Wolf Totem

21

Chen Zhen saw that several clusters of sheep had left the lakeshore ahead, so he rounded up his flock and led them to the lake. Once they were on the move, he rode over ahead of them. A small herd of horses, having drunk their fill, was standing in the water, resting with their eyes closed, unwilling to return to dry land. Wild ducks and a variety of waterbirds were swimming on the lake, a few of them actually sporting around the horses, flitting beneath their bellies and between their legs. Swans cruised on the surface in the center of the lake away from the horses and on the opposite shore, where reeds still grew.

Suddenly, the silence was shattered by loud bleating on a sandy ridge on the northwestern shore, as Chen’s sheep smelled the water. In the summer, sheep were watered every other day, and the animals were voicing their thirst. They ran to the lake, raising a cloud of dust. The herdsmen and their livestock had been on the new land slightly more than a week, but the grass near the lake had already been trampled into the sandy soil by all the cattle, sheep, and horses that had drunk there. The sheep rushed into the lake, crowding the horses as they greedily lapped up the water.

Chen’s sheep had barely climbed to the top of the ridge after drinking their fill when another flock of thirsty animals ran noisily to the lake’s edge, raising another cloud of dust.

Laborers had set up four or five tents on a gentle slope a few hundred feet from the lake, where dozens of men were hard at work digging trenches. Under Bao Shungui’s direction, they were building a dipping pool for sheep, a wool storage shed, and a provisional headquarters building. Chen saw some of the laborers and members of their family dig trenches and plow plots of land for vegetable gardens. Another group of laborers had dug a stone quarry on a distant hill and were loading bright yellow rocks and flagstone onto large wagons, which were driven back to the work sites. Chen hated to see scars opened on the virgin land, so he turned back to his sheep and herded them off to the northwest.

The flock crossed a mountain ridge into a grassy basin. Bilgee had asked that the livestock not graze exclusively in the basin; since the summer days were so long, he said, the animals should be taken as far away as possible. That way there would be no need to move again as summer turned to fall. He planned to have the animals make several large sweeps of the basin and its outlying areas to keep the grass from growing out of control and patting down the loose soil as a means of mosquito control. Chen’s flock, forming a crescent, moved slowly toward mountains to the west.

In the glare of sunlight, the thousand or so sheep and their lambs sparkled like a field of white chrysanthemums, in stark contrast to their green surroundings. The lambs, whose coats were getting fluffy, alternately suckled and grazed the field. Their round tails were filling out and were nearly as big as those of their still-nursing mothers. Chen felt his eyes fill with the golden luster of yellow daylilies, which had just bloomed on the mountainside. Tens of thousands of bushes, two feet tall, offered up large, trumpet-shaped yellow flowers, with long, thin new buds dotting the branches below, ready to open soon.

Chen got up, mounted his horse, and rode over to an even denser field to pick the flowers, which had been introduced into the Beijing students’ diets: lilies and lamb dumplings, lilies and mountain onion salad, lilies and shredded lamb soup, and more. After going without vegetables all winter, they took to the wild greens and flowers like sheep to grazing land. The local herdsmen were amazed, since wildflowers were not something they ate. Before Chen left the yurt in the morning, Zhang Jiyuan had emptied out a pair of schoolbags, denying him the pleasure of reading while he tended the flock, so he and Yang could bring back a load of wildflowers before they withered and died. He blanched them in boiled water and dried them for the coming winter. In a few days they had already filled a sack half full of dried flowers.

The sheep grazed on the field behind Chen as he quickly filled a bag with flowers. While he continued to pick, he spotted some wolf droppings by his foot. He bent down and picked up a piece to examine it closely. It was gray, about the length of a banana, and already dry, though he could tell that it was still relatively fresh. He had just sat down to study it when it dawned on him that this must have been a resting spot for a wolf only a few days before. What was it doing there? He checked but found no bones or animal fur, so it wasn’t where it had eaten a kill. Small clusters of sheep often passed through the area, with its tall flowers and dense grass, so maybe this was the wolf’s hiding place, an ideal spot for an ambush. Suddenly quite nervous, he stood up and looked around, happy to spot some shepherds surveying the surroundings while they rested. Since his flock was several hundred feet behind him, he relaxed and sat down again.

