Wolf Totem

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 deal 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.”

Like a trio of racehorses, their mounts galloped off toward the mountains, sending grass and dirt flying behind them, the fresh green grass staining their hooves. Luckily, there would be no other horses in that area for several months. Chen, who was bringing up the rear, was beginning to understand the true implications of the saying “Horse herds are the grassland’s enemy.”

The horses reached a hillside, where they were greeted by the high-pitched yelps of marmots, burrowing animals found all over the grassland. Nearly half the hills on the Olonbulag were home to Mongolian marmots. Every autumn Chen saw marmots the old man had shot and was treated to their fatty, delicious meat. Like bears, they hibernate during the winter and survive on stored-up fat. The distinctive meat has a layer of fat, like pork, and, since it has no gamey taste, it is among the Mongols’ favorite foods; they prefer it over beef and lamb. A grown marmot provides enough meat for a meal for a whole family.

Chen was amazed by the array of marmots in front of him: no fewer than sixty or seventy of the animals, big and small, stood on the slopes and peaks of a string of hills, looking like tree stumps after the loggers have left. Large brown males in front of large isolated burrows, the slightly smaller females with fur as yellow as wolf coats in front of burrow clusters. Babies, sometimes as many as seven or eight of them, their heads like little rabbits, stood around their mothers. The arrival of humans did not send them scurrying into their burrows; instead, they rose up on their hind legs, front legs in front of their chests, like little fists, and barked, each bark accompanied by an upward jerk of their bottlebrush tails, as if to warn the intruders away.

“People call this place Marmot Hill,” Bilgee said. “It’s crawling with them. Up north there’s another spot with even more than here. This place was once the salvation of the grassland’s poorest residents. In the fall, when the marmots were big and plump, they’d come here to catch them, eating the meat and selling the pelts and oil for money or for lamb. You Chinese are crazy about marmot overcoats, so each fall, the fur traders from Zhangjiakou come here to pick mushrooms and buy marmot skins, which are three times as expensive as lambskin. These little animals have saved more people than you know, including Genghis Khan’s family when they were living in hard times.”

“Marmots are tasty because of the fat,” Uljii said. “Other burrowing animals, such as ground squirrels and field voles, store up food for the winter months. But marmots get through the winter thanks to their fat.”

“After making it through the winter,” Bilgee said, “they have lost nearly all their fat, but there’s plenty of meat on their bones. See how big they are? Well, thanks to the abundance of grass this year, they’ll fatten up in no time.”

“No wonder the wolves haven’t been harassing us lately,” Chen said. “They like a change of diet too. But how do they catch them, since marmots never stray far from their deep burrows?”

“They’re expert marmot hunters,” Bilgee said with a laugh. “The big ones dig into the burrow entrance, sending the occupants scurrying out escape holes, where other wolves are waiting to kill and eat them. Sometimes smaller wolves actually dig their way deep into the burrow to catch and drag them out. Desert foxes also burrow in to get at them. When I come out to shoot marmots, I trap six or seven foxes every year, and once I trapped a small wolf. We learned to let our children crawl into wolf dens to get at the cubs from the wolves and the desert foxes. If their burrows are too shallow, the marmots will freeze, so they dig very deep-ten, maybe twenty feet. Can you tell me why wolf dens are so deep, since wolves don’t hibernate in the winter?” the old man asked Chen.

Chen shook his head.

“Because they often take over marmot burrows. A wolf will clear out one of these burrows and have her cubs inside.”

“That’s amazing,” Chen remarked. “Killing and eating a family of marmots isn’t enough for them. They have to take over their home as well.”

