The Christmas Reindeer (9 page)

“Of course he loves the reindeer!” Aklak interrupted. “How could he help loving the reindeer? Aren't they the most important animals in all the Great World?”

“That is what I said, but the man said that horses are more important down there. I asked him if they ate the meat of the horses and he said no. And I asked him if they made clothing from the skins of the horses and he said no. He said they were important because they worked for men.”

Aklak shrugged his shoulders. “The reindeer work for men also. They carry us where we want to go. We do not have to carry food for them, for they find it for themselves. They furnish us with food and clothing and our tents. I would not for the world live down there where there are no reindeer. Did the man tell you anything else?”

Tuktu's eyes were like stars. “Yes,” said she. “He said that all over that land at Christmas time they have beautiful green trees covered with lights at night and many shining things. And sometimes these trees are hung with presents for the boys and girls ; and sometimes the Good Saint appears at one of these trees and with his own hands gives the gifts to the children. But the very day after Christmas he disappears and he is seen no more until the Christmas season comes again ; and no one knows where he is. All the children wonder and wonder where he is all through the year, but they have never been able to find out.”

“Did you tell the man that we know?” Aklak asked.

Tuktu shook her head. “He wouldn't believe,” said she. “But we do know, Aklak, for that children's saint is the Good Spirit who lives in the Valley of the Good Spirit. Oh, Aklak, wouldn't it be too wonderful if he would choose our deer for that marvelous Christmas journey?”

CHAPTER XX

THE GREAT TEMPTATION

T
UKTU and Aklak loved the summer by the shore. Yet both were impatient for the coming of the time when the herds would move up to the Valley of the Good Spirit. The eight deer Aklak had so carefully trained had been grazing with the herd all summer. The two children had kept their secret well, but, oh, how eager they were to see if the Good Spirit would choose any of their deer!

At last the big herd moved and as before Kutok took the two children with him to watch that the deer should not leave the valley without knowledge of the herders. When they got there, they found grazing near the camp Speedfoot, the missing deer, which Tuktu had seen chosen in the Valley of the Good Spirit. Looking at the ears, they found Kutok's mark, but also a new mark, the mark of the Good Spirit, for it was unlike any other
mark in all that region. This splendid deer and seven others were grazing near the hut, and Kutok and Aklak promptly fastened them, that they might not go back with the herd. For were not these the blessed deer?

But the herd moved on. Looking over toward the hills around the valley, the children could see the grazing deer in the distance, but they were too far away to tell one deer from another.

This year Aklak spent less time hunting than he had the previous year. He could think of nothing but those eight deer. “If the Good Spirit chooses all of them, how wonderful it would be! I do hope he will,” said he.

Tuktu hoped so, too, but she didn't say so. She merely reminded Aklak that only one of his father's deer had been chosen the year before.

As the days slipped by, Aklak was less and less certain that his deer would be chosen. Finally, he confessed to Tuktu that if the Good Spirit would just take one, he would be satisfied.

“He will. I know he will,” replied Tuktu.

One morning when their father was off hunting, Aklak proposed that they take the two pack-deer and go over to the edge of the Valley of the Good Spirit, where they could look down into it. Tuktu shook her head and there was a startled look in her big eyes. “Oh, no, Aklak,” she cried, “we mustn't do that!”

“Why not?” demanded Aklak. “You went down into the valley last year. Why should you be afraid to do it again?”

“But I didn't go of my own will,” cried Tuktu. “I was taken there without knowing I was going, and that is very different. I think the Good Spirit knew and meant for me to come.”

“Well, anyway,” said Aklak, “let's go up on the hills where we can look down on the curtain of beautiful mist. That will do no harm. Besides, I want to see if those deer I trained are all right.”

But Tuktu would not be moved. “Do you remember the story the white man told, and that I told you?” she demanded.

Aklak nodded. “What of it?” said he.

“Do you not remember that the children
who peek, not only never see the good saint when he visits them at Christmas, but get no gifts?”

Aklak hung his head. “Yes,” he admitted, “I remember. But this is different.”

“No,” said Tuktu, “it is not different. Have we not always been told that the deer people only may visit the Valley of the Good Spirit? If we should anger the Good Spirit, our deer would not be chosen.”

“Perhaps they won't be anyway,” declared Aklak.

“Perhaps they won't,” agreed Tuktu, “but I know the Good Spirit will know that we trained them for him. And even if he does not choose them for his Christmas journey, I think he will be pleased. Aklak, we mustn't do anything so dreadful as even to seem to be spying on the Good Spirit. If he wants us to visit him, I am sure he will let us know in some way.”

Aklak looked over toward the specks dotting the distant hillside, the deer feeding above Kringle Valley. He sighed. “Of course you are right, Tuktu,” said he, but, oh dear, I should so like to look down in that
valley.” His face brightened suddenly. “Perhaps we will have a fog,” he exclaimed. “If we have a fog, we will just get on the two pack-deer and perhaps they'll take us in there. I'll ride Whitefoot, because he has been there before.”

“We won't do anything of the kind,” replied Tuktu decidedly. “That would be just as bad as going right up in there ourselves. Aklak, I feel it in my bones that the Good Spirit is going to choose some of our deer. So, let's forget all about wanting to see into that valley.”

