frightfiction Chapter 234 Bear and Deer Tracks Appear
Chapter 234 Bear and Deer Tracks Appear
Li Ju'an found Zhang, a foreman from the village, and finalized the construction plans for the house extension. His mother, Song Lanhua, had calculated that the end of the month would be an auspicious time to break ground. The Li family decided to build the house at the end of the month and hire help. Village workers would assist, with Zhang and his team of craftsmen as the main workers. His mother and Zhang's aunt would cook a large pot of hot food to welcome the villagers who came to help.
Social interactions are an art. During the Lunar New Year, every household brings out their stockpiled good food and meat for feasts, and by the end of the month, everyone is out of meat. He plans to take advantage of this time to go into the mountains and hunt for meat to sell off the meat he used to hire people to build houses.
However, at this time, he had to go to the Lin family.
He had just been about to leave when Sun Weimin ran into the yard, breathless, and called out to him.
"Li Ju'an! It's a good thing you haven't left yet, otherwise you wouldn't have had such a good opportunity. If you were even half an hour later, you wouldn't have seen me at all."
Li Ju'an glared at him: "I don't like the way you talk. Say it, what's wrong now?"
Sun Weimin said proudly, "Why don't you team up with me? I saw something on the ridge of Huolazi Mountain yesterday, you know what? A whole line of bear tracks! It's definitely something new. Let's go over there soon and maybe we can catch them."
Li Ju'an was also puzzled. The Lantern Festival had just passed, and bears should still be holed up in their barns in the dead of winter. How could there be any bear sightings? He said, "This bear isn't holed up. You're going to go and hunt a bear that isn't holed up? How are you going to do it? With your old sledgehammer, do you think you can break through a bear's skull?"
Sun Weimin witnessed it last time; a whole row of 7.62mm bullets couldn't penetrate the skull of the brown bear. The bear skin was peeled off, and the whole row of bullets was still embedded in the skull—they were incredibly sturdy.
Sun Weimin said, "We asked you to join us, didn't we? Li Ju'an, are you going to join us or not? If you don't come, I'll call Uncle Zhang to come along."
"Why don't you find someone else to team up with? Uncle Zhang doesn't have any hunting dogs. Why don't you go out and track them yourself?"
Sun Weimin was speechless, his eyes rolling back in his head. He really was after Li Ju'an's gang of dogs; without dogs, no one would dare to fight a bear. He grumbled angrily, "Fine, Li Ju'an, you just wait. You think I can't fight a bear without you? I'm not going to team up with you; I'll find someone else to team up with."
The tiger and the hunting dog barked and barked at him. Li Ju'an scolded the dog, "Quiet down and lie still."
Sun Weimin turned and left in anger, just as Lu Zhiqiang entered the room. Seeing Sun Weimin's face turn ashen with rage, he still managed to laugh and tease him: "Oh, young master Sun, you're in such a panic, were you chased by a bear again? Bring back a couple more bears later, and open a golden gallbladder so we can all be envious."
Sun Weimin shouted loudly, "Absolutely!"
Li Ju'an and Lu Zhiqiang laughed heartily and said, "Look at his sour temper. He's really hard to get along with."
"That's not true. Most people can't be on the same level as him."
After hearing the whole story, Lu Zhiqiang realized that there was a bear that wasn't in its den wandering around near Huolazi Mountain. His expression changed slightly, and he said, "I was just about to tell you about that hillside at Huolazi. Li Dong was wandering around the mountains, and he said he saw deer tracks in that area, which was quite interesting."
Li Ju'an laughed at him: "You still haven't let Uncle Dong off the hook."
"Can we let him go? He swallowed so much of our steel cable and wire snares. I've been going to his place every few days. Do you know what good stuff I found this time?"
Lu Zhiqiang grinned and pulled a piece of oiled silk rope from his cloth bag. The rope was about five or six meters long, rolled up in a bundle, and had been used before.
Li Ju'an's eyes lit up, and he said, "This thing is hard to come by. We have to pull strings and borrow it from the forestry station. With this stuff, we can harvest corn."
