Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

Li Long rode his bike to the department store again and bought some school supplies.

Children are usually careless when they go to school. Large items like notebooks and textbooks may have a few pages torn at most, but pencils and erasers are too easy to lose.

Or dismembered.

So Li Long bought some more and prepared to take them to his children for school tomorrow.

When I rode my bicycle back to the compound, Sister Yang and Han Fang had already returned. Han Fang was cleaning up Sister Yang's tools for selling food, while Sister Yang was preparing dinner.

Seeing Li Long coming back, Han Fang greeted him with a smile. Li Long handed her one of the stationery:
"Xiaofang, these are for you. Pens, rulers, erasers, and notebooks. I heard from your mother that you did well in the final exam, very good."

Han Fang wiped her hands with her apron shyly and took the stationery carefully.

Although Sister Yang is rich now, Han Fang is still frugal. Perhaps the days of wandering left too deep an impression on her.

"Her uncle is back." Sister Yang poked her head out from the kitchen. "I'm going to make noodle soup tonight. What do you want to say to her uncle?"

"Just make it thinner." Li Long said, "Xiaoxia's father has a bad stomach, and it's hard for him to digest thick food."

"Okay." Sister Yang responded and went over to continue preparing.

Those who came to participate in the construction in the early days all suffered from stomach problems to varying degrees. The main reason was that they were basically hungry in their hometowns and had few opportunities to eat a full meal. The work they did here was heavy, but they were provided with enough food.

If you eat too much all at once, your stomach will be hurt. If you work hard and have a tight schedule, you need to eat quickly, which will make your stomach more susceptible to illness if you don't digest food well.

Li Jianguo also has stomach problems, which is why Li Long always leaves a few wild boar stomachs after hunting them.

After putting his things away, Li Long went to the living room of the master bedroom to clean his gun.

I fired a few bullets in the mountains today, killed a wolf, and saved Halimu.

This made Li Long understand once again that the mountains today are not the same as in the future, and those prairie wolves are not the internet celebrity wolves in the future who would beg with a smile.

These wolves will eat people!

So weapons must be well maintained. In winter, you have to use winter gun oil to clean your gun. He plans to bring some winter gun oil to Halim and the others when he goes into the mountains tomorrow, so that they don't have to use summer gun oil, and then it will jam at a critical moment, which will be troublesome.

Although it was not Li Long himself who was chased by the pack of wolves yesterday, he truly felt that hunting in the mountains is not just about ambushes and sneak attacks, sometimes it really involves a life-and-death fight.

Bring your weapons and be prepared. Even if nothing happens, don't be afraid.

If it really happens, at least you won’t suffer losses due to lack of preparation.

After cleaning the gun, Li Long looked at the time. Gu Xiaoxia should be off work, so he strolled out to pick her up.

Since his wife doesn't want him to drive a jeep around, it would be fine for him to walk to pick her up.

Halfway through the journey, he saw Gu Boyuan coming over with his hands behind his back, wearing a cotton hat. When he saw Li Long, he asked:

"What are you going to do?"

"Go pick up Xiaoxia."

"Not driving? Walking?"

"Well, Xiaoxia said that driving was too ostentatious."

"Okay, you go ahead, I'll just take a walk here." Knowing that Sister Yang and her daughter were in the yard, Gu Boyuan didn't plan to go in now.

Li Long didn't say anything and continued walking towards the Education Bureau.

When they were almost at the entrance of the Education Bureau, Li Long saw Gu Xiaoxia coming out of the gate, with two or three colleagues saying goodbye to her on bicycles.

When Gu Xiaoxia passed by, her colleagues turned their heads to look at her.

Then Li Long came quickly and helped Gu Xiaoxia cross the road together.

"Why are you here?" Gu Xiaoxia was a little surprised that Li Long came back so soon.

"I came back early and bought some furniture for them. Halimu and Yushanjiang's children were both in school, and it was inconvenient to write on their kang tables, so I went to the woodworking factory and bought some small tables.

After I came back, I went to the department store and bought some notebooks. I will send them over tomorrow."

Li Long knew that Gu Xiaoxia wanted to know about his situation outside, so he told her everything he could in detail.

