"I mustn"t lose Big White Bear," thought Little White Fox, "and I mustn"t let him see me. Oh! My! No! I mustn"t do that, for he is a big, big fellow and who knows what he might do to me?" So he slipped along behind very slyly, hiding behind this rock and that one, behind this snow pile and that one, very carefully indeed.
But Big White Bear was nearly as badly frightened as Little White Fox.
"What was that great big laugh?" he kept thinking to himself. And every time he thought of it, he looked behind him, and I am sure he really expected to see Omnok, the hunter, step right out with his terrible gun.
But by and by, when he had gone down the mountain and across the tundra and over the little lakes, he was not so much afraid, and he began to grow hungry. Now that was just what Little White Fox hoped would happen, for he was very hungry himself and very curious besides to see where Big White Bear kept his pantry. Where would it be? Would it be in the tall mountains, or on the tundra, or out on the roof of the sea? How interesting it would be to know!
Pretty soon Big White Bear began to go straight ahead, without turning to one side or the other. Then Little White Fox was sure he had started for his kitchen, and he was glad as could be! Big White Bear went right out on the roof to the ocean and on and on and on, till Little White Fox was good and tired. When he came to the dark, dark waters of the ocean, Big White Bear didn"t stop one moment. He just tumbled right into the water and disappeared all at once!
"My!" said Little White Fox, opening his eyes very wide. "He will surely be drowned." And then all at once he thought of the fine dinner he had been expecting to get and how far it was back to the great rock where his mother was to wait for him. And then, of course, he remembered what his mother had said about coming back to call her. How sorry he was now that he had forgotten all about that. Oh! if they could only find Big White Bear"s kitchen! Just then Little White Fox heard a scratching on the ice and bounded behind an ice boulder before he was seen. Big White Bear had come right up out of the ocean with the biggest dinner you have ever seen. His kitchen was right down in the water under the roof of the ocean, and he had brought his dinner out on the ice to eat it in the sunshine.
Little White Fox thought Big White Bear would never, never get through eating, but he finally did. And there was quite a big dinner left for Little White Fox. When Big White Bear was fast asleep on the ice, taking his after-dinner nap, Little White Fox crept up and began to eat his dinner too. "He didn"t ask me," said Little White Fox, "but then I didn"t give him a chance, I am sure he would if I had." It was a very good dinner and how Little White Fox"s sides did stick out when he had finished! But he didn"t stay to say thank you, so I guess he wasn"t very sure that Big White Bear would have invited him. He just hid behind an ice boulder and waited for Big White Bear to wake up. He mustn"t lose Big White Bear. He began to think about that fine dinner he had just eaten and about how he had found Big White Bear all by himself and how he had frightened him. It made him feel so good he just wanted to laugh.
The more he thought, the more he wanted to laugh, and the first thing, before he knew it, he was laughing right out loud, "Ha! Ha! Yak! Yak!
Yak! Yak!"
Just that minute Big White Bear woke up, and he didn"t stop to see who was laughing! He tumbled right into the ocean and went paddling away as fast as ever he could. He didn"t stop till he was almost out of sight, then he looked back once for just a moment and went paddling on and on, till he was way out of sight. Little White Fox had lost Big White Bear.
All the fine dinners he was to have in the future were lost, just because he had laughed at the wrong time.
I don"t know what Little Mrs. White Fox had to say to him when he came home, for I wasn"t there, but there are some very fine switches made out of reindeer moss lying all over the tundra. However, Little White Fox was a very young fellow and had a great many things to learn, so perhaps his mother did not punish him very hard.
CHAPTER XIV
BIG WHITE BEAR FINDS LITTLE WHITE FOX
When Omnok returned from hunting Big White Bear he sat down and began to think. "White bears about," he thought to himself. "There must be white foxes about too, for they always stay close to white bears. I must go out and set some traps." And that is just what he did the very next evening. He threw the cruel looking traps, with their ugly steel jaws, over his shoulder and went out to look for a good place to set them. At last he came to a place where there were many white bear tracks. "I guess this will do," he said to himself. He took out his great knife and cut out a cake of snow that was nearly as hard as ice. He cut this up into four little snow boards, very square and very smooth. Then he made a little hole in the snow and put a trap there. Next he made a thin shingle of snow,--so thin that the least touch would break it right in two. He put this over the trap and smoothed it over so carefully that no one in all the world could tell there was a trap hidden there. Then he made a little house over it with the four boards,--a very fine looking house with a roof and three sides, and with one side left open for the door. He put some nice pieces of meat inside of the house, so when any little fox came to live there he wouldn"t have to go away hungry.
