THE REINDEER AND ITS PURSUIT 
feet to a miserable stone hut about eight feet by six feet square. Having 
arrived there the snow commenced and the horse ran away after depositing 
his burden. Bratteland went after it and disappeared for a week, when I 
hunted alone with his boy Anders, an ingenuous youth of fifteen, who knew 
far more about reindeer than his father. 
It is, perhaps, unnecessary to detail the toil and discomfort we experi- 
enced during that fortnight. It snowed without cessation for ten days, and 
every reindeer had trekked far to the south-east. At night the temperature 
was freezing, the snow penetrated every chink of the wretched shelter, if 
it might be so called. Moreover, the cooking stove went wrong, and more 
often than not we went to bed after eating biscuits, cold tea and half raw 
ptarmigan. 
On September 10 I killed a female and a young stag reindeer, and as 
the stove behaved properly we had quite a merry day. It was not until the 
last day of the season that I saw reindeer again, this time a herd of ten 
females. I had no intention of shooting one, but Anders remarked that he 
must have his winter’s meat, and that if I did not kill more deer he would 
return to these mountains and shoot them himself. In consequence I stalked 
the herd and got within sixty yards of them. My first shot killed an old doe, 
and I shot two others before the rest were out of range. This pleased Anders 
mightily, but it was a poor conclusion to my second effort to secure a good 
head. One incident of this unfortunate trip I shall always remember, as it 
nearly ended in a serious accident. I had been shooting some ptarmigan, 
which were abundant near the hut, and had given my gun, a highly prized 
fifty-guinea article, to Anders to carry. Boy -like, he wished to show me 
how to run across a steep snow -brae, and set off at top speed to cross at 
an angle of over 60 degrees. He got to the middle, hesitated and slipped, 
and the next moment was flying through space for over 100 feet. At the 
bottom there was snow and a jumble of rocks, just above a precipice, and 
into this the boy fell and lay prone, my gun being flung 20 yards away. 
I thought for the moment he was dead, but on hurrying to his assistance 
was glad to see him rise to his feet and begin to laugh. He was not hurt 
at all, at least far less than the gun, which he seemed to regard as a totally 
valueless article compared with a “ Krag.” Having work to do at Chris- 
tiania and Copenhagen in the autumn of 1911 I thought I would combine 
it with a last attempt to kill a good reindeer stag, and so decided to try the 
Upper Laerdal mountains again, as I had heard of a good beat there where 
a few deer were still to be found. By good luck, however, I chanced to meet 
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