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.