Chen was familiar with wolf droppings, but this was his first opportunity to study them up close. He broke off a piece; inside he found gazelle fur and sheep’s wool, but not a shard of bone. There were a couple of field-mouse teeth and a few calcified chunks of wool. He crumbled the piece in his hand, but that was all it contained. The meat, skin, bones, and tendons of the sheep and mice the wolf had eaten had been completely digested, leaving behind only the fur and teeth. When he looked even closer, he saw that only the coarsest hair had passed through the wolf’s body. No dog had as effective a digestive system as that, he knew, since you can normally find undigested items like bone and kernels of corn in their droppings.

The efficiency with which wolves, the grassland’s sanitation workers, disposed of everything-cows, sheep, horses, marmots and gazelles, wild rabbits and field mice, even humans-was astonishing. As the animals passed through the wolf’s mouth, stomach, and intestines, the nutrients were removed, leaving behind only bits of hair and teeth, not even enough to feed germs. The grassland remained clean down through the ages thanks largely to its wolves.

The wildflowers swayed in a breeze. Chen crumbled the last of the wolf dung, which was carried off by the wind, settling to the ground to become one with the grassland, leaving no waste at all. With wolf dung it was truly a case of ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

Chen was by then deep in thought. Over the centuries, the herdsmen and hunters of the grassland returned to Tengger with no burial and no markers, and definitely no mausoleums. Men and wolves were born on the grassland, lived there, fought there, and died there. They left the grassland exactly as they found it.

Every month, or at least once every season, a grasslander was given a sky burial to send his soul to Tengger. Chen lifted his hands to the blue sky and said a silent wish that all those souls were at peace.

Summer days are dreadfully long on the Mongolian grassland. The sky is light from three in the morning till nine at night. The sheep are not taken out until eight or nine o’clock, after the sun has burned off the frost. At night they are not returned to their pens until after dark, since the period between sunset and darkness is when they eat the most ravenously and fatten up. Tending sheep in the summer takes nearly twice the time as it does in the winter. Summer is the shepherds’ least favorite season of the year. After breakfast, they go hungry until nine o’clock at night; all day long they bake under the sun, fight off the urge to sleep, go thirsty and hungry, and are bored stiff. At the height of summer, the mosquitoes turn the grassland into a torture chamber. Compared to the draining days of summer, the long cold winters are happy times.

Before being exposed to the hordes of mosquitoes, Chen had believed that hunger and thirst took the greatest toll on people. Herdsmen, on the other hand, tolerated hunger and thirst well, even though most of them were bothered by stomach ailments. During their first summer, the students took dry food along when they let the sheep out to graze, but eventually they followed the local custom of going without a midday meal.

While Chen was standing there in the tall grass, Dorji rode up and asked how he’d like some roast marmot. Chen salivated over the prospect. "They’re all over the place,” Dorji said. "That mountain ridge to the west is pockmarked with marmot holes. Let’s survey the place today, then lay out a dozen traps tomorrow. We’ll catch some by noon, and we can have roast marmot for lunch. That’ll take care of our hunger and keep us from napping in the middle of the day.” Dorji looked out at the two flocks of sheep, his and Chen’s, and saw that none of the animals were up and grazing. So the two men rode over to the mountain ridge, where they hid behind some limestone boulders, in sight of the sheep behind them and the marmot holes in front. They took out their telescopes. The ridge was still, the dozens of marmot holes seemingly empty; sunlight glistened on the bits of mineral ore in the limestone.

Before long, they heard the chirps and squeaks of marmots, exploratory noises made by animals before emerging from their holes. If they detected no responses, they’d pop up in large numbers. There were no responses, so out they came, dozens of them, big and small, filling the air with chirps. From every hole, it seemed, a female emerged to survey the area, and when they saw there were no predators nearby, they chirped a slow, rhythmic all-clear signal, following which hordes of young animals shot out of the holes and began eating clumps of grass as far as thirty or forty feet from the safety of their holes. With vultures circling high above in the deep blue sky, the females kept a careful watch. If their winged natural enemies descended, the marmot mothers chirped a frantic warning, which sent the young animals scurrying back to the safety of their holes, where they waited for the danger to pass.