Uljii smiled with admiration. “That’s how they keep the marmots in check. They perform a great service, since the rodents are no good at all for the grassland. See what they’ve done to this hillside, burrows everywhere. They produce litters of six or seven every year. If their burrows stay small, there isn’t enough room for them all, so they dig bigger ones, destroying the grazing land for miles around. The four destructive pests of the grassland are field mice, wild rabbits, marmots, and gazelles, in that order. Marmots are relatively slow animals, and ought to be easy to catch. So why do we need to trap them? Because their burrows are interconnected. At the first sign of danger, they disappear in the web of tunnels. They forage voraciously, and in the fall they feed on seeds. One of those plump little bodies requires several acres of grass and seeds each year. There’s nothing worse for horses than a marmot colony. Every year we lose several horses that break their legs when they step in one of these burrows and throw their riders.

“Actually,” Uljii continued, “the burrows cause even more trouble that that. During the winter, they’re home to mosquitoes. The mosquitoes of Eastern Mongolia are world renowned. Mosquitoes in the Manchurian forests can eat a man alive. Ours can eat a cow. You’d think that out here, where the temperature plunges to thirty or forty below in the winter, cold enough to turn a sick cow into an ice sculpture, that it ought to freeze the mosquitoes. How do they make it through the winters? Marmot burrows. When winter closes in, they follow the marmots into the deep burrows, which are sealed up to keep the snow and ice out and the warmth in. The marmots sleep, going without food and water. But the mosquitoes have plenty of food and water, all from their hosts, making for a comfortable winter. Then when spring arrives, and the marmots leave their burrows, the mosquitoes follow them out and, given all the little lakes on the grassland, fly off to breed the next generation on the water. Come summertime, the grassland is mosquito heaven. See what I mean? Wolves are the prime marmot killers out here. We have a saying that goes, ‘When marmots leave their burrows, the wolves go up the mountain.’ Once the marmots are out in the open, the livestock can rest easy for a spell.”

Chen had been severely bitten for two summers, and the sound of mosquitoes was enough to make his hair stand on end. His skin felt as if it were being cracked and split; the Chinese students feared mosquitoes more than they did wolves. Eventually, he got his family to send mosquito netting from Beijing, and he began sleeping through the night. The herdsmen thought the netting was a wonderful thing, and it quickly became an essential part of the Mongol yurts. They called the nets “mosquito houses.”

“I’ve never seen in any book a word about the relationship between mosquitoes and marmots, or how the burrows are the mosquitoes’ bandit hideouts, or how wolves are their mortal enemies,” a skeptical Chen said to Uljii.

“The grassland is a complex place,” Uljii said. “Everything is linked, and the wolves are the major link, tied to all the others. If that link is removed, livestock raising will disappear out here. You can’t count all the benefits the wolves bring, far greater than the damage they cause.”

With a laugh, Bilgee said, “But don’t think that the marmots don’t benefit us at all. Their fur, their meat, and their oil are extremely valuable. Marmot skins are an important source of income for the herdsmen. The government trades them for automobiles and artillery. The wolves are smart, they don’t kill off all the marmots, so there’ll always be a supply for the next year. That’s true for the herdsmen as well. We take only the adults, not the young animals.”

As the horses sped through the mountains, the fearless marmots kept up the chorus of barks. Hawks attacked out of the sky, but failed most of the time. The farther northwest the men traveled, the fewer people they saw, and the fewer signs of habitation, until finally there weren’t even horse droppings anywhere.

When the three riders reached the top of a steep slope, spread out before them were hills so green they seemed unreal. As they crossed the hill, they saw yellow mixed in with the green, the color of last year’s grass, but the green on the mountains ahead was like a dyed stage curtain, or a fairyland in an animated movie. Uljii pointed with his whip. “If you’d come here last fall, you’d have seen only black mountains. It looks like they’ve been dressed in green felt, doesn’t it?” The horses picked up speed when they spotted the green mountains. Uljii led the way across gently rising land.

