Irving Bacheller

“ These northern woodsmen love the smell of powder and the feel of a gun. It is an inborn, overruling passion with most of them. Generally an idle hand had a gun in it, and the itching palm was one that had long been deprived of its birthright. These godless men of the forest spent their Sundays, in good weather, hunting on snow-shoes, and the roar of their guns rushed through the timber and bellowed in the distant waste. It happened sometimes that a luckless hunter ventured too far from camp and never got back for one reason or another. ”

“ There was the brute majesty of the lion in these men as they shook the mighty muscles of breast and arm in their laughter or when the furrows moved and tightened on their brows in the stern dignity of anger. There were a number of men who could sing doleful ballads, and one who often harangued them with mock-oratory that provoked noisy applause. ”

“ Occasionally two or more of the men would wake in the dead of night when the timber-wolves were howling and get up and peer out of the window and speak of “poor Tom.”
One cold Sunday morning in midwinter, I started over snow for Long Pond with a brawny Scotchman known as McVeigh. That was four miles beyond the Ottawa, and hard walking in the light snow. We wounded a caribou on the farther side of the river and followed its trail of crimson for miles to the top of the great ridge in the north, and then westward through the burnt timber. The sky was clouded over and the cold unusually severe. ”