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"Junior says," Merton explained, "that the partridges and rabbits in the mountains are killed off by foxes and wild-cats and wood- choppers who catch them in traps and snares." "I fancy the wood-choppers do the most harm. If I had my way, there would be a big bounty for the destruction of foxes, and a heavy fine for all trappers of game.

In the meantime, the skirmishing in the valley below resembled the sounds made by ten thousand wood-choppers.

Some of the wood-choppers who had been at work a mile and a half up the valley also had an exciting experience during the day with the savages, but came out unharmed.

During the evening I fell in with the Colonel of each of these regiments, and from the conversation that ensued, I gleaned a fair idea of them all. The Wisconsin regiment was from a new and ambitious State of the Northwest. The men were rough-mannered, great-hearted farmers, wood-choppers, and tradesmen.

The wood-choppers, like sailors, have a way of putting a new man through a few tricks to initiate him into the camp. Leclere was bossing the job, with a gang of ten men from St. Raymond under him. Vaillantcoeur had just driven a team in over the snow with a load of provisions, and was lounging around the camp as if it belonged to him.

Probably half a dozen level-headed wood-choppers, endowed with authority to deal with the tribes, could have acquitted themselves as well; perhaps they might not have done so well, and it is probable that they might have exhibited a better showing. It was in this settlement that in after years appeared Louis Riel pere.

Hence we put "in requisition all who have anything to do with handling, transporting or selling provisions and articles of prime necessity," especially combustibles and food wood-choppers, carters, raftsmen, millers, reapers, threshers, wine-growers, movers, field-hands, "country people" of every kind and degree.

There were no trees, and but few houses. The chief signs of human labour were the rounded piles of peat, and the square cuttings in the moor marking the places where the subterranean wood-choppers had gathered their harvests. The long straths were once cultivated, and every patch of arable land had its group of cottages full of children.

I mean, were you ever initiated into full brotherhood by a Greek-letter society with the aid of a baseball bat, a sausage-making machine, a stick of dynamite and a corn-sheller? What's that? You say you belong to the Up-to-Date Wood-choppers and have taken the josh degree in the Noble Order of Prong-Horned Wapiti? Forget it. Those aren't initiations. They are rest cures.

It is a large fur-handled hunting knife like Corkey in its style. Corkey peers down on deck. The wood-choppers are fastening life-preservers about their bodies. Whether they be crying or shouting, cannot be told. He sees human forms hurrying past the cabin window, and there is reflected the yellow, wooden, ribby thing which he knows to be a life-preserver. It is a cheering thing in such a moment.