Who in Memurudalen died.
While we were still lingering over these beautiful and appropriate sentiments, and deliberating as to whether they should be cut on a stone or only on wood, the corpse suddenly walked into the tent and announced that he wanted something to eat. We soon got over our natural disappointment at the waste of a good epitaph, and really welcomed him quite warmly, much more so when Öla appeared laden with the tit-bits of a reindeer buck. Then we set food before the Skipper, and after he had feasted he related unto us his story.
‘I left camp yesterday morning determined to beard the savage untamed reindeer of the mountains in his lair, and soon came on very fresh tracks, which we followed for some time, and at each step seemed to get “hotter,” as the children say, and the indications of deer being near got more and more encouraging. However, by one o’clock we had seen nothing, so sat down behind a little rocky eminence to have our ‘spise.’ Mine was a particularly good lunch, as I had spread some gravy from the ‘boss pie’ on my slice of bread and butter, and this with the icy cold snow-water was very grateful after a four hours’ walk uphill under a scorching sun.
‘Öla also seemed to devour his food with considerable relish. So we had been sitting there some time, happily silent, as we cannot talk each other’s tongue, and I was just preparing to move on, and putting my knife back in its sheath, when we heard a slight snort quite close to us.
‘Öla immediately peeped cautiously over an adjacent stone; then he pushed my rifle into my hand and whispering the magic word “Reins,” pointed to another stone a few yards away, whither he wished me to crawl. To unsling my cartridge-bag lest it should jingle, and creep to that stone, was what the novelists call the work of a moment: then I raised my head va-a-ry gingerly, and saw forty yards away a single four-year-old buck standing broadside to me with his head in the air, sniffing suspiciously, and his whole attitude denoting uncertainty and caution. This buck, as we found out afterwards from the spoor, had walked up to within ten yards of us as we sat at lunch; then he must have either heard me or smelt Öla, probably the latter, for Öla seldom washes his hands, never his blood-stained hunting coat; and when I encountered his gaze he had evidently just decided that this was not a good place for reindeer to be about in. This was an excellent frame of mind on his part, but he arrived at it a couple of seconds too late: my rifle was levelled, and the shot hit him just above the heart. At that distance the express bullet smashed a portion of him about as big as a hat, so that he rolled over stone dead, and had no time for lingering glances or last words. Half an hour more, and he was skinned, gralloched, put in a hole and buried under a heap of stones, to remain there until we need his flesh and send the horse to bring him home. Then we built a little cairn to mark his resting-place for future use, and wandered on in search of the rest of his party.
‘Very soon we came on the tracks of four other deer, one of them only a calf, but although we followed the spoor all the afternoon we never came up with them: probably they were near enough to hear my shot when I fired, and at once betook themselves to remote regions.
