Wolf Totem

9

By half past three in the morning, Chen Zhen and Yang Ke, along with two big dogs, were perched on a hill in the vicinity of Black Rock Mountain. Their horses, cowhide fetters in place, were hidden behind the hill. Erlang and Yellow had strong hunting instincts, and getting up so early could only mean one thing: a hunt. They were sprawled atop the snow, not making a sound and alertly looking all around. Clouds blotted out the moon and the stars, turning the gloomy grassland extraordinarily cold and terrifying. Chen and Yang were the only two people within miles, at a time when the wolf pack was on the prowl, when an attack was most likely. Close up, Black Rock Mountain was like a sculpture of enormous beasts, its sinister presence bearing down on the two men and raising chills on Chen’s back. He was worrying about the horses and beginning to panic over this dangerous exploit.

Suddenly the baying of a wolf off to the northwest tore through the silence and echoed in the valleys around them, the fading strains sounding like a flute or a reed pipe, drawn out and cheerless. The sound died away and was followed by the distant barking of a dog. Neither sound stirred the two dogs beside Chen. They were familiar with hunting protocols: guarding the pens at night required constant barking; hunting in the mountains demanded strict silence. Chen stuck one of his hands down into the fur between Erlang’s front legs to warm it and wrapped his other arm around the dog’s neck. Yang had fed both dogs about half full before setting out; on a hunt a dog must not be too full or overly hungry. Too much food deadens the dog’s fighting spirit; too little saps its strength. The food they’d been given was already doing its job; Chen’s hand warmed up quickly, and he used it in turn to warm the dog’s icy nose. Erlang wagged his tail lightly. Having the dog beside him steadied Chen’s nerves.

After several rough nights, Chen was as tired as he’d ever been. Two nights earlier, Yang had invited a few herdsmen friends to come along for some cub hunting, though he didn’t believe there could be any active dens on Black Rock Mountain and no one was willing to get out of bed so early. The herdsmen tried to talk Chen and Yang out of going. Instead, feeling rebuffed, the two friends decided to go on their own, which is why their only companions on the mountain were the two loyal dogs.

Yang held Yellow tightly in his arms and whispered to Chen, “Look, even Yellow’s kind of spooked out here. He can’t stop trembling. I wonder if he smells a wolf nearby…”

Chen patted the dog on the head. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered. “There’s nothing to be scared of. The sun will be up soon, and wolves are afraid of people in the daytime. Besides, we brought a lasso pole along.” Chen felt his hand tremble slightly as it rested on Yellow’s body. “You and I are like secret agents,” he said, in part to calm himself, “late at night behind enemy lines, yanking a wolf’s fangs. You know, I’m not sleepy.”

Yang Ke also puffed himself up. “Fighting wolves is like fighting a war: strength against strength, spirit against spirit, wisdom and courage against wisdom and courage. All the thirty-six stratagems, except for using the wiles of a beautiful woman, are in play.”

“Let’s not get complacent. I’m not sure thirty-six stratagems will be enough when wolves are the enemy.”

“Good point,” Yang said. “So which one do we use? Follow the mother wolf when she goes back to feed her young and find the entrance that way? That’s not one of the thirty-six. Papa’s the sly one. This is actually pretty cruel.”

“Who told the wolves to kill all those horses?” Chen said. “They forced his hand. When we were laying traps, he said he hasn’t done that for years. He’s never been in favor of the wholesale killing of wolves.”

As the sky lightened up in the east, Black Rock Mountain shed its sculptural image and became a mountain again. The first rays of sunlight filtered through the thin cloud cover, expanding the men’s field of vision as they and their dogs lay sprawled on the snowy ground. Chen Zhen swept the mountainside with his telescope; there was nothing but scenery in his lens, since fog hugged the ground. He was worried that the wolf might have made it back to her den under the cover of fog, which would mean that he and Yang and the dogs had frozen up there half the night for nothing. But then, happily, the fog lifted and turned into a thin, transparent mist hovering above the ground, and any animal passing by would penetrate the mist and reveal itself.

