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Updated: May 9, 2025
One day when the snow was nearly all gone, Little Miss Ptarmigan suddenly disappeared. Little White Fox didn't believe she was dead. He remembered how he had been fooled by Tdariuk, and he remembered, too, how she had looked when he talked about catching her. Also, he remembered how he had found out the truth about Tdariuk.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What a world!" said Little White Bear. "I wonder " But just then he heard a strange sound, crack crack crackety, crackety, crack! What could it be? In just a moment Tdariuk, the reindeer, came trotting around the point, and Little White Bear knew it was Tdariuk's heels he had heard cracking. But Tdariuk didn't give him time to say a word.
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."
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.
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.
"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.
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