“We are not herded at night, mother,” White Sox said.
“That is true, my son,” said Mother Reindeer. “On this side of the big waters there are not so many wolves. Our herders watch us at night only during the season when the ground is bare and we are inclined to scatter.”
“How did you get across the big waters, mother?”
“That is what I’m going to tell you now,” she said.
“‘My mother was a beautiful spotted reindeer.’”
XI
How Mother Reindeer Came to Alaska
“At last the herd became so big that it had to be divided,” said Mother Reindeer. “Dainten had always claimed White Feet. Tah-ne-na had claimed Blackie. Now Dainten took all the spotted and white reindeer and moved toward the rising sun, where his wife’s people lived. Tah-ne-na had only the dark reindeer for his herd. He moved toward the setting sun, where his wife’s people had come from. They moved the two herds so far apart that they could never mingle again. Tah-ne-na’s herd multiplied and stocked the shores toward the setting sun. Dainten’s herd increased rapidly and spread along the shores toward the rising sun.”
“You belonged to Dainten, didn’t you, mother?” White Sox asked.
“Dainten and White Feet had been dead for ages and ages before I was born,” said Mother Reindeer. “I belonged to one of the herds that descended from White Feet. My mother was a beautiful spotted reindeer, and my father was a great leader of a band of wild caribou. When I was a fawn, all the members of our family were roped and hobbled. We were taken on board a big floating corral and brought across the waters to a place some thirty days’ journey from here. That floating corral was a long, narrow, smoky, noisy, quivering thing that moved over the surface of the waters toward the rising sun. It was a dreadful journey. Our mothers were too much scared to eat. The fawns were bleating all the time. For two suns there was no land anywhere in sight—nothing but water and fog, water and fog. We didn’t know what the herders were going to do to us. We were all very much afraid.