36: The Sound at the Saddle

The sound came at the second hour of the noon, two days later.

Heizi was at the rock-face hollow's small fire, cooking — slowly, in a small clay pot the eastern-pine hermit had given them, perhaps the smallest cook-pot the country had — a small portion of millet with a small piece of the dried hare from yesterday's snare. Wang Er was at the back of the lean-to, mending the small tear that had come up at the eastern lashing in the second night of wind. Tie-zhu was on the small flat slab at the western edge of the flat, carving — finally, with the small whittling knife held very steady — the small careful eye on the small unfinished elm-wood bird that Lan-gu had said she would finish.

The lame boy had decided, the previous evening, that he would do it himself.

He had said, in the small low voice he had been speaking in, *the bird is mine. The promise was — was that she would finish it. The promise was — perhaps — that I would bring it back to her finished, by my own hand. The eye — the eye is mine to put. The dark ribbon will keep on the body.* He had said it without looking up from the bird; he had said it the way the lame boy now said most of the things he said, in a small specific way that was not asking permission but stating, by the small unornamented evenness of his voice, what he had decided. Heizi had not, at the small fire, argued.

The lame boy had, this morning, been working at the eye for the past two hours.

The sound came across the country.

It was — at first — only a small far hum, like the hum of a wasp at the edge of hearing. Heizi looked up from the small clay pot. Wang Er, at the back of the lean-to, set down the lashing without sound. Tie-zhu, at the slab, paused with the small whittling knife at the eye and held it suspended.

The hum became, after one beat, a sound that was not a hum. It was the small distant carry of a man's voice, calling out — not in alarm; not in challenge; only in the small specific way a man calls out at four *li*, when the small thin air of the upper hills carries the voice across the small narrow valleys with the small bright clarity that the country gave a single shout in summer.

The voice was answered.

It was answered by another man's voice — also distant, but closer; from the small saddle of the third ridge east, perhaps. The two voices crossed, briefly, in the air. Heizi could not make out the words. He could make out only the small specific shape of the calling: *one man calling at distance, one man answering at the saddle.*

Then there was a small interval of silence.

The interval was perhaps the length of a long breath.

Then the small distant carry of more voices — not one or two, several. Several men shouting, briefly, at the saddle of the third ridge east. The shouting did not — by the small specific arc of the voices — last long. It rose. It cut off. It rose again, more briefly. It cut off.

Then there was, again, silence.

The silence stayed silent.

Heizi did not, at the small fire, move.

Wang Er, at the back of the lean-to, did not move.

Tie-zhu, at the slab, did not move.

The country around them — the small spring at the back of the rock face running its small steady run, the small wind in the upper pines, the small far call of an upper-hills bird — went on as before. Nothing about the country had changed except for the small interval that had taken, somewhere on the third ridge's saddle four *li* away, an unknown number of small distant voices and had cut them off.

Heizi closed his eyes for the space of one breath.

He opened them.

He went back, very slowly, to stirring the small clay pot.

He understood, at the small fire, what had happened. He had understood it before the second silence had fallen. The eight men of the band, at their small green-wood ambush fire, had — by the small specific arrangement of the saddle — caught whoever had been coming through. The first voice had been the man coming through; he had called out, at the lip of the saddle, perhaps to some companion behind him, perhaps to the country itself in the small ordinary way a single walker calls out at a saddle to test the silence. The answering voice had been one of the band — perhaps the leader with the short bow, calling back from the saddle, in the small false friendliness of an ambush's first move, drawing the walker forward into the small specific reach of the band.

The second wave of voices had been the catching.

The cutting off had been the catching's end.

Heizi did not, in the small fire, look at the brothers. He stirred the pot.

Wang Er, after a long beat, came around to the front of the lean-to and sat at the fire's small low edge.

Tie-zhu, after another beat, set the small whittling knife down on the slab — with the small careful precision of a man whose hand was not, on this afternoon, steady enough for the eye. He came over and sat at the fire's other edge.

The three of them sat for a long time.

Heizi stirred the small clay pot. He poured the small portions of the millet into the three small wooden bowls. He laid a small slice of the dried hare into each bowl. He passed the bowls.

They ate.

They ate slowly. The food was — by the small honest measure of the upper hills — good food. The hare was the small slow-cooked sweetness of an animal that had been on the right diet of upper-hills brush. The millet was the millet. Salt was the small final pinch from the eastern-pine hermit's twist. The small clay pot, when Heizi laid it down in the embers, gave off the small good smell of millet at the bottom of a hot pot.

Heizi ate his portion. He did not, in the eating, allow himself any guilt. The guilt would not, by the small unhurried arithmetic he was learning, undo the small distant cutting off at the saddle of the third ridge east.

He ate.

After the bowls were empty, Wang Er said, in the small low voice he had been using since the funeral: *brother.*

"Yes."

"They will, perhaps, be moving by tomorrow."

"Yes."

"They have what they wanted. They will, perhaps, take whatever it is back to wherever they have come from. East, perhaps. Or west, along the contour."

