Another hour passed; still we raced south. I kept praying we’d turn north again, back towards the green grass, but it was useless. I should have stayed in Montana where I had a good job on a nice ranch in a lush forest. The mountains around us were but low rims when out on the flat horizon two tiny white dots appeared, and grew into gers, the felt tents most Mongolians call home.
Ichbaatar, the horse trader, wasn't home, so the lawyer’s uncle and his older brother grabbed a few of the nephews and cousins we’d brought along and jammed me and them back into the sedan and drove us to the gers of their relatives, a few miles away, where we were greeted heartedly and once again served the salty tea. After a while we returned to Ichbaatar's ger, where we waited, and drank milk tea.
When Ichbaatar arrived, we all had milk tea. Then we went out onto the steppe and one of the teenage cousins jumped on the only horse around and raced away into the heat.
We stood in the bright empty desert, and I got a good look at Ichbaatar, who eyed me suspiciously. He appeared to be in his mid-forties, but was likely younger than that, and he looked tougher than rocks. He said little, and he stood still. His narrowed eyes made granite look soft. He stared off into the distance.
A dust cloud rose. Below it ran horses. Forty head raced across the dry steppe, two teens galloping behind. The herd reached us and held up, and the boys raced circles around it, impressively forming a two-man human fence.
Ichbaatar roped the most starved out and scarred up horse I ever saw. I scoffed and waved it away. He looped another with oozing wounds on its withers and I shooed that one off as well. The third horse had several saddle sores, but they were (mostly) healed, and its feet looked all right. I decided that in a pinch the horse might make the list. I turned around and the herd was gone and Ichbaatar was holding the horse with the oozing wounds.
Though I spoke almost no Mongolian, there are certain signs understood universally; even on the opposite side of the planet hands held out with palms up and eyebrows arched still conveys: “What? Are you kidding me here?” Eventually, to Ichbaatar’s obvious displeasure, the kids were bringing the herd back in.
The horses raced towards us, a good-looking paint out front, kicking and jumping and keeping the lead; I was amazed when Ichbaatar roped it.
So was the horse. The look on its face clearly stated that while it thought Ichbaatar was not to be trusted, I was a wolf, grizzly bear, and space alien wrapped in one. It took me ten minutes just to get near him. He never did let me pick his feet up. But I liked his spirit.
I took my saddle from the trunk of the lawyer's uncle's sedan and for the first time Ichbaatar showed some emotion – he got nervous. He spoke hurriedly to the lawyer’s uncle, who spoke a bit of English, and translated for me: "No – too dangerous."
I stood in the middle of the Mongolian steppe with my saddle in my hand and 100 pounds of gear in the lawyer’s uncle’s trunk, hundreds of miles from the capital city, the only civilization as far as I could see two felt tents, and the only people around Ichbaatar and his kin. Without their help I was stranded, and suddenly that was obvious in any language.
But there was no way I would head out across the steppe with a horse that couldn’t be ridden. I put my saddle on the horse.
Ichbaatar actually pushed me aside to cinch up the horse himself. With all his family watching, I let him. I stood a few paces back then checked his work, though I hardly doubted him – the guy looked about half horse himself. Then, in an empty field half way around the world from my family (and my family doctor) I took one long look around at the world I hold dear and stepped into the narrow stirrup and eased onto the dangerous horse. Nothing happened. Every muscle in the animal's body vibrated with tension, but we just sat there. I wiggled my hips a bit but he was frozen. Finally I nudged him… and got nothing. I nudged him some more. Zip. I gave him the tinniest little kick. He took half a step and stopped. I looked at Ichbaatar; his face was as locked up as the horse. Eventually I turned a halting circle in each direction and decided that was good enough. After a few days he'd loosen up. |
Ichbaatar wasn’t exactly scratching my back; I’d hired the lawyer’s uncle, Ichbaatar’s brother, to drive me out there, and he'd brought half the family along for the trip – when he’d arrived to pick me up there were so many cousins and nephews in the little sedan there was barely room for me to squeeze in. I was financing a family vacation. Plus I was buying two horses, for no doubt several times what they were worth. I felt I deserved at least a little scratch.
For a long time no one spoke. The lawyer’s uncle shuffled his feet, the eldest brother cleaned his fingernails, and Ichbaatar didn’t even blink. It seemed like winter might set in before he spoke. Clearly Ichbaatar was not in a scratching mood.