Oiled wire rope is better than steel wire rope. It is composed of a steel core, a plastic layer, oiled wire, and a special threading process. It has high strength, high wear resistance, and is also resistant to bending and has tensile strength.
"Pulling a stick," also known as setting a bear snare, is a technique specifically designed for bears that don't stay in their dens. Simply loop one end of a silken rope around a thick, solid wooden stick, tie it to the snare, and the bear will be subdued. As the bear runs, it pulls on the stick, scattering in terror across the mountainside. With so many rocks and trees, the horizontal stick will get stuck in crevices between rocks or within pieces of wood, preventing it from escaping.
Lu Zhiqiang's eyes widened, and he excitedly said, "Let's intercept Sun Weimin's bear!" But after thinking about it carefully, he was also afraid and hesitated. "It's not enough for just the two of us. Even if we manage to lasso the bear with the stick, what if the bear catches up with us while holding the stick? If the bear slaps us, we're done for."
Li Ju'an pondered for a moment and said, "Song Desheng hasn't gone to work yet. Let's call him and your brother. The four of us will go into the mountains to hunt deer. We'll also try to lasso a bear with a stick. If we can catch it, great. If not, we'll bring back more deer."
"Okay!"
Four men, four guns, ten dogs—isn't that better than teaming up with Sun Weimin?
Li Ju'an arranged a time for the three of them to go into the mountains, and then took the extra comic books, face cream and some daily necessities he had bought to the Lin family.
These past few days, Lin Mei had asked Zhang's niece to bring him some homemade snacks, but he wasn't home, so his mother accepted them. He carried a bag of things into the Lin family home and saw Lin Mei's younger brother, Lin Jiadong, squatting on the ground, frowning as he pondered the plywood and veneer in front of him.
"Brother Li, what brings you here?"
Li Ju'an glanced at Lin Jiadong, who was contemplating woodworking, and chuckled, "Want to learn how to make furniture?"
Lin Jiadong looked up and said, "Mom said that when I get married, she wants a wife with thirty-six legs or seventy-two legs, and she wants me to do it myself. I thought that asking someone to build it outside would be too expensive, so I asked Zhang Gong's apprentice in the county town to learn how to build cabinets."
Li Ju'an also knew that Zhang Gong had entrusted him with carpentry work, and the large wooden cabinets that Zhang Gong made greatly satisfied his mother and sister. Zhang Gong's apprentice was Lin Jiadong's brother, and he learned to make cabinets from his brother.
On the ground were half-finished beams and a tabletop made of autumn wood, along with pieces of salvaged old plywood and veneer, and a homemade frosted striped glass door. Lin Jiadong was skilled at fine work; he picked up a floor lamp he had assembled himself and showed off his carpentry skills with a smile.
"Brother Li, look at this ground lamp I made, isn't it nice? The lamp post and base were made at the factory by Xiao Zhang, and the lamp shade is made of wire and staples. There's still a lot of wood left, enough to make two wooden chairs."
Li Ju'an glanced at the carpentry work and thought it was a bit rough, but it looked decent enough that the floor lamp would work. He handed over a stack of loose comic books he had bought and said, "With this skill, you could go out and take on jobs. So many people would line up to hire you. Here, take these and read a book. Don't work yourself to the bone; you need to rest more."
Lin Jiadong stared at the several loose comic books, his eyes wide with excitement, his grin stretching to his ears. Like other mothers in the village, Lin's mother disliked seeing her child staring at comic books, believing it was a waste of time and a bad influence on the child.
So when Lam Ka-tung was in junior high, he wasn't allowed to buy books either. He didn't have any pocket money, so he could only run to the book rental stalls, begging the older kids who rented books to let him borrow them. Sometimes he was lucky and could read for a few minutes, but if he was unlucky, he would be rejected and chased away.
Lin Jiadong shouted loudly, his face beaming with joy: "Thank you, Brother Li! Brother Li, my sister and mother are in the backyard. I'll call my sister over right now. I won't call my mother over."