DEER TEAMS MEETING A DOG TEAM]

The deer had cost us, landed, some fifty-one dollars apiece. Three
years of herding under the adverse conditions of lack of support from
either Government or people had not lessened the per caput expense
very materially. If we had shot some one's fifty-dollar cow, our name
would have been anathema--but we lost two hundred and fifty deer one
winter. In addition to this, when we moved the deer to a spot near
another village on a high bluff, over a hundred died in summer,
either--according to the report of the herders--from falling over the
cliffs driven by dogs, or of a sickness of which we could not discover
the nature, though we thought that it resembled a kind of pneumonia.

The poaching got so bad that we took every means in our power to catch
the guilty parties. But it was a very difficult thing to do. A dead
deer lies quiet, keeps for weeks where he falls in our winter climate,
and can be surreptitiously removed by day or night. The little Lapp
dogs occasionally scented them beneath the snow, and many tell-tale
"paunches" showed where deer had been killed and carried off.

I had been treating the hunchback boy and only child of a fisherman
for whom I had very great respect. His was the home where the
Methodist minister always boarded, and he was looked upon as a pillar
of piety. After a straightening by frame treatment, the boy's spine
had been ankylosed by an operation; and as every one felt sorry for
the little fellow, we were often able to send him gifts. One day the
father came to me, evidently in great trouble, to have what proved to
be a most uncommon private talk. To my utter surprise he began:
"Doctor, I can no longer live and keep the secret that I shot two of
your reindeer. I have brought you ninety dollars, all the cash that I
have, and I want to ask your forgiveness, after all you have done for
me." Needless to say, it was freely given, but it made me feel more
than ever that the deer must be moved to some other country.

It was about this year that the Government for the first time granted
us a resident policeman--previously we had had to be our own police.
Fortunately the man sent was quite a smart fellow. A dozen or so deer
had been killed along the section of our coast, and so skilfully that
even though it was done under the noses of the herders no evidence to
convict could be obtained. It so happened, however, that while one of
the herders was eating a piece of one