All of a sudden, Yellow turned his head to the west, his hackles standing up, his body tense. Erlang turned his head in the same direction, and Chen, sensing that something was up, turned his telescope to see what had caught the dogs’ attention. A stretch of dry yellow reeds in a marshy spot that followed the curve of the mountain was a favorite place for the wolves, with its hiding places and the wind at their backs; as the spot where they preferred to launch their guerrilla attacks on humans, it had gained the nickname Green Curtain. Bilgee was fond of saying that in winter and in spring this was where the wolves moved around, hid themselves, and slept; it was also a battlefield for wolf-hunting humans. Yellow and Erlang may have heard a wolf’s footsteps crushing the dry reeds. It was the right time of day and the right direction, and Chen knew it had to be the female returning to her den. He scanned the area, waiting for her to appear. The old man had said there was shallow water in the reedy patch, runoff from melting snow, so the wolves would never make their den there. Mostly they chose higher ground, above spots where water would accumulate, and Chen was sure that if she appeared, her den was somewhere nearby.

The dogs fixed their gaze on a spot in the reeds, and Chen hastily swung his telescope to it. His heart lurched as a large wolf poked its head and upper body out from the reeds and looked around. The dogs immediately lowered their heads, until their chins were buried in the snow. The men flattened out on the ground, keeping as low as humanly possible. After scouring the mountainside, the wolf emerged from the reeds and ran toward a ravine. Chen followed her progress with his telescope; she resembled the wolf he’d seen the last time. She loped along with effort, probably having taken a sheep that night and eaten her fill. If this was the only wolf around, Chen saw no reason to be afraid. Two men and a pair of dogs, especially when Erlang was one of them, were easily a match for one female wolf.

The wolf climbed up the slope. All I need to see is which direction she takes, Chen was thinking, and I’ll have a pretty good idea where her den is. But at that moment, she stopped abruptly, turned, and looked first to one side, then the other, and finally toward the spot where the men and their dogs lay unmoving on a hilltop. The men didn’t dare breathe; she was now higher up than when she’d emerged from the reeds, and things she couldn’t have seen then she could easily see now. Chen regretted his lack of experience; a moment earlier, when she was running toward the ravine, he and his companions should have backed off a few yards down the hill. The wolf’s suspicions had taken him by surprise. She stretched her body taut, adding height to her stance, and checked again to see if there were dangers in the area. She made two complete circles, hesitated a moment, then spun around and darted onto a gentle slope to the east, where she headed for a cavelike hole and disappeared inside it.

“Great! There’s the door! Now we’ve got them, the mother and her litter,” Yang blurted out with a clap of his hands.

Chen stood up, bursting with excitement. “Come on, let’s go get the horses.”

The dogs were jumping around, panting excitedly and waiting for a command from their masters, which Chen had forgotten in his excitement. “Go!” he said, and the dogs tore down the hill, heading straight for the den entrance. The men ran to the rear of the hill, removed their horses’ fetters, mounted up, and galloped off toward the den, where the dogs were waiting for them, barking loudly at the entrance. Erlang, fangs bared, was going crazy, storming the entrance, then backing out, not venturing in too far. Yellow remained at the entrance, adding his voice to the vocal assault and pawing the ground, sending snow and dirt flying. The riders jumped down off their horses and quickly sized up the situation. What they saw stopped them in their tracks: Just inside an oval opening some two or three feet across, the wolf was guarding her den and its contents with her life, sending Erlang back outside with her fangs after each feint, then emerging halfway to snap and snarl at both dogs.

Chen threw down his lasso pole, picked up his spade, and swung it at the wolf’s head. She was too quick, and the spade hit nothing but air. Then she burst out of the entrance a second time, fangs bared; Yang swung with his club, and he too missed. Again she retreated, and again she attacked, round after round, until Chen was finally able to connect with her head, and Yang also made contact. That only made her angrier, more crazed than ever. This time, she retreated a yard or so, followed by Erlang. He was immediately bitten on the chest and scurried back outside, blood oozing from the wound, his eyes rage red. With an angry roar, he exploded back inside, until only his tail, swishing back and forth, was visible.

