Triple Spies | Page 7

he
had awakened with a sense of impending danger. A prowling tiger had
wandered over the desert, an Arab had proved treacherous--who knows
what? The feeling, after all, had been only of a vague dread.
The dream had wakened him, and now he lay staring into utter darkness
and marveling that the dream was so much like the reality. He was
traveling over barren wastes with a caravan; had been for three days.
But the waste they crossed was a waste of snow. His companions were
natives--who like the Arabs, lived a nomadic life. Their steeds the swift
footed reindeer, their tents the igloos of walrus and reindeer skins, they
roamed over a territory hundreds of miles in extent. To one of these
"fleets of the frozen desert," Johnny had attached himself after leaving
the train.
It had been a wonderful three days that he had spent in his journeying
northward. These Chukches of Siberia, so like the Eskimos of Alaska
that one could distinguish them only by the language they spoke, lived
a romantic life. Johnny had entered into this life with all the zest of
youth. True, he had found himself very awkward in many things and
had been set aside with a growled, "Dezra" (that is enough), many
times but he had persevered and had learned far more about the ways of
these nomads of the great, white north than they themselves suspected.
During those three days Johnny's eyes had been always on the job. He
had not traveled a dozen miles before he had made a thorough study of
the reindeer equipment. This, indeed, was simple enough, but the
simpler one's equipment, the more thorough must be one's knowledge
of its handling. The harness of the deer was made of split walrus skin

and wood. Simple wooden hames, cut to fit the shoulders of the deer
and tied together with a leather thong, took the place of both collar and
hames of other harnesses. From the bottom of these hames ran a broad
strap of leather. This, passing between both the fore and hind legs of
the deer, was fastened to the sled. A second broad strap was passed
around the deer's body directly behind the fore legs. This held the
pulling strap above the ground to prevent the reindeer from stepping
over his trace. In travel, in spite of this precaution, the deer did often
step over the trace. In such cases, the driver had but to seize the draw
strap and give it a quick pull, sending the sled close to the deer's heels.
This gave the draw straps slack and the deer stepped over the trace
again to his proper place.
The sleds were made of a good quality of hard wood procured from the
river forests or from the Russians, and fitted with shoes of steel or of
walrus ivory cut in thin strips. The sleds were built short, broad and
low. This prevented many a spill, for as Johnny soon learned, the
reindeer is a cross between a burro and an ox in his disposition, and,
once he has scented a rich bed of mosses and lichens, on which he
feeds, he takes on the strength and speed of an ox stampeding for a
water hole in the desert, and the stubbornness of a burro drawn away
from his favorite thistle.
The deer were driven by a single leather strap; the old, old jerk strap of
the days of ox teams. Johnny had demanded at once the privilege of
driving but he had made a sorry mess of it. He had jerked the strap to
make the deer go more slowly. This really being the signal for greater
speed, the deer had bolted across the tundra, at last spilling Johnny and
his load of Chukche plunder over a cutbank. This procedure did not
please the Chukches, and Johnny was not given a second opportunity to
drive. He was compelled to trot along beside the sleds or, back to back
with one of his fellow travelers, to ride over the gleaming whiteness
that lay everywhere.
It was at such times as these that Johnny had ample opportunity to
study the country through which they passed. Lighted as it was by a
glorious moon, it presented a grand and fascinating panorama. To the

right lay the frozen ocean, its white expanse cut here and there by a
pool of salt water pitchy black by contrast with the ice. To the left lay
the mountains extending as far as the eye could see, with their dark
purple shadows and triangles of light and seeming but another sea, that
tempest-tossed and terrible had been congealed by the bitter northern
blasts.
When twelve hours of travel had been accomplished, and it had been
proposed that they camp for