a month,” Bilgee said with a laugh.
“Thanks for bringing me along, Papa. I needed a break.”
The old man replied, “I’ve been worried you might ruin your eyesight reading all those books.”
At the northeast corner of the brigade territory stood some forty square miles of barren, hilly land. According to Uljii, no one had ever lived there, so it was especially fertile, with several streams and some lakes of various sizes. The grass grew three feet tall or more, with a ground accumulation at least a foot thick. Given the abundance of water and the dense grass, the mosquito population was immense. In the summer and autumn, these insects could collectively kill a cow. When the men stepped on the thick ground cover, swarms of mosquitoes rose into the air; it was like stepping on land mines. Both people and their animals feared the mountainous terrain and refused to go there. With the ground cover so thick, the grass had to grow tall in order to get any sun; the livestock didn’t like it, and it was no good for fattening them up.
Uljii, the head of the pastureland, had anticipated that under the policy of quantity over quality, sooner or later the Olonbulag would be overgrazed. For years he’d had his eye on this unused tract of virgin land, looking forward to an autumn wildfire that would burn off the ground cover. Over the following spring, he could then drive large herds of the production brigade’s horses and cows to trample down the loose earth and eat the new grass, which would control its growth. The land would become harder, the soil enriched, and the short grass would deter the mosquito population. Within a few years, an unusable tract of wild land would become an excellent summer field for grazing, providing a new seasonal pasture. Finally, they would turn the original summer pasture into a spring pasture. That way the brigade could double its quantity of livestock and none of its land would be overgrazed. But then the herdsmen, who feared the mosquitoes, opposed his plans. So he sought out Bilgee’s help, asking him to inspect the area with him. If Bilgee gave the nod, Uljii could set up a new grazing land with two brigades.
As they passed through a neighboring brigade’s winter grazing land, Chen saw that the grass was still thick, and a full four fingers high. “You keep saying there isn’t enough grazing land,” he said to Uljii, “but look, sheep and horses have been grazing here all winter, and there’s still all this left.”
Uljii looked down. “That’s stubble grass,” he said. “It’s too hard; the animals have trouble biting it off, so they wind up pulling it out by its roots. And the poor quality of the grass stubble can’t fatten them up. The grazing has to stop when it gets like this; if not, the grassland will begin to deteriorate. There are too many of you Chinese, and not enough meat to feed you, so the country depends on the lamb and beef from Inner Mongolia. But to produce one ton of beef and lamb requires seventy or eighty tons of grass. When you people come demanding our meat, what you’re really asking us for is our grass, and if you keep it up, you’ll kill off the grassland. The pressure from government quotas has nearly turned several banners in the southeast into desert.”
“Raising livestock seems a lot harder than planting crops,” Chen Zhen said.
Bilgee nodded in agreement: “The grassland is a big life, but it’s thinner than people’s eyelids. If you rupture its grassy surface, you blind it, and dust storms are more lethal than the white-hair blizzards. If the grassland dies, so will the cows and sheep and horses, as well as the wolves and the people, all the little lives. Then not even the Great Wall, not even Beijing will be protected.”
“I used to attend meetings in Hohhot once every few years,” Uljii said emotionally. “The pastureland there is in even worse shape than ours. Several hundred miles of the western portion of the Great Wall have already been swallowed up by sand. If the government continues increasing our supply quotas, the eastern portion of the wall will be in danger of suffering the same fate. I hear some foreign governments have passed laws to protect their grasslands, that restrictions on types of livestock permitted to graze are in place, and that even the number of animals per acre is regulated and enforced, with stiff monetary penalties for overgrazing. That can only keep existing grassland from further decline. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. If our people wait to gain an understanding of the grassland until it’s been claimed by the desert, it’ll be too late to do anything.”
“People are just too greedy,” Bilgee said, “and too many are ignorant. You can give these fools a hundred reasons to do the right thing, but you’re just wasting your time. Tengger understands that the only way to dea
l with those greedy fools is with wolves. Let the wolves control the livestock population, and the grassland will survive.”
Uljii shook his head. “The old Tengger ways don’t work,” he said. “China has tested an atomic bomb. Eradicating a bunch of wolves couldn’t be easier.”
Chen Zhen felt as if his heart had filled with sand. “I haven’t heard the wolves or the dogs for several nights. We’ve driven them away, Papa, haven’t we? If they don’t come back, we’re sunk.”
“Thirty or so wolves, the equivalent of four or five litters, is a tiny fraction of the Olonbulag wolf population. They haven’t shown up, not because we scared them off, but because they have other things to do this time of year.”
“What are they up to?” Chen asked, growing excited again.
The old man pointed to some nearby mountains. “Come with me, I’ll show you.” He smacked the rump of Chen’s horse with his whip. “Let him run. Horses need to sweat in the spring. It helps them shed their winter coats. It also helps fatten them up.”