When Wang Mingjun heard Li Long say he could pay with hides, he immediately wanted to unload the hides on the tractor and make a partial payment.
But Big Old Chen stopped him.
"Company Commander, quite a few of these hides belong to the workers. They're waiting for us to bring the money back so they can split it and celebrate the New Year. If you use them to pay now, what will we give them when we get back?
"It's only just February. We've still got over a month of hunting left. Once we get back, we can make a few trips into the sand hollows. I heard several herds of Mongolian gazelles didn't head for Southern Mountain this year. They're in the saxaul woods in the hollows. If we put some effort into hunting, we should be able to get enough."
Both men had some savings. They didn't have to pay entirely in hides. Couldn't they trade in some hides and cover the rest with cash?
For the forty thousand yuan, Wang Mingjun planned to get two hundred full hides, or a hundred full hides and two hundred damaged pelts, then add twelve thousand yuan. That would be about enough.
Getting over three hundred hides in a little over a month would be difficult, but not impossible.
If necessary, he could get a submachine gun and bring in more damaged pelts.
Big Old Chen thought the same way. The Gurbantünggüt Desert to the north wasn't a shifting desert. The patches of red willows and saxaul woods of various sizes among its dunes were all hiding places for Mongolian gazelles and red deer when the snow wasn't particularly heavy.
So, as long as they worked hard and took plenty of ammunition, shooting a dozen or so a day wasn't