Northern Tibet’s No Man’s Land was also known as Kekexili in Qinghai Province. It was barren, lonely country, and the land was so poor, it barely merited the term. It could not support crops or trees, and the only plants that grew were short, wild grasses and low shrubs, sparse and frail. Most of the land had not even a centimetre’s growth of grass on it. In No Man’s Land, mountains of six or seven thousand metres seemed like small hills. No matter the time of year, the peaks were permanently snowbound, flashing their silver light as they had for a thousand years, adding a sparkle of white to the otherwise green summers and brown winters. The bright blue sky and white snow complemented each other perfectly.
It was a paradise for wild animals. When people elsewhere on the plateau went crazy and started killing animals just for fun, the wild yaks, asses and sheep that had nowhere to hide fled there, to No Man’s Land, where there were hardly any humans. Vegetation was also scarce: there was less food and the environment was harsher, but at least the animals’ lives were not in danger, so they could find happiness.
Happiness was not something that just animals needed; people needed it too. On the vast plain, a brown horse walked slowly, as if it was taking a stroll. Its rider wore an old sheepskin chuba tied around his waist. A thick beard covered almost half of his face, his eyebrows were the colour of coal, his skin was rough, and his long hair was filthy and wild. He carried an old hunting gun on his back. He appeared to be asleep, but he was not asleep.
It was Gongzha. Twice on Mount Chanaluo he had tried to kill Kaguo, and twice he had failed. Even so, Kaguo was spooked and had fled to No Man’s Land. Gongzha had followed. Cuomu had been dead for many years, but Gongzha’s memories of her had only intensified with time. The more he thought about her, the clearer his memories became: in his heart, she was forever young and beautiful. Now he didn’t even need to think about her; she was always by his side or in front of his eyes.
The day slowly fell towards night. As the evening sun began painting the sky red, the grassland and the snow mountains turned gold. In one small patch of that golden grassland stood a few tumbledown mud walls. An old woman carrying a wooden bucket on her back hobbled out from between them. She started when she saw Gongzha. ‘Guest, are you lost?’
Gongzha sprang off his horse and led it over by the reins. He bowed and put his palms together in greeting. ‘Dear Ama, I am a hunter. I’ve been chasing a bear here.’
‘Oh, we haven’t seen an outsider for many years. Respected guest, please come with me and rest your feet. I’ll stew you some mutton ribs. An eagle only has the strength to fly when it is full,’ the old woman said, and she led him to a black tent nearby.
Gongzha followed the old woman, tethered his horse to a post, entered the tent and sat down by the stove. She served him butter tea, then threw several yak pats into the stove and used the sheep-gut bellows to blow the fire until the flames leapt high. Her kindly, wrinkled face glowed in the firelight and Gongzha’s thoughts turned to his own mother and to his brothers’ children. His wanderer’s heart was suddenly filled with bitterness. Women and children were a man’s future, the hope in his tent. But his own future and his own hopes had disappeared at the sound of Kaguo’s wild howls on that gloomy afternoon long ago.
With these thoughts preying on him, Gongzha’s heart began to hurt again. He picked up his butter tea and gulped it down, hoping to suppress the pain.
The old woman stood up and refilled his cup. ‘Where are you from, child?’
‘Cuoe Grassland, Ama.’
‘Cuoe Grassland?’ The old woman lifted her head and stared through the window in the roof of the tent at the white clouds drifting overhead. ‘Now that is a lovely place!’
‘Has Ama been there?’
‘No, but I’ve heard of it. A place like heaven!’ The old woman withdrew her gaze. She used a fork to lift the meat out of the water and into a bowl, placed it in front of Gongzha, and passed him a small knife. ‘Eat, my respected guest. I have nothing fancy to offer you; I can only give you this mutton to fill your stomach and give you the energy to journey across the grassland and over the mountains in search of your bear.’
Gongzha hadn’t eaten stewed mutton in a long time. Like any hunter out in the wilderness, he ate what he could hit. He didn’t stand on ceremony – to do so would have been disrespectful to his hostess. He took the meat in one hand and his knife in the other, and in a flash devoured a large part of everything in his bowl. The old woman grinned appreciatively, poured him some more tea, and passed him the salt and some hot pepper. When they heard someone approaching from outside the tent, the old woman lifted the door flap, smiled and went out.
