As Li Long drove his horse cart away from the Black Market, Tao Dayong and Tao Daqiang headed to Little Haizi together. Their father, Tao Jianshe, was at home making a sled.
There was a clear pattern to it all. They only needed to follow what Li Long had done.
It did not seem difficult in the slightest.
Even after reaching Little Haizi, Tao Dayong did not bother breaking a new hole in the ice. He simply used the one Li Long and the others had made. Yet more than an hour passed, and they caught less than ten kilograms of fish.
Tao Dayong went to find the Wang Family's ice hole instead, but half an hour later, several members of the Wang Family arrived and chased him back.
Tao Daqiang tried to persuade Tao Dayong:
"Brother, why don't we make our own hole? Too many fish have been caught here. They aren't coming anymore."
"Since when are fish that smart?" Tao Dayong dismissed the idea. "We'll just keep scooping here. We should get thirty to fifty kilograms in a day, no matter what."
Thirty to fifty kilograms was plenty of fish. Tao Dayong did not think he was being greedy. Even at fifty cents a kilogram, he could make ten or twenty yuan-he had already learned Li Long's prices from Daqiang.
Two yuan for a big fish, and the small ones sold in lots. How convenient.
So making money was this easy!
Neither brother went home for lunch. Tao Jianshe brought them cornmeal flatbreads on the sled. After eating, the father and his two sons kept working until dark, catching just under forty kilograms of fish.
Once they got home, Tao Daqiang wanted to leave all the particularly small common carp and silver carp, those weighing less than a kilogram, at home. Tao Dayong refused:
"If we take them into town, they'll sell for something. Why leave them here? If we want fish to eat, we can just catch more from the ice hole."
He had forgotten that even the scoop net was borrowed.
Fish could fire a man up and make him lose his head. As Tao Dayong spoke, he was already imagining himself making a fortune, buying a bicycle, and holding his head high in the production team, before his wife, and at his mother-in-law's house.
So he got up early the next morning, cooked cornmeal porridge, and heated up some pickled vegetables and flatbreads. After hurriedly gulping down a few mouthfuls, he ran to his father's yard and urged Daqiang to finish eating so they could head to the Black Market in town together.
It was still dark when they reached the Black Market, and business was bustling. The moment Tao Dayong set out his stall, he attracted several people.
After learning what Li Long charged for his fish, he had secretly decided to lower his prices so he could sell faster!
So when he announced, "One yuan fifty for a big fish, twenty small fish for a yuan," several people who had been hesitating immediately began picking out fish.
Within half an hour, Tao Dayong had ten yuan fifty in his pocket. He was immensely pleased with himself!
If he had known money was this easy to make, he would have come long ago!
Tao Daqiang had planned to wait some distance away, but when Tao Dayong saw that half the fish on his stall had sold, he hurriedly waved him over to replenish the stock.
When Tao Daqiang came over, Tao Dayong even scolded him:
"What are you scared of? Don't you see nobody's bothering the others? They've loosened things up now. Nobody cares!"
Neither of them knew yet that Gu Ermao had been arrested.
As dawn approached, the people beside them began packing up their stalls. Most knew that members of the Joint Defense Team had come to arrest people the day before. Without needing to discuss it, they kept quiet, afraid of drawing the customers' attention.
Seeing so many people packing up, Tao Daqiang sensed trouble. He noticed that some were leaving with only half their goods sold, so he warned Tao Dayong:
"Brother, those people are all packing up. Shouldn't we pack up too?"
"Pack up for what?" Tao Dayong had just taken another yuan and was happily counting his money. "We've already made sixteen yuan fifty in this little while. Who knew the money would come in so fast? Let's sell a little longer. We've only sold a bit more than half the fish..."
Tao Daqiang still felt that something was wrong, and he stayed alert.
Sure enough, less than fifteen minutes later, a commotion broke out on the western side of the Black Market. Someone shouted:
"Don't run! Keep running and we'll arrest you!"
That shout only made things more chaotic!
Tao Daqiang was tall. When he spotted two men wearing red armbands arresting people, he jumped in fright and quickly turned to his brother:
"Brother, they're coming to raid the stalls! Hurry!"
Only a dozen or so stalls remained in the Black Market. Although the other stallholders had not left, most were prepared. The moment they saw people coming to arrest them, they bundled up their stalls and ran into the alleys.
All Tao Dayong's earlier confidence vanished. He frantically gathered his goods, shouting to Tao Daqiang:
"Hurry and help me load the fish onto the sled!"
"Load what? Leave the sled too!" Remembering Li Long's words, Tao Daqiang grabbed his brother and tried to run. But Tao Dayong could not bear to abandon the fish or the sled and insisted on dragging it along. Then the crowd surged into them, separating the brothers.
By the time Tao Daqiang darted out of the alley, his brother was nowhere in sight.
He had no way of knowing that Tao Dayong was still dragging the sled. Though he stood only a little over 1.6 meters tall, a head shorter than his younger brother, the sled made a conspicuous target. Members of the Joint Defense Team spotted him at once, ran after him, and caught him.
By the time he thought of abandoning the sled and running, it was too late. He was taken away with three or four other stallholders.
Unable to find his brother in County Town, Tao Daqiang could only head home in a daze.
By the time he learned that his brother had been arrested and fined fifty yuan, daylight had come.
Li Long took a deep breath, feeling nervous, then turned to look at Harimu.
Harimu was looking at him too. He held up five fingers.
Li Long understood. As they had agreed earlier, they would count to five, then fire.
Turning back, he looked through the sights and saw that the wild boars had settled down. They grunted now and then as they rooted through the snow, eating grass roots, fallen wild fruit, pine cones, and the like.
He lined up the sow in his sights again, took aim the way Xu Chengjun had taught him, and squeezed the trigger!
Bang!
Bang!
The sharp gunshots rang out almost simultaneously.
Without checking whether he had hit his target, Li Long shifted the muzzle slightly, aimed at the smaller Little Wild Boar he had already chosen as his next target, and pulled the trigger.
Seventy or eighty meters away, after those two shots, the surviving boars scattered in all directions. Seeing the largest boar charging toward them, Li Long jumped in fright. He hurriedly took aim and fired at it!
The shot rang out, and the boar fell. Only then did he realize he was sweating, whether from nerves or excitement.
Harimu stood up with his gun in his hands and said with a smile:
"Good. Two wild boars. Not bad at all!"
With that, he headed down the slope toward the boars.
Li Long could clearly see more than one bloody wound on the largest boar. Before long, a broad patch of red had spread across the snow.
Only then did he realize that this must have been Harimu's first target. To defeat the bandits, capture their chief-that was probably the idea. With the leader taken out, the remaining boars would pose little threat for a while.
Then Li Long looked at the first boar he had aimed at. It lay where it had been rooting moments earlier, twitching occasionally, not quite dead.
Li Long smiled.
(End of chapter)
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