INTRODUCTION
This story will be read by boys and girls in Alaska who know their fathers’ herds of reindeer “like a book,” or better than a book; and it will be read by other boys and girls who never saw a reindeer and think of them only as strange and wonderful creatures that live among the snows in a far-off northern region. I hardly know whether we enjoy more hearing the story of our own domestic animals or the story of strange animals that we have never seen. So I can hardly guess whether this story will be read with more interest in Alaska or in Maine and Florida and California. But it will be read with lively interest wherever it may go.
When I was Commissioner of Education at Washington, in the Department of the Interior, people often asked me how it happened that my office had anything to do with such a distant and unrelated activity as the reindeer industry. I told them that this was one of the finest examples of real education for real life with which I had ever had to do. I found the subject tremendously interesting. Dr. Sheldon Jackson, who introduced domestic reindeer into Alaska, was then alive and was one of the most vigorous and adventurous and interesting members of my staff. Very soon Mr. Lopp, who was at that time a District Superintendent in Alaska, came on to Washington to arrange with the new Commissioner for the more complete organization of the reindeer industry and for its further development.
I found Mr. Lopp one of those rare men who think more than they talk. We very soon got together, became acquainted with each other, and settled down to the work that we had to do together. I learned to appreciate his intimate knowledge of the reindeer business and its use in the making of better living conditions and a better life for those Alaskans who live in the reindeer country. I learned to value his personal devotion to the great work in which he was engaged. The friendship that grew up between us, through our official relations, is one which I have greatly prized, from that time down to the present day; and accordingly I have welcomed this story of his most warmly, and I am sure it will be welcomed by a wide circle of readers.
Elmer Ellsworth Brown
New York University
WHITE SOX
“Not a thing could he see except his mother.”
I
Astray from the Herd
White Sox opened his eyes, winked them several times, and looked about him. Not a thing could he see except his mother. She was resting on a bed of moss close beside him, wide awake, chewing her cud. He knew he had not slept very long because it was still daylight. But the daylight was gray and damp, for the sides and roof of his bedroom were of fog,—fog so thick that it walled them in completely.
“Mother,” he said anxiously, “do you think we shall ever find our way back to the big herd?”
Mother Reindeer looked at him for a moment without speaking, and went on grinding the wad of food in her mouth—chew, chew, chew. Then she turned her head this way and that, as if listening for any sound that might be heard.
“I’m beginning to think the whole world is made of fog,” complained White Sox. “We’ve been wandering about in it for two days—here and there, up and down—without so much as scenting another reindeer or hearing a sound. Mother, I’m getting dreadfully worried.”
Mother Reindeer looked at him again. Her kind eyes were full of patience. She did not seem a bit worried about things like fog or being lost.
White Sox thought they had gone straying in search of better moss fields and had become separated from the herd by the heavy mist. He never dreamed that his mother was taking him to school. No, indeed!
“Mother,” he said, speaking a little louder, “what if we have been going farther away all the time and never find our way back to the big herd on the sea beach?”
Mother Reindeer swallowed her cud. “Nonsense!” she answered. “When the fog lifts we shall be able to see where we are. We have better moss here than down on the sea beach, and no mosquitoes to bother us. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“But, mother! it is very lonesome here. There isn’t a fox or a ptarmigan, not even an owl or a mouse,” White Sox complained.
Then he rose and stretched himself. He was five months old, and he had never been away from the sea beach before. He tried to look through the fog—this way and that way—but he was afraid of losing sight of his mother. He did not go more than a couple of yards from her.
“This awful stillness makes me unhappy,” he said. “I want to hear the sound of the cowbells, the yelps of the collies, and the shouts of the herders.”
Mother Reindeer watched him with kindly eyes. She was very proud of White Sox. He was her fifteenth fawn, and the smartest, handsomest, and most graceful and agile in the big herd.
He was very tall. His body was slender and well proportioned. His head was finely shaped and held very high; his horns were still in the velvet, and they were beautiful. His hair was of the darkest shade of brown—all except his legs, which, from the hoofs to the knees, were as white and smooth as the skin of a winter weasel, and his nose, which looked as if it had been dipped halfway to his eyes into a pail of milk.
