"D' y' see it, lad?" exclaimed the excited old man. "D'y'see it?
H'it's gold."
CHAPTER XII
THE RUSSIAN TIGER
When Rainey and Thompson, accompanied by the native, left the village to hunt the strange creature that was working havoc with the village reindeer herd, they walked directly away from the rows of deerskin houses toward the tundra at the foot of the hills where, some five miles away, the deer were herded.
The five miles were accomplished mostly in silence. Each man was busy with his own thoughts. As for the little native, he seemed quite without fear as long as he was with the powerful "spirits of dead whales."
When they approached the brown line of the herd that spread itself across the horizon, the boy led them around it to a point beyond where the beast attacked the young deer.
There, though the ground had been much trampled by the maddened herd, they found many traces of the attack. Splotches of blood stained the snow and made a well-defined trail where the creature had carried off its prey. Soon they were beyond the patches of trampled snow and then the native left them to follow the trail alone.
Faintly, from the distance, came the rattle and clatter of reindeer antlers as the herd moved about. Above them, in all its silver glory, shone the moon. Now and again the hunters gave a start, as a ptarmigan, roused from its slumbers, went whirring away. To them every purple shadow of rock or bush or snow-pile might be the beast crouching over his kill.
"The Doctor's right!" exclaimed Rainey, bending over the trail, which still showed a bloodspot here and there. "It's no polar bear—here's the scratch of his claws where he climbed this bank. Polar bears have no claws, only a sort of hard lump on the end of each toe."
"No wolf, either," said Thompson, examining the tracks carefully. "The scratches are too long and too far apart. But, for that matter, who would even dream of a wolf large enough to carry off a two hundred pound deer?"