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. I found it out for myself," boasted Little White Fox
proudly, quite forgetting his sorrow in thinking what a wise young chap
he was.

"_You_ found it out!" exclaimed his mother. "Pray, tell me how?"

"Why, you see," explained Little White Fox, with an air of deep mystery,
"I was down on the tundra, at the foot of Saw Tooth Mountain, looking
all around to see what I could see. 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. 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.

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." He looked all around among the
sand dunes by the ocean, but there was nothing strange there. He went in
and out among the big rocks at the foot of Saw Tooth Mountain and came
near falling into one of Omnok's cruel traps, but there was nothing
strange there. He went here and there, and back and forth, all over the
tundra, but there was nothing strange there.

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. How could it be Tdariuk, when
T