“Mother!” shouted White Sox, suddenly, “look at our wild cousins on that other ridge! See how scared they are! Ptarmigan can’t hurt them.”
“Keep quiet, my son!” commanded his mother. “That squawking of the ptarmigan is a danger signal. There’s a hungry fox among the willows who wanted to make his breakfast off a fat ptarmigan, or else it is—”
“The very next instant a big black wolf came out of the willows.”
“What, mother?”
White Sox had crept close to her side; but he also was looking this way and that, this way and that.
“It may be a wolf,” said Mother Reindeer.
“A wolf!” repeated White Sox, in a whisper.
“If it were a herder looking for us, we should see his head and shoulders above the willows. It must be that a wolf has scented us from afar.”
Mother Reindeer was right. But it was not one wolf. Hardly had she said the words when three big gray wolves left the willows by a small ravine that ended near the herd of frightened caribou.