At that moment, Chen was reminded of his lasso pole, which he picked up off the ground. One look, and Yang knew what Chen had in mind. “That’s it,” he said. “We’ll get a rope around her.” Chen loosened the noose at the end of the pole so that he could hang it in the entrance to the den. When she poked her head out the next time, he’d jerk the pole up and tighten the noose around her neck, then drag her out. Once that was done, Yang Ke’s club and the two dogs would finish her off in short order. Chen was so nervous he could hardly breathe. But he’d no sooner set his trap than Erlang was driven out of the den again, his rear legs knocking the noose askew. Seconds later, the wolf, her head bloodied from fighting the dog, emerged again, but she stepped down on the noose, and when she saw the lasso pole, she fled back inside as if hit by a jolt of electricity.

Chen stuck his head in the hole, seeing a steep downslope, thirty-five degrees or so, for the first couple of yards, then a turn, making the remainder of the den a mystery. Yang screamed at the entrance in anger, the sound quickly swallowed up by the tunnel, while Chen sat down, disheartened. “I’m an idiot,” he said. “If I’d thought of the lasso pole first, that wolf would be dead by now. You have to be on your toes when you’re fighting a wolf,” he added. “And make no mistakes.”

Yang Ke, even more disheartened, jammed the end of his club into the ground and said, “Shit, the wolf won because we didn’t have a rifle. If I’d brought one along, I’d have blown off the top of her head.”

“Headquarters says we’re in a heightened state of battle preparedness, and no one is permitted to fire a weapon. A rifle wouldn’t have done us any good.”

“At this rate,” Yang said, “we’re going nowhere. What do you say we light off some double-kick firecrackers?”

“What’s the difference between that and a rifle?” By this time Chen had calmed down. “If we frighten off the wolves up north, the hunt plans will be ruined, and you and I will be in hot water. Besides, you can’t kill a wolf with firecrackers.”

“So?” Yang said, apparently disgruntled. “We can scare the hell out of her, smoke her out. We’re a good ten miles from the frontier, so the wolf pack won’t hear a thing. But if you’re still worried, how’s this? I’ll take off my deel, and after I throw some crackers inside, I’ll hold the deel over the entrance to muffle the sound. You won’t hear a thing.”

“What if the wolf doesn’t come out?”

“She will, trust me,” Yang said as he untied his belt. “A herdsman told me that wolves are terrified of gunfire and the smell of gunpowder. I’ll throw in three double-kicks, six explosions, and the sound reverberating in that enclosed space will be much louder than outside. It’ll scare the hell out of her. And since the entrance is so narrow, she’ll choke on the thick smoke. I’m betting that three is all it will take to drive her right into your arms. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole litter of cubs followed her out. A windfall.”

“Okay,” Chen said, “go ahead. But let’s be prepared for anything. I’ll look around for more holes in the area. Even rabbits make three escape routes, so she must have more than one entrance. Wolves are crafty, and no matter how clever we are, we could still come up short.”

Chen climbed into the saddle and circled the area several times with the dogs, assuming that dark holes would be easy to spot in the snow. They found nothing within a hundred-yard radius, so he dismounted, led the horses off a ways, and fettered them. Then he walked back to the entrance and laid out the lasso pole, the spade, and the club. Erlang was trying to stanch the flow of blood from his chest with his tongue; the wolf had torn off a chunk of flesh the size of two fingers, and the flesh was still twitching. In obvious pain, he didn’t make a sound. The men had not brought along any ointment or gauze, so all they could do was watch Erlang employ the dog’s traditional healing method of sterilizing the wound, stopping the bleeding, and lessening the pain with his own saliva. They’d take care of it when they were back at camp. The other scars on Erlang’s body looked to have been caused by wolf bites, which was why his eyes turned fiery red at the mere sight of a wolf.