When Chen moved slightly, Dorji laid his hand on his back to have him stay still. “Look at that hole over there,” he whispered. “There’s a wolf. He’s looking forward to a meal of marmot, just like us.” Chen immediately grew alert and turned his head to look. A large male marmot was standing in front of its hole, front legs folded in front of its chest as it scanned the area, obviously reluctant to leave the hole to graze on the grass. Male and female marmots live separately. The females live in one hole with their offspring; the males live alone in another. A large clump of tall grass lay not far below this particular male’s hole, and as it swayed in gentle breezes, the tops of brown rocks peeked through. The shifting shadows made it difficult to discern anything farther below.

“I don’t see a wolf,” Chen said. “Nothing but a few rocks.”

“There’s a wolf hidden beside one of those rocks, and I’ll bet it’s been there for a long time.”

Straining to look closer, Chen thought he could make out the partial figure of a wolf. “You’ve got better eyes than me,” he said. “I didn’t spot it.”

“If you don’t know how wolves hunt marmots,” Dorji explained, “you’d never spot one like this. They have to stay downwind of their prey, hidden in a clump of grass below a marmot hole. Catching one of those things is hard, even for a wolf, so they concentrate on big males. See that big one standing there? Damn near as big as a newborn lamb. It’s enough for one wolf meal. If it’s a wolf you’re looking for, head for the nearest male marmot hole, then scan the tall grass downwind from it.”

“Well, I learned another trick today,” Chen declared happily. “But when will the marmot decide to go down and eat? I want to see how the wolf catches it. There are holes everywhere, and the minute the wolf shows itself, the marmots will scramble down the nearest one.”

Dorji said, “It takes a smart wolf to catch a marmot. They have a trick to keep marmots from getting into a hole. Let’s see how this one does.”

They looked downhill, where their sheep were still lying in the grass, so they decided to be patient and see what happened. “Too bad we didn’t bring a dog,” Dorji said. “If we had, we could wait till the wolf got this one, then turn the dog loose and follow it on horseback. The marmot would become a meal-but ours, not the wolf’s.”

“Why don’t we chase it anyway?” Chen said. “We might catch it.”

“No way,” Dorji said. “Just look. The wolf is on the mountain ridge, so it would be heading downhill, and we’d be riding uphill. And once the wolf made it over the ridge, you’d never see it again. Besides, with all those marmot holes, our horses can’t run fast.” Chen gave up on the idea.

“No, we’ll lay some traps tomorrow,” Dorji said. “I just brought you here today to look around. Wolves will only be catching marmots for another couple of weeks. Once the rains come and the mosquitoes emerge, they no longer go after them. Why? Because they’re afraid of the mosquitoes, who attack their noses, eyes, and ears, making them jump into the air and give themselves away, which sends the marmots scurrying back into their holes. That’s when the wolves give up on marmots and turn their attention to our sheep and horses. That’s bad news for us and our livestock.”

The big male watched the other marmots gorging themselves on the grass until it couldn’t stand it any longer and left the safety of its hole for the tempting grass several feet away. After a few tentative bites, it ran back to its hole and chirped loudly. “See how it won’t eat the grass around its hole? They save that as a sort of barrier. Things out here are never easy,” Dorji said. “One careless moment is all it takes to lose your life.”

Chen watched the wolf with growing anxiety. It didn’t seem to have a clear view of the marmot from its hiding place, and would have to rely on sound to determine the location and movements of its prey. It pressed itself down so flat that it had nearly burrowed into the ground.

After four or five lightning trips to the grass and back, the marmot relaxed, sensing there was no danger, and ran over to a spot where the grass was at its most lush. Five or six minutes passed; then, all of a sudden, the wolf stood up. What surprised Chen was that instead of rushing over to pounce on the marmot, the wolf pawed at some loose rocks, sending several of them rolling downhill, making noise as they built up speed and grew in number. Chen watched as the marmot, now twenty feet or more from its hole, looked up in fright, turned, and raced back toward safety. But the wolf streaked toward the marmot hole, reaching it at about the same time as its inhabitant. Before the marmot could scurry down the hole, the wolf had it by the scruff of its neck. It was quickly flung to the ground, where the wolf sank its teeth into its neck. Then the wolf picked it up and ran off, quickly crossing the ridge. The whole maneuver had taken less than thirty seconds.

All the other marmots had vanished. The two men sat up. Images of the wolf catching its prey replayed in Chen’s head. He was speechless. The wisdom of the wolf was unfathomable. An almost magical beast.