Yes, indeed! Mother Reindeer had good reason to be proud of White Sox. He was strong as well as handsome; only a few hours after he was born he had been able to run with the other fawns and take care of himself. Now, at five months, he could outrun them all. And, strange as it may appear, all the other mothers in the big herd admitted that there was not another fawn to compare with White Sox.
Just at that moment, while Mother Reindeer was thinking about these things, a gentle breeze from the northwest blew in her direction and kissed the tip of her nose. She sprang quickly to her feet. She stretched her graceful neck, lifted her upper lip slightly, and sniffed the breeze.
“White Sox turned his nose in the same direction as hers, and sniffed, and sniffed, and sniffed.”
“What is it?” White Sox asked quickly. “Mother, do you scent the big herd?”
Mother Reindeer was nodding her head upward and downward. White Sox turned his nose in the same direction as hers, and sniffed, and sniffed, and sniffed.
“Come!” cried Mother Reindeer. “Let’s be off!”
Away they went—right through the thick fog, just as if it had not been there at all. After they had gone a few miles, the heavy mist began to lift. They could see a little farther, then still farther, and at last, on a low ridge straight ahead of them, White Sox caught sight of moving forms.
“Mother! Look, look! It’s the big herd!” he shouted joyfully.
He was about to rush toward them, when his mother spoke.
“Not so fast, my son,” she said. “That is a herd of caribou. They are our wild cousins.”
White Sox was very much surprised. “Our wild cousins?” he repeated slowly. Then he became greatly excited. “Oh, mother, I’m so glad! I’ve always wanted to see our wild cousins. How lucky we are! Come, let’s hurry!”
“No, no, my son! You have many lessons to learn,” she said kindly. “Our wild cousins do not know we are coming to visit them. They have not scented us, because the wind is blowing from them to us. They will be startled when they see us. We must move very slowly. If we rush toward them, they will run away.”
As White Sox and his mother moved toward the herd of white caribou, they left the last of the fog behind and could see their cousins quite plainly.
“They look exactly like us,” said White Sox, after watching them for a little while.
“Look again, my son,” said Mother Reindeer.
But at that moment the caribou caught sight of the strangers. They quickly bunched together, with heads erect, and watched them.
Mother Reindeer paused. White Sox stopped also.
“No, mother, I was wrong,” he said. “I can see our cousins plainer now. Their bodies are more slender than those of the reindeer in our herd. Their legs and necks are longer. They hold their heads higher. There are no spotted or white ones among them.”
“Very true,” said Mother Reindeer. She liked to have White Sox find out things for himself. “The spotted and white ones are found only in the herds that live with man and serve him. Come, we will go to our wild cousins now. They are frightened. Walk very slowly, and pay attention to what I tell you.”
“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.
“‘When I bent my head to take a drink, I saw the picture of my antlers.’”
III
White Sox Learns Many Things
When White Sox and the fawns returned from the brook where the dwarf willows grew, he was full of a new subject that he could not understand, and of course he wanted his mother to explain it.
“Mother,” he said, “the water in the brook was very clear this morning. When I bent my head to take a drink, I saw the picture of my antlers. They are not so big and strong as those of the caribou fawns. There is one little fellow here—much younger than I—whose upright branches are longer than mine.”[1]
“Very likely he’ll need his horns more than you will,” said Mother Reindeer.
“Not if I become a caribou, mother; and I do so want to stay here and have a good time all my life,” pleaded White Sox. Then he looked at her curiously and said, “Mother, the caribou all seem to have better antlers than the reindeer. You are like the caribou; your coat is of the same color when you stand in the deep moss and hide your white ankles. But your antlers—”
“Well, what’s the matter with them?” she asked, when her son paused.
“I don’t know, mother,” he answered. “Something seems to be wrong with them. You have twenty-two points still covered with velvet, but the points are soft. They curve inward. I don’t think they would be of much use in a fight.”
“Neither do I,” said Mother Reindeer, “but I am not expecting to get into a fight. I lost a set of beautiful antlers when you were born. Mothers usually lose their horns at such times. The big herd was kept on the shores of a lagoon near the beach while my new set was growing. Mosquitoes were very thick at that place. I had to keep shaking my head from side to side to beat off the pests. That constant striking of my growing horns caused them to curve inward at the ends.”