When he finally got the point where he couldn’t fit anything else in his stomach, Gongzha stuck the knife into the rest of the meat, stood up and went out of the tent. The old woman had been joined by a young woman and they were driving sheep towards the sheep pen. He went over to them, borrowed the old woman’s slingshot and launched a few stones. They whirred through the air and landed squarely on the old ram that was trying to stray from the flock, forcing him back into line.
The young woman smiled at him. Working together, the two of them herded the sheep into the pen and shut the gate.
‘I’m Yongxi. Who are you?’ The young woman tilted her head to one side, flashing two large dimples as she smiled.
‘Gongzha.’ He strode over to take the bag of yak pats out of the old woman’s hand, swung it onto his back and returned to the tent.
The old woman smiled, her eyes narrowing, and said to her granddaughter Yongxi, ‘That child can really work!’
Yongxi giggled, swung her thin plaits behind her, and trotted over to catch up with Gongzha.
‘Where are you from?’
‘Shenzha County.’
‘Our area here is called Ejiu, that snow mountain is called Tajiapu and we are all its children.’
‘Tajiapu?’ Gongzha squinted at the distant snow mountain.
‘You know it?’ As Yongxi looked at him, the evening sunlight slanted across her face and her delicate eyelashes were so defined, you could count them.
‘I’ve heard of it,’ Gongzha said and he looked away.
Yongxi kept up with him and chattered on. ‘Tajiapu must be quite famous then, if even you’ve heard of it, but it has only a few children. There aren’t even a hundred of us herders here. Granny says there used to be many people on Tajiapu Grassland, but they left.’
‘They left? Why?’
‘It’s said that Tajiapu was invaded by demons, so it was always hailing. No grass grew, so the yaks and sheep starved to death, and the herders had no choice but to look for better pasture elsewhere. Granny said that some of them moved to Cuoe Lake.’
Gongzha turned to look at her. ‘To Cuoe Lake? Are you Nacangdeba?’
‘Yes, we’re Nacangdeba. How did you know?’
‘I’m from Cuoe Lake.’
‘We’re family?’ Yongxi jumped in front of him and grinned at him in delight, her eyes wide. She called to her grandmother in the tent, ‘Mo, he’s from Cuoe Lake and he’s Nacangdeba!’
The old woman glanced at Gongzha with a smile but said nothing.
The Nacangdeba on the grassland all had one ancestor. No matter where they wandered, they were all one family.
Gongzha stacked the yak pats by the stove. Then he went out again, found some stones and began to repair the yak enclosure. He got hot and took off his leather chuba, tying the sleeves around his waist; his weathered, coppery skin gave off a faint golden light in the evening sun. Yongxi stood by his side and helped by passing him stones. She didn’t know why, but every time she looked at the full-bearded man from Cuoe Grassland, a strange new feeling arose in her heart.
That night, Gongzha slept in the little black tent in the wilderness. The stove gave off a rosy glow and made the tent quite toasty. In its innermost part, the old woman made a bed for Gongzha out of three cushions and a new rug. The auspicious blue images on the rug had taken her a year to create; she’d planned to give the rug to her granddaughter when she was grown up and started a tent of her own. Tonight she brought it out to welcome their relative from a faraway place. Only treasured guests received such treatment and Gongzha was moved, though he said nothing. He was not one to express himself, keeping both his gratitude and his anger buried deep.
When the stars had risen and the moon hung over the mountain peaks, the grassland became so still, it was as if it had entered a different dimension. The three of them sat on their rugs in the faint light cast by the stars and the old woman told Gongzha stories of the past.
‘We were also once from Cuoe Grassland. My grandmother was called Duojilamu and her first tent was by the side of Cuoe Lake. When my mother was small, demons suddenly invaded the grassland. They went everywhere, stealing yaks, sheep and girls, and burning any tents they found. Our ancestors couldn’t defeat them, so the men ordered the women to escape during the night, taking the elderly and the children with them. That was how my mother left her home; her mother brought her here to No Man’s Land in Shuanghu. Her brothers froze to death on the road, and her father did not return. I heard that none of the men of the clan escaped; some said they were eaten by the demons.’
The old woman sat facing the fire, occasionally throwing yak pats onto the flames. The fire was perfectly hot enough, but she needed to do something to distract herself from her grief. Shaking the dust off the old stories had exposed the pain hidden beneath.