Even the fat sheep might not be enough, so Halimu and his friends told other herders everything they had asked except the story about hunting wolves, for fear that Gu Xiaoxia would worry.

"So you're leaving early tomorrow?"

"Well, go there early. They will slaughter the sheep and I will drive the tractor to pull up all that can be pulled. We should be able to get out of the mountain in the afternoon and then pull the sheep to the Shicheng Sugar Factory. If there is not enough time, I will pull them back first."

Anyway, it’s not the right time to fight the wolves, so Li Long is not in a hurry.

The two of them walked and chatted, and soon they returned to the big yard. At this time, Gu Boyuan came out from somewhere and followed them in.

The yard is already filled with the smell of sour noodles. The sourness is not from vinegar, but from tomato sauce made in the summer, which tastes really good. With a layer of green leafy vegetables on top, it is really tempting in the winter.

The green leafy vegetables were picked from the glass house at the back. Most of the vegetables there were already edible. However, the chives were still relatively thin and had only just sprouted, so they could not be cut.

Other vegetables like bok choy, coriander and celery are already ready to be eaten.

The scallions are a bit thin, so it will take at least until the Spring Festival before we can eat them.

Li Long plans to pick some and send them to the team in a couple of days. It is really rare to eat fresh vegetables these days.

After dinner, Gu Boyuan rejected Li Longsong’s proposal, took the flashlight, put his hands behind his back, and slowly walked back.

It was a bit cold at night, but after having hot soup and rice, my body was warm and I was not afraid of the cold at all.

In Gu Boyuan's words, the temperature was more than 30 degrees below zero at the time, and they lived in dugouts. There was not enough coal, so they were not afraid to go to the sand pits to dig red willow roots and saxaul firewood in the middle of winter.

What's this little bit of cold?
Li Long thought to himself that he didn't want to hear about your glorious history.

Of course, I am a little envious. The generation that founded the village can brag about the hardships they went through for the rest of their lives.

Even if he is eighty years old, the younger generation will have to listen to him. In the future, the four teams will have nearly ten thousand acres of fertile land, which they have reclaimed bit by bit from the beginning.

After cleaning up the kitchen, Sister Yang took Han Fang to the side room, and then she was heard urging Han Fang to do her homework.

Now that we have electric lights, we don’t have to worry about irritating our eyes when doing homework at night. In Sister Yang’s opinion, life is a hundred times or a thousand times better than before.

The family back home wrote again, still asking for money, but did not mention her husband's address. Sister Yang's original desire to find her husband quickly faded.

She even lost the desire to go back and find out what was going on, and felt that living like this was pretty good.

In the next two years, my husband would always go back home. No matter how hard my husband's family tried to hide it, I couldn't hide the fact that I came from my hometown to the northern border to look for my relatives. There were so many people in the village, so many mouths to feed, it couldn't be hidden.

Unless the husband doesn't want to pry into the details.

Sister Yang planned to send another telegram to the village director. The village director was generally fair and would reply to her if he knew about her husband's situation.

Even if there is no reply, she can write another letter. At least if her husband goes back and asks the village director, he will tell her about his situation in northern Xinjiang.

After going through so much, Sister Yang understood that if she and Han Fang went back to their hometown, there was probably no way they could come back. Her mother-in-law and her family would never let her go out again.

It may also be that I am greedy for comfort, and life here is really good. Besides, Xiaofang is already in school, can she go to school like this in her hometown?

Given the tempers of her parents-in-law, it was impossible for Han Fang to go to school safely.

It is also possible that my husband would find me and take me and Xiaofang to his workplace, and then we would have a peaceful life.

But Yang Xiulan didn't dare to gamble on the process in between.

Life was so good now that she was afraid that if she went back to gamble, she would lose everything.

Li Long and Gu Xiaoxia were watching TV in the master bedroom and continuing to chat about family matters.

"We have three days off for the New Year." Gu Xiaoxia said, "Should we stay here or go back to the big yard?"

"Let's go back to the compound." Li Long said naturally.

Gu Xiaoxia hesitated to speak.

"When I finish my work in the mountains, I will come back to the team before the New Year to clean up your old yard, then set up the stove and warm the house." Li Long continued:
"I'll bring your father back to the team before the New Year. This agricultural supply store is owned by our family anyway, so we have the final say on when to close it.