“The leader of the caribou has a fine set of antlers,” White Sox told her. “I counted forty-seven points, all peeled and sharpened for service. Will mine ever be like his, mother?”
“Don’t worry, my son,” said Mother Reindeer, kindly. “You’ll grow a new set of antlers each year. I’ve grown and cast fifteen sets. No two of them were alike.”
Mother Reindeer knew that the size and shape of antlers and the number of their points all depended on the summer range. If she and White Sox were to adopt the wild life of the caribou, their antlers would be as large and strong as those of their wild cousins. But she was too wise to tell this to her son before he had learned his first lessons.
Away he skipped. If he could not match the caribou fawns in antlers, he could equal them in fleetness. My, how he could run! Mother Reindeer watched him now, and she thought that his white stockings looked for all the world like a streak of snow above the moss. She knew, too, that his cousins envied him those white stockings, and she hoped that he would have sense enough not to become vain of them.
When the second night came, White Sox was very tired and sleepy. But his wild cousins would not let him rest in peace. Just about midnight they decided to move to the next ridge. They were no sooner comfortably settled there than the leader ordered them all to another place. When daylight came, White Sox complained to his mother about this frequent moving.
“Mother, do our wild cousins never rest and sleep?” he asked. “I’ve lost more sleep these two nights than during all the past month. And tell me, please, mother, why do they eat the poor, short dry moss on the top of the ridges and knob hills, when there is much better grazing in the valleys?”
But Mother Reindeer answered only with a shake of her wise head. She knew perfectly well that White Sox might forget the things she told him, but he would always remember the things he found out for himself.
While White Sox waited for her to speak, he saw her turn her head to the right, then to the left, just as the caribou were always doing—looking for trouble.
“Mother, you’ve caught their nervous habit,” he said. “It’s the only thing about our cousins that I don’t like. Well, if I can’t get enough sleep here, I’m surely going to have enough to eat. I’m not going to punish myself by adopting foolish caribou habits. There’ll be some good moss in that little valley down there. I’m going to have it for my breakfast.”
Away he went. Mother Reindeer followed him quickly. Sure enough, as they crossed a patch where dwarf willows grew they came upon some of the finest moss. Um! it made their mouths water. But do you think White Sox had that moss for his breakfast? No, indeed!
Mother Reindeer shook her head. “You come right up to this other knoll at once,” she ordered, sternly. “The restless habits of your wild cousins are not foolish styles, as you’ll soon find out. Come right along, now, and pay attention to what I say. Your father once called my ear buttons a ‘foolish female style,’ but he changed his mind about it when the herders clamped buttons on his own ears.”
White Sox followed his mother up the slope to the little knoll. He did not like it one bit, but he dared not disobey her. They had barely reached the high ground when they heard the frightened squawkings of a flock of ptarmigan, which rose like a cloud out of another patch of low arctic willows a few hundred yards from the spot where they had crossed the little valley.
“Look, look!” exclaimed White Sox, becoming excited. “I never saw so many ptarmigan before. I believe there are as many as there are reindeer in our big herd.”
But Mother Reindeer was looking this way and that, this way and that, looking and listening, just as the caribou did.
“Mother!” shouted White Sox, suddenly, “look at our wild cousins on that other ridge! See how scared they are! Ptarmigan can’t hurt them.”
“Keep quiet, my son!” commanded his mother. “That squawking of the ptarmigan is a danger signal. There’s a hungry fox among the willows who wanted to make his breakfast off a fat ptarmigan, or else it is—”
“The very next instant a big black wolf came out of the willows.”
“What, mother?”
White Sox had crept close to her side; but he also was looking this way and that, this way and that.
“It may be a wolf,” said Mother Reindeer.
“A wolf!” repeated White Sox, in a whisper.
“If it were a herder looking for us, we should see his head and shoulders above the willows. It must be that a wolf has scented us from afar.”
Mother Reindeer was right. But it was not one wolf. Hardly had she said the words when three big gray wolves left the willows by a small ravine that ended near the herd of frightened caribou.
But the caribou could not see the wolves. White Sox forgot everything except the fact that his cousins were in danger. He must warn them instantly.
Before his mother could stop him, he had given out three piercing bleats, “He-awk! he-awk! he-awk!”
The very next instant a big black wolf came out of the willows. It was followed by a gray one. They started up the slope toward him and his mother.