reindeer to a little settlement about twenty miles off, an' so I
went along and got the names there, comin' back on a reindeer sled.
That's the only time I ever felt like Santa Claus. I'm sure I don't look
it."

[Illustration: TO ESKIMO SETTLEMENTS BY REINDEER. Census enumerator
using half-wild animals when dog-team was too exhausted to go farther.
(_Courtesy of the Bureau of the Census._)]

Hamilton looked at his spare figure and laughed.

"No," he said, "I don't think an artist would be likely to pick you for
the part. How did you like the reindeer, though? I've always wondered
that they didn't use them more in Alaska. The government keeps a herd,
doesn't it?"

"Yes," was the reply, "but that is more for fresh meat than for travel.
A good reindeer is a cracker-jack of an animal when he wants to be, but
when he takes a streak to quit, it doesn't matter where it is or what
you do to him, he won't go another step. A balky mule is an angel of
meekness beside a reindeer. You can always make a mule see what you want
him to do--although the odds are that he won't do it even then--but when
a reindeer gets stubborn,--why, he just can't be made to understand
anythin'!"

"Yet I've read that they use them a good deal in Lapland!" said the boy
in surprise.

"They have domesticated them more thoroughly, I guess," the Northerner
replied. "In time they may be worked up here in the same way, and when
you consider how short a time the government has had to do what is
already accomplished, it seems to me the result is wonderful. Of course,
so far as traffic is concerned there are dogs enough, and they do the
work in mighty good shape."

"How did you work back from the settlement which you had got to with
such difficulty?" the boy asked.

"I came back another way, in order to take in a little group of houses
on a small pay-creek," was the reply. "But it was comin' back from that
trip, on the Koatak River, that I had quite a time, although I was not
the sufferer. We had been havin' a hard spell of weather, but there come
a week when conditions on the trail were much better an' we were reelin'
off the miles in great shape. I hadn't a place on my map for about sixty
miles, when in the distance I saw a little hut, just in the fringe of
some stunted cottonwoods and some scraggy willows, for we were not far
from the timber limit.

"'Billy,' I called to the Indian, 'ever see that hut before?'

"The Indian shook his head, but knowin