Yang was ready. His deel draped over his shoulders, he held three double-kick firecrackers as thick as tubular hand grenades; a lit cigarette dangled from his lips, a sight that drew laughter from Chen. “You look more like a Japanese tunnel rat than a hunter,” he said.

“Just going local,” Yang replied, “dressed like a barbarian. I’m betting this wolf is ill-prepared for a gas attack.”

“Okay,” Chen said. “Throw them in. We’ll see what happens.”

Yang lit one of the fuses, watched it sizzle for a moment, and then flung it as far inside the tunnel as he could. He did the same with the second cracker. After throwing in the third one, he watched briefly as all three rolled down the steep slope of the tunnel before covering the entrance with his deel, just in time to hear a series of six muffled explosions that made the ground shake. Inside the tunnel, the sound must have been earsplitting, the concussion powerful, the smoke suffocating. No grassland wolf den had likely ever witnessed explosions of that magnitude. Unfortunately, the men did not hear agonizing howls from the wolf deep down in her tunnel, and that was not good news.

Yang hugged himself to keep from freezing. “So, when do we open it up?”

“Let’s give it some time. We’ll open a little hole and wait till some smoke comes out, then we can open it all the way.”

Chen peeled back a corner of Yang’s deel but replaced it when he saw only a wisp of smoke. Seeing how cold Yang was, he offered to wrap his deel around them both. But Yang waved him off. “Stay focused. The wolf will be coming out any minute! Loosening your belt will restrict your movements. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be okay.”

They were still talking when Yellow and Erlang jumped to their feet and looked off to the northwest. Soft whines marked their tension. Chen and Yang quickly turned to see pale blue smoke emerge from the ground some twenty yards away. “Uh-oh,” Chen blurted out. “There’s another hole over there. Stay here; I’ll go take a look.” He picked up his spade and ran over, followed by the dogs. Smoke burst from the hole; so did a very big wolf, like a guided missile, bounding off toward the reedy area at the foot of the mountain. She was out of sight before Chen could react. Erlang followed her into the reeds, the rustling moving northward. Stunned, Chen shouted, “Come back here!” Erlang ignored the command. Yellow ran over to the edge of the reeds but lacked the nerve to go in. After a symbolic bark or two, back he came.

Wrapping his deel around himself, Yang walked up to the second hole, where Chen was standing. It was, they were surprised to see, newly dug, a hidden emergency exit.

Yang was so enraged that the tendons in his neck stood out. “That damned wolf has made a fool of us!”

Chen sighed. “No matter how many escape routes a rabbit has, they’re fairly easy to find. But there’s no way to tell how many escape tunnels this crafty wolf has. This one’s perfectly planned. See, there’s a steep falloff beyond the opening, and from there straight to the reeds. The wolf can reach them in no time. This one hole is more useful than eight or ten rabbit escapes. Bao Shungui says that wolves are skilled in close fighting, night fighting, long-range raids, guerrilla fighting, mobile fighting, all sorts of things. The next time I see him, I’m going to have to tell him they’re not bad at tunnel warfare and camouflage either, and can even combine the two. Soldiering is the art of deception, and wolves are the world’s finest soldiers.”

But Yang’s anger lingered. “Movies go on and on about tunnel warfare and camouflage in North China, like that’s where they were invented. Well, here’s some news: wolves were the inventors, about ten thousand years ago.”

They walked back to the opening, where emerging wisps of smoke were thick with the smell of gunpowder.

Yang stuck his head in and looked around. “The cubs ought to be crawling out after an explosion like that. Do you think the smoke killed them?”

“I’ve been wondering that myself. If the cubs are dead, where does that leave us?”

Yang could only sigh. “If Bayar were here, he could crawl in.”

