They were now in winter camp. As Marian thought of this, then thought of the four strange reindeer on the ridge above, her brow again showed wrinkles of anxiety.
“If it’s Bill Scarberry’s herd,” she said fiercely, clenching her fists, “if it is!” In her words there was a world of feeling.
In the early stages of the reindeer industry in Alaska, the problem of feed grounds for the deer had been exceedingly simple. There were the broad stretches of tundra, a hundred square miles for every reindeer. Help yourself. Every mile of it was matted deep with rich moss; every stream lined in summer with tender willow leaves. If you chanced to sight another small herd in your wandering, you went to right or left, and so avoided them. There was room for all.
Now things were vastly changed. One hundred thousand deer ranged the tundra. Reindeer moss, eaten away in a single season, requires four or five years to grow again in abundance. Back, back, farther and farther back from shore and river the herds had been pushed, until now it was difficult indeed to transport food to the herders.
With these conditions arising, the rivalry between owners for good feeding ground grew intense. Many and bitter were the feuds that had arisen between owners. There was not the best of feeling between Bill Scarberry, another owner, and her father; Marian knew that all too well.
“And now maybe his herd is coming into our feeding ground,” she sighed.
It was true that the Government Agent attempted to allot feeding grounds. The valley her deer were feeding upon had been written down in his book as her winter range; but when one is many days’ travel from even the fringe of civilization, when one is the herder of but four hundred deer, and only a girl at that, when an overriding owner of ten thousand deer comes driving in his vast herd to lick up one’s little pasture in a week or two, what is there to do?
These were the bitter thoughts that ran through the girl’s mind as she rode up the valley.
The pasture to the right and left of them, and to the north, had been alloted for so many miles that it was out of the question to think of breaking winter camp and freighting supplies to some new range.
“No,” she said firmly, “we are here, and here we stay!”