"One yuan fifty per mu," Li Long said. "Of course, you can pay with hides, deer antlers, jade, things like that. Think about it. We work hard driving tractors into the mountains to cut grass. There's labor and fuel involved. Look over there..."
Li Long pointed at the diesel drum still on the truck bed and said:
"We use quite a bit of fuel every day. One drum costs over a hundred yuan. Cutting the grass on two or three households' pastures uses up a whole drum..."
Not only did this stun Tursun, it also startled Harimu.
So cutting grass with Li Long's tractor cost that much money.
Naturally, he had no idea Li Long had exaggerated the cost by at least double. He had also blurred the issue. There was no fixed size for two or three households' pastures. They could cover over a thousand mu, or just a few hundred. After all, each household's pasture had not been allotted according to a strict acreage.
After hearing this, Tursun actually felt that one yuan fifty per mu wasn't expensive-but there was no way the pastoralists could come up with that money.
Yet Tursun couldn't bring himself to tell them to cut grass as originally planned, either. Two days earlier, while drinking with his clansmen, he had thumped his chest and promised he would get the tractor over to cut their grass and save them time and effort.
Now things were awkward.
Just then, hoofbeats sounded in the distance. Everyone looked over, which happened to ease the awkwardness.
Two horses came running out of the mountains. Li Long recognized Talihaal riding one, and his good friend Zhate riding the other.
The two galloped toward them, one behind the other. Li Long could see something loaded on Talihaal's horse, too. It