THE WILD STAMPEDE
At no time in Curlie Carson’s adventurous life had he experienced such
strangely mingled emotions as he did while riding astride the white
reindeer in the midst of the wild stampede. A sea of tossing antlers was
all about him. Behind him was the red glare of a mountain of flame. What
the next moment would bring forth he could not even guess. Now the mass
of struggling life was crowded into a narrow runway between banks of a
river and now they spread out over an open flat. Now his legs were
pinched and bruised by antlers pressed against them, and now he rode
almost alone. But always his white steed plunged on into the night made
light as day by the great conflagration.
“Our hope is in the open tundra, open, treeless tundra,” he told himself
over and over.
The great horde of creatures, seeming to know this by instinct, headed
straight for it. Now he could see the tundra’s broad, white expanse
gleaming before them. Would they make it? The fire was gaining upon them.
He felt the hot breath of flame upon his cheek. The crowding from behind
became all but unbearable. Beside him, mouth open, panting, raced a
monstrous caribou. Before him crashed a spotted reindeer.
Would they make it? Now they were a half mile from safety, now a quarter.
The smell of burning hair came stiflingly from the rear.
And now the foremost of the pack reached the open tundra. Then, like a
swollen stream which has suddenly broken through its barriers, they
spread out, racing still, over the silent glistening expanse of white
prairie-like tundra. “A few of the weaker ones have perished. The great
mass of this wild life is saved,” was Curlie’s mental comment.
A mile from the flames Curlie dropped stiffly from his place on the
reindeer’s back and, patting his head in grateful appreciation, tied him
with a loose rope to a willow bush.
“There,” he murmured, “feed up a bit.”
The reindeer began digging in the snow for moss, while Curlie climbed a
near-by knoll to have a look at the strange spectacle.
As each wild creature pursued his own course, Curlie looked on with
interest. The wolves were the first to slink away. The bear, a huge
barren-ground grizzly, climbed a distant hill, there to suck his sore
paws and nurse his grievances.
The caribou began passing to right and left like some army ordered to
deploy and, in an astonishingly brief space of time, had all disappeared.
Only the reindeer, five hundred to a thousand in number, remained to feed
peacefully upon the moss of the tundra.
“Well,” Curlie said to himself, “it seems I’ve come into possession of a
reindeer herd! Don’t see’s they have any masters. No men in sight.”
Just then a dog barked. It was answered by a second one.
“Dogs!” he exclaimed. “Two of them. That’s interesting. Wonder what
kind.”
Putting two fingers to his lips, he sent out a shrill whistle. A moment
later two beautiful collies came racing up to him.
“Collies!” he cried in great joy, “reindeer collies. Why, here I am all
set up in business, with a herd of reindeer and collies to help herd
them.”
He sat down to think. This was undoubtedly the herd which had been held
by the Indians. Had the fire caught them unawares and had they been
burned alive? Or had they set the fire in the hope of concealing their
theft of the reindeer?
“If they’re still alive and did not set the fire,” he told himself,
“they’ll be along after the fire dies down and there’ll be more trouble.
On the other hand, if I could take some of these deer out upon the ice
floe to meet Joe and the explorers, it would be a great boon to them.
Plenty of meat, the right kind too. It might save their lives.
“But there’s the outlaw!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Got to settle him
first. He can’t—why he can’t be more than eight or ten miles from the
food depot on Flaxman Island. A brisk morning’s walk, that’s all.”
After careful deliberation he decided to mount his reindeer and ride
directly for the shore of the island. The island would be solidly
connected to the shore by the ocean ice. He would search out the depot
and ride boldly up to it.
“Surely,” he told himself, “no man who plots mischief is going to be
afraid of an unarmed boy riding a reindeer. Hope I can catch him unawares
and steal a march on him.”
Having put his plan into action, his faithful reindeer and he soon went
racing away over the tundra. Coming to the shore of the island, in order
to reach the north shore where the food depot was placed he began
skirting it.
The ice was everywhere smooth as a floor and covered with just enough
snow to give the reindeer good footing.
“Would be a regular lark if it wasn’t so dangerous. This marching right
up to a man you have followed for thousands of miles is not what it’s
cracked up to be.”
A high cut-bank hid the food depot, a long, low building, from his sight
until he was all but upon it.
As he rounded the point of the cut-bank he saw a man, whose back was
turned to him, disappear around the northwest corner of the building.
“Did he see me?” he breathed. “I’ll play he didn’t.”
Hastily wheeling his reindeer about, he retreated to the shelter of the
cut-bank.
Here after a moment’s thought he tied the reindeer to an out-cropping
willow root, then, on hands and knees, crept back to the corner.
Peeping around the point, he stood at strained attention. He saw no one,
heard no one. “And yet he might be spying at me,” he whispered. “Got to
risk it, though.”
At that he leaped to his feet and dashed full speed toward the cabin. The
distance was two hundred yards. His heart beat madly. Would he be shot
down before he reached that shelter?
Now he had covered half the distance, now two-thirds, now three-quarters.
That his footsteps might not be heard, he was now running on tiptoes.
With his breath coming in short gasps, he leaped to a corner of the
cabin, threw himself upon the snow close to the wall and was for the
moment safe.
“So much, so good,” he breathed. “Now if only he doesn’t see me first.”