Free The Blue-Eyed Shan by Stephen; Becker Page A

of them boys, and in summer it was said jokingly that none were yet weaned and there was plenty for all.
    Mong himself was a skinny bunch of dried sticks, short and bandy-legged, so the jokes included him, and some were by now village traditions: “Where is Mong today?” “Fallen in again.” Or, “He slipped and was smothered.” Chung would snort, hearing this, and her little brown eyes would flame in fun and pretended anger, and she would tell them, “Not one of you would last an hour, and Mong is still rutting like a hare after fifteen monsoons!”
    The Sawbwa said that all women were meant to be like Chung. This was the highest of compliments, and it was generally agreed that Chung merited it. She bore herself proudly, even now, serving Mong his meal. While he ate, the villagers admired his work, squinted at the sun, smoked cheroots (small ones, the cheroots of mountain farmers and not the foot-long monstrosities that lazy low-landers had time to burn), poked their children in the ribs and told ancient stories of the miserly and barbarous Chinese. At the edge of the crowd Naung sat against the wall of a house and dozed.
    When Mong had belched, and washed his hands in the dust, and smiled shy thanks at Chung, Naung rose casually and assembled his platoon. Mong would carry the cages, Kin-tan the heads. So many would stand guard, so many would dig, so many would carry posts and so many beams. Naung asked the Sawbwa, “Is it well?”
    The Sawbwa was in good humor this morning. He blinked, and his filmy eye shone pale in the tall sunlight, and he said, “All things have their uses and their seasons, and this morning’s work is well done. It seems to me the hot weather will come a day or two early.”
    The villagers murmured. The Sawbwa was rarely wrong, and now that he had spoken, it seemed to them that, yes, the teak leaves were shriveling a day or two early, and perhaps the goats had begun to shed, and down among the pyinkado trees the monkeys were noisier and more active than customary.
    The Sawbwa tapped his turban as if saluting and said, “Go then.” Naung marched his men off, the whole length of the village, from the Sawbwa’s house on West Slope down the dusty road toward Red Bullock Pass, and when they passed his own house Loi-mae and Lola waved and the woman called, “Hurry home!” Naung’s men then exchanged the customary jokes about those who spoiled women with excessive gallantry, and not merely gallantry but acrobatics, and that was why the Shan never killed monkeys, because the monkeys set high standards of promiscuity, frequency and speed, standards for men to live up to, but this Naung was embarrassing even the monkeys, perhaps because he was over-educated by foreign travel.
    They saw vultures on the upper slope, above East Poppy Field. They crossed the field and entered the grove in open order, a loose rank, some bearing timber, some with weapons at the ready, each man a scout. They only gathered again at the road. From there they could scan the hills thousands of feet above them, where the Wild Wa lived. Naung glassed the hills carefully. They marched north then, the bearers and Mong flanked by their guard, and two men like shadows in the groves to either side. They passed four poles, four beams, four cages, two of them down, the hemp slashed by impious travelers. On the road crows strutted, iridescent blue at the shoulder. Here the road was broad and straight, a true road, suitable for carts. The men kicked up reddish dust.
    After some hundreds of paces Naung called a halt. The band of Shan conferred, and some dug at the earth here and there with their swords. They decided to place the cages one directly opposite the other, a double warning for travelers, who would thus pass between the staring Kachin heads.
    The diggers worked with wooden spades fashioned from one timber and beveled. They would dig crotch-deep. Meantime the balance