And I really was alone in a desert. Even the horses could see that; their nervous looks seemed to say you’re even worse off than us. That may be, I thought. But now we’re in it together. Saddle Sore and Dangerous would be my new horses. I held out my hand and Ichbaatar shook it, then we went inside to seal the deal with milk tea.
Ichbaatar and his brothers decided I should see the nearby UNICEF Genghis Khan memorial, so the whole family, oddly minus Ichbaatar and his wife, once again crammed into the little sedan and set off across the desert. After a few miles we came to the small town of Delgerkhan; the former headquarters of the world’s greatest general, which was now just a few wooden buildings huddled on a rise against the wind. We drove south, towards the Kherlon River (which I would eventually meet up with after its broad hook to north). We could almost see the water when the monument appeared, a tall marble obelisk with a plaque, surrounded by a picket fence. The whole family stood beneath it for snap shots. I looked over the flat plain, imaging the massive armies that had staged there once while creating the largest empire the world has known. Then we drove home, stopping twice along the way for milk tea. |
We huddled in the lee side of Ichbaatar's tent as the wind howled and the sun set. The remaining sheep grazed complacently thirty yards away, rumps to the wind, oblivious to the carnage of their kin. A crescent moon rose in the purple sky and I felt I had travelled in time.
Ichbaatar's wife and oldest daughter tore much of the meat into strips and hung it to dry inside the ger and the lawyer’s uncle threw one whole skinned sheep into the trunk of his sedan to stay refrigerated. Inside the ger the women cooked, the men smoked, and Ichbaatar examined my tack and, finding my bridle insufficient, took out a hand-treadled sewing machine and without a word to me, modified it.
By candlelight we ate stringy, fatty, stewed sheep and dry bread. Then the lawyer’s uncle brought out a bottle of vodka. Ichbaatar's wife and children huddled in the shadows while the men drank. Conversation between the three brothers was quiet and serious. After a few shots I refused any more, and they seemed insulted.
As the brothers took shot after shot I remembered the warnings I’d gotten about Mongolia: the greatest dangers were wolves and drunks. I felt the barren emptiness all around us, and glanced again and again at Ichbaatar's eyes, which were harder than ever.
Eventually Ichbaatar’s wife spread blankets on the floor. There was only one bed and Ichbaatar offered it to me. Ichbaatar's older brother, the lawyer's father, was twice my age and it didn't seem right him sleeping on the floor and me in a bed, so I refused repeatedly. Finally the eldest brother took the bed but the family seemed offended.
In the morning I woke to Ichbaatar's wife watching me with a look that said what in the world are you doing here? Or maybe it simply said you can't ride across the steppe alone. (She certainly wouldn’t be the first to have said so). She gazed at me for several more moments then returned to her work. I went outside and found the lawyer’s uncle nervous. The horses were gone.
We warmed up the sedan and all the men got in, Ichbaatar tense, gripping a pair of old military binoculars and a carbine rifle. The binoculars made sense but I wondered what the gun was for.
We drove around the steppe, glassing from little hillocks, checking shallow washes. Only the eldest brother spoke; he occasionally said something to Ichbaatar, who just nodded. I was quite uncomfortable as I'd already given Ichbaatar the cash. I should have slept in the bed. I should have slept with my new stock lashed to my ankle. Something didn’t feel right. Then we spotted them, up a dry wash. As we approached, the horses looked at us with faces that seemed to say what do you guys look so worked up about?
After a breakfast of hard, sour cheese and biscuits the whole family watched me pack. Everything I had fit on the back of one scrawny pony and yet it seemed like I had so much more than them. I gave the kids my extra pens. Ichbaatar's wife was out with the sheep so I gave the oldest daughter a bag of dried fruit. Ichbaatar saddled the horses and together we hung my duffels on the one I called Saddle Sore. I knew Ichbaatar would insist on lashing the bags down himself. I had a hundred-foot picket line and a fifty-foot lash rope. I held the lash rope back and sure enough, without pausing, Ichbaatar picked up the picket line and started tying. It took him several minutes to weave up a tangled mess with all that rope. Then I stepped in and threw a box hitch and had the whole thing cinched down tight and pretty in about a minute flat. Ichbaatar’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes softened just the tinniest bit, as though maybe he thought I wasn’t totally hopeless after all.