CHAPTER XVIII
LITTLE WHITE FOX COMES HOME
When Little White Fox looked all around him very carefully, this way and that, and didn't see a thing he had ever seen before and not a person who knew him in all this new tundra and all these new hills, he felt very blue, you may be sure. But he didn't cry about it. He was too happy at being off that bit of roof to the great ocean for that. So he looked as far as he could see in every direction, and at last he spied some little lakes way down on the tundra. "I'll just go over there and see if there is any one I know," he said to himself, and went trotting away as fast as ever he could. He came right down by the lakes and at last he saw some one he had met in his own home land. It was Mr. Widgeon Junior, a son of Old Mrs. Widgeon Duck, who was killed by Omnok the hunter.
"Hello," said Little White Fox.
Widgeon Junior looked up quick, in a frightened sort of way, but he never said a word. He just stretched out his long neck and flapped his strong wings and began to fly. And all the time he pointed with his bill straight ahead and with his feet straight behind, as if to say, "Follow me; this is the way home."
"I just believe that is the way home!" said Little White Fox. "His mother had her nest right down on our tundra last summer, and I believe he is going there right now!" So he picked up his feet lively and ran along behind Widgeon Junior but he couldn't near keep up! It wasn't any time at all before he was so far behind that he couldn't see Widgeon Junior at all! And before long he was just as badly lost as before. But he trotted on cheerfully, "For," he said to himself, "I'll see some one else I know very soon."
And sure enough, all of a sudden there was a clap, clap of wings, and some one that looked just like Who-Who, the big white owl, went soaring over his head. But when Little White Fox shouted "Hello" in his very best voice, the great white owl never answered a word, but went flapping on till he lit on the top of a whalebone which one of Omnok's relatives had put up to mark a grave.
"Well," said Little White Fox to himself, "I guess that isn't Who-Who, but anyway, it is one of his cousins, and he is very wise. All the Owl folks are. He will tell me the way home."
So he hurried over to the foot of the whalebone and said, "Please, Mr. White Owl, won't you tell me the way home?"