‘The year I was five, there was a great blizzard here. The snow was up to our knees and it didn’t melt for two months. The livestock all froze to death. Many people did too. The clan leaders had no choice but to tell the herders to go and find a new pasture. Most people left, but my parents only had me, so our life wasn’t that hard, and they were used to it here, so we stayed.’
‘Duojilamu? Cuoe Grassland?’ Gongzha sat on the rug, his sheepskin chuba wrapped around him, staring at the serene old woman in the firelight. Her face was a mass of wrinkles, her hair was white and wild, and her spirit was peaceful, as if she’d seen everything in life there was to see. She was like the shaft of a bow, like the craggy mountain ranges that loomed over the grassland, ravaged but steadfast. Only mothers of the grassland had that kind of face; only mothers of the grassland had that kind of mountain-like spine.
As she spoke, Gongzha thought back to that strange cave, and he muttered to himself, ‘Duojilamu?’ The name was familiar – he’d seen it somewhere:
The smoke is rising and the door to Shambhala has been opened. I must go. Duojilamu, my woman, you must raise our child. When he’s grown, he must avenge his father and drive the Jialong off our grassland.
That mysterious stone chamber, those peaceful corpses, that man who’d written his last words in the dust on the ground… Gongzha told the old woman about everything he’d seen in the cave on Chanaluo. As he talked about the men’s final words, he heard Yongxi weeping quietly beside him.
Without looking at either Yongxi or Gongzha, the old woman rose to add some water to the pot on the stove. ‘People come and people go. No matter how beautiful the grassland is, it will never belong to just one person.’ She returned to her seat and squeezed the bellows twice to fan the flames again. ‘It’s like this fire – it will die down today, but tomorrow it will brighten again. The grassland too: its flowers wither, but next year they will bloom again.’
The night slowly grew silent, and all that remained of the fire were some faintly glowing embers.
In the middle of the night, Gongzha suddenly woke up. He heard footsteps outside the tent. From his many years in the wilderness, he’d cultivated a keen pair of ears: he could tell just by listening whether it was a human or an animal drawing close.
The person approached the tent slowly, then raised the door flap. A gust of cold wind rushed in. Squinting into the moonlight, even with his eyes half closed, Gongzha could tell it was a young man. He didn’t move; he barely even drew breath.
The young man walked over to where Yongxi was sleeping, called her name softly and began to pull at her quilt.
Gongzha still didn’t move. The grassland had its traditions. When a young man came visiting at night, pursuing the young woman in his heart, no one had the right to interfere.
Yongxi seemed unwilling; she clutched at her quilt, struggled, and began to cry, calling out, ‘Mo! Mo…!’
The old woman didn’t stir. Perhaps she was sleeping, or perhaps she was waiting for something.
Gongzha didn’t stir either. He was simply respecting the customs of the grassland.
In that tiny space, Yongxi’s struggles seemed all the more helpless, her muffled cries all the more piteous. But her tears didn’t seem to have any effect on the young man. He began to pull vigorously at her arms and tear at her quilt.
Yongxi’s cries got louder and she began to swear at him.
Now Gongzha got up. He crossed the tent in two steps, grabbed the young man’s arm, twisted it behind his back and pushed him out of the tent without a word.
The last thing the young man had expected was an encounter with a man who didn’t understand the rules. He whipped out his knife and rushed at Gongzha, who was standing by the tent door. Gongzha didn’t move. He waited until the young man drew close, then grabbed his wrist, yanked him to the side and threw him to the ground, where he lay splayed like an old sheep.
He scrambled up and glowered at Gongzha, who stood there as strong and silent as an iron tower. The young man knew he was no match for him, so he turned away, cursing, clambered onto his horse and sped off.
Gongzha watched him disappear swearing into the distance. Then he went back inside the tent, walked over to his rug and crawled back into his chuba; within minutes he was breathing evenly.
Yongxi sat clutching her quilt around her, staring in confusion at Gongzha’s sleeping form. Moonlight streamed through the little skylight and illuminated her face: her eyes were misty and her cheeks were still wet with tears. The old woman’s snores were as peaceful as before.
Once this now tranquil night was over, could everything really remain unchanged?