"West, by the contour, is more likely. There is — by the man with the lame mule — bandit road on the lower contour. They will, perhaps, be heading back to that road."

"Then we are in the path."

"We are in the path."

"Tomorrow at dawn we should be — should be more careful than we have been the past two days."

"Yes."

They were silent for a while.

Tie-zhu said: *big brother.*

"Yes, lame brother."

"The snares."

"Yes."

"They are still on the contour."

"Yes."

"If the band comes west along the contour — they will see the snares. They will know there are men in this country. They will — they will, perhaps, look for us."

"Yes. We will take down the snares before dawn. I had said three days — that is today; the snares come down before dawn tomorrow."

"All right."

"All eight. The empty ones too. Anything that says a man has been here."

"Yes, big brother."

Heizi, by the fire, looked at the small unfinished elm-wood bird where Tie-zhu had laid it on the slab.

"Lame brother."

"Yes."

"The eye."

Tie-zhu paused.

"I — I will not finish it today, big brother. The hand is not steady. I will — I will finish it some other day."

"All right."

The afternoon went on. They did not, in the afternoon, leave the small flat place. They did the small careful work of the afternoon — Wang Er finished the lashing at the back; Heizi, at the slab, sharpened the militia knife with the small flat stone in long even strokes; Tie-zhu, at the lean-to's south face, did the small repair of the front brush that had loosened in yesterday's wind. The work was the work. The hands moved. The hours passed.

The wind was steady. The sky was bright. The small thin column of smoke from their banked fire — at the small new fire ring in the rock-face hollow, where the smoke went up against the rock and dissipated before it cleared the ridge — was, by Heizi's eye, invisible from any quadrant beyond the long low ridge. The lean-to's south face, with the small additional brush, was — by the eye — invisible from the long low ridge above.

The country was, by the small careful work of two months and the small specific work of the past two afternoons, willing to keep them hidden.

They were not, on this afternoon, going to be visible.

Heizi understood it. He filed it.

That night, he took the first watch.

He took it from the small banked fire in the rock-face hollow — outside the lean-to, where the small smoke went up against the rock and was lost. He took it with the militia knife at his belt and the small charcoal-burner's knife — no, that was buried — with Old Zhang's old militia knife at his belt and the small flat stone Wang Er had carried from Cao Ergou's hut beside him. He sat with his back against the rock face. He listened.

The shape of the silence, on this night, was a different shape than yesterday's.

It had — somewhere east, four *li* off — a band of eight men sitting at a saddle at their banked fire, with whatever they had taken at the noon. The whatever was, by Heizi's reckoning, perhaps a small caravan of one or two men with a small load of goods; or a small remnant family on the road; or a single peddler with a small mule. Heizi did not know. He would, he understood, never know. The whatever-it-was was now a thing the country had taken, in the small specific way the country had taken Yan Liu-er at the bend of the second valley's small stream, in the small specific way the country had taken the four-year-old's family on the log west of the eastern saddle of the third valley.

He filed *the whatever* in the small interior register, without a name.

He did not weep.

He had — in the small four-month accumulation of the road — learned that the weeping was for some moments and not for others; that the weeping for *the whatever* would be a weeping for an abstraction, and an abstraction did not deserve the same kind of water as a body; that the body of the small one at his sister's grave or the small thin chest of Ah Si on the doorstone or the small lock of dark hair on the shrine's offering plate were the things to weep for, and the abstractions — the four-year-old's mother gone past in the patrol's sweep, the woman in the lean-to with the line at her temple, the fourteen-year-old sitting with her shoulder against the middle one's — were the things to file.

The filing was different from the weeping.

It was — by the small unhurried way the upper hills had been teaching him — a different work.

He sat his watch.

In the morning, before the second cock, he and Wang Er went up the small contour to take down the snares.

They went together, at the careful pace of two men who knew there was a band somewhere in the further country to the east. Wang Er went ahead; he had — by the small acquired specificity of two months of upper-hills work — a slightly better eye for the small old hare-runs than Heizi had, and could see a snare at twenty paces in the dim grey where Heizi could see it only at five.

They took down the snares. The first, the second, the third — empty; the fourth, with a small grey hare; the fifth, the sixth, the seventh — empty; the eighth, with another small hare. They took the two hares. They unwound the small loops of cord from the saplings; they untied the small cords from the ground stakes; they coiled the cord and put it in Heizi's hempen sack. They scattered, on each snare's place, a small handful of fresh leaves over the small flat depressions where the saplings had been bent — to obscure, by the small careful method, the small marks of a young man's having laid a snare-line at the runs.

They came back to the camp at the second hour after dawn.

Tie-zhu was at the small fire. He had been on the watch since they had gone. He had — by the small specific calmness of his face — kept the watch at his own pace.

"Brothers."

"Lame brother."

"The eye."

He held up the small unfinished elm-wood bird.

The eye was on the bird.

It was small. It was the small dark eye of an upper-hills bird — perhaps the yellow-eyed small grey one that came down to springs at dusk, perhaps the long-mournful one that called from far off at the eastern slopes — that the lame boy had decided, by the small private discipline of a young man at his work, looked like the right kind of eye for the bird Lan-gu had carved from a piece of the elm at the western edge of the small open square at the hamlet of two wells.