Chen echoed the sigh. “I couldn’t take the chance of bringing him along. Can anyone guarantee there aren’t more adult wolves in there? These things are never easy for the Mongols. Gasmai only has the one son, and still she didn’t stop him from grabbing a wolf’s tail or crawling into a den. The old Chinese saying ‘Don’t fight wolves if you’re unwilling to sacrifice your son’ must have come from the grassland. Don’t forget, the Mongols ruled China for nearly a century. I used to think it meant using your son as wolf bait, believe it or not. Now I realize it means letting your son risk crawling into a wolf’s den to get the cubs. Only a youngster could handle a tunnel this deep and this narrow. If Mongol women doted on their children the way Han women do, their race probably would have died out long ago. But they don’t, so Mongol youngsters grow up strong and fearless.”

Chen went to his horse, took down the canvas bag, and brought it back to the opening. Yellow spotted the bag and ran over, wagging his tail and panting greedily. It was the bag in which Chen had put food for the dogs. He opened it, took out the smaller of two pieces of meat, and gave it to Yellow. The other piece was for Erlang. But he hadn’t returned, and Chen was worried. In the winter and spring, reeds are the wolves’ domain, and if this wolf had enticed Erlang into the middle of the pack, that probably spelled trouble. He was the mainstay where keeping the sheep safe was concerned. Things had not gone well on this outing, and losing their canine general would be the worse thing he could imagine.

Yellow’s tail wagged feverishly as he ate. He was a clever animal, bold and fearless around rabbits, foxes, and gazelles. But with wolves he took care to size up the situation. If there were more dogs than wolves, he attacked. But without strong backup, he had no interest in showing off his fighting skills. Moments earlier, he’d stopped short of coming to Erlang’s aid when the fight was at hand, afraid of running into the pack in the reeds. He was good at protecting number one, which was how he survived. Chen was fond of Yellow, who seemed quite human, and didn’t blame him for his lack of loyalty. But since the onset of spring, he’d grown increasingly fond of Erlang, whose brutish nature was intense and who didn’t seem human at all. He stood up and trained his telescope on the reeds in the northwest, hoping to get a glimpse of the dog.

But there was no sign of him. Chen reached inside his coat and took out a little sheepskin bag. It was a waterproof, oil-resistant food pouch Gasmai had given him. Under his coat it had stayed warm and hadn’t soiled his clothes. He took out some flat bread, some fatty meat, and two chunks of curds. He handed half the food to Yang, and as they ate, they tried to devise a new plan.

Tearing off a piece of the flat bread and putting it in his mouth, Yang said, “This den is full of tricks and dodges, a real maze. They always keep their cubs in places we’d never think of. We went to a lot of trouble finding this one, and I’m not ready to quit, not yet. Since we didn’t smoke them out, let’s see how we do with water. If we brought up nine or ten water wagons, we could drown every last one of those little bastards.”

“In this sandy soil?” Chen replied with a sneer. “You could bring an entire reservoir up here, and it’d all seep into the ground.”

“Got it!” Yang exclaimed after a moment. “The adult wolf is gone, so why not send Yellow in there and have him bring the cubs out in his mouth, one at a time?”

This time Chen had to laugh. “That dog has already developed human traits and lost half its wolfishness. He’s got such a keen sense of smell he can sniff out any wolf that’s nearby. If a dog could bring cubs out like you say, then all we’d ever have to do is wait for the mother to leave the den and send in the dogs. That, of course, would spell the end of the wolves on the grassland. What kind of morons do you take the herdsmen for?”

“We could try,” Yang said defiantly. “What would it cost us?” He called Yellow over to the entrance, where the smell of gunpowder was nearly gone. He pointed to the tunnel and called out, “Go get ’em!” Yellow knew exactly what Yang wanted, and backed off in fear. Yang straddled the dog and closed his knees around his middle, grabbing his front legs and dragging him back to the entrance. Yellow tucked his tail between his legs and whined as he struggled to break free, casting a pleading look at Chen Zhen, begging him to rescind the command.

“See what I mean?” Chen said. “You’re wasting your time. Progress is hard; regression is harder. Dogs have regressed far from their wolfish origins. These days dogs are weak, or lazy, or stupid. Just like people.”