Finally he spilled a few drops of delicious smelling seal oil around the house and went away.
Now who should happen by that way, almost right away, but our own Little White Fox, looking, looking everywhere for Big White Bear. Right away the west wind blew a little whiff of the rich seal oil in front of his nose, and almost before he knew it, Little White Fox was standing in front of the little house that Omnok built, wondering how it came there and how there happened to be such delicious looking meat inside of it.
He wasn"t quite sure it was safe to go inside, so he just licked up all the drops of seal oil around the outside. It was very good, but it was only a taste, and it made him hungrier than ever.
"I just believe I am going to have that meat!" he said to himself. He was about to put his paw on the little snow shingle that was so thin and would break so easily, when he heard a great, gruff voice right behind him.
"Here! What you doing there?" Little White Fox just tumbled a back somersault away from the little house and ran as fast as ever he could, for there, right behind him, was Big White Bear! It"s one thing to be looking for some one very much larger than yourself, but quite another thing for that big person to be looking at you. Little White Fox didn"t take any chances. But when he was a long distance away, and Big White Bear wasn"t following him, he turned around to see what would happen to the little house. He wished Big White Bear would go away, so he could get all that delicious meat.
But Big White Bear did not go away. He bent his long neck and put his great nose right up to the little house and gave a great "Woof!" The little house was far too small for Big White Bear to enter, so he put out one of his ponderous, powerful paws and sent the little house flying every way. But his ponderous, powerful paw went too deep. It touched the thin shingle, and Snap! the trap came down on Big White Bear"s paw. Came down hard too! Ow-e-e-e! How it did hurt! How Big White Bear roared! One might have thought he was being killed! He ran limping to the ocean, dragging the little fox trap after him. When he got there, he stuck his paw up in the air, and moved it round and round, round and round, till the chain on the trap went Ziz! Ziz! Ziz! just like that. All of a sudden the trap came loose and tumbled into the sea, and I think Steadfast Starfish"s children are playing with it still.
Little White Fox ran straight home to tell his mother how he had found Big White Bear and all the things that had happened.
"Well," said his mother, "I think Big White Bear has found you, and I am sure it is a good thing he did!" Then she sat down and told Little White Fox all about the dangers of nice smelling meat and the little houses that Omnok builds.
CHAPTER XV
LITTLE WHITE FOX GOES FISHING
Little White Fox was hungry again. It would seem that a little white fox is hungry most of the time. He went wandering all over the tundra, looking for something to eat. At last he came to the bank of the river.
He was sniffing about there when he spied a door right in the ground near the ice roof of the river. "h.e.l.lo!" said he, stopping short, "I wonder who made that door in there." He looked into the door but could see no one. It was too dark. He shouted into the door, but no one answered. He crept part way down the stairway. Then he stopped and listened. He heard nothing, so he ventured on, and almost before he knew it, he found himself in one of the biggest caves he had ever seen. It was as wide as half the river and as long as he could see in each direction. It had an ice roof and a good solid floor. Only the floor stopped pretty soon, and then there was water.
"I don"t believe anybody in the world could build a house like this!"
said Little White Fox. "I guess it just happened to be here, and some one has discovered it. I wonder who it could be?"
He walked down close to where the water was, and there he found tracks.
Oh! hundreds and hundreds of them! But he could not tell whose tracks they were. He had never seen such tracks before.
"Anyway, I believe there is something good to eat in that water," he said to himself. "If there wasn"t, that fellow wouldn"t come down here and stand around so much. It is nice and warm down here out of the wind, and I guess I"ll stand around a little myself and see what will happen."
