<h2 id="c3"><br/>CHAPTER III <br/>MARIAN FACES A PROBLEM</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>At that instant something happened that
brought her hand to her side. Quickly unstrapping
her field glasses, she put them to her eyes.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_36">[36]</div>
<p>“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—”</p>
<p>She pursed her lips in deep thought as the
furrows in her brow deepened.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_37">[37]</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_38">[38]</div>
<p>As she rode on up the valley her mind went
over the months that had passed and the problems
she and Patsy now faced.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“We <i>must</i> 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.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_39">[39]</div>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“Sell?” she questioned, “how can we sell?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Oh!” she cried, “I must go back. I must!
I must!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_40">[40]</div>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_41">[41]</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_42">[42]</div>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_43">[43]</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_44">[44]</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“And now maybe his herd is coming into our
feeding ground,” she sighed.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_45">[45]</div>
<p>These were the bitter thoughts that ran
through the girl’s mind as she rode up the
valley.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“No,” she said firmly, “we are here, and
here we stay!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_46">[46]</div>
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