Chapter III: Marian Faces a Problem

Marian buried her hand in the thick warm coat of the spotted reindeer that stood by her side and, shading her eyes, gazed away at the distant hills. A brown spot had appeared at the crest of the third hill to her right.

“There’s another and another,” she said. “Reindeer or caribou? I wonder. If it’s caribou, perhaps Terogloona can get one of them with his rifle. It would help out our food supply. But if it’s reindeer—” her brow wrinkled at the thought, “reindeer might mean trouble.”

At that instant something happened that brought her hand to her side. Quickly unstrapping her field glasses, she put them to her eyes.

A fourth object had appeared on the crest. Even with the naked eye one might tell that this one was not like the other three. He was lighter in color and lacked the lace-like suggestion against the sky which meant broad spreading antlers.

“Reindeer!” she groaned. “All of them reindeer, and the last one’s a sled deer. His antlers have been cut off so he’ll travel better. And that means—”

She pursed her lips in deep thought as the furrows in her brow deepened.

“Oh, well!” she exclaimed at last. “Perhaps it doesn’t mean anything after all. Perhaps they’re just a bunch of strays. Who knows? But a sled reindeer?” she argued with herself. “They don’t often stray away.”

For a moment she stood staring at the distant hillcrest. Then, seizing her drive line, she spoke to her deer. As he bounded away she leaped nimbly upon the sled and went skimming along after him.

“We’ll see about that,” she said. “They’re not our deer, that’s sure. Whose are they? That’s what we’re about to find out. A circle across that long valley, then a stiff climb up a gully, will just about bring us to their position.”

Fifteen minutes later she found herself atop the first elevation. For the time, out of sight of the strange reindeer, she had an opportunity to glance back down the valley where her own herd was peacefully feeding. Her eyes lighted up as she looked. It was indeed a beautiful sight. Winter had come, for she and Patsy Martin had now been following the herd for three months. Winter, having buried deep beneath the snow every trace of the browns and greens of summer, had left only deep purple shadows and pale yellow lights over mountain, hill and tundra. In the midst of these lights and shadows, such as are not seen save upon a sun-scorched desert or the winter-charmed Arctic, her little herd of some four hundred deer stood out as if painted on a canvas or done in bas-relief with wood or stone.

“It’s not like anything in the world,” said Marian, “and I love it. Oh, how I do love it! How I wish I could paint it as it really is!”

As she rode on up the valley her mind went over the months that had passed and the problems she and Patsy now faced.

Great as was her love for the Arctic, fond as she was of its wild, free life, her father had made other plans for her; plans that could not be carried out so long as they were in possession of the herd. This seemed to make the sale of the herd an urgent necessity. Every letter from her father that came to her over hundreds of miles of dog-sled and reindeer trail, suggested some possible means of disposing of the herd.

“We _must_ sell by spring,” his last letter had said. “Not that I am in immediate need of money, but you must get back to school. One year out there in the wilderness, with Patsy for your companion, will do no harm, but it must not go on. The doctor says I cannot return to the North for four or five years at the least. So, somehow, we must sell.”

“Sell! Sell!” Marian repeated, almost savagely. It seemed to her that there could be no selling the herd. There was only a limited market for reindeer meat. Miners here and there bought it. The mining cities bought it, but of late the increase to one hundred thousand reindeer in Alaska had overloaded the market. A little meat could be shipped to the States, there to be served at great club luncheons and in palatial hotels, but the demand was not large.

“Sell?” she questioned, “how can we sell?”

Little she knew how soon a possible answer to that question would come. Not knowing, she visioned herself following the herd year after year, while all those beautiful, wonderful months she had had a taste of, and now dreamed of by day and night, faded from her thoughts.

She had spent one year under the shadows of a great university. Marvelous new thoughts had come to her that year. Friendships had been made, such friendships as she in her northern wilds had never dreamed of. The stately towers of the university even now appeared to loom before her, and again she seemed to hear the melodious chimes of the bells.

“Oh!” she cried, “I must go back. I must! I must!”

