We found ourselves amongst a herd of grazing reindeer--if herd can be used for such a scattered flock. Now we would see one through the palings of the pines, trotting away from us into the deeper quiet of the woods. Now one would stalk out in lordly majesty, and stand, a clear mark against some sky-line, and stare in haughty wonder as to who those intruders could be who dared to bring their taint between the wind and his nobility. And then as we came up, back would go the branching antlers against the straight, strong back, and in a moment the forest would have swallowed him from view.
They were all in velvet, these deer, with the young horn hot and feverish beneath its covering, and with their antlers in many cases only half-grown. They were only just recovering from the leanness of spring. They were still casting their coats, and the old hair hung from them in faded, matted tufts, which made them look dishevelled and woebegone. Six weeks later they would be in their prime, rolling in fat, sleek-coated, and ready for heavy sledge-work, and short commons, and all another winter's stress. They would be decked, too, with new antlers, clean and unsplintered, and proudly conscious of the two new points which marked the dignity of another year's growth. But at present their one life-duty was to eat, and eat, and eat; and the crisp ivory-yellow moss which lay thick beneath the pines, and the tender shoots of the birches and the Arctic willows, provided the wherewithal.
It was Pat's delight to set off these deer into a stretching gallop. "_Porro_," he would whisper when his poacher's blue eye caught sight of one of the brown forms grazing between the tree-stems. And then the Lapps would all creep forward on their silent foot-gear till the reindeer espied them, and Pat would set back his head and let a regular Irish yell out of him till the forest rang again. The deer would start off with the last mouthful of the crisp, yellow moss hanging from its lips, and the perspiring Johann would burst into a great guffaw, and Pedr would deliver himself of one of those beautiful smiles which served to express his every emotion. And then Pat would turn to us with his droll grin, and we would have to laugh too, whether we wanted to or not. He was really a most cheery ruffian, this strayed Galwegian.