The sunlight had turned from white to yellow, and the sheep were once again grazing, having moved several hundred feet to the west. Chen and Dorji talked for a few minutes before deciding to return to their flocks, turn them around, and head back to camp. But just as they their flocks, turn them around, and head back to camp. But just as they were about to climb into the saddle, Chen noticed some stirring among his sheep. Quickly taking out his telescope, he trained it on the left edge of the flock, where he spotted a large wolf slipping out of the bed of flowers and pouncing on one of his sheep, pinning it to the ground. Chen’s face turned white from fright, and he was about to scream when Dorji stopped him. He swallowed the scream and watched as the wolf tore flesh from one of the live sheep’s rear legs. As one of the lower animals, sheep won’t make a sound when they see blood. This one struggled, pawing the ground with its front legs, but, unlike a goat, made no sound, no plea for help.

“We’re too far away to save the sheep,” Dorji said. “Let the wolf eat. When it’s gorged itself till it can’t run, we’ll get it. All right, you damned wolf,” he continued calmly, “you think you can take one of our sheep right under our eyes. Well, we’ll see about that!” They moved over behind a big rock so as not to give themselves away too early.

Obviously, they’d encountered a bold and very hungry wolf. Seeing that the flock had been unattended for a long time, it had moved through the tall grass and wildflowers up next to it, then pounced and immediately started eating the fat sheep. It saw the men and horses up on the ridge, but didn’t run away. Keeping one eye on the men and calculating how far away they were, it ate as fast and as much as it could. No wonder the cub back at camp turns mealtime into a battle, Chen was thinking. Out on the grassland, time is food, and a wolf given to leisurely eating will starve to death.

Chen had heard shepherds tell stories about trading sheep for wolves, and this encounter appeared to be shaping up as one of those strategic battles. Trading a sheep for a mature wolf was a bargain. A single adult wolf will eat ten or more sheep every year, not to mention the occasional horse or colt. A shepherd who trades a single sheep for a wolf will be neither criticized nor punished by the brigade; he will be commended. What worried Chen was the possibility of losing a sheep without bringing in a wolf. That would be considered a serious loss. He stared at the wolf through his glass, watching as an entire leg-wool, skin, and all-wound up in the wolf’s stomach in half a minute or less. That sheep was doomed, and Chen was hoping the wolf would eat the whole animal. He and Dorji moved slowly toward their horses. They removed the fetters, clutched the reins tightly, and waited with their hearts in their throats.

Sheep are truly stupid animals. When the wolf knocked the unfortunate sheep to the ground, the other sheep scattered in fright. But the entire flock soon calmed down, and there were even a few animals that timidly drew closer to watch the wolf eat a member of their flock. As they looked on, more joined them, until at least a hundred sheep had virtually penned the wolf and its bloody victim in; they pushed and shoved and craned their necks to get a better look. Their expressions seemed to say, “Well, the wolf is eating you and not me!” Either that or, “You’re dying so I can live.” Their fear was measured by a sense of gloating. None made a move to stop the wolf.

Startled by the scene, Chen was reminded of the writer Lu Xun, who had written about a crowd of dull-witted Chinese looking on as a Japanese swordsman was about to lop off the head of a Chinese prisoner. What was the difference between that and this? No wonder the nomads see the Han Chinese as sheep. A wolf eating a sheep may be abhorrent, but far more loathsome were cowardly people who acted like sheep.

Dorji was in a quandary. Known throughout the brigade as a first-rate hunter, he was now in the unenviable position of having abandoned his flock to take a Beijing student marmot hunting, in the process losing a nice fat sheep to a lone wolf in broad daylight. With the female sheep gone, her lamb would not be able to suckle and grow big and fat, dooming it for the coming winter. In a brigade devoted to raising livestock, this counts as negligence, for which Chen was sure to be criticized and Dorji implicated. Worst of all, why had this happened to the two individuals who were raising wolf cubs back at camp? Someone who doesn’t care about sheep should not be a shepherd, and wolves will seek revenge against anyone who raises one of their own. Every member of the brigade who opposed the idea of taking a wolf out of the wild would jump on the incident as proof that they were right. Chen’s fears mounted.

Dorji kept his glass trained on the wolf, gradually gaining confidence in what they were to do. “I’ll take responsibility for the loss of the sheep,” he said. “But the pelt will be mine. Once I hand that over to Bao Shungui, you and I will come off looking good.”

