When the second night came, White Sox was very tired and sleepy. But his wild cousins would not let him rest in peace. Just about midnight they decided to move to the next ridge. They were no sooner comfortably settled there than the leader ordered them all to another place. When daylight came, White Sox complained to his mother about this frequent moving.
“Mother, do our wild cousins never rest and sleep?” he asked. “I’ve lost more sleep these two nights than during all the past month. And tell me, please, mother, why do they eat the poor, short dry moss on the top of the ridges and knob hills, when there is much better grazing in the valleys?”
But Mother Reindeer answered only with a shake of her wise head. She knew perfectly well that White Sox might forget the things she told him, but he would always remember the things he found out for himself.
While White Sox waited for her to speak, he saw her turn her head to the right, then to the left, just as the caribou were always doing—looking for trouble.
“Mother, you’ve caught their nervous habit,” he said. “It’s the only thing about our cousins that I don’t like. Well, if I can’t get enough sleep here, I’m surely going to have enough to eat. I’m not going to punish myself by adopting foolish caribou habits. There’ll be some good moss in that little valley down there. I’m going to have it for my breakfast.”
Away he went. Mother Reindeer followed him quickly. Sure enough, as they crossed a patch where dwarf willows grew they came upon some of the finest moss. Um! it made their mouths water. But do you think White Sox had that moss for his breakfast? No, indeed!
Mother Reindeer shook her head. “You come right up to this other knoll at once,” she ordered, sternly. “The restless habits of your wild cousins are not foolish styles, as you’ll soon find out. Come right along, now, and pay attention to what I say. Your father once called my ear buttons a ‘foolish female style,’ but he changed his mind about it when the herders clamped buttons on his own ears.”
White Sox followed his mother up the slope to the little knoll. He did not like it one bit, but he dared not disobey her. They had barely reached the high ground when they heard the frightened squawkings of a flock of ptarmigan, which rose like a cloud out of another patch of low arctic willows a few hundred yards from the spot where they had crossed the little valley.
“Look, look!” exclaimed White Sox, becoming excited. “I never saw so many ptarmigan before. I believe there are as many as there are reindeer in our big herd.”
But Mother Reindeer was looking this way and that, this way and that, looking and listening, just as the caribou did.