Meanwhile, down below in the river, two of the little river people were having a talk all by themselves. They were Unfortunate Flounder and Mr.
Salmon Trout. Salmon Trout is a very graceful fellow who always holds himself erect in the water. When he swims, he goes so swiftly that you can hardly see him. But Unfortunate Flounder goes floating around on one side all the time, and looks more like a dead leaf than any member of the fish family.
"Why do you not stand straight up in the water as I do?" said Salmon Trout.
"Well," said Unfortunate Flounder, "it"s only a little my fault. Can"t you see that my eyes are on one of my flat sides and my stomach on the other? It wouldn"t be very pleasant to go about looking one way and going another, would it? When I was going south, I"d be looking west; don"t you see?"
"How does it happen that you are that way?"
"I was born that way. All my children are the same, and so were my parents before me. You see, it"s really a matter of ancestry. Way back somewhere, one of my great grandparents found out it was easier to lop around sidewise in the water than to stand straight up as you do, so he lopped around all his life long. His son followed his example and lopped around a little worse. So it went on, until to-day we could not straighten up if we were to try. At least, it would take whole generations before we could balance ourselves as well as you do. As for me, I don"t see as it matters much, for, after all, I quite agree with my great grandfather that it is best to be comfortable, even if it does make you ugly, ungraceful, and slow."
But just then Unfortunate Flounder learned what an unhappy thing it was to be slow. Little White Fox from his station on the bank had been watching, watching very sharply two dark spots that had appeared in the water. He had watched them come closer and closer. At last he thought he could reach out and grab one of them without getting in the water.
"Look out!" cried Salmon Trout, as he glided swiftly away. But poor Unfortunate Flounder was too slow, and he felt Little White Fox"s sharp teeth close down on him.
Just then something happened. "Here! what are you doing in my fishing house?" demanded an angry voice. It frightened Little White Fox so badly that he dropped Unfortunate Flounder back into the river and looked around.
It was Mr. Golden Marten, and this was his fishing house. At least, he called it his, for he had made the stairway down to it. It took Little White Fox only a moment to discover that while Golden Marten was not quite as large as he was, his teeth were very sharp. The door to the stairway was quite close to him, and before Golden Marten could stop him Little White Fox was out of the door and racing for home as fast as his little legs could carry him.
"All the same," he said to his mother that night, after he had told her of the cave, "when I am as old as you are, I am going to have a fish house all my own!"
CHAPTER XVI
LITTLE BROWN SEAL"S NARROW ESCAPE
One day Little White Fox was out in front of his house sunning himself.
He and his mother were living off the bounty of Big White Bear these days, so there was nothing to worry about. He just stretched himself out there on the white snow and looked away at the wide, white world, as contented as could be. But all at once he saw a strange, strange thing.
Out on the roof of the silent sea, Little Brown Seal was sunning himself too, right close to the door of his home. He was taking little "cat"
naps. You see, Little Brown Seal could not sleep down in his house in the ocean. It was far too damp down there. So he was lying there by his door, sleeping just two or three minutes at a time, then looking up to see if there was any danger near.
Now that wasn"t such a strange thing. Little White Fox had seen Little Brown Seal do that nearly every day, but the strange thing was that there was some one else out on the ice who seemed to be doing the very same thing that Little Brown Seal was doing,--taking "cat" naps. And stranger still, he did not seem to be one of Little Brown Seal"s relatives! He was too long, and he didn"t wiggle his body right!
Little White Fox could see all that, but Little Brown Seal was so low down on the ice that all he could see was the stranger"s head. He might have known even then that it was not one of his cousins, if he had had as sharp eyes as Little White Fox. But he didn"t, for his eyes were very poor. So Little Brown Seal thought it was one of his own cousins taking a nap now and then, just as he was. Once it looked to Little White Fox as if he were beginning to understand that the stranger was not one of his cousins, for he stayed awake a long, long time and looked and looked and looked. The stranger seemed to be sleeping a long time, and that made Little Brown Seal suspicious. But just then the stranger bobbed his head and looked all around this way and that way, just as any real, wise seal would do, and Little Brown Seal decided it was all right, that this stranger was one of his really truly cousins.