Aklak hung his head. “Yes,” he admitted, “I remember. But this is different.”
“No,” said Tuktu, “it is not different. Have we not always been told that the deer people only may visit the Valley of the Good Spirit? If we should anger the Good Spirit, our deer would not be chosen.”
“Perhaps they won’t be anyway,” declared Aklak.
“Perhaps they won’t,” agreed Tuktu, “but I know the Good Spirit will know that we trained them for him. And even if he does not choose them for his Christmas journey, I think he will be pleased. Aklak, we mustn’t do anything so dreadful as even to seem to be spying on the Good Spirit. If he wants us to visit him, I am sure he will let us know in some way.”
Aklak looked over toward the specks dotting the distant hillside, the deer feeding above Kringle Valley. He sighed. “Of course you are right, Tuktu,” said he, “but, oh dear, I should so like to look down in that valley.” His face brightened suddenly. “Perhaps we will have a fog,” he exclaimed. “If we have a fog, we will just get on the two pack-deer and perhaps they’ll take us in there. I’ll ride Whitefoot, because he has been there before.”
“We won’t do anything of the kind,” replied Tuktu decidedly. “That would be just as bad as going right up in there ourselves. Aklak, I feel it in my bones that the Good Spirit is going to choose some of our deer. So, let’s forget all about wanting to see into that valley.”
CHAPTER XXI
ATTACKED BY WOLVES
SUMMER this year was shorter than usual. As if they knew that the winter would come early and be long and hard, the deer left the Valley of the Good Spirit earlier than ever before, and began the slow journey back toward the winter grazing grounds. At the first movement of the herds, Aklak and Tuktu had been sent back to the main camp to help break camp and move to their winter home. So it was not until the deer were back on the home pastures that they had an opportunity to look for the deer Aklak had so carefully trained.
An unusually bold family of wolves had attacked the herd on the way. There are no more cunning people in all the great world than the wolves. For days they had followed the deer without once being discovered by either the deer or the herders. Perhaps the latter had grown careless. Perhaps they had allowed the deer to scatter too widely. Anyway, the attack came when there were no herders near enough to interfere.
A wary, clever old mother was the leader of those wolves. She knew deer as not even the herders knew them. She knew just how to cut out a small band of animals from the main herd and drive them into the hills to be killed at leisure. She knew how to do it without stampeding the rest of the herd, and she and her well-grown children did it. It wasn’t until one of the herders found their tracks in newly-fallen snow that the presence of the wolves was suspected. Then it didn’t take long to discover what had happened.