Yang let Yellow go and said, “Too bad Erlang’s not here. He’d go in.”

“Of course, but he’d kill every cub he found. I want a live one.”

“I know what you mean. That dog wants to kill every wolf he sees.”

After finishing the meat he’d been given, Yellow walked off to check things out. He sniffed around and lifted his leg to leave his mark on the ground, drifting farther and farther away. Erlang, meanwhile, had still not returned, and Chen and Yang sat by the entrance waiting and watching, not knowing what else to do. No signs of life in the tunnel, yet the cubs couldn’t all have died. At least one or two would have survived the smoke, and they should be trying to get out. But another half hour passed, and none emerged. Either they were dead, the two men surmised, or there hadn’t been any in there to begin with.

While they were getting ready to head back to camp, they suddenly heard Yellow barking-now loud, now soft-somewhere behind the hill to the north, sounding like a hunting dog that had found its prey. They jumped onto their horses and rode as fast as they could up to the top of the hill; they couldn’t see Yellow but could still hear him, so they followed the sound until the rocky ground made it too hard for their horses to run and they were forced to rein them in. Crisscrossing gullies stretched out in front on the weedy, rock-strewn ground. The snowy surface was covered by the tracks of animals-rabbits, foxes, corsacs, and wolves-all of which had passed by the spot at one time or another. A profusion of waist-high cogon grass, brambles, and other underbrush filled the spaces between splintered rocks, all dried-out and withered, presenting a scene of desolation to match an abandoned Chinese graveyard. The riders kept a tight grip on the reins as the horses slipped and stumbled on the dangerously uneven ground. No cow, sheep, or horse ever grazed there; neither Chen nor Yang had ever been there.

Yellow’s barks were getting closer, but there was still no sight of him. “With all the tracks around here,” Chen said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s caught a fox. Let’s speed up a little. At least the trip won’t be a total waste.”

Finally, after skirting the brambles, they reached the bottom of a ravine, where, as soon as they turned the corner, they spotted Yellow and were stunned by what they saw. Yellow, his tail sticking up in the air, was haranguing the entrance to an even larger, and much darker, den. The ravine was gloomy, the presence of wolves palpable. As a cold wind blew past, Chen felt his skin crawl. He wondered if they had stumbled into a wolf-pack ambush, with lupine eyes burning holes in him from their hiding places, and his hair stood on end.

The men dismounted, fettered their horses, and ran to the entrance, weapons in hand. The opening, which faced south, was at least three feet high and a couple of feet wide. Chen had never seen one bigger, not even one of the wartime tunnels he’d seen as a high school farm laborer in Hebei Province. It was so well hidden in a tiny gully, and so protected by needle grass above and rocky ground below, that it was visible only close-up. Delighted to see them, Yellow jumped and ran around Chen, as if wanting to be rewarded for his discovery. “I think we’ve found what we were looking for,” Chen said. “The way Yellow’s strutting around, he might actually have seen some cubs here.”

“I think you’re right. This looks like a real wolf’s den, gloomy as hell.”

“And there’s a strong wolf smell,” Chen said. “They’re in there, I know it!”

Chen bent down to examine the berm in front of the opening, typical of dens, built by moving rocks during the digging process; the bigger the hole, the bigger the berm. This one was the size of two school desks placed side by side. There was no snow on it, but plenty of wolf prints and bone fragments. Chen’s heart was thumping; this was what he’d been looking for. He called Yellow over and had him stand guard. Then he and Yang knelt down to examine the berm. By then Yellow had stepped all over the animal tracks, but the men could distinguish the prints of two or three adult wolves and five or six young ones. The cubs’ prints were like plum blossoms, small, delicate, quite lovely. They were so well defined that the cubs might have been playing there only moments before, running inside only when they heard the barking dog; the berm itself looked as if the mother wolf had built it as a sort of play-ground. There were shards of lambs’ bones and bits of hide here and there, with traces of nibbling on the tender bones by the cubs. Little piles of cub droppings were visible alongside the berm, thin as chopsticks and oily black, like little honeyed Chinese medicine pills.