*
When dawn broke the next day, Gongzha didn’t leave straightaway. He helped the old woman tether the sheep together in pairs while Yongxi brought over the milking bucket. As she did the milking, the old woman said with feigned carelessness, ‘Our household has no man and we need to move pastures soon. As it’s just me and Yongxi, one old woman and one young woman, we’ll have to ask a man to help us.’
‘How long until you move?’ Gongzha said lightly. He tied the horns of the last two sheep together, straightened up, and looked over the two rows of sheep.
‘Ten days. We’ll move to another side of Tajiapu.’
‘I’ll help you move and then leave,’ Gongzha said. He strode over to pour the full buckets of milk into the butter churn.
Yongxi and her grandmother stared after him as he worked busily in the morning sunshine and burst into smiles.
Gongzha said little, but his hands and feet never rested, and he kept himself occupied both inside the tent and out. He hated the thought of the compassionate old woman pushing a heavy cart over the snow mountain, and anyway, it didn’t matter to him how many days he stayed. His purpose in life was to catch Kaguo; whether he did so sooner or later, the outcome would be the same. He knew Kaguo had come to this part of the country, and if he didn’t chase her, she wouldn’t go far. He would let her survive for a few more days.
Ejiu was a true wilderness and life there was fragile. The ground was covered in pebbles the size of fingernails. If heaven was gracious and sent more rain and less hail, wind and snow, then the people and the animals could live comfortably through the year. If heaven was not gracious, it took only one season of sandstorms for the grassland to become a place of starvation. The grass that managed to endure such hardships completed its cycle swiftly – it sprouted, made rapid growth, flowered, and dropped its seeds all within a relatively short period. If the herders moved their livestock to the pastures just when the grass was at its best, there was hope for the season ahead. It was the most labour-intensive task of their year.
Before they moved the cart to the new pasture on the other side of the snow mountain, Gongzha first wanted to relocate most of the livestock there. He asked Yongxi to be his guide. On Cuoe Grassland, moving pasture was something all the families did together. The busy sounds of moving would fill the air and nothing and nobody would even contemplate attacking them, neither wolves nor other people. But in the infinite wilderness of Tajiapu, they were on their own: people had become an endangered species.
Gongzha had tied his chuba around his waist, and his long, wild hair blew in the wind. He walked with his tanned face to the sun, and his rough skin could have been used as sandpaper. Yongxi was by his side. She’d dressed carefully in a red robe with gilded edges that set off her figure perfectly; her freshly washed wavy hair had not yet dried and it rippled behind her in the wind. As she walked, she knitted something with yak wool.
The two occasionally exchanged a few sentences; usually it was Yongxi asking a question and Gongzha replying. A black dog travelled with them, racing back and forth and circling around them. As they crossed the snow mountain and meandered along the pathless slope, Gongzha and the dog worked together to push the yaks into one long line.
The reflection of the sun’s rays off the snowy ground was extremely strong and Gongzha had to keep raising his hands to shield his eyes. Yongxi called to him, opened the yak-wool circlet she’d been knitting and placed it over his eyes. He smiled at her gratefully. It was a simple but effective device. When worn over the eyes, the knitted shade protected the wearer from the glare but still kept their line of vision clear. In the highlands, where sunglasses were not yet commonplace, the herders had developed their own way of preventing snow-blindness.
‘Brother, you said that Chanaluo has an iron chain on top of it. Our Tajiapu does too!’ Yongxi said, searching for something to talk about.
Gongzha lifted his head to look at the cloud-encircled peak. ‘On the summit?’
‘Yes. I’ve been up there to see it – it looks as if it’s growing out of the rock.’
Gongzha’s heart stirred, but he said nothing. He thought about the chain, that strange symbol, the vanished Nacangdeba, the enigmatic statue of the Medicine Buddha… Try as he might, he still didn’t understand what it all meant.
‘The elders say that the chain was used to tether a Wolf Spirit meant to keep watch over the part of Princess Gesar’s treasure that was hidden on Tajiapu.’
‘A Wolf Spirit?’ How could there be another chained Wolf Spirit? Gongzha thought to himself. Chanaluo’s chain was to bind a Wolf Spirit, Tajiapu’s chain was also to bind a Wolf Spirit, although one was meant to guard the grassland and the other to guard treasure. Chanaluo and Tajiapu stood over five hundred kilometres apart and seemed unconnected, but there was apparently a mysterious, hidden thread that linked them.