Although your father has lived in the city for a while, he will definitely go back to the team to spend the New Year. After all, he is still a member of the team, and I think he must want to go back and live in peace for a few days. "

Gu Xiaoxia smiled.

Yes, neither she nor her father, at least not yet, completely considered themselves as city dwellers. The father and daughter still felt that they were from the Fourth Squad. After all, Gu Xiaoxia and Li Long had a large yard in the Fourth Squad, and Gu Boyuan also had a yard in the Fourth Squad.

Gu Xiaoxia believes that Li Long can do this.

It's very peaceful at night on Li Long's side, and everyone in the yard can sleep well.

But in the mountains, there were constant howling of wolves near Halimu's winter den. If he hadn't come out from time to time to shoot outside, Halimu suspected that the wolves would have rushed directly over and into the sheepfold to kill.

Li Long got up early the next day and set up the stove in the glass house as usual. After watering it, he went to tinker with the tractor.

Han Fang still didn't sleep in, and it might be that Sister Yang woke her up when she got up.

This made Li Long unable to help but mention to Sister Yang while adding hot water to the tractor:
"Sister Yang, Xiaofang is on holiday now, let her sleep in this morning. Children have a hard time at school, let her relax now that they are on holiday."

In Team 4, Li Juan and Li Qiang can both sleep in. Although they don’t sleep for long, at least they can wake up naturally.

"Why sleep?" Sister Yang disagreed, "Life is already good enough. If you get lazy, I really don't know how to live a good life in the future."

"Uncle Li, it's okay," Han Fang had no complaints and explained to Li Long, "I went to bed early at night, and when my mother got up in the morning, I woke up and couldn't fall asleep."

Well, they are just mother and daughter, so Li Long didn’t say anything more.

He added boiling water to the tractor, and took out some red charcoal from the glass house at the back and placed it under the engine to roast.

The fur coat and cotton hat were all roasted on the fire wall in the house. While Li Long was busy with things outside, Gu Xiaoxia had already set up the stove in the house.

The stove in the house is easy to clean. I put the charcoal on it when I go to bed at night. Because the whole house is warm, the charcoal burns slowly. When I get up in the morning, I poke it a few times with the stove hook to get rid of the ash, then add some chopped firewood and put coal on it, and the stove will light up quickly.

Chopped firewood and coal blocks are available next to the stove in the house, so it is convenient to set them up.

After breakfast, Li Long sent Gu Xiaoxia to work. When he came back, he started the tractor, put on all his equipment, carried his gun, and loaded the bullets.

Han Fang and Sister Yang had already opened the door. Li Long greeted them and drove out.

The tractor drove out of the county town, rumbling westward, and then headed south at the fork in Qingshuihezi.

The road surface is smoother, there are more people passing by, the snow on the road is compacted, and the tractor can drive faster.

After crossing the Qingshui River and preparing to enter the mountains, Li Long heard the wolf howling again.

There was something he couldn't figure out. Could it be that a ferocious beast like a tiger appeared in the mountains and drove the wolves out?

Not likely.

After all, there have only been one or two reports of the Northern Frontier Tiger appearing in more than ten or twenty years.

I have just collected one that was killed by Halimu. There must be brown bears in this mountain, but the bears hibernate in the winter.

What else could scare the wolf out?
And we only saw wolves, no other wild animals, such as elk.

Logically speaking, we should see more of these things.

When the tractor rumbled to the Halimu winter camp, Li Long discovered that the winter slaughter had already begun.

The imam in a chakrat was already chanting, the young men were slaughtering and skinning sheep, and a few old men were cleaning the sheep's internal organs, squeezing out the feces and washing the intestines.

Li Long had seen a similar scene once, and when he saw it again this year, he was still very grateful.

The tractor rumbled up to the winter den and Li Long got off.

The others all had work on their hands, so the one who was busy just nodded, smiled and greeted them.

Most people had seen him before or couldn't remember his name, but Li Long still responded to them one by one with a smile.

Halimu was piling up the slaughtered and cleaned Klangzi sheep. When he saw Li Long coming over, he finished piling up the sheep on hand, walked over, pointed at the tractor bucket and asked:

"what is this?"