After crossing a pair of ridges, the party reached a green slope. It was covered with barley; not a single blade of yellow grass in sight, nor a trace of any unpleasant scent. The fragrance grew stronger, and Bilgee sensed that something was different. He looked down. The dogs also picked up a scent and checked out the area, nose to the ground. The old man bent down to get a closer look at the tall grass around the horses’ hooves. When he looked up, he said, “What do you smell?” Chen breathed in deeply, and could smell the fragrance of the tender new grass. It was like sitting on a horse-drawn mower in the fall, when the smell of cut grass floods the nose. “No one was out here cutting this, were they?” he asked. “Who could it be?”

The old man got off his horse and poked at the grass with his herding club, looking for something. Before long, he found something green and yellow. He pinched it, then smelled it. “This is gazelle dung,” he said. “They passed through here not long ago.”

Uljii and Chen also got down off their horses and examined the gazelle dung the old man was holding. Gazelle dung is wet in the summer, tightly packed, not pellets. Uljii and Chen were surprised by the find. They walked a few steps and spotted patches of grass that looked as if they had been attacked with scythes, but unevenly.

“I thought I saw gazelles out by the birthing pens this spring. So this is where they came to graze. They cut through the grass more savagely than mowers.”

Uljii loaded his rifle and flicked off the safety. “Every spring they migrate to the birthing pens, where they compete for grazing land with ewes that have just given birth. But not this year, and that’s because this is better grass. They think like me.”

Bilgee’s eyes turned into slits as he laughed. “They’re experts at finding good grazing land,” he said to Uljii. “It’d be a shame if they chose the best land and we and our livestock stayed away. You were certainly right this time.”

“Not so fast,” Uljii counseled. “Wait till you see the source of water.”

“But the lambs are still too young,” Chen said. “They can’t walk all the way out here. It’ll be at least another month before they’ll be able to walk long distances, and by then this grass will all be in the bellies of gazelles.”

“Don’t worry,” Bilgee said. “Wolves are smarter than people. Sooner or later they’ll be here too. The birthing season for gazelles hasn’t ended yet, and neither the adults nor the young can run fast. This is the time of the year when the wolves can feast on gazelle. It won’t take many days for them to drive the entire herd out of here.”

“No wonder the survival rate among newborn sheep was so high this year,” Uljii said. “With the growth of this grass, the gazelles and the wolves all came out here. There was no fighting over grazing land.”

Hearing that there might be wolves around, Chen anxiously urged the two men to get back onto their horses. As they crossed another ridge, Uljii reminded them to be alert, since just beyond the next ridge lay a vast grazing land, and that, he guessed, was where they’d find both gazelles and wolves.

They dismounted when they reached the top of the ridge; bending low and stepping quietly, they led the horses with one hand and held the dogs with the other as they made their way to a spot among several large boulders. The two big dogs could smell a hunt and crawled along, sticking close to their masters. Just before they reached the rocks, the men wrapped their reins around their horses’ front legs. Then they sprawled on the ground behind the boulders to survey the area through telescopes.

At last Chen laid eyes on virgin grassland, possibly the last of its kind in all of China, and breathtakingly beautiful. Spread out before him was a dark green basin, dozens of square miles, with layers of mountain peaks to the east, all the way north to the Great Xing’an range. Mountains of many colors-dark and light green, brown, deep red, purple-rose in waves as far as one could see, to merge with an ocean of pink clouds. The basin was surrounded by gentle sloping hills on three sides. The basin itself looked like a green carpet manicured by Tengger; patterns of blue, white, yellow, and pink mountain flowers formed a seamless patchwork of color.

A stream flowed down from a mountain valley to the southeast, twisting and turning as soon as it entered the basin, each horseshoe twist like a silver band, the many bands lengthening and curving until the stream drained into a blue lake in the center of the basin. Puffy white clouds floated atop the clear water.

That centerpiece was a swan lake, which Chen Zhen never dreamed of seeing. Through the lens of his telescope he saw a dozen white swans floating gracefully on water ringed by dense green reeds. The swans were surrounded by hundreds, perhaps thousands of wild geese, wild ducks, and other nameless waterbirds. Five or six large swans flew up into the air, accompanied by a flurry of waterbirds. They circled the lake and the stream, crying out like a welcoming orchestra. The lake was quiet, white feathers dancing on its surface, an otherworldly haven of peace.

