lightheartedly.
Fang Tianbao bent down to examine my genitals, then ran over to check underneath the Han family’s female. He lifted up her tail and took a good look.
“Yes, it was,” he announced authoritatively. “Take my word for it. You Hans are going to have a new donkey.”
“Old Han, you’d better send a couple of pecks of black beans over to help our black donkey regain his strength,” Lan Lian said somberly.
“Like hell!” was Han’s curt reply.
By this time, the musket-armed men who had been hiding in the tamarisk bushes joined the others. Light on their feet, they moved furtively. Clearly, they were not farmers. Their leader was a squat man with piercing eyes. He walked up to the dead wolves and bent over to turn the head of one with the barrel of his weapon, after which he did the same to the abdomen of the other wolf. In a voice that betrayed surprise mixed with regret, he said:
“This is the destructive pair we’ve been looking for!”
One of his men, also armed with a musket, turned to the crowd and announced loudly:
“That does it. We can go back and report to our superiors now”
“I doubt that you people have seen these two,” one of the men said to Lan Lian and the others. “They’re not a pair of wild dogs, they’re gray wolves, the kind you seldom see out on the plains. They fled from Inner Mongolia and left a bloody trail. They were both tricky and vicious. In just over a month they killed a dozen or more head of livestock, including horses, cows, even a camel. We think people were next on their menu. If word had gotten out, the people would have panicked, so we organized six hunting teams in secret, searching and lying in wait for these two day and night. Now it’s over.” Another one, a man with an obvious sense of his own importance, kicked one of the carcasses: “You never thought this day would come, you bastard!” he cursed.
The team leader took aim at the head of one of the wolves and fired. Flames from the barrel of his musket and the smoke that followed swallowed the animal up, its head now shattered, just like Ximen Nao’s, the rocks splattered with grays and reds.
Another hunter took the hint and, with a smile, shot the other wolf in the abdomen. A fist-sized hole opened up in its belly, out of which a dirty mess of guts poured.
Dumbfounded by what they’d just seen, Lan Lian and the others could only gape at one another. Once the smell of gunpowder had dissipated, the melodious sound of flowing water beguiled their ears; a flock of sparrows numbering in the hundreds came on the air, rising and falling like a dark cloud. They settled with a loud fluttering sound on tamarisk bushes, bending the pliant branches like fruit-laden trees. Waves of bird-talk enlivened the sandy ridges. To that was added the gossamer voice of Yingchun:
“What was that for? Why shoot dead wolves?”
“Is that your damned attempt to take credit for this?” Lan Lian thundered. “You didn’t kill those wolves, my donkey did.”
The leader of the hunting team took two brand-new notes and tucked one under my reins, the other under Huahua’s.
“Do you really think you can shut me up with money?” Lan Lian said, spitting mad. “That’s not going to happen!”
“Take back your money,” Han the stonemason said. “Our donkeys killed those wolves, and we’re taking them with us.”
The hunter smirked.
“Good brothers,” he said, “with one eye open and the other shut, everyone wins. You could plead your case until your lips were chapped, and no one would believe that your donkeys were capable of doing that. Especially now that one’s head has been blown open and the other’s belly has a gaping bullet hole.”
“Our donkeys were clawed and bitten bloody by those wolves,” Lan Lian shouted.
“I agree, they have wounds all over their bodies, and no one could say they weren’t caused by wolves. And so…” The man smirked again. “Here’s what that proves: Two attacked your donkeys, causing bloody injuries, but at the moment of greatest danger, the three members of the Number Six hunting team arrived on the scene and, with no thoughts for their own safety, engaged the wolves in a life-or-death battle. The team leader, Qiao Feipeng, stood face-to-face with the male wolf, took aim, and fired, shattering its head. A second member of the team, Liu Yong, took aim at the second wolf and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired. After he’d spent a whole night hiding amid tamarisk bushes, his powder was wet. The wolf opened her mouth, which seemed to spread all the way to her ears, bared her gleaming white fangs, let loose a hideous, spine-tingling roar, and went straight for Liu Yong, who rolled out of the way of her first charge. But his heel caught between two rocks, and he lay faceup on the sandy ground. With a leap, her tail stretched out behind her, she charged again like a yellow blur. At that desperate moment, in less time than it takes to tell, Lu Xiaopo, the youngest member of the hunting team, took aim and fired at the animal’s head. But since it was a moving target, the shot hit her in the abdomen. When she fell, she rolled on the ground, spilling her guts all over the place, a terrifying sight. Though she was a vile predator, it was too terrible to see. By this time, Liu Yong had reloaded his musket and fired at the wolf, which was still rolling in agony. But because of the distance between them, the buckshot sprayed the area and peppered the dying animal in many spots. She stretched out her legs and died.”
While Qiao was weaving his story, Liu Yong stepped backward, aimed, and fired buckshot into the wolf’s carcass, creating holes with burned edges.
“So, what do you think?” Qiao asked, smiling proudly. “Whose story do you think people will believe, yours or mine?” He put more gunpowder into the barrel of his musket and said, “You outnumber us, but don’t even think of taking the wolves back with you. We hunters have an unwritten rule: Whenever there’s a dispute over a kill, the hunter with the most buckshot in it keeps it. And there’s another rule. A hunter is within his rights to shoot anyone who walks off with his kill. It’s a matter of retaining his self-esteem.”
“You’re fucking thugs!” Lan Lian said. “You’re going to be visited by nightmares after this. You’ll pay for taking what doesn’t belong to you.”
The hunter just laughed. “Reincarnation and retribution are nonsense people use to trick old ladies. I don’t believe them for a minute. But maybe there’s something we can do together. If you’ll help us carry these carcasses to town on the backs of your donkeys, the county chief will reward you handsomely and I’ll give you each a bottle of the finest liquor.”
I couldn’t take any more of that. Opening my mouth to bare my front teeth, I took aim at that flat head of his. But he was too fast for me. He moved his head away just in time, but I got him by the shoulder. Now you’ll see what a donkey can do, you thug! You people think that only felines or canines, with their sharp claws and teeth, know how to be predators, and that we donkeys, with our hooves, only know how to eat grass and husks of grain. You are all formalists, dogmatists, book worshippers, and empiricists. Well, today, I’m going to teach you that when he’s irritated, a donkey will bite!
After gripping the hunter’s shoulder in my teeth, I raised my head and shook it back and forth. I tasted something sour, unpleasant, and very sticky. As for the crafty, smooth-talking fellow, well, he was on the ground, bleeding from his shoulder, and unconscious.
He could always tell the county chief that one of the wolves had bitten him on the shoulder during the fight. Or he could say that when the wolf buried its fangs in his shoulder, he reacted by biting the animal on the back of its head. As to how he’d managed to finish off the wolf, well, he could say what he wanted.
Our people, meanwhile, saw that things had turned ugly, so they quickly got us on the road home, leaving the wolf carcasses and the wolf hunters on the sandbar.
8
Ouch, Xlmen Donkey Loses a Gonad
A Colossal Hero Arrives at the Estate
January 24, 1955, was the first day of the first month of the Yiwei Lunar Year. Mo Yan settled on that day as
