Bolati had originally planned to eat some offal before settling up with Li Long. Now that he heard someone was confiscating fritillaria on his turf, he was immediately displeased.
It wasn't entirely because the man had confiscated fritillaria. The main thing was that someone was stirring up trouble on his turf, and he hadn't gotten a thing out of it!
Hearing Li Long say it was a young man on horseback carrying a gun, Bolati asked, "Was he one of us Uyghurs or a Kazakh?"
"I don't know either. The people there couldn't tell Uyghurs and Kazakhs apart," Li Long said. "My guess is he's from your Forestry Team. Think about it. Who else in these mountains would ride a horse, carry a gun, and know to confiscate fritillaria?"
Bolati thought that made sense. A few herders rode horses and carried guns too. But herders generally wouldn't think of confiscating fritillaria from herb gatherers unless they knew how the process worked.
"A young man..." Bolati murmured. "There are quite a few young men on our Forestry Team. Our wages went up a little recently, and plenty of people want to get into this line of work."
"Are any of them particularly short of money?" Li Long thought for a moment. "Most people on your Forestry Team should know I trade for fritillaria here, right? Most of them should know about my relationship with your team too.
"If this man is from the Forestry Team, he probably wouldn't do something so obviously bound to anger me unless he was desperately short of money.
"Of course, he could be someone your Forestry Team fired. But someone who'd been fired couldn't still be carrying a gun, could he?" Another possibility occurred to Li Long, only for him to dismiss it immediately.
"It's not