By the time they’d crossed the snow mountain, the sky was already darkening. They found a place out of the wind, tethered the ropes to the ground, lined up the yaks and tied them together, and left the dog to watch them. Then they selected a yak each and lay down beside its soft, warm belly.
Under the night sky, Yongxi’s black eyes gleamed like two stars. When Gongzha sensed her gaze resting on him as he lay in his nest by the yak’s side, he was well aware of its meaning. But his heart had already followed Cuomu to a distant place. It would be hard for him to fall for another woman.
‘Brother Gongzha,’ Yongxi complained lightly, ‘I’m so cold!’
Gongzha threw his chuba over to her.
‘What will you do?’ Yongxi lifted up the chuba and covered herself with it, looking at him with an air of quiet complaint. How could he understand so little about attraction? If it had been one of the shadow hunters in his place, they would have come over to her long ago.
‘I’m used to it!’ Gongzha said, and closed his eyes. It was not that he had no desire for a woman, it was that when he was alone at night, he usually thought of Cuomu’s warm body. He could not allow another woman to take her place.
As soon as dawn broke, Yongxi got up and made a fire with some yak pats to boil tea. They ate some meat, then freed the yaks and continued on.
When they were almost at the pasture, Gongzha discovered that two wild yaks were following them. That didn’t surprise or worry him. Yaks were not like wolves: as grass-eating animals, they didn’t hurt people unless they were angry. It was their mating season, and unlike the domesticated yaks, the wild bulls had to fight for the right to mate. Those that lost out would quite often set their sights on the domesticated yak herd, and because they were three times larger than the domesticated bulls, they were usually successful. The mating life of a yak was a real example of survival of the fittest. The main thing to watch out for was that the domesticated females didn’t run off with the wild bulls. Gongzha instructed the dog to watch the yaks carefully and to keep the females from leaving the herd.
There was no one else at the new pasture; the black tent stood all alone between heaven and earth. Gongzha did not sleep that night but took his gun and rode around the area. When he failed to find any traces of wolves or bears, he was relieved. Even so, he was reluctant to leave Yongxi all alone in the wilderness, far from any signs of human life, while he returned for her grandmother. On Cuoe Grassland, a young woman of Yongxi’s age would never have been out on her own on such a lonely pasture. She would have stayed with the family tent under the protection of her father and brothers. But Yongxi was used to that way of life, used to dealing with the wind and rain of the wilderness. She and her grandmother had struggled on by themselves since her childhood, and she knew how to keep herself safe.
When the sun had risen in the sky, it was time for Gongzha to leave. He didn’t want Yongxi’s grandmother to bring the heavy wagon over the snow mountain by herself.
Yongxi stood by the tent and handed the gun to Gongzha. ‘You should take the gun – what if you meet some wolves? I’ll be fine. I’ve got the dog for company, haven’t I?’
‘I’m a man!’ Gongzha said, and leapt onto his horse.
As he whipped it to urge it forward, Yongxi said loudly, ‘Brother…’
Gongzha turned and shot her a questioning look.
‘You… you’ll come back, won’t you?’ she asked gloomily, tears welling in her eyes. She truly feared he might not return.
‘Don’t worry.’ Gongzha whipped the horse’s rump fiercely and rode off into the reddened morning clouds, leaving a column of dust in his wake.
Yongxi watched his silhouette disappear into the light on the horizon. Then she turned around and began to tidy up, humming a herder’s song.
A pack of wild asses trotted over. When they saw Yongxi busying herself around her tent, they were startled but not afraid. They’d got used to seeing that tent there over the years. The two wild yak bulls slowly drew close.
*
They had finally finished moving to the new pasture. Because Gongzha was there, the two wild yak bulls had left again. But now a trail of dust was floating towards them, kicked up from some distance away. Yongxi suddenly came running back to the tent from the foot of the mountain, waving her hands and yelling to Gongzha, ‘Brother, you must leave quickly! Qiangba is coming with a posse!’
Yongxi was clearly scared out of her wits, but Gongzha had no idea why.
She ran over and began pushing Gongzha towards his horse. ‘It’s the man who came to the tent that night, he’s brought a posse to take revenge on you for throwing him out. They have guns – they’re poachers and they wouldn’t think twice about killing someone. Go quickly, Brother! Quick! Once you get over the snow mountain you’ll be on a grassland so vast that not even an eagle can spot a sparrow there.’