A natural outlet opened to the northwest, diverting the lake’s water to thousands of acres of marshland.

This was likely the last spot in the northern grassland that still retained its primitive beauty. Chen Zhen was mesmerized by the sight. But even as he marveled, anxiety entered his heart. Once men and horses come, he was thinking, the primitive beauty of the place will quickly be lost, and no Chinese will lay his eyes on such natural, pristine beauty ever again.

Uljii and Bilgee kept their telescopes trained on spots below. The old man nudged Chen’s leg with the tip of his boot and directed his attention to the third bend in the stream, off to the right. There on the bank at one of the horseshoe bends he saw a pair of gazelles in the water, straining to climb onto dry land, their upper bodies safely aground, their rear legs apparently stuck in the mud. They lacked the strength to pull themselves out. Not far away, in the grass, lay the bodies of a dozen more, their abdomens torn open… Chen swung his telescope slowly toward the tall lakeshore grass. His heart lurched. Several large wolves were sprawled near their kills, fast asleep. The grass was too tall for him to get an accurate count.

Uljii and Bilgee continued scanning the area, stopping on a slope off to the southeast, where the dispersed members of the gazelle herd were grazing in small clusters, the newborns staying close to their mothers. Chen watched as one of the gazelles cleaned her newborn calf with her tongue, looking up anxiously every few seconds. The calf was struggling to get to its feet; once a gazelle calf is standing, it can run so fast not even a dog can catch it. The minutes during which it tries to stand will determine whether it lives or dies. Chen didn’t know what to do. At this distance, they had to make a decision: Go for the wolves or for the gazelles?

Bilgee said, “Look at those wolves, sleeping out in the open. They know there’s nothing anyone can do to them. We’re too far for our rifles to be of any use, and if we show ourselves, they and the gazelles will be gone before we know it.”

“But those stuck in the lake are ours,” Uljii pointed out. “Lunch.”

They mounted up and rode off toward the lake; the minute they, their horses, and their dogs were out in the open, the wolves fled toward the mountains, spread out, and headed south. They were immediately swallowed up by patches of reeds. The gazelles reacted the same way, and just as quickly, leaving behind the ones stuck in the mud and the mothers licking their calves.

The riders approached a bend in the stream that surrounded an acre of land. A dozen or more gazelles, adult and young, lay in the grass, their innards gone, their legs chewed down to the bone. One was stuck in the mud, unable to move an inch; the others were still making feeble attempts to pull themselves out, the wounds in their necks still bleeding.

By now Chen was familiar with the wolves’ tactics, but this was the first time he’d seen how they could use the bend in a stream to do the work. He rode around examining the tactics of the attack.

“See what geniuses they are?” Uljii said. “They hid in the grass the night before and waited until the gazelles came to drink. Then they quickly sealed off all avenues of escape, and trapped the gazelles with the help of the stream. As easy as that. The stream was their sack, and all they had to do was tighten the drawstring around the meat they needed.”

The dogs, smelling the wild meat all around, were in no hurry to eat, and they ignored the gazelles the wolves had eaten from. Bar charged a gazelle that was barely alive, and grabbed it by the throat. He glanced over at Bilgee; the old man nodded. “Go ahead, eat.” The dog lowered his head and bit down hard, and the gazelle was dead. He then ripped a chunk of meat off the animal’s thigh and began to eat. The sight of the bloody kill sent the hair on Erlang’s back straight up, like a wolf, and stirred his killer instinct. Seeing a live calf near a bend in the stream not far off, he jumped into the water and swam across. Bilgee stopped Chen from calling him back. “That dog has a wild streak. If you don’t let him kill wild animals,” he said, “he’ll turn on our sheep again.”

