“The caribou stood at attention as White Sox and his mother came up to them.”
II
A Taste of Wild Life
The caribou stood at attention as White Sox and his mother came up to them. To White Sox they seemed very shy and nervous, but he supposed that was because they had not been expecting company.
“Mother,” he whispered, “why do they all stare at me so?”
“You are the first white-legged and white-nosed fawn they have ever seen,” she told him. Then she introduced him to them all.
White Sox held his head as high as theirs, but he behaved very nicely while they admired his beautiful markings. While his mother was greeting the older cousins, the younger ones gathered about him and invited him to join in their play. But White Sox was not in a playful mood. He was curious to learn more about these strange cousins; so he went back to his mother.
“Have you been here before, mother?” he asked. “Our wild cousins seem to know you quite well.”
“Yes, my son. I have often made visits to the caribou at this time of the year,” Mother Reindeer said. “But run away and eat your supper with the fawns. Keep your eyes and ears open, and learn all you can of their life and habits.”
White Sox was very happy. This new world seemed a beautiful place to him. From the top of the ridge he could see for a long distance in every direction. Life was not a bit lonesome now. He skipped and frisked with the fawns, and ate his supper of moss with them in a tiny hollow just below the ridge where the big caribou were eating. Oh, it was the most delicious moss he had ever tasted! When sleeping time came, he went back to his mother, too tired and drowsy to say a word.
But do you suppose the wild caribou were going to allow the lazy fellow to sleep in peace? Not a bit of it! Four times during the night the herd changed its camping ground. White Sox was awakened out of a lovely nap each time in order to follow them.
But next day—well, he had forgotten this; and it was just as Mother Reindeer had expected it would be. The fawns had told him wonderful stories about their wild life. The newness and excitement of it had so charmed him that the foolish fellow wanted to stay with his wild cousins forever and ever.
Mother Reindeer was preparing for her afternoon nap. She had made herself comfortable on a nice soft bed of moss where she could see up the ridge and down the ridge, when White Sox came to her, all out of breath. He dropped down on the bed beside her without so much as asking her leave.
“Mother, I’ve changed my mind,” he said, panting. “I don’t want to go back to the big herd.”
Mother Reindeer did not say a word. She wanted to know how much he had learned, and so she kept quiet till he had breath enough to tell her. She did not have to wait very long.
“I like this wild life, mother,” he said. “Our cousins are free to come and go as they please. They eat on the mossy ranges in winter and on the grassy slopes in summer. They have sorrels and mushrooms, foliage of shrubs, and all kinds of dainties. The fawns are never robbed of their mothers’ milk. They are never roped and thrown to the ground by cruel herders. They don’t have their ears cut and their horns torn off.”
White Sox was all out of breath again because he had talked so fast. He was quite excited, too.
“I’ve been thinking of my Cousin Bald Face,” he went on. “If he had lived with the caribou, he would have been alive today. I shall never forget his death.”
“Bald Face did not heed his mother’s teaching, my son,” said Mother Reindeer, gently.
“It wasn’t his fault, mother. I had just been roped and thrown to the ground. One of the herders had taken two V’s out of my right ear and another V out of my left ear—so you’d know I belonged to you, I suppose—when I saw the loop of the lasso close over Bald Face’s left horn, near the end. The poor little fellow was running his fastest. The herder braced himself and held the lasso tight. My cousin’s horn was pulled off. Oh, it was horrible! A piece of Bald Face’s skull the size of my ear was torn off with the root of the horn, leaving his brain bare.”
“The herder was a new one,” said Mother Reindeer. “He had not learned his business. He will never injure another reindeer in that way. We must forgive him and try to forget it.”
“Mother, I can’t forget it,” cried White Sox. “These wild cousins of ours can look forward to a long life of freedom and safety. They are not the slaves of herders and dogs. I want to stay with them.”
“You are very young, my son. You have much to learn,” said his mother.
“But I know what will happen to me if I stay with the big herd,” he said. “I’ll have to draw heavy sled loads in winter and carry tiresome packs in summer, if I am not killed by the butcher’s knife when I am two years old. In that case the herders will eat my flesh and make clothing out of my hide. The skin of my white legs will be used for fancy boots for some herder.”
A herder.
Mother Reindeer nodded her head upward and downward. She knew the ways of the big herd and had seen these things happen many times. She knew that if her beautiful White Sox was intended for a sled deer, he would first have to be halter-broken. A herder would rope him and tie him to a piece of tundra surface that was higher than the rest of the tundra, called a “niggerhead.” Then would follow the tedious work of breaking him to harness. He would be a beast of burden in winter as long as his back-fat lasted. Back-fat is the fat that collects on a reindeer’s back in summer, when there are green grass and shrubbery to eat. Reindeer moss alone does not give the reindeer strength enough for much hard work.
If White Sox was broken to harness, Mother Reindeer thought it quite likely that he would be selected by the mail carrier for that terrible journey of five hundred miles to Kotzebue Sound. But she had reason to believe that, because of his perfect markings, this wonderful fawn of hers might escape the butcher’s knife and the herder’s harness and be kept for a leader of the big herd. It was because she thought this that she had brought him with her on a visit to the caribou.
“This wonderful fawn of hers might escape the butcher’s knife and the herder’s harness and be kept for a leader.”
“Mother,” began White Sox, after thinking for a little while, “have you forgotten what Uncle Slim told us just before we became separated from the big herd?”
“No, indeed! But run away and play with the fawns now,” she said. “Watch them carefully. You have not learned your lesson yet.”
Mother Reindeer had intended to take a nap, but she had many things to think of after White Sox left her. Uncle Slim had told them that probably the big herd would be pastured on the ice-coated sea beach during the coming winter. This meant that the sled deer would grow very thin again. The herders liked to pasture the herd there so that they could live in their old sod houses and be near the big village at Point Barrow.
Lack of moss would not be the only drawback; there was also the terror of the Eskimo dogs. Slim’s brother had been crippled by a malamute dog, at Kivalina, when hauling mail on the Barrow-Kotzebue route. Last December, Slim and five other reindeer had been staked out for five nights near Point Barrow village. They were exposed to a fierce northeast wind while the drivers were enjoying themselves in the village, where feasting and dancing were going on. On the fifth night the wind had changed to the northwest, and the reindeer had been scented by hungry village dogs. After a desperate struggle, Slim and the other reindeer had broken their tethers and had outrun the dogs. They had run miles and miles back to the big herd, and so had saved their lives.
It was not all joy in the big herd. Mother Reindeer knew that very well. Many a time she too had been tempted to stay with her caribou cousins and adopt their free life. But always something had happened to make her change her mind. She felt sure it would be the same way with White Sox.