Shan stared back in the direction the minibus had taken. Have you come to understand, the strange monk with the gold fringed robe had asked him. Shan understood nothing. The stocky monk seemed to be warning Shan, suggesting that Tuan and Khodrak were engaged in a subterfuge, that they were actually looking for a man with a fish. In all his years in Tibet Shan had never even seen a fish.
By mid-afternoon the five riders crested a small knoll to see a long rolling plain that gleamed white from salt encrusted on its surface, at the center of which lay a busy camp containing four white tents and three black ones. Dremu told them to wait as he rode toward the camp. They watched as a man in a derby emerged from one of the white tents, shouted at the Golok, then picked up stones and threw them at him. Dremu wheeled his horse and trotted back.
"This is the place," he declared with a satisfied tone, and gestured for Shan to lead the way toward the yurts.
It was a salt camp, Lokesh explained excitedly, as they dismounted amid several small children who darted among the horses, rubbing their noses and helping Tenzin loosen the saddles. Shan untied his saddle bag and relinquished his mount to a beaming girl whose cheeks were smeared with red doja cream, one of the dropka's defenses against high altitude sunlight. As he took a tentative step into the camp a sweet pungent scent wafted by, the smell of yak butter being churned.
Several men and women worked at the shoreline, using short wooden pestles to break the rough crust of salt into coarse pieces, then pushing the salt into piles with crude rakes. Others were packing the salt into small colorful woven pouches which were fastened together in pairs with stout cords. Like saddlebags, Shan thought as he noticed a woman sewing the bags shut, though too small for horses.
The man in the derby who had yelled at Dremu stood at the flap of a white tent near the center of the camp, a brown and white mastiff at his side, motioning them toward the fire that lay smoldering in a ring of stones by his feet. Shan and Lokesh passed a stern grey-haired man in a tattered chuba sitting at the entrance to one of the tents, a heavy staff across his legs. A dropka woman wearing a bright rainbow-pattern apron sat by a solitary yak, tethered to a stake, working a long wooden cylinder with a handle protruding from its open top, a dongma, one of the churns used to mix the tea, butter, and salt for the traditional Tibetan beverage. Her hair was arrayed in dozens of braids, each ending with a bead, a style that had been worn for centuries by devout women, always using one hundred eight braids, one for every bead of the Buddhist rosary. She acknowledged them with a casual, disinterested nod. Shan surveyed the little village and realized it was actually a series of camps, separate fires and separate tents brought together by the salt.
The man at the white tent eagerly searched the line of new arrivals as they walked toward his fire, his brown eyes gleaming with anticipation as he lifted his hat, revealing a head of shaggy black hair streaked with grey. A birthmark in the shape of an inverted, slanted U was conspicuous on his neck above a necklace of small turquoise stones that supported a large silver gau. Suddenly his face lit with a smile. "Nyma!" he exclaimed as the nun dismounted and darted to him. "Blessed Buddha, it is true!" They embraced tightly before Nyma gestured toward Shan. The man straightened, suddenly very sober, and silently inspected Shan.
Shan removed his own hat and returned the man's steady gaze.
"You are the virtuous Chinese," the man observed skeptically. He abruptly raised his hand and gripped Shan's chin in his calloused thumb and forefinger, turning his head from left to right as though measuring Shan for something.
"Just a Chinese who was asked to help," Shan replied impassively. He was accustomed to being greeted with taunts by unfamiliar Tibetans.
The man frowned in apparent disappointment. "I was expecting someone taller."
Shan found a grin tugging at his face.
"His back used to be straighter," Lokesh offered in the same dry tone used by the stranger, "before they forced him to build lao gai roads."
The man acknowledged Lokesh with a solemn nod, then called out, cupping his hands toward one of the salt teams, to announce their arrival. "I am called Lhandro," he said, smiling now, and gestured toward the small knot of men approaching the white tent. "We from the Yapchi Valley offer you welcome."
"Yapchi?" Shan asked in surprise, and found himself glancing toward the saddlebag that contained the chenyi stone. "But it's more than a hundred miles to the north."
Lhandro just kept smiling, letting Nyma introduce her companions as another man emerged from the tent, holding a dongma of fresh tea. Shan studied the tents as the Tibetans exchanged greetings. They were all of the traditional yurt style, but only the heavy black felt ones were for dropka, those who lived year-round on the plains. The white tents were of canvas, of the kind used by those who lived in settlements but occasionally camped in the mountains or high plains. Lhandro and his companions were not herders. They must be rongpa, Shan realized, farmers who tended crops in the Yapchi Valley.
As bowls of frothy tea were distributed Lhandro pointed toward the white, crusted plain. "Our people have been coming here for centuries. The government gave us little boxes of Chinese salt, with pictures of pandas on them, and said we were slaves to feudalism for coming here." He shrugged. "But Chinese salt makes you weak. We said we like the taste of Lamtso salt." He squatted with Nyma and began speaking in low, confiding tones. Lhandro was not giving her good news, Shan saw. Nyma stared at the farmer in dismay, uttered something that had the cadence of a prayer, and hung her head in her hands. The nun seemed to remember something and it was her turn to speak in a grim tone to Lhandro. The rongpa's face sagged and he glanced back in alarm at Shan. She had, he knew, explained about Drakte's death, and the purba's strange warning before he died. At last, as Nyma began speaking with the others from her village, Lhandro stepped back to the fire, his face clouded with worry. The nun spoke loud enough now for Shan to hear snippets of her conversation. She was speaking of their encounter with the white bus. One of the men hurried away, apparently spreading a warning among the other tents. Howlers might come. Several of the salt breakers stopped and darted into their tents. The dropka sometimes kept things on their altars the howlers did not approve of. A woman ran to the man who sat like a guard with his staff, and he stepped inside his tent momentarily, then reappeared, standing, staff at his side like a sentry.
An adolescent girl wearing her hair in two braids, her eyes nearly as bright as her red doja-smeared cheeks, approached the ring of stones with a small drawstring bag. She had a conspicuous limp, and her left leg seemed to twist below the knee. For a moment she and Nyma exchanged huge smiles, then silently, fiercely embraced. When they finally separated, the girl dropped her bag by the fire and opened its top. Tenzin stepped over and prodded the load with an approving nod. It was dung for the fire, and the mute Tibetan held up a piece with the air of connoisseur, as if to confirm it was yak dung, the best of the fuels typically used on the high plateau. Unlike sheep or goat dung it did not need the constant work of a bellows to keep a flame. Tenzin emptied the girl's bag, silently raised his own leather sack, carried from his saddle like a treasured possession, and walked out toward the pastures. Shan watched the enigmatic man. It was as if collecting dung had become the escapee's calling in life, as if the Tibetan with the aristocratic bearing had decided that his role in society would be to keep other people's fires burning.