Chen slapped himself on the knee. “The cub I’ve been looking for is in there,” he said. “That mother wolf made suckers out of us.”

Yang also realized what she’d done, and he pounded the berm. “You’re right. This is where she’d been running to, and when she spotted us on the mountain, she made a detour and tricked us into searching an empty tunnel, then made us believe it was the real thing, drawing the dog into a fight, like any mother protecting her young. You damned wolf, you got us that time.”

Chen thought back and said, “I had my suspicions when she changed directions, but she quickly made a believer out of me. That’s a wolf that knows how to adapt. If you hadn’t tossed those three firecrackers in there, she’d have gone around and around with us till nightfall, and we’d have been the ones who got screwed.”

“We’re lucky we had good dogs with us. If not for them, we’d have had to slink back to camp empty-handed.”

“We’re not in much better shape now,” Chen said. “This wolf has kept us busy most of the day and got us to waste three bombs. This den goes down into the belly of the hill, deeper than the first one, with more twists and turns.”

“We haven’t got much time,” Yang said as he stared at the opening, “and we don’t have any more bombs. I think we’re done for the day. Maybe we should check the area to see if there are any more openings, and seal up any we find. Then tomorrow we ask some herdsmen what we should do now, especially Papa, whose ideas are always the best.”

Chen Zhen, not happy with how things had turned out, said, “There’s one thing we can try. This is a big opening, probably the size of that Hebei tunnel, which we were able to crawl into. Why can’t we do the same here? After all, Erlang’s out dealing with the mother wolf, and there shouldn’t be another adult wolf in there. If you tie your sash around my foot and lower me in, who knows, we might find our cubs. And even if we don’t, I can get an idea of how the den is laid out.”

Yang Ke shook his head. “That’s suicide. What if there is another wolf in there? I’ve been tricked by wolves enough for one day. How confident are you that this is her den? What if it belongs to another wolf?”

The desire Chen had suppressed for more than two years suddenly burst to the surface and drowned out his fears. Clenching his teeth, he said, “If a Mongol boy has the guts to crawl into a wolf’s den, and we don’t, what does that make us? I’m going in, and that’s that. I just need you to give me a hand. I’ll take my flashlight and spade with me, in case there’s an adult down there.”

“If you’re intent on going in, let me go first. I’m stronger, and you’re too skinny.”

“Being skinny gives me an advantage. If the tunnel narrows, you could get stuck. So no more arguments. The fat guy stays behind.”

After Chen took off his deel, Yang reluctantly handed him the flashlight, the spade, and his bag. He tied Chen’s Mongol sash, which was several feet long, around Chen’s foot, then tied his own sash to Chen’s. Just before he went in, Chen announced, “If I’m afraid to enter the wolf’s den, I don’t deserve a wolf cub!”

“If there’s an adult in there,” Yang reminded him, “don’t forget to shout and give a hard tug on the sash.” Chen turned on the light, got down on his hands and knees, and slid down the forty-degree slope into the passage. The smell of wolf was heavy in his nostrils, nearly suffocating him. Not daring to breathe deeply, he moved slowly past slippery walls with an occasional tuft of hair stuck to a protruding rock, on ground that was covered with tiny wolf tracks. I could be getting my hands on the cubs within a few feet, he was thinking happily, once he was completely inside the tunnel; Yang was feeding him the tether little by little, constantly asking if Chen wanted to come back out, to which he responded by telling Yang to keep going as he inched along on his forearms.

The first gradual turn in the passage came when he was five or six feet inside the den, where light from outside did not reach. Chen could now see only that much of the tunnel illuminated by his flashlight, and as he negotiated the turn, the tunnel gradually leveled out, though the walls abruptly narrowed and the ceiling lowered. He could move forward only by keeping his head down and holding his arms close into his body. As he crawled along, he studied the walls, which were slicker than the ones just inside the opening, and firmer, as if a spade had been used on them. Hardly any dirt fell when his shoulder brushed against the walls or when he scraped his spade against the ceiling, which eased his fears of a cave-in. He doubted that a single wolf could dig out such hard-packed dirt with her claws, certainly not this deep. All the sharp edges had been rubbed smooth, like cobblestones, so this must have served countless wolves-male, female, adult, and newborn-for a century or more. He had entered the world of wolves, and its smell was overpowering.