They rode up to the stream, where Bilgee took a leather rope from his saddle and tied it into a loop. Chen removed his boots, rolled up his pant legs, and waded into the water, where he looped the rope around the neck of a gazelle. Bilgee and Uljii dragged the animal up onto the bank, where they placed it on the ground and hogtied it. Then they dragged the second gazelle out of the bloody stream, laid it out on a clean patch of grass, and selected a site for their cookout. “We’ll eat one and take the other back with us,” Bilgee said. While Uljii was slaughtering one of the gazelles, Bilgee took Chen up into the mountains to the northwest to look for firewood.

They reached a ravine with a copse of wild apricot trees, only a few of which had died. But there were plenty of burned branches on the three-foot-tall trunks. The scent of apricot blossoms that had recently fallen to the now colorful ground permeated the ravine, the floor of which was buried under a layer of rotten apricots. They tied up two bundles of firewood and dragged them back to the cookout site, where Uljii had already skinned the gazelle and sliced off hunks of raw meat; he’d also picked wild onions and leeks, as thick as chopsticks, that grew by the stream.

The men removed their horses’ bits and saddles. After shaking off the effects of their burdens, the horses sought out a gentle grazing slope, then walked up to the stream, where they eagerly drank their fill. Bilgee was feeling good about everything. “There’s good water here,” he said, “very good water. That’s the first thing you look for in summer grazing land.” The horses drank until their bellies were taut, then went up the slope and began to graze, snorting happily.

The cook fire blazed, sending the fragrance of gazelle meat into the air above the swan lake for the first time ever, along with oily smoke redolent of leeks and peppers. They sat close to the lake. The meat, speared on thin branches, was so fresh it seemed to still twitch. Having set out that day before dawn, the men were famished. One after another, Chen polished off strips of meat with peppers and leeks, washing them down with gulps of liquor from the old man’s flask. “This is the second time I’ve been fed by wolves,” he said, “and I’ve never tasted anything better, especially eating it at the site of the hunt.”

Bilgee and Uljii were searing gazelle legs over the fire, slicing off layers as they got cooked, then making several cuts and adding salt they’d brought with them, onions, and a few peppers to cook some more. The old man ate heartily, finishing off layer after layer. After drinking from his flask, he said, “I’m glad we’ve got the wolf pack to watch over this new pasture. In another twenty days, when the lambs are strong enough to make the trip, we’ll move the production team out here.”

Uljii wrapped a strip of meat around a wild onion and bit into it. “Do you think the whole team will come?” he asked.

“The wolves are here,” Bilgee replied, “and so are the gazelles. Why wouldn’t they? If the grass were no good, would the gazelles be here? If there were few gazelles, would the wolves come? I’ll take that gazelle back with us and call a meeting at my place tomorrow. There will be gazelle-stuffed buns for everyone. Once they know how good the water is, they’ll fight to come. For a summer pasture, good grass isn’t enough; you need good water too. There’s nothing worse in summer than having stagnant, dirty water. It makes the animals sick.”

Uljii said, “If anyone objects, I’ll bring them out to see for themselves. ”

The old man laughed heartily. “No need for that,” he said. “I’m the alpha wolf. If I come, the other wolves will follow. You can never be hurt by following the alpha wolf.” He turned to Chen Zhen. “All the time you’ve been following me, has it ever hurt you?”

Chen laughed. “By following the wolf king, I eat good food and drink strong liquor. Yang Ke and the others would love to travel with Papa.”

“Then it’s settled,” Uljii said. “When we get back, I’ll call a meeting to announce the move. The quotas we’ve been given over the past few years have got me to where I can hardly breathe. Opening this new pasture will bring four or five years of relief.”

“And after that?” Chen asked. “Is there any more land out there somewhere?”

“No,” Uljii said, his mood darkening. “There’s the border to the north and other communes west and south. As for the northeast, the mountains are too steep and too rocky. I’ve been there twice. There’s no more available pastureland.”

