Read Ebook: White Sox the story of the reindeer in Alaska by Lopp William T Dummer H Boylston Illustrator

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Ebook has 353 lines and 18552 words, and 8 pages

White Sox was very happy. This new world seemed a beautiful place to him. From the top of the ridge he could see for a long distance in every direction. Life was not a bit lonesome now. He skipped and frisked with the fawns, and ate his supper of moss with them in a tiny hollow just below the ridge where the big caribou were eating. Oh, it was the most delicious moss he had ever tasted! When sleeping time came, he went back to his mother, too tired and drowsy to say a word.

But do you suppose the wild caribou were going to allow the lazy fellow to sleep in peace? Not a bit of it! Four times during the night the herd changed its camping ground. White Sox was awakened out of a lovely nap each time in order to follow them.

But next day--well, he had forgotten this; and it was just as Mother Reindeer had expected it would be. The fawns had told him wonderful stories about their wild life. The newness and excitement of it had so charmed him that the foolish fellow wanted to stay with his wild cousins forever and ever.

Mother Reindeer was preparing for her afternoon nap. She had made herself comfortable on a nice soft bed of moss where she could see up the ridge and down the ridge, when White Sox came to her, all out of breath. He dropped down on the bed beside her without so much as asking her leave.

"Mother, I've changed my mind," he said, panting. "I don't want to go back to the big herd."

Mother Reindeer did not say a word. She wanted to know how much he had learned, and so she kept quiet till he had breath enough to tell her. She did not have to wait very long.

"I like this wild life, mother," he said. "Our cousins are free to come and go as they please. They eat on the mossy ranges in winter and on the grassy slopes in summer. They have sorrels and mushrooms, foliage of shrubs, and all kinds of dainties. The fawns are never robbed of their mothers' milk. They are never roped and thrown to the ground by cruel herders. They don't have their ears cut and their horns torn off."

White Sox was all out of breath again because he had talked so fast. He was quite excited, too.

"I've been thinking of my Cousin Bald Face," he went on. "If he had lived with the caribou, he would have been alive today. I shall never forget his death."

"Bald Face did not heed his mother's teaching, my son," said Mother Reindeer, gently.

"It wasn't his fault, mother. I had just been roped and thrown to the ground. One of the herders had taken two V's out of my right ear and another V out of my left ear--so you'd know I belonged to you, I suppose--when I saw the loop of the lasso close over Bald Face's left horn, near the end. The poor little fellow was running his fastest. The herder braced himself and held the lasso tight. My cousin's horn was pulled off. Oh, it was horrible! A piece of Bald Face's skull the size of my ear was torn off with the root of the horn, leaving his brain bare."

"The herder was a new one," said Mother Reindeer. "He had not learned his business. He will never injure another reindeer in that way. We must forgive him and try to forget it."

"Mother, I can't forget it," cried White Sox. "These wild cousins of ours can look forward to a long life of freedom and safety. They are not the slaves of herders and dogs. I want to stay with them."

"You are very young, my son. You have much to learn," said his mother.

"But I know what will happen to me if I stay with the big herd," he said. "I'll have to draw heavy sled loads in winter and carry tiresome packs in summer, if I am not killed by the butcher's knife when I am two years old. In that case the herders will eat my flesh and make clothing out of my hide. The skin of my white legs will be used for fancy boots for some herder."

Mother Reindeer nodded her head upward and downward. She knew the ways of the big herd and had seen these things happen many times. She knew that if her beautiful White Sox was intended for a sled deer, he would first have to be halter-broken. A herder would rope him and tie him to a piece of tundra surface that was higher than the rest of the tundra, called a "niggerhead." Then would follow the tedious work of breaking him to harness. He would be a beast of burden in winter as long as his back-fat lasted. Back-fat is the fat that collects on a reindeer's back in summer, when there are green grass and shrubbery to eat. Reindeer moss alone does not give the reindeer strength enough for much hard work.

If White Sox was broken to harness, Mother Reindeer thought it quite likely that he would be selected by the mail carrier for that terrible journey of five hundred miles to Kotzebue Sound. But she had reason to believe that, because of his perfect markings, this wonderful fawn of hers might escape the butcher's knife and the herder's harness and be kept for a leader of the big herd. It was because she thought this that she had brought him with her on a visit to the caribou.

"Mother," began White Sox, after thinking for a little while, "have you forgotten what Uncle Slim told us just before we became separated from the big herd?"

"No, indeed! But run away and play with the fawns now," she said. "Watch them carefully. You have not learned your lesson yet."

Mother Reindeer had intended to take a nap, but she had many things to think of after White Sox left her. Uncle Slim had told them that probably the big herd would be pastured on the ice-coated sea beach during the coming winter. This meant that the sled deer would grow very thin again. The herders liked to pasture the herd there so that they could live in their old sod houses and be near the big village at Point Barrow.

Lack of moss would not be the only drawback; there was also the terror of the Eskimo dogs. Slim's brother had been crippled by a malamute dog, at Kivalina, when hauling mail on the Barrow-Kotzebue route. Last December, Slim and five other reindeer had been staked out for five nights near Point Barrow village. They were exposed to a fierce northeast wind while the drivers were enjoying themselves in the village, where feasting and dancing were going on. On the fifth night the wind had changed to the northwest, and the reindeer had been scented by hungry village dogs. After a desperate struggle, Slim and the other reindeer had broken their tethers and had outrun the dogs. They had run miles and miles back to the big herd, and so had saved their lives.

It was not all joy in the big herd. Mother Reindeer knew that very well. Many a time she too had been tempted to stay with her caribou cousins and adopt their free life. But always something had happened to make her change her mind. She felt sure it would be the same way with White Sox.

WHITE SOX LEARNS MANY THINGS

When White Sox and the fawns returned from the brook where the dwarf willows grew, he was full of a new subject that he could not understand, and of course he wanted his mother to explain it.

"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."

"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.

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.

"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--"

"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."

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