Gongzha stood his ground. He turned, patted Yongxi on the shoulder, then went into the tent and brought out his old gun. He placed the forked stand on the ground and kept one hand on the butt. His chuba was tied around his waist as always, its greying sheep’s wool drifting in the wind. He stood in front of the tent with his legs planted wide and watched with narrowed eyes as the riders raced towards them from the mountains. It was as if he was observing a herd of wild asses running freely and considering whether or not to fire a shot to scare them.
The posse was heading straight for them. When they saw Gongzha and Yongxi, they tried to bunch their horses together, to look as threatening as possible. But the horses wouldn’t obey; they scattered left and right and cast the formation into disarray.
The young man that Gongzha had thrown out of the tent that night was one of the posse. He leapt off his horse and glared angrily at Gongzha. Then he turned to the centre of the posse and addressed a stern-faced man wearing a red fox-fur hat and black leather clothes and sitting astride a black horse. ‘It’s him, boss, he’s the one that chucked me out. An outsider who has the audacity to break our rules – he shows us too little respect.’
‘Qiangba, this has nothing to do with him.’ Yongxi moved to stand in front of Gongzha. ‘He’s only passing through – he’s a guest of our grassland,’ she said angrily.
Qiangba glanced at Gongzha. ‘He must abide by grassland rules, Yongxi,’ he said nastily. ‘He has interfered in our affairs and now he must take the consequences.’
Gongzha pushed past Yongxi and gave Qiangba a cool stare. ‘The grassland has another rule: if you want to win a woman, her heart is more important than her body.’
‘What grassland man doesn’t go visiting? You’re an outsider, what right do you have to concern yourself with what I do?’ Qiangba patted his gun.
‘Since I have concerned myself, I’m not going to back down now,’ Gongzha said lightly.
He looked at the man on the black horse: the image of an eagle about to take flight was displayed on the horse’s bridle, a clear sign of its owner’s status. The rider was Jijia, the leader of the shadow hunters. It was said he would kill a man without blinking and that it was he who was responsible for slaughtering the Tibetan antelopes in the area. It was also said that he had a good heart and that when disaster struck he would help the poor without leaving his name. One rumour followed another. Very few people on the grassland had seen him – they only knew that whenever his eagle appeared, blood and trouble followed.
‘You don’t like Qiangba?’ Jijia asked, shooting Yongxi a playful look from under the brim of his fox-fur hat. The sound of his voice was dry and scratchy, like sand being ground over paper.
Yongxi raised her eyes and couldn’t help shivering as she looked at the arrogant man. She lowered her head but her words were clear. ‘I don’t like him.’
Jijia looked at his men and said, ‘Leave this woman out of it!’
‘Boss…’ Qiangba lifted his head to protest, but when he saw the serious expression on his boss’s face, he dropped his gaze. Even though men were free to visit tents, the desire for an encounter had to be mutual. If it became known that a man had forced a woman, that would not go down well. Of course, out there in the wilderness, even if there was such a rumour, how many people would hear it? That was why Qiangba did what he liked.
Jijia turned back to Gongzha and said unhurriedly, ‘However, you have broken our grassland’s rules. This affair must be resolved.’
‘How shall we resolve it?’ Gongzha said, looking markedly unconcerned.
His cool attitude irritated Jijia. No one out there in the wilderness disrespected him: he was always treated with fear and reverence. That was the rule. So what gave this man, this grassland wanderer, the right to look at him with such levity? ‘How about this?’ he said. ‘We will do as we always do on the grassland: you will shoot it out on horseback, from a distance of a hundred paces, and let fate take its course.’
‘Boss…’ Qiangba called back, clearly annoyed.
‘Alright!’ Gongzha said in a low voice. At his whistle, the old brown horse that had accompanied him all those years trotted over. Gongzha mounted and without a second glance at the posse rode out into the sandy wastes.
Qiangba glanced at Yongxi with irritation. He had no option but to climb onto the back of his horse and follow suit.
Yongxi looked at the horses, standing waiting in the distance, and hurried over to Jijia. ‘Why are you making them gamble their lives? Why are you so cruel? Is slaughtering antelopes not enough? Do you have to slaughter people too?’