The wolf sped up the pace of its eating, never taking its eyes off of the men watching it. Tearing off hunks of flesh and swallowing them whole, it seemed almost crazed. “Even the smartest wolf will do stupid things when it’s hungry,” Dorji said. “Doesn’t it realize that pretty soon it won’t be able to run away? This is definitely not one of the smart wolves, and one that’s no good at catching marmots. It probably hasn’t eaten for days.”

Chen saw that the wolf had already consumed half a sheep; its belly was round and taut. “What are we waiting for?” he asked.

“Take it easy,” Dorji replied. “Let’s wait a little longer. But then we have to move fast. We’ll come in from the south and drive the wolf in the opposite direction, since that’s where the other shepherds are. They can help us run it down.”

Dorji watched a while longer, then cried, “Mount up!” Leaping into their saddles, they rode down the slope south of the flock. The wolf had already planned its escape route, and the instant it saw the men riding toward him, it bit off and swallowed a couple more bites, abandoned what was left of the now dead sheep, turned, and headed north. But it hadn’t gone far when it staggered, realizing it had miscalculated badly. It skidded to a halt, lowered its head, and hunkered down.

“Uh-oh, that’s bad!” Dorji shouted. “It’s bringing up what it just ate.”

Chen watched as the wolf arched its back and vomited great heaps of sheep flesh. This was their chance. They spurred their horses on, frantically shortening the distance between them and the regurgitating wolf.

Chen was aware that wolves will bring up food for their young, but this surprised him: a wolf vomiting food that would slow it down. It may have been a starving wolf, but it was not a stupid one, and if it succeeded in emptying its stomach, the men’s potential problem would become a real one. Chen whipped his horse on, but Dorji was outdistancing him, all the while shouting to scare the wolf and alert the shepherds on the mountain ahead. When he was dangerously close, the animal stopped vomiting and ran for its life, gaining top speed in no time. When Chen rode up to where the wolf had stopped, he saw a large pile of bloody meat, and the sight momentarily unnerved him; but then he whipped his horse mercilessly and rejoined the chase.

The wolf must have stopped vomiting before its stomach was empty, and what remained had not had time to turn to energy. It was fast, but slower than usual, and Dorji had no trouble keeping up with it. Seeing that it could not shake its pursuer, the wolf veered off in the direction of a steep hill, a trick all grassland wolves resorted to when their lives were in imminent danger. Then, out of nowhere, the shepherd Sanjai appeared at the crest of the hill; raising his lasso pole, he cut off the wolf’s escape route, making it shudder in fear. That lasted only an instant before it abruptly changed course and headed straight for a flock of sheep that was grazing nearby. The wolf, Chen was surprised to realize, was going to create havoc in the flock, putting the sheep between it and the riders, who would have to rein in their horses. It would then break out on the other side and get away.

But the animal’s momentary hesitation had given Dorji a chance to gallop up next to it and Sanjai enough time to block its way. As it turned to change course a second time, Dorji leaned forward in the saddle, thrust out his lasso pole, shook the rope to form a noose, and neatly looped it around the wolf’s neck, immediately pulling it tight before the wolf had a chance to pull its neck back into its shoulders. With his rope looped tightly around the animal’s throat, behind its ears, Dorji spun his horse around and began dragging it behind him.

The fight went out of the wolf as its weight further tightened the noose. Its tongue lolled from its open mouth as it struggled to breathe, but bloody froth was already seeping out. Dorji began dragging it uphill, increasing the stranglehold. Chen rode up and watched as the death spasms began. He breathed a sigh of relief. Their screwup wasn’t going to get them in hot water after all. He was relieved, yes, but not excited, for he was witness to the violent death of a wolf that had been alive and active only moments before. The grassland is a cruel place, exacting terrible costs from all who struggle to survive in its core. The slow, the clumsy, and the dull are ruthlessly eliminated. A heavy sorrow filled Chen’s heart. The dying wolf had been possessed with intelligence and strength. In the world of humans, would anyone that smart and that courageous have been eliminated?

The wolf had gone limp by the time Dorji was halfway up the hill, but it was still breathing and still losing blood. Dorji jumped to the ground, jerking the pole with both hands so the wolf could not get to its feet. When he’d pulled it up to where he stood, he grasped his herding club and crushed the wolf’s head with it. Then he took out his Mongol dagger and buried it in the animal’s chest. The wolf was dead by the time Chen got down off his horse. After kicking the animal a couple of times and seeing no reaction, Dorji mopped his sweaty forehead, sat down, and smoked a cigarette.

