They had heard the cry inside the house, too. Li Guihua put on her clothes and came out of the east room. “What happened just now?”
“It’s nothing. An alpha wolf got into the yard. Dongzi slashed it and cut off a section of its tail!”
“So it really was a wolf! Dongzi, are you hurt?” Li Guihua didn’t care whether he’d hit the wolf’s tail or anything else—her first concern was Li Xiangdong.
“I’m fine, Aunt. Too bad the wolf got away!”
“Let it go. As long as none of you are hurt, that’s all that matters. All right, hurry up and shut the door, then go back to sleep!”
“Okay!”
Li Xiangdong answered, then shut the door behind him and slid the bolt into place.
After that little interruption, Li Xiangdong didn’t open his eyes again until morning. It was already light outside, and Aunt Li Guihua had started a fire in the main room to cook breakfast.
After getting up and washing up quickly, Li Xiangdong went outside again to check the route the wolf had taken when it fled the night before.
The wolf had its tail chopped off the night before. After jumping over the wall, it had headed north toward the woods, leaving a trail of bright red blood across the snow.
If the wolf had been injured somewhere else, he might have been able to track it, but with its tail injured, there was no way.
He could see its tracks, but all four of the wolf’s legs were sound. There was no way he could catch up on two legs alone.
Li Xiangdong had no choice but to give up on the idea.
After breakfast, Li Xiangdong took his letter of introduction and household registration documents and went with Sun Qingfeng to the production team leader’s house. Today, they were going to town to register Li Xiangdong as a resident.
Only after registering could Li Xiangdong receive his basic ration grain from the village and be allocated a homestead plot.
The paperwork was simple enough. With the production team leader accompanying them, Feng Shouye knew exactly whom to see and in what order. The three of them set out around seven or eight in the morning and finished everything before noon.
They treated Feng Shouye to lunch in town, and the three returned to the village around nightfall.
Over the next few days, Li Xiangdong got to know the people in the village, collected his ration grain from the production brigade, and applied to make that old, dilapidated house his homestead.
Sun Qingfeng also spent five yuan to buy the old muzzleloader from Old Chen.
An old muzzleloader was a kind of front-loading smoothbore gun. In Northeast China it was called an old muzzleloader or a heavy-barrel gun, while in the south it was usually called a homemade gun or a homemade musket.
The old muzzleloaders of that time were different from those of the late Qing. Their barrels were now made from seamless steel pipes, usually bought directly from factories.
When making one, the blacksmith would seal one end with an iron plug to form the bottom of the barrel. The barrel was between one and one and a half meters long, with no rifling inside.
Then he would shape the stock and butt from wood. Grooves in the stock held the barrel, trigger, and other components in place, while the butt was made flat so it could be braced against the shoulder when firing.
Black powder was generally used as the propellant.
The gunpowder was poured in through the muzzle and tamped down with a gun cleaning rod. Then iron shot or a slug was loaded. Between the bullet and the powder, a wad made of stiff cardboard or scraps of cloth was also placed, to provide greater force when fired.
Finally, a percussion cap was fitted at the touchhole, and then the gun was ready to aim and fire. However, these old muzzleloaders were very inaccurate; shooting them was all guesswork.
With fine iron shot, the effective range was only twenty or thirty meters. Fortunately, there was a lot of shot, and it spread into a wide fan when fired, covering a fairly large area.
For small animals such as pheasants and rabbits, you didn’t need much shot. As long as they were within that spread, you could usually hit them.
But for large animals such as wild boars and wolves, iron shot was useless; you needed a slug. Its range was somewhat greater, reaching around fifty meters. Beyond that, both accuracy and stopping power dropped sharply.
Once he had the gun, Li Xiangdong practiced loading and firing at home, then went outside the village and fired two shots.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to practice more; gunpowder, iron shot, and slugs all cost money, so he couldn’t just fire away to his heart’s content.
Besides, there wasn’t much point in practicing his aim with this old muzzleloader. It simply wasn’t capable of being accurate.
Still, he needed to prepare a few things before heading into the mountains. The old muzzleloader could only fire once before it had to be reloaded with powder and shot.
If an animal charged at him while he was reloading, he wouldn’t be able to handle it.
So he cleaned up the machete from the house, heated it until it glowed red, and hammered it into the shape of a spearhead.
He found an elm branch about as thick as a child’s wrist, fitted the reshaped machete to it, and made a spear.
That finished his initial preparations.
Once everything was ready, Li Xiangdong slung the old muzzleloader over his back, carried the spear in his hand, tucked away some dry rations, and took some thin hemp rope to use for setting snares. He had only just learned how from Sun Qingfeng.
But Sun Qingfeng was only a half-baked hand himself. What kind of good student could he possibly teach?
It was all just guesswork. He’d set the snares on paths pheasants and rabbits used, then leave it to fate whether anything got caught.
Before entering the woods, Li Xiangdong was still full of confidence.
But once he was actually in the woods, he was at a loss.
There were animal tracks everywhere, but he could only identify a few kinds. He also couldn’t tell when the tracks had been made or which direction the animals had gone.
He found several paths left by rabbits and pheasants and set more than a dozen snares along them.
After that, Li Xiangdong carried his spear and continued deeper into the woods.
He had no particular destination. He just went wherever his feet took him, planning to circle back when the sun began to set.
And so the day passed.
He was exhausted, but hadn’t caught a single animal. He had spotted a roe deer in the distance, but by the time he chased after it, it had already run far away.
When the sun began to set, he had no choice but to head home.
Fortunately, Li Guihua and the others hadn’t expected Li Xiangdong to bring anything back on his first trip into the mountains. When he returned empty-handed, they comforted him and told him not to rush; he could take his time.
Li Xiangdong knew this wasn’t something he could accomplish in a day. Since he had no Master to guide him, he could only slowly build up experience on his own.
He kept at it for more than ten days, but didn’t catch a thing. Even the snares he set hadn’t caught so much as a pheasant feather.
This left Li Xiangdong feeling rather discouraged.
But at times like this, Li Xiangdong’s resolve to catch something only grew stronger.
If he couldn’t have steamed buns, he’d at least have to save face!
The next morning, Li Xiangdong got up early and set out when the sky was only just beginning to lighten.
And sure enough, the day was finally kind to him.
Of the dozen or so snares he had set, one had caught a one-eyed pheasant. When he came upon it, it was still struggling furiously.
There was no way Li Xiangdong would let it get away. He swung the gunstock at it several times and killed it. Then he cut off its head, drained the blood, and stuffed it into a cloth bag.
With his old muzzleloader on his shoulder, he continued on.