Chapter 296: Acting Separately
Chapter 296: Chapter 217: Acting Separately
They dug for over an hour before the three of them finally stopped to rest. By then, they had already dug up more than half a sack of Forest Frogs, surpassing the amount Guan Yongguang’s father and uncle had managed. They ate their flatbreads with some snow for lunch to replenish their energy, then got back to digging. They kept at it until the sky was nearly dark. The entire section of the stream bed had been turned over, and they ended up with more than two full sacks of Forest Frogs. They had completely cleaned out the entire colony.
“They’re all gone, Brother San. We can’t dig up any more over here.”
“Brother San, my side is empty too.”
Hearing them, Zhao Wendong got up, rubbing his sore back. He glanced at the sun, then pulled out his pocket watch. It was almost three in the afternoon; the sky would be dark soon.
“Alright, let’s head back.”
“Brother San, wait up! I’m gonna go for one more slide.”
With that, Zhao Wenwu scrambled up the large mound of ice. Perhaps wanting a longer slide, he climbed almost to the very top, near where the spring water was bubbling up. Then, he seemed to spot something and shouted.
“Brother San!”
The moment he shouted, his feet slipped, and he slid down sideways. He scrambled back up, ignoring the snow clinging to his clothes, and excitedly held something out for Zhao Wendong to see.
“Brother San, look! It’s a mud loach!”
Zhao Wendong looked at Zhao Wenwu’s hand in astonishment. Sure enough, he was holding a small, slender black fish. It really was a loach.
“Huh? Where’d you find it?”
“It jumped right out of that spring!”
Zhao Wenwu pointed at the ice mound, beaming. Zhao Wendong reached to his left hip and pulled out a battered old skimmer he had brought from home for fishing.
“Come on, let’s try scooping a few. Quick, lay down some dirt.”
The adjacent stream bed was full of soil they had just dug up. The three of them shoveled some fine dirt onto the ice mound, quickly creating a path from the bottom to the top. Although the bubbling water would eventually freeze the dirt into the ice, for the time being, they didn’t have to worry about slipping and losing their footing.
“Brother San, let me do it! Let me!”
Zhao Wenwu snatched the skimmer and plunged it straight into the water. The spring had to be at least as deep as the ice mound was tall, so the arm’s-length handle of the skimmer couldn’t reach the bottom. Even so, with a single scoop, Zhao Wenwu brought up a whole mess of loaches squirming in the black mud.
“Haha, this is great!”
Zhao Wenwu returned with the skimmer, grinning from ear to ear. Zhao Wendong and Zhao Ergou were just as overjoyed to see it. With the sky darkening, the three of them immediately got to work. To scoop deeper, they tied the skimmer to a wooden pole with some rope. They didn’t have time to pick the loaches out of the black mud, so they simply dumped the mud and fish together into a sack. They kept at it until they couldn’t scoop up any more loaches, by which time half the sun had sunk below the horizon.
“Let’s go. There are no more.”
Zhao Wendong tried to lift the sack of loaches. It had to be close to two hundred pounds, and he could barely budge it. Zhao Wenwu, however, lifted it with ease and shot Zhao Wendong a smug grin. Zhao Wendong gave him a thumbs-up, which made Wenwu puff up with pride. He held his head so high that Er Gouzi, who was already short, could only see his nostrils.
The three of them headed back with their bountiful harvest: over two sacks of Forest Frogs, one sack of loaches, a few unlucky pheasants, and two wild rabbits contributed by Xiaojin. By the time they reached the stronghold, the sky was completely dark. The stone door to the cave was partially blocked from the inside. Zhao Wendong called out.
“Brother?”
“Third Brother, it’s me.”
Zhao Wenjun answered and came out to help them carry everything inside.
“Wow, you got so much again! But… why did you bring back a sack of mud?”
Zhao Wenjun looked at the filthy sack, full of black mud, completely puzzled.
“It’s full of mud loaches!”
Zhao Wenwu chimed in. Zhao Wenjun was stunned to hear this. ‘This winter really has been more like summer,’ he thought. ‘All sorts of strange things are turning up.’
“Oh, right,” Zhao Wendong added. “Leave the sack of loaches by the entrance. Don’t bring it inside, or it’ll thaw and get mud everywhere.”
Zhao Wenjun nodded at Zhao Wendong’s reminder and placed the sack of loaches by the entrance. The four of them then sealed the entrance with the stone slab and went back inside. Seeing that all the things from yesterday were gone, Zhao Wendong asked Zhao Wenjun about the day’s events.
“It’s all been moved? Were you able to manage it all?”
“Yeah, we managed. Third Master came to help with the horse-drawn sled. Your wife and her parents, plus my wife and Mom—the six of us moved all the meat and everything down the mountain. Then they all went back home on the sled.”
“How are Erhei and the bear cubs?”
“Erhei’s fine, he just needs to rest and recover. Dad wasn’t sure about the bear cubs, since he’s never raised black bears before. But when we went to get the horse sled, the Little Bastard’s maternal grandfather, Grandmaster Ai, heard you’d gotten two little cubs and made a special trip to our house to take a look. He said they’ll survive. We happen to have a sow that’s nursing, and he said if she won’t feed them, we can just milk her ourselves. The old man was completely fascinated when he saw we also had a little tiger. He said if we can raise a tiger, we can definitely raise a black bear—those things will eat anything and are way hardier than tigers.”
“Hahaha, that’s great.”
‘Thinking of how Grandmaster Ai must have been startled when he visited their home, Zhao Wendong couldn’t help but smile. He also realized that as an old Hunter, Grandmaster Ai would surely have a lot in common with their father, Zhao Dashan. In fact, Grandmaster Ai was even younger than Third Master. If he recovered his strength, he might even be able to go hunting in the mountains again someday.’
“By the way, did the letter for Big Wang get sent out?”
“It’s sent. I told him to come first thing in the morning on the twenty-ninth of the twelfth lunar month.”
“Okay. In that case, we’ll hunt for one more day tomorrow. We’ll head back the day after tomorrow in the afternoon—that’ll be the twenty-eighth of the twelfth lunar month.”
With the next few days planned out, the four brothers washed up, cooked, ate, and then went straight to sleep. The temperature inside the cave stronghold was relatively constant. Aside from the spartan conditions, it was actually more comfortable than sleeping on the kang bed at home. The kang was hot for the first half of the night and cold for the second. Thankfully, Zhao Wendong had bought new, large quilts for the family; otherwise, a draft in the middle of the night would have been enough to wake a person from the freezing cold.