The eye was charcoal-black, set into the wood with the very tip of the small whittling knife, with a small fine dot at the center that was the small thin bright reflection that an upper-hills bird's eye had at the moment it took notice of a thing.

The lame boy had finished it, before dawn, at the watch.

He had not been steady in the afternoon. He had been steady at the watch, in the small thin grey light of the third hour of the watch, alone, at the rock-face hollow's small banked fire, with the brothers asleep in the lean-to.

Heizi looked at the eye for a long beat.

"Lame brother. It is — it is a good eye."

"Yes, big brother."

"Lan-gu will see it."

"Yes, big brother."

"And the bird —"

The lame boy looked at him.

"The bird is finished. I will carry it to her."

He did not say *if I come back.* He had said that at the door. He had said it once. He was not, by the small even discipline he had been carrying since the funeral, going to say it twice. The bird was finished. The carrying was, in some unfound year, a thing that would happen, or that would not.

Heizi nodded.

He filed the eye in the small interior register beside the small wooden tiger on the flat stone at the second bend, and the small carved horse with the dark ribbon at the eastern end of the third row, and the small dark date in Wei Da-niang's broad warm hand.

He did not say anything more.

The day went on.

By the second hour after the noon, the small thin column of smoke at the saddle of the third ridge east was no longer visible. The band had moved. Heizi went, at the third hour, very low, on his stomach, to the lip of the eastern saddle of the long low ridge and looked. He could see, at four *li*, the small cleared place at the saddle of the third ridge — the small flat where the band had been; the small black ring where the green-wood fire had been laid; the small careful absence of any standing person at the saddle.

He could see also, at the small further line of the contour going west, a small fresh line of dust, half a *li* below the third ridge.

The band was moving.

He counted, by the small old method.

He counted seven.

He looked again. He looked carefully.

He counted seven.

One of the eight, by some small specificity Heizi did not know — perhaps a man wounded in the catching, perhaps a man left at the saddle to keep watch, perhaps a man dead in the small interval of voices at the noon — was no longer with the band. The seven were moving west along the contour, at the slow careful pace of men with a small load between them.

Heizi watched them for a long beat.

He filed: *seven men, moving west along the lower contour. Approximately three *li* below us. Pace: the pace of men carrying a small load, walking with a small caravan — perhaps a captive — between them. Estimated arrival at our line of contour: one and a half days, if the contour stays straight; possibly more if it bends.*

He came back from the lip.

He went down to the small fire at the rock-face hollow.

"Brothers."

They looked up.

"They are moving. Seven of them, west, on the lower contour, three *li* below us. They are slow. They have a small load between them. They will be — by the contour — at our line in about a day and a half. Perhaps less."

Wang Er thought.

"What do we do."

Heizi paused.

He had thought about this on the lip.

"We will — we will be silent. The camp is hidden. The fire is in the rock-face hollow. The lean-to is invisible from the long low ridge. The snares are down. The contour above us is clean of any sign of us. We will not, in the next day and a half, leave the small flat place. We will not lay any new fire — only the small banked fire at the rock-face hollow, only at the noon, only enough for the small clay pot. We will eat cold at morning and evening."

"For how long."

"Two days, perhaps three. Until we are sure they have gone past our latitude. After three days, if the country has been quiet, we go back to the small daily shape. We will not, this season, lay snares on the contour above. We will lay them, if we lay them at all, on the small western face of the long low ridge, where the band is unlikely to walk."

Wang Er nodded slowly.

"All right."

That night, the small banked fire at the rock-face hollow was so small it cast no light past the small ring of stones. Heizi banked it carefully, in the small layered way Mei-er had banked the brazier at his foster father's house. The night was warm. The lean-to held the small body warmth of three brothers without need of the fire. They slept.

Heizi took the first watch.

He sat with his back against the rock face. He listened.

The shape of the silence, on this night, had — somewhere on the lower contour, three *li* below them — seven men with a small load between them, walking, perhaps, at a slow pace by the small thin moon's last light, before laying their own banked fire wherever they meant to lay it.

He listened.

He did not, at any quadrant, hear them.

The country, in its small specific way, was holding the seven men at three *li*, and was holding the three brothers at the small flat place, and was — by the small old patient measure of the upper hills — keeping them apart.

He sat his watch.

The owls of the upper hills called twice.

The small banked fire at the rock-face hollow burned down to a single small live coal under the ash.

In the dim grey of the third hour of the watch, Heizi reached into the inner pocket of his shirt, in the small unconscious gesture of a young man checking that the small things were in the small order, and felt — in their small specific places — the indigo pouch with the silk square and the millet grain; the wrapped jade with his foster mother's hair from Old Zhang; the small twist of paper with the eastern-pine hermit's incense for the unfound-woman's shrine; the small piece of plain dark jade from Lu Wen-han, returned to his pocket from the foot of the path at the bear-back's grove of twelve pines.

The small things were in their small order.

He filed it.

He sat his watch through the night.