“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.