The farther in he crawled, the greater his sense of terror. On the floor beneath him, the tracks of adult wolves lay beneath those of cubs; would his spade be enough to allow him to survive if he encountered a mature animal? The tunnel was so narrow that it might be difficult for a wolf to use her fangs to full effect, but her claws would easily make up for that. She could probably rip him to shreds. Why hadn’t he considered that? He began to sweat. Hesitation. All he had to do was jerk his leg, and Yang Ke would drag him out of there. But thoughts of the eight or nine cubs, or more, waiting up ahead convinced him that he couldn’t stop now, so he clenched his teeth, relaxed the leg tethered to the outside, and continued crawling tenaciously. By now the walls were hugging him tightly, and he felt less like a hunter than a grave robber. The air thinned out, the smell of wolf got stronger, and the thought that he could die of suffocation came to him. Archaeological digs often turn up the remains of grave robbers trapped in just such narrow passages.

An opening loomed up ahead. Big enough for an adult wolf to squeeze through, but too small for him, it clearly was the wolf’s defense against her sole predator on the grassland. Chen knew she’d built it to protect her litter against water and smoke; it also succeeded in stopping him. But there was no surrender in him. He tried to breach a wall with his spade, but it didn’t take long to see how cleverly she’d chosen this site: the walls were constructed of large rocks with abundant gaps, making them sturdy yet dangerous. He was beginning to have trouble breathing, and his strength was ebbing. Even if he’d been able to keep hacking away, a cave-in was a possibility and he’d succumb to the wolf’s trap.

Chen breathed in a mouthful of air with more wolf smell than oxygen, and he knew he’d been defeated, that there would be no cub for him today. But he wasn’t ready to head back quite yet; he wanted to get a closer look at the construction of the opening, hoping to at least catch a glimpse of a cub or two. He put what little remained of his strength in the service of this last desire: sticking his head and right arm through the narrow opening, he shone his flashlight inside. What he saw was demoralizing: just beyond the opening, the passage continued on upward and out of sight. Up there somewhere was a drier, cozier spot for the wolf to raise her litter and protect them against flooding. She’d put a great deal of thought into creating a complex den for her offspring and, he was amazed to see, a roadblock for him.

He cocked his head to see if he could hear anything. No sound; either the cubs were asleep or they’d already developed the ability to hide from danger, keeping absolutely still in reaction to unfamiliar sounds. Suddenly feeling dizzy, he summoned up the strength to jerk his tethered leg. Worried and excited at the same time, Yang pulled with all his might and managed to drag Chen back out of the hole. His face covered with dirt, Chen sat weakly in the opening sucking in big gulps of air. “No way,” he said to Yang. “It’s a fiendish cave that goes on forever.” With a look of disappointment, Yang draped Chen’s deel around his shoulders.

After Chen had rested, they scoured the area within a couple of hundred yards for half an hour, and found only one large exit, which they stopped up with rocks. Once they’d sealed up both openings, they stuffed dirt into the cracks and packed it in tight. Just before returning to camp, Chen, still fuming over his failure, stuck the business end of his spade in the dirt around the main entrance as a sign to the female: They’d bring more people back the next day, and more effective methods.

The sun was going down, and Erlang still hadn’t returned. The dog’s courage and ferocity might not have been sufficient to deal with a wolf so sinister and so cunning, and the two men were anxious and concerned. But they couldn’t wait, and would have to head back with Yellow. Just before they reached camp, when the sky was pitch-black, Chen handed his tools to Yang, telling him to take Yellow home and let Gao Jianzhong know that everything was okay. Then he reined his horse to the side and rode off to Bilgee’s yurt.