“So what will you do?”

“We’ll have to control the size of the herds and improve the quality. For instance, we can raise Xinjiang improved sheep,” Uljii said. “They produce twice the amount of wool, and it’s better stuff. Our wool sells for a little over one yuan a pound, but better-quality wool goes for more than four. Wool is our greatest single source of income.” Chen had to agree that this was a good plan. But then Uljii sighed. “China has so many people that I figure our pastureland will fall behind in production in a few years. After people of my generation retire, I don’t know what you youngsters are going to do.”

Bilgee stared at Uljii. “You’re going to have to talk to the people in charge. Tell them to ease the pressure on the livestock units. If they keep it up, the sky will turn yellow, the earth will rebel, and the sand will bury us all.”

Uljii shook his head. “Who’s going to listen to us? Farming officials run the show these days. They’re more cultured than us, and they speak Chinese. Besides, officials in the pasture areas are obsessed with hunting wolves. By competing over the quantity of livestock, those who know nothing about the land actually get promoted faster.”

The horses had eaten their fill and were resting, heads down, eyes closed.

Uljii led his companions on a tour of the rest of the basin, discussing with Bilgee where to have the four companies set up camp. Chen was greedily soaking up the incredible scenery, wondering if he’d landed in a Garden of Eden in the midst of the grassland. Or a grassland in the midst of a Garden of Eden. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to leave-ever.

After returning to the site of the cookout, they slaughtered and skinned the second gazelle, and as Chen looked out at the carcasses strewn around the horseshoe bend, he felt empty and suddenly gloomy. The smell of blood had driven out the peaceful, romantic feelings he’d experienced when he first stepped foot on the grazing land. After a thoughtful moment, he reluctantly said to the old man, “When wolves kill gazelles in the winter it’s to keep them on ice for the spring. But why do they kill so many in the summer? There are probably more in some of the other bends. They’ll begin to stink in a couple of days and won’t be edible. Maybe the wolves just love killing.”

“They don’t kill all those gazelles for the fun of it,” Bilgee said, “or to display their power. They do it so that the old, sick, and wounded wolves will have something to eat. Do you know why tigers and such can’t survive out here? And why wolves dominate the grassland? It’s because of their pack mentality. Tigers make a kill for themselves, not for other tigers, not even for their mates or offspring. But wolves kill for themselves and for the rest of the pack, even those that can’t be in on the kill-the old, the crippled, the nearly blind, the young, the sick, and the nursing females. All you see now are the carcasses, but when the alpha male howls tonight, half the wolves in the Olonbulag and any others that can claim some kinship with this pack will show up, and there won’t be anything left by morning. A wolf takes care of the pack, and the pack takes care of each wolf. They stick together, which is what makes them such formidable foes. Sometimes the howl of the alpha male will draw a hundred wolves into a battle. Old-timers tell us there used to be tigers out here, but they were all driven off by wolves. Wolves are more family-oriented than people, and much more united.”

The old man sighed. “Back in the time of Genghis Khan, that’s when the Mongols really learned from wolves. Every tribe came together, like spokes on a wheel, or a quiver of arrows. Their numbers were small, but they had considerable power, and every one of them would have gladly given up his life for their mother, the grassland. How else were they able to conquer half the world? Our downfall came when we lost that sense of unity. Now it’s tribe against tribe, individual arrows fired in anger, but easily deflected and broken. Wolves have it all over people. We can learn from their tactics in battle, but the way they stick together seems to elude us. For hundreds of years we’ve tried, but we still haven’t mastered it. But that’s enough-just talking about it is painful.”

Chen looked out over the breathtakingly beautiful swan lake and was lost in thought.

The old man wrapped the meat from the gazelle in its skin and stuffed it into a pair of gunnysacks. After Chen got the horses saddled, the two older men each threw one of the bags over the rump of his horse and secured it behind the saddle.

The three horses galloped off toward brigade headquarters.