When the men around Jijia heard Yongxi’s words, they straightened up and stared at her with wide eyes. In all their years roaming the wilderness with Jijia, they’d never come across anyone who’d dared raise her voice to their boss like that. For a moment they were so shocked, they forgot they were supposed to shout her down.
‘Who is it that you don’t want to die?’ Jijia didn’t seem to mind this herder girl shouting at him at all. He was calm, as if she’d just asked him something quite unimportant.
Seeing how cool Jijia was, Yongxi spat out her reply. ‘Neither of them should die. It’s you that should die.’ She regretted her words as soon as she’d said them. What was she doing provoking this notorious demon, the most evil man in the wilderness? If she pushed too far, it wouldn’t take a genius to imagine the consequences.
‘I should die?’ Jijia leapt off his horse and strode angrily over to Yongxi, his whip raised ready to strike.
The other horsemen were taken aback. ‘Boss, she’s a woman!’
‘You…’ Jijia’s face was livid with rage. Looking at Yongxi’s impassive expression, all he wanted to do was to thrash her. He had never hit a woman, but this woman had made him incandescent with anger. In the end, the whip did not fall. Instead, he inwardly cursed this impossible woman; he wanted to pick her up and hurl her into the void.
Jijia’s eyes burnt fiercely, but Yongxi showed no fear. Only heaven knew how afraid she really was and how she longed for a crevice to rush into and hide.
Jijia felt a great fire rising within him: he wanted to curse someone or even kill someone. This woman was irrational – didn’t she know he was helping her? If the conflict didn’t get resolved today, those two men would be forever fighting over her and her small tent would know no peace.
‘You really don’t want either of them to die?’
‘Of course not. Do you think I’m like you, as careless with people’s lives as if they were sand or grass?’
‘Am I some sort of demon to you?’ Jijia’s eyes blazed again. He took a step forward and glowered at Yongxi.
‘Bah, a demon is a hundred times better.’ Yongxi lifted her head and stared at him as she waited for the whip to fall.
Looking at her stony face, a strange new thought suddenly came into Jijia’s head. It seemed this woman considered him to be beneath her; she was behaving as if he was a piece of grit, a grain of sand that she wanted to keep from getting into her eyes. What if the grain of sand were to land on her? The thought brought a cold, malicious smile to his lips. ‘If you are determined that neither of them should die, we can arrange that. There is a way. But I’m not sure you’ll agree to it.’
Seeing his chilly smile, Yongxi couldn’t stop herself from trembling. This demon who would kill without batting an eye… who knew what kinds of torturous ideas circled in his head?
‘If you’re not interested, then forget about it. Let one of them die. Once one of them is dead, you’ll be safe.’ Jijia gave a faint smile and laughed carelessly. He turned and raised his hand, preparing to shout the signal to begin.
‘No, I don’t want either of them to die,’ Yongxi shouted fearfully. ‘Tell me, what’s the alternative?’
Jijia turned his head and, paying no heed to what was happening, and without changing his expression or letting his heart race, said quietly but clearly, as if this was all just part of the plan, ‘Be my woman.’
‘What?’ Yongxi looked at him in shock, thinking she’d misheard.
‘What?’ The men stared at their boss in surprise, also thinking they’d misheard.
‘If you become my woman, Qiangba won’t dare bother you again. As for that man, he can live.’
Yongxi rolled her eyes. ‘You’re so sure Gongzha will die?’ she said uncooperatively.
‘He’s called Gongzha?’ Jijia pretended not to see the look of amazement on his men’s faces. He kept his eyes on Yongxi, speaking softly as if he was reasoning with an intransigent child. ‘If Qiangba dies, things will be even worse for you and your grandmother. My companions are not very reasonable men; they’re not going to watch their comrade die and do nothing about it, are they? Even if I help you, I can’t watch them every day, and once my back is turned, they may come and find you and take their revenge.’ Jijia raised his voice when he said this and added threateningly, ‘Isn’t that right, brothers?’
The other men knew perfectly well that even if Qiangba died, they wouldn’t seek revenge. The grassland rules were clear: if a dispute was to be resolved with a fight and that fight was fairly won, that was the end of it, no matter who died. Even so, the men all nodded vigorously and shouted, ‘Of course, boss, of course we’d take revenge.’