"I got some small tables from the woodworking factory. There are other furniture as well," Li Long said as he unwrapped the plastic wrapping on them. "The small tables are for Nathan and the others to do their homework. You can divide the others among yourselves."

As soon as the plastic sheet was untied, Li Long heard a burst of exclamations.

Obviously, these furniture really caught the eyes of these herdsmen.

Li Long has been to several winter dens. The furniture of these herdsmen is at least seven or eight years old, and most of them are at least ten years old, and some are even several decades old.

As long as it works, continue to use it after making some repairs.

There are no carpenters in the mountains, so it is not easy to change.

Therefore, when people, young or old, saw the furniture that Li Long had brought, their attention was immediately drawn to it.

Before Halimu could speak, an old lady suddenly stood up, threw the intestines in her hand away, and shouted a few words to the young man over there.

Li Long could barely hear that she was calling Talihar, but he didn't understand the rest of the sentence.

Then Talihar, who was skinning the animals, responded in a muffled voice.

Halimu translated in a low voice:

"This is Talihar's grandmother. She said she didn't want any money for the sheep she drove over, but she wanted the cabinet and the box. She asked Talihar to agree, and Talihar agreed.

His grandmother said that the wooden boxes at home were all eaten by insects and were full of debris. If they were not cleaned properly, they could not be used. The same goes for the cabinets. They were not stable after being repaired many times, so they had to be replaced. This cabinet and box are very good, and she likes them very much! "

After Halim finished translating, he asked:
"Talihar has driven over eleven sheep. Is that enough?"

Li Long was sweating.

He stroked his tongue and said to Halim:
"Tell them that they must be given the money for the sheep. These furniture are for you.

I originally thought that not many people would want it, but now it seems that there are still not enough. Tell them that I will continue to deliver furniture. If anyone needs something, just tell me and I will go to the woodworking factory to make it for them.”

Halimu smiled and turned to translate for everyone.

Whether young or old, everyone started talking immediately after hearing what Halimu said.

Everyone was talking at once, and their expressions looked quite excited.

Halimu smiled and translated for Li Long:
"They said they can't take your furniture for free. These sheep will be exchanged for furniture. As for what else you need, we'll tell you after we slaughter the sheep.

They also told me that we must not let you suffer any loss. We Kazakhs cannot let our friends suffer any loss..."

Suffer?

Li Long smiled bitterly and said to Halim seriously:

"Let me tell you, this truckload of furniture, all added up, is only worth seven or eight sheep. Don't worry, I won't lose out."

"If you want to buy furniture, you have to send it here." Halimu shook his head and said:
"In the middle of winter, the goods sent here are at least twice the price, and there is no guarantee that anyone will do it. Li Long, this is not how we calculate the accounts, right?

You told us not to just count the sheep's own value, but also that there are people who need meat now. You should also think about it. Now that the mountains are blocked by heavy snow, will anyone send things to the mountains to sell? Oh, and there are bullets..."

As soon as the bullet was mentioned, Li Long reacted, hurriedly opened the bag and took out the bullet.

Halimu took the packages of bullets and smiled.

What happened yesterday was such a shame for him, and it could only be washed away with bullets and wolf's blood!

Li Long took out the stationery and handed it to him, asking him to distribute it to the children.

He only knew that Halimu and Yushanjiang's children went to school, but Li Long felt that there must be other children who were also going to school, but he was not familiar with them.

The sheep were being slaughtered on an assembly line basis. Li Long couldn't help, so he untied the ropes on the tractor bucket and took down the furniture and placed it beside the winter den.

Looking at the brand new furniture, smiles appeared on the faces of several old ladies.

Li Long was thinking about how to get the woodworking factory to make another batch of furniture with such ethnic characteristics.

After all, the master craftsman has retired, and I don’t know if he can make it now.

But I think if the quantity is large, the woodworking factory should not refuse such an order, right?

At worst, I could go to Shicheng or other places. After all, the place is big, I have a car and a tractor, and there are many places to choose from.

As he was thinking this, Halimu over there couldn't help but call two young men and went to shoot the wolves with guns.

Li Long followed, and during the conversation he learned that wolves had been active nearby last night. (End of this chapter)