Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

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