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LITTLE WHITE FOX AND HIS ARCTIC FRIENDS
[Illustration: "Such ugly, bent noses I never saw before in all my life,
either." FRONTISPIECE. _See Page 21_]
LITTLE WHITE FOX
AND HIS ARCTIC FRIENDS
BY
ROY J. SNELL
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
GEORGE F. KERR
[Device]
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1916
_Copyright, 1916_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_
Published, September, 1916
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. LITTLE WHITE FOX MAKES A DISCOVERY 1
II. LITTLE MISS PTARMIGAN FOOLS HIM 9
III. HE GETS HIS HEAD THUMPED 19
IV. WHEN LITTLE FOXES QUARREL 27
V. LITTLE WHITE FOX MEETS BARRED SEAL 34
VI. LITTLE WHITE FOX HELPS HIMSELF 41
VII. LITTLE WHITE BEAR AND LITTLE BLACK BEAR 48
VIII. TROUBLE FOR LITTLE WHITE BEAR 54
IX. LITTLE BLACK BEAR'S DISCOVERY 61
X. FUN FOR TWO LITTLE BEARS 67
XI. BIG WHITE BEAR MEETS HUSKIE 74
XII. LITTLE WHITE FOX GOES HUNTING 83
XIII. BIG WHITE BEAR'S KITCHEN 89
XIV. BIG WHITE BEAR FINDS LITTLE WHITE FOX 95
XV. LITTLE WHITE FOX GOES FISHING 101
XVI. LITTLE BROWN SEAL'S NARROW ESCAPE 108
XVII. A STRANGE JOURNEY 115
XVIII. LITTLE WHITE FOX COMES HOME 122
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"Such ugly, bent noses I never saw before in all
my life, either." _Frontispiece_
"Now," he said, when he had finished fishing, "we
will have dinner." PAGE 38
Little White Bear knew right away what he had done. " 52
"I am going to make your teeth chatter so you can't
call your master." " 81
Big White Bear popped right up out of the ocean! " 119
She was going back to his own dear beach. " 128
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Six of the Little White Fox Stories appeared serially in the
_Continent_, to whose publishers my thanks are due for permission to
publish them in book form.
LITTLE WHITE FOX AND HIS ARCTIC FRIENDS
CHAPTER I
LITTLE WHITE FOX MAKES A DISCOVERY
Little White Fox was very, very much worried, for something dreadful had
happened, something he couldn't account for at all: Tdariuk, the
reindeer, was dead!
Tdariuk was not related to Little White Fox. And he wasn't a bit in the
world like him. He was many times bigger than Little White Fox would
ever be, and he was quite different from him in every way. But all the
same, Little White Fox loved him. If you had asked him why he loved the
big reindeer, he would probably have told you that, for one thing,
Tdariuk, in spite of his huge body, was very gentle and kind. None of
the little animals of the tundra was afraid of him. Little Mrs.
Ptarmigan calmly hunted for dry blueberries and weed seed right beside
him while he cropped his moss. And when he drew close to the shore by
the sea, Little Brown Seal never thought of such a thing as slipping off
his rock and hiding in the water. Even if there were no other reason,
wouldn't Tdariuk's gentleness alone make Little White Fox love him?
Now when Little White Fox discovered that his big, kind friend was dead,
he ran home as fast as his legs could carry him to tell his mother the
sad news.
"Mother! Mother!" he called tumbling into his home under the great rock,
"Tdariuk is dead!"
"Tdariuk dead!" cried Madam White Fox. "Who could have been mean enough
to kill him?"
"I don't know who killed him, but he's dead, I know that," said Little
White Fox, the tears running down his cheeks.
"It must have been Old Man Gray Wolf, or Omnok, the hunter," said Madam
White Fox, wiping her eyes with her paw. "For my part, I could easily
wish them both dead themselves. None of us is safe as long as they are
about. But who told you Tdariuk was dead?"
"No one told me. I found it out for myself," boasted Little White Fox
proudly, quite forgetting his sorrow in thinking what a wise young chap
he was.
"_You_ found it out!" exclaimed his mother. "Pray, tell me how?"
"Why, you see," explained Little White Fox, with an air of deep mystery,
"I was down on the tundra, at the foot of Saw Tooth Mountain, looking
all around to see what I could see. And all of a sudden I came right on
one of Tdariuk's great, fine antlers lying there in the snow. Now, what
do you think of that? And when I went on a little farther, there was the
other one! And then I knew, of course, that Tdariuk was dead."
When Madam White Fox heard that, she smiled a little and stopped wiping
her eyes. But all she said was: "Keep your eyes wide open, my son, and
one of these days you will see something very strange."
Little White Fox thought that a queer way to answer him. Why, she hadn't
even told him he was smart to discover about Tdariuk.
"What do you mean, mother? What will I see? Tell me what I will see!
_Please_ tell me what I will see!" teased Little White Fox.
But not another word would Madam Fox tell him. Little White Fox
wondered why she dried her tears for Tdariuk so quickly, but he
couldn't find that out, either.
And so every day and all day, Little White Fox went peering curiously
about everywhere, just as his mother had told him to do, trying to find
the something that was "very strange." He looked all around among the
sand dunes by the ocean, but there was nothing strange there. He went in
and out among the big rocks at the foot of Saw Tooth Mountain and came
near falling into one of Omnok's cruel traps, but there was nothing
strange there. He went here and there, and back and forth, all over the
tundra, but there was nothing strange there.
Hunt as he would, Little White Fox could find nothing strange anywhere.
He had grown quite discouraged, when one day, when he was searching
down among the scrub willows by the river, his ear caught a familiar
sound, "Ark! Ark! Ark!"
Little White Fox couldn't believe his ears.
"Why, that's queer!" he exclaimed. "It sounds just like Tdariuk, the
reindeer. But it can't be Tdariuk. How could it be Tdariuk, when
Tdariuk's dead?"
Then he heard it again, much louder this time and quite close: "Ark!
Ark! Ark!"
Little White Fox, for once in his life, was too astonished to say a
word. He just held his breath and waited. And in just another moment out
walked Tdariuk, as big and gentle as ever, and very much alive indeed.
And--on his head he wore a brand new pair of antlers, bigger than the
others and all covered with velvet! My! how handsome those antlers
were!
Little White Fox didn't stop to ask a single question. He just gave
Tdariuk one long look and then whirled around and ran home as fast as he
could travel.
He burst breathlessly into the cave and started to tell his mother that
Tdariuk wasn't dead. But it wasn't news to her; she had known it all the
time. Little White Fox, however, had found out the something very
strange that she had hoped he would find, and had done it all by
himself. Therefore Madam Fox was very happy as she curled down on the
floor for her afternoon nap.