The second baby blue fox answered,
"Everybody who makes a snowball, a snow man, a snow fox or a snow fish
or a snow pattycake, everybody has a snow ghost."

And that was only the beginning of their talk. It would take a big book
to tell all that the two baby foxes told each other that night about
the Minnesota snow ghosts, because they sat up all night telling old
stories their fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers
told them, and making up new stories never heard before about where the
snow ghosts go on Christmas morning and how the snow ghosts watch the
New Year in.

Somewhere between Winnipeg and Moose Jaw, somewhere it was they
stopped the train and all ran out in the snow where the white moon was
shining down a valley of birch trees. It was the Snowbird Valley where
all the snowbirds of Canada come early in the winter and make their
snow shoes.

At last they came to Medicine Hat, near the Saskatchewan River, where
the blizzards and the chinooks begin, where nobody works unless they
have to and they nearly all have to. There they ran in the snow till
they came to the place where the Head Spotter of the Weather Makers
sits on a high stool in a high tower on a high hill watching the
weather.

"Let loose another big wind to blow back our tails to us, let loose a
big freeze to freeze our tails onto us again, and so let us get back
our lost tails," they said to the Head Spotter of the Weather Makers.

Which was just what he did, giving them exactly what they wanted, so
they all went back home satisfied, the blue foxes each with a big wavy
brush of a tail to help him when he runs, when he eats, when he walks
or talks, when he makes pictures or writes letters in the snow or when
he puts a snack of bacon meat with stripes of fat and lean to hide
till he wants it under a big rock by the river--and the yellow
flongboos each with a long yellow torch of a tail to light up his home
in a hollow tree or to light up his way when he sneaks at night on the
prairie, sneaking up on the flangwayer, the hipper or the hangjast.

[Illustration]

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Rootabaga Stories, by Carl Sandburg

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROOTABAGA STORIES ***

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