Seeing this, Zhang Xuefeng quickly asked, "Uncle, where are you off to?"
"Back to the Forest Farm!" Elder Yang said with a hint of resignation. "Who would’ve thought the gatekeeper job would become such a hot ticket? Now everyone wants it!"
Zhao Jun didn’t quite understand what he meant and just continued packing his luggage with Zhang Xuefeng. When he noticed there were still some of the steamed buns and large crackers Ma Ling had given him, Zhao Jun gave them all to Elder Yang.
Then, he went to find Lin Musen and asked him to arrange for a horse-drawn cart to take Elder Yang home.
Even though Zhao Jun was leaving, Lin Musen didn’t dare to slight his request. As it happened, a teamster was hauling logs into the Logging Camp, so Lin Musen told him to take Elder Yang after he finished unloading.
The old man was incredibly touched that Zhao Jun had arranged a ride for him. He grabbed Zhao Jun’s hand and kept praising Yong’an Village for raising such good kids.
Zhao Jun didn’t understand this either. He simply helped the old man load his luggage onto the cart and watched as he rode away from the Logging Camp.
After seeing Elder Yang off, Zhao Jun and Zhang Xuefeng politely declined Lin Musen and Xu Shengli’s kind offer to arrange a ride for them as well. They then left the Logging Camp and walked their separate ways home.
It was nearly five o’clock by the time Zhao Jun got back to Yong’an Village. He recalled how, before he left, his two little sisters had wanted to eat the large crackers Ma Ling had bought for him, but Wang Meilan had stopped them.
At the time, Wang Meilan had told the two little girls that the crackers were for Zhao Jun to eat in the mountains. His sisters were very good; as soon as they heard their big brother would be gone for a long time, they didn’t ask for the snacks anymore. They just hugged Zhao Jun, saying they didn’t want him to leave.
A warm feeling spread through Zhao Jun’s chest as he thought of his sisters. He changed course and headed for the village store, planning to buy them some snacks.
But just as Zhao Jun was behind the store and about to round the corner, he saw Li Ruhai come running from the south.
A group of women with time on their hands had gathered at the entrance of the store, idly gossiping.
"Ruhai! What have you been up to lately?"
"That’s right, Ruhai, we haven’t seen you around for the past couple of days."
"Ruhai, got any good gossip for us?"
The moment Li Ruhai arrived, he instantly became the center of the women’s attention.
Li Ruhai, never one to be shy, let out a laugh. "You’re not going to believe what happened today! A major event!"
Hearing this, Zhao Jun thought the kid was about to spill the beans about his fight with Dou Baoguo, so he immediately turned to leave.
But then he heard Li Ruhai say, "I saw Gu Yang when I was coming back this afternoon!"
’Hm?’ Hearing it wasn’t about him, Zhao Jun stopped in his tracks and pricked up his ears to listen.
After all, who doesn’t love a bit of gossip?
Amid the women’s eager questions, Li Ruhai announced, "Gu Yang wet his pants again!"
"Oh my god!" one of the women exclaimed as soon as the words were out of Li Ruhai’s mouth. "How did Gu Yang wet his pants again? How old is he?"
Li Ruhai chuckled. "He went up the mountain with his second brother to pick hazel mushrooms. They saw the Big Bear Dominator walking along the opposite ridge, and when that Big Bear Dominator roared at them, it scared Gu Yang so bad he wet his pants!"
’The Big Bear Dominator has come down the mountain!’ The news immediately caught Zhao Jun’s attention.
It was early September, and the grass was starting to yellow and wither. This was what Hunters called the ’parting of the grass.’ Around the twentieth of September, when the leaves fell, it would be the season of the ’rustling leaves.’
’Time to take my hounds up the mountain for a run!’
Brown bears were different from Black Bears. In the autumn, most Black Bears stayed at the foot of the mountains around Bojiwaizi, feasting on hardy kiwis.
Brown bears, on the other hand, mostly lived higher up, near High Mountain Foot and Jumping Stone Pond, living off nuts and acorns.
While Zhao Jun was contemplating the matter of the brown bear, the women were gathered around Li Ruhai, chattering away.
Unlike Zhao Jun, these women were more interested in the gossip. Someone spoke up in Gu Yang’s defense, "Being scared enough by a bear to wet your pants, isn’t that normal?"
"What’s normal about it?" another woman countered. "Didn’t Ruhai tell us last time? There’s something wrong with Gu Yang."
"Hey! Auntie, you can’t just make things up!" Hearing that, Li Ruhai’s expression soured. He said with displeasure, "I, Li Ruhai, have lived in this village for years, and I never spread baseless rumors. I never said that!"
Hearing Li Ruhai’s denial, the woman who had brought up Gu Yang’s "problem" was taken aback for a second, but she quickly retorted, "But the other day..."
As she spoke, she glanced to the side, then turned back to Li Ruhai. "It was right here, wasn’t it? I was coming out after buying vinegar, and you stopped me and told me yourself."
"Auntie, that wasn’t me," Li Ruhai said with a perfectly straight face. "You must be mistaken. The person who said that was Jiang the Third’s wife."
"Oh!" The woman blinked, thinking back. "You know what? You’re right!"
"Ruhai," another busybody asked, "so you’re saying this business with Gu Yang always wetting his pants... is there really something wrong with him?"
"Nah," Li Ruhai said with a grin. "It was just the bear that scared him."
At this point, Li Ruhai added, "Aunts, now that I’ve told you all this, you can’t go spreading it around. Gu Yang cares a lot about his reputation. Plus, the man still wants to get married. We can’t go ruining his good name."
The women: "..."
Zhao Jun: "..."
"Ruhai!" Just then, the store’s proprietress poked her head out the window. "If there’s nothing wrong with Gu Yang, why would Jiang the Third’s wife say such a thing?"
"Ah, that’s the part you don’t know!" Li Ruhai grinned. "Let me tell you, Jiang the Third’s wife approached Gu Yang a while back."
"Huh? What for?"
Li Ruhai smiled mysteriously and lowered his voice. "Her husband can’t work the fields anymore, can he? There’s no one to do the heavy labor at home, so she wanted Gu Yang to become her family’s ’live-in hand’!"
"What?"
"No way!"
"Good heavens!" A woman cried out as soon as Li Ruhai finished speaking. "Is she crazy? Gu Yang wouldn’t even marry into a family as a live-in son-in-law, you think he’d agree to be a live-in hand?"
This business of being a "live-in hand," if you wanted to be charitable about it, could be considered a form of helping people in need.
In those days, every family in the rural mountains needed able-bodied workers. But, as the saying goes, the sky has unpredictable storms, and people’s lives have sudden misfortunes.
In some families, the main pillar—the husband—might fall ill and be unable to do heavy labor. With the children still young and the wife unable to support the household alone, she would have no choice but to find another man to help.
But you couldn’t expect a man to help for free, could you? And if the family was poor, they often had nothing of value to offer as thanks.
The solution, however, was simple. As Guo Haizao once said, a debt of gratitude can be repaid in the flesh.
The family would have one kang bed in the east room and one in the west room.
The original husband would live in the east room, and the live-in hand would live in the west. As for the woman... well, she just had the tough job of running back and forth between the two.
This sort of arrangement wasn’t uncommon in those days.
Listening to the women chattering around Li Ruhai, Zhao Jun, who had originally planned to ask for news about Xiong Ba, decided to stay hidden around the corner and enjoy the show.
’After all, how could the Big Bear Dominator be as interesting as this?’