CHAPTER XXV

AGAIN DEPENDENT ON THEMSELVES

Days and weeks had gone since that morning in the spring when the children from Barren Moor had parted from their old friends, the Lapp Mattes Klip and his family. Before then, both Andy, Maglena, and Magnus had thrown lassoes, milked reindeer, and helped pack tents and household goods and food into long rows of waiting akkjas.

Andy had even had a ride after a reindeer that was great fun, but came near being dangerous. He was given permission to creep into an akkja. A supposedly gentle deer was harnessed to it, and Mattes himself handed him the rein, which was made of deerskin. And then he was told how to manage the deer and how to use the rein, casting it to the right or to the left over the deer’s horns, depending on the direction in which he wanted to go where there was the best snow. He was even told what to do if the deer became unmanageable.

So Andy had flown across the crusted snow between high firs that shone golden and violet in the morning sun which was just forcing its way into the woods.

‘Hi! Hi!’ Such fun! Even the eagle that flew so high above the woods could not have flown faster.

Andy was in the highest spirits. It seemed to him that he flew like the eagle; that he glided through the woods swift as an arrow, like a salmon through clear water; that he raced for miles like a colt. The deer knew how to find a road between the trees where there was no road.

But then, in a clearing, he wanted to turn back, and this attempt Andy most decidedly opposed with a jerk at the rein and threatening cries.

‘Ho! Ho! You! Keep on!’

Andy threw the rein to the right of the horn and to the left of the horn, pulled and tore. He had never had such fun.

‘Will you go, you cloven-hoof!’ shrieked Andy, and overbearingly used abusive words to the mountain reindeer, he who was only a forest and stream Swede-boy.

So the deer became furious. Unexpectedly, swift as lightning, he turned toward the akkja to attack with horns and front legs the scamp of a boy who had called him ‘cloven-hoof.’

And now it was well that Andy remembered what he had been told about ungovernable reindeer and that he of habit and necessity had become resolute and quick in action. Andy did as Mattes had taught him. He slipped out of the akkja and turned it quickly over him as a protective roof.

There he lay, what seemed to him a terribly long time, and heard how the deer beat on the akkja with his hard sharp ‘cloven-hoofs.’ More than discontented was the deer at not being able, in spite of his really tiring efforts, to get at the boy who had jerked at the rein so recklessly, shrieked, ‘Ho! Ho! You!’ and called him ‘cloven-hoof,’ and who now lay under the wooden akkja that was without a single weak spot. But he had to save his legs and hoofs to scrape away the crust of snow later in the day in order to get at the desirable moss that the deer live on.

Andy raised the akkja on his back and peeped out through the opening.

So that was the way matters stood! The deer had boldly turned about and stood ready to be off to the camp! Again it was important to be quick. ‘Cloven-hoof’ was apparently ready to be off with the akkja regardless of whether the Swedish boy was in it or not. Andy had scarcely time to swing the akkja aright and tumble headlong into it before they were off again toward the tents and the herd.

Proudly, and with eyes shining with joy, he had come back to the camp and reaped applause and admiration from the Lapps. The admiration he accepted with surprising humility. No one but himself knew how truly cowardly he had felt while he lay under the akkja with the drumming of the sharp hoofs over him.

When Maglena and Magnus also wanted to be noticed and to win the applause of the Lapps by a pleasure ride in an akkja, they met Andy’s resolute opposition. He insisted that it was too dangerous for the little ones.

‘As if it were hard to ride in an akkja! Sit and hold the reins! Nonsense!’

Magnus had been quite at home with the Lapps and the reindeer. He had played with little Mattes, who in the morning was allowed to creep out of the cradle and who, with the soft deer hairs sticking to his warm little body, looked like a hairy little goblin.

Magnus was so content among the Lapps that he thought it would be much pleasanter to go home again with them than to plod along the roads and run one’s self to death on the ice to escape Wicked Farm people and dogs. He announced openly that there was nothing to hinder him from turning back except that both father and mother were away from the cottage. ‘For you see, Andy,’ Magnus had assured him--and struck one hand against the other--‘for you see, if only they were there, then I for my part would turn around and ride home in an akkja after a deer all the way to Barren Moor, and that you may be sure of.’

Magnus had walked away from Andy, superior, with hands in his trousers pockets, proud that he could resist such a fine ride home for such a slight hindrance as the fact that father and mother were not there in the little gray cottage.

It had been so drearily empty when the children and the Lapps, whom they had so recently met, went their own way; the children toward the southeast, toward well-off folk in fruitful parishes; the Lapps in a bustling journey toward the north, toward the great northern lights, toward high mountain peaks, toward wide ledges of rock that stood white with reindeer moss.

Far away, when alone, they neared the large village, they heard the Lapp-Mattes’s farewell song:

‘Wandering children go far away to see much and learn through black words in books. Poor Lapp knows nothing, cannot read black words. Lapp goes to the mountains; learns to understand words of the Great Father, learns where the herbs grow that cure sick people, learns to find the way to wolves’ hole, learns to read the stars’ omens. Poor Lapp has good Father above the mountains, goes there quickly, sings song about wandering children who made Lapp happy in hut. Wandering children have gone a dark road, but the light stands over them. Wandering children also have good Father.’

The children had stood still, listening until not a sound could be heard from the singing Lapp.