Sanjai rode up and looked down at the dead wolf. “Good job,” he said, and then went out to round up Dorji’s sheep. Chen rode over to his flock to do the same and get them headed back to camp. He then went back up the hill to watch Dorji skin the wolf. In the heat of summer, there is always a concern that a pelt will begin to stink, so instead of skinning the animal with the legs intact, the grasslanders skin the wolf like they do a sheep, producing a flat pelt. By the time Chen reached him, Dorji had already laid the pelt out on the ground to dry in the sun.

“That’s the first time I’ve seen a wolf killed with a lasso pole,” Chen remarked. “How were you so confident?”

With a bit of a gloating laugh, Dorji said, “I saw right away that this wasn’t a very smart wolf. A really clever one would have shaken off the noose as soon as it landed by drawing its neck in.”

“You’ve got sharp eyes,” Chen complimented him. “I’m no match for you, and couldn’t be if I spent the next five years trying. Then there’s my horse. Next year I’m going to get some good stud horses. You can’t get by out here without a good horse.”

“Have Batu give you one of his,” Dorji said. “He’s your big brother; he’ll do it.”

Suddenly, Chen was reminded of the wolf cub he’d given Dorji. “There’s been so much going on lately,” he said, “I haven’t had a chance to ask about your cub.”

“Didn’t they tell you?” Dorji shook his head. “What a shame. I killed it a couple of days ago.”

“What?” Chen blurted out, suddenly heartsick. “You killed it? Why? What happened?”

“I should have chained it up, like you did,” he said. “My cub was smaller than yours, and not as wild, so I kept it in a pen with some puppies. After a month or so, it had gotten used to being around dogs, and everybody treated it like just another dog. But it soon outgrew the puppies, and got more and more like a wolfhound. Everyone favored him, especially my four-year-old son. But a couple of days ago, while they were playing, out of the blue he attacked my son, taking a bloody bite out of his belly. It scared the hell out of the boy, who screamed and bawled. Unlike a dog’s, a wolf’s fangs are lethal, and I was so startled I clubbed it to death. Then I rushed my son over to see the brigade’s barefoot doctor, Peng, who gave him a couple of shots. Fortunately, that was the end of it, except that my son’s belly is still swollen.”

Chen felt a sense of panic coming over him. “Don’t let it go at that,” he said anxiously. “You need to give him another shot, and soon. If it’s rabies, a series of injections will take care of it.”

“The herdsmen all know you need to get injections if you’re bitten by a dog,” Dorji said. “With a wolf, it’s even more important. Dogs and wolves are different, and the locals have been saying I shouldn’t try to raise a wolf. Well, it looks like they were right. You can’t take the wildness out of them, and sooner or later there’ll be trouble. I advise you to give it up. That cub of yours is bigger and wilder, and has an even more lethal bite. It could kill you with its teeth alone, and chaining it doesn’t guarantee safety.”

Chen, bothered by a nagging fear, thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll be careful. I’ve raised it this far. It hasn’t been easy, but I can’t give up now. Even Gao Jianzhong, who hated it at first, has taken to it. He plays with it every day.”

The sheep had wandered off, so Dorji rolled up the wolf pelt and tied it to his saddle. Then he mounted up and began driving his flock back to camp.

Chen was thinking about his cub as he walked up to the half-eaten sheep. He took out his knife to slice off a piece where the wolf had been eating and then fished out the intestines; he left the heart and lungs. After tying the sheep by its head to the saddle to take home to feed the dogs and the cub, he climbed onto his horse and headed slowly home, weighed down with anxiety.

The next day, the story of how Dorji had traded a sheep for a wolf spread through the brigade. After Bao Shungui received the wolf pelt, he couldn’t praise Dorji enough; he circulated a commendation throughout the brigade and rewarded him with thirty bullets. A few days later, a young shepherd from Group Three who had decided to use his sheep as bait, left his flock alone, hoping to swap a sheep for a wolf. But he encountered a wily old wolf that ate only one and a half legs of the sheep, enough to be reasonably full, but not enough to influence its ability to run; in fact, the wolf ran faster than usual and was quickly out of sight. Bilgee gave the shepherd a tongue-lashing in front of the brigade and punished him by not letting his family kill a sheep for food for a month.