‘Alright, I agree,’ Yongxi shouted in despair; she couldn’t bear to hear any more.
Jijia smiled and glanced at the man to his right. In tacit understanding, the man galloped off, shouting, ‘Don’t fire! The woman belongs to our boss. You don’t need to fight!’
‘What?’ Qiangba turned round, his eyes as large as a yak’s. ‘What did you say? She’s our boss’s woman?’
‘Our boss has taken a fancy to her, so she’s our boss’s woman!’
Qiangba noted his comrade’s serious tone and glanced back at his boss, who seemed to be embracing the woman and smiling contentedly. He had no choice but to shoulder his gun and reluctantly ride back, his head low.
Yongxi’s eyes were full of loathing. As Jijia stared into them, he kept his expression neutral, even though he was laughing inside. ‘I have to go. I’ll come and get you when I’ve taken care of my affairs. And don’t forget that you agreed to be my woman. I don’t like the idea of other men living in my woman’s tent.’ He leapt onto his horse. ‘I’ll come and visit you in ten days.’ And with that, he whipped his horse and led the posse away. They disappeared into the distance in a flash.
The wilderness became peaceful again. Several white clouds hung from the blue curtain of the heavens. On the distant sand dunes, antelopes gazed curiously at their surrounds. Herds of yak and sheep nibbled lazily at the grass.
Yongxi’s life was now quite different to what it had been. Gongzha took on all the work she used to do, so most of the time now she did nothing but churn butter or untie her plaits and redo them. What she wanted was a dependable man who could support a tent. Someone like Gongzha. Someone who would only have one woman in his heart and who would stay at his own pasture.
She sat on the sandy ground holding a small lamb, watching the figure of the man busying himself in the sunlight, a smile on her lips. How wonderful it would be if things could always be like this!
Gongzha reapplied mud to the lamb pen, fixed the holes in the tent where the wind blew in, cleared the area around the pasture, and scared away the lone wolves that were eyeing the flock. When everything was finally in order, he began to pack his things, although he didn’t have much to pack. His clothes doubled as blankets, his riding boots were already on his feet, his gun was leaning next to the stove, and the powder was in its leather bag; he only had to mount his horse and then he could go.
He was worried about how to tell them he was leaving. The old woman and Yongxi had been very good to him, and his heart, which had been wandering for so long, had been touched by their warmth. Particularly Yongxi, and she’d hinted several times that Granny also hoped he might stay. It wasn’t that he misunderstood what staying would mean; it was that his heart was already full, and he had no way of emptying it and filling it with a new life. He thought that if Cuomu had still been with him, he’d have felt so blessed, he wouldn’t have considered taking even a single step away from their tent.
When the sun rose, Gongzha shouldered his gun and stood out on the plain staring in silence at the distant mountains, his brown horse at his side.
Yongxi was churning butter in the large wooden churn, one stroke up and one stroke down, occasionally lifting her head to look at the solitary Gongzha. The sight of his sad, lonely silhouette pained her. Was she being selfish keeping him there? His heart was not in their tent; what good was keeping his body there? She should let him go. He belonged out there in the vast wilderness. She could only hope that one day, when his body was weary and his legs weak, she would hear his steps outside her tent once again.
So that night Yongxi wrapped up the butter in a sheep’s stomach, placed a freshly whetted knife in Gongzha’s sheath, and said, ‘Go. Go and do what you need to do.’
Gongzha nodded gratefully.
The next morning, as Gongzha was leading his horse away, the old woman came rushing out and put a leg of dried yak meat on its back. ‘Child, when you are tired, come here to rest.’
He nodded.
Yongxi stood by the side of the tent, her narrow shoulders shivering in the wind. Despite all her efforts, he was still determined to leave. Would she ever see him again? Men who wandered never made plans. And even if he did return, it wouldn’t be to this small tent in No Man’s Land.
Gongzha mounted silently, cantered a few steps, then looked back.
The old woman had placed her hand on her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun. Yongxi was standing in front of the tent, rolling her plaits back and forth in her hand; she too was watching him. The black sheepdog was by her side, staring at the man on horseback. A light blue thread of smoke floated up from the small tent that had warmed his heart; it too was basking now, in the rays of the sun.
He whipped his horse and sped away. The pasture became as peaceful as a painting from ancient history.