And yet Marian was not unhappy. For the present she would not be any other place than where she was. It was a charming life, this wandering life of the reindeer herder. During the short summer, and even into the frosts of fall and winter, they lived in tents, and like nomads of the desert, wandered from place to place, always seeking the freshest water, the greenest grass, the tallest willow bushes. But when winter truly came swooping down upon them, they went to a spot chosen months before, the center of rich feeding grounds where the ground beneath the snow was green-white with “reindeer moss.” Here they made a more permanent camp. After that there remained but the task of defending the herd from wolves and other marauders, and of driving the herd to camp each day, that they might not wander too far away.

As for Patsy, she had fairly revelled in it all. Reared in a city apartment where a chirping sparrow gave the only touch of nature, she had come to this wilderness with a great thirst for knowledge of the out-of-doors. Each day brought some new revelation to her. The snow buntings, ptarmigans and ravens; the foxes, caribou and reindeer; even the occasional prowling wolves, all were her teachers. From them she learned many secrets of wild nature.

Of course there had been long, shut-in days, when the wind swept the tundra, and the snow, appearing to rest nowhere, whirled on and on. Such days were lonely ones. Letters were weeks in coming and arrived but seldom. All these things gave the energetic city lass some blue days, but even then she never complained.

Her health was greatly improved. Gone was the nervous twitch of eyelids that told of too many hours spent pouring over books. The summer freckles had been replaced by ruddy brown, such as only Arctic winds and an occasional freeze can impart. As for her muscles, they were like iron bands. Never in the longest day’s tramp did she complain of weariness. With the quick adaptability of a bright and cheerful girl, she had become a part of the wild world which surrounded her. The expression of her lips, too, was somehow changed. Firmness and determination were still written there, but certain lines had been added; lines of patience that said louder than words: “I have learned one great lesson; that one may run uphill, but that mountains must be climbed slowly, patiently, circle by circle, till the summit is reached.”

They were in winter camp now. As Marian thought of it she smiled. At no other spot in all Alaska was there another such camp as hers. Marian, as you know if you have read our other book, “The Blue Envelope,” had, some two years before, spent the short summer months of the Arctic in Siberia, across from Alaska. Much against her own wishes, she had spent a part of the winter there. Someone has said “there is no great loss without some small gain”; and while Marian had endured hardships and known moments of peril in Siberia, from the strange and interesting tribes there she had learned some lessons of real value regarding winter camps in the Arctic. Upon making her own camp she had put this knowledge into practice.

They were now in winter camp. As Marian thought of this, then thought of the four strange reindeer on the ridge above, her brow again showed wrinkles of anxiety.

“If it’s Bill Scarberry’s herd,” she said fiercely, clenching her fists, “if it is!” In her words there was a world of feeling.

In the early stages of the reindeer industry in Alaska, the problem of feed grounds for the deer had been exceedingly simple. There were the broad stretches of tundra, a hundred square miles for every reindeer. Help yourself. Every mile of it was matted deep with rich moss; every stream lined in summer with tender willow leaves. If you chanced to sight another small herd in your wandering, you went to right or left, and so avoided them. There was room for all.

Now things were vastly changed. One hundred thousand deer ranged the tundra. Reindeer moss, eaten away in a single season, requires four or five years to grow again in abundance. Back, back, farther and farther back from shore and river the herds had been pushed, until now it was difficult indeed to transport food to the herders.

With these conditions arising, the rivalry between owners for good feeding ground grew intense. Many and bitter were the feuds that had arisen between owners. There was not the best of feeling between Bill Scarberry, another owner, and her father; Marian knew that all too well.

“And now maybe his herd is coming into our feeding ground,” she sighed.

It was true that the Government Agent attempted to allot feeding grounds. The valley her deer were feeding upon had been written down in his book as her winter range; but when one is many days’ travel from even the fringe of civilization, when one is the herder of but four hundred deer, and only a girl at that, when an overriding owner of ten thousand deer comes driving in his vast herd to lick up one’s little pasture in a week or two, what is there to do?

These were the bitter thoughts that ran through the girl’s mind as she rode up the valley.

The pasture to the right and left of them, and to the north, had been alloted for so many miles that it was out of the question to think of breaking winter camp and freighting supplies to some new range.

“No,” she said firmly, “we are here, and here we stay!”

Had she known the strange circumstances that would cause her to alter this decision, she might have been startled at the grim humor of it.