CHAPTER XXI

ATTACKED BY WOLVES

S
UMMER this year was shorter than usual. As if they knew that the winter would come early and be long and hard, the deer left the Valley of the Good Spirit earlier than ever before, and began the slow journey back toward the winter grazing grounds. At the first movement of the herds, Aklak and Tuktu had been sent back to the main camp to help break camp and move to their winter home. So it was not until the deer were back on the home pastures that they had an opportunity to look for the deer Aklak had so carefully trained.

An unusually bold family of wolves had attacked the herd on the way. There are no more cunning people in all the great world than the wolves. For days they had followed the deer without once being discovered by either the deer or the herders. Perhaps the
latter had grown careless. Perhaps they had allowed the deer to scatter too widely. Anyway, the attack came when there were no herders near enough to interfere.

A wary, clever old mother was the leader of those wolves. She knew deer as not even the herders knew them. She knew just how to cut out a small band of animals from the main herd and drive them into the hills to be killed at leisure. She knew how to do it without stampeding the rest of the herd, and she and her well-grown children did it. It wasn't until one of the herders found their tracks in newly-fallen snow that the presence of the wolves was suspected. Then it didn't take long to discover what had happened.

Two of the herders, who were also noted hunters, set out on the trail of the wolves to make sure that the band was not still hanging around. They also hoped that they might find some of the missing deer.

But those deer had been run hard and fast and all the hunters found were the cleanly picked bones of several. The others had been so scattered that it was useless to try to round them up.

There was no way of knowing whose deer the wolves had killed until the winter roundup. Then when the count was made, it would be discovered whose deer were missing. But it was a long time to wait for that winter round-up, so Tuktu and Aklak spent much time going about in the herd looking for those trained deer. And they were not the only ones who were looking. Kutok, their father, had been very proud of those deer, and as soon as the herd was back on the home pastures, he asked Aklak where they were. Of course Aklak had to tell him that he hadn't seen them.

Now trained sled-deer are valuable animals, and Kutok at once called the other herders to him and told them to watch out for these particular deer. He remembered the attack of the wolves and he feared greatly that the eight sled-deer might have been the victims. This was the same fear that was tugging at the hearts of Aklak and Tuktu. There was no way for them to know whether the Good Spirit had chosen those deer, or whether the wolves had killed them. There could be no way of knowing until the return
of the herds to the seashore in the early summer. Meanwhile, Aklak was busy training more deer, and one of these was Little Spot. He was still young for sled work, but he was such a splendid young deer, so big and so strong and so willing, that everybody who saw him said that in time he would make the finest sled-deer in all the Northland.

Of course, Tuktu and Aklak said nothing to their father of their hope that the Good Spirit had chosen those deer. They suspected that should they tell, they would be laughed at. Also, they were afraid their father would not like it that they should have dared to think that they could train deer for the Good Spirit. So, when the round-up came and none of the deer were found, but it was discovered that several others of Kutok's deer were also missing, they pretended to think as did all the other folk, that Kutok had been unfortunate and that the wolves had gotten his deer. This was what every one believed and it was repeated so often that Tuktu and Aklak found it difficult at times not to believe that it was true. “Had it not been for those wolves, we
should know,” Tuktu kept saying over and over. “I hate those wolves! I do so!”

Kutok also hated the wolves. He hated them for the same reason that Tuktu did, and he hated them because he knew that if those deer were not safe in the Valley of the Good Spirit, they most certainly had been eaten by this time and all his hard work had gone for nothing. So it was that the wolves brought worry to the home of Kutok.

CHAPTER XXII

THE CHRISTMAS INVITATION

I
T HAD been known to the village since the forming of new ice that the ship which they had visited in summer had not left for the far-away country from which it had come, but was now frozen in the ice and would spend the winter in the Far Northland. So there was no surprise when one day there arrived two white men and an Eskimo guide, who had journeyed overland by dog sledge. One of these men was the one who had told Tuktu the story of Christmas. As Kutok's house was the largest and the best house in the village, the visitors were entertained there.

They remained two or three days and when they left to return to their ship, all the village turned out to see them go. They had brought things to trade and in return for deer meat and warm clothing of deerskin had left things which were of equal value to the Eskimos. And they had left the feeling of goodwill, for in all their trading they had taken the greatest care to be fair. When they left they had taken with them a promise that those of the men who could be spared from their duties in watching the deer, together with some of the women and children from the village, would visit the ship at a certain time, which the white men called Christmas. There would be much feasting and merrymaking and strange things to see on the ship.

The white man who had made friends with Tuktu had made Kutok promise that Tuktu should come. And this her father had been the more willing to grant, because he had been given a knife he had long wanted. So it was arranged that unless the weather should
be too bad, so there could be no traveling, Ikok, Navaluk, and the two children, and perhaps some others of the village, should pay a Christmas visit to the ship.

Tuktu and Aklak could think of and talk about little else. Aklak saw to it that the sled-deer were in the best possible condition. It would take them at least two days and one sleep. That sleep would be at the herder's hut near Kringle Valley. At least, that is the way that Kutok planned to go. There was a longer way around by way of another village and this would be the way that others from the village would go.

Kutok and Aklak went to work on the sleds. They must be put in the best condition for such a long journey. They would take six, one for each of them and two extra to carry provisions and things for trade. It would not be necessary to have extra drivers, for often one driver handles at least three sleds. He rides on the first one, the deer drawing the second one is attached to the rear of his sled, and to the rear of that sled is attached the third deer. So, it would be a simple matter to look out for the extra sleds on this journey.
Kutok was to drive Speedfoot; Tuktu would drive Big Spot; Aklak would drive Little Spot; and Navaluk would drive Whitefoot.