So this is the Cracker cowboy, whose chief interest would be found in
the tales of some bushwhacking enterprise, which I very much fear would
be a one-sided story, and not worth the telling. At best they must be
revolting, having no note of the savage encounters which used to
characterize the easy days in West Texas and New Mexico, when every man
tossed his life away to the crackle of his own revolver. The moon shows
pale through the leafy canopy on their evening fires, and the mists, the
miasma, and the mosquitoes settle over their dreary camp talk. In place
of the wild stampede, there is only the bellowing in the pens, and
instead of the plains shaking under the dusty air as the bedizened
vaqueros plough their fiery broncos through the milling herds, the
cattle-hunter wends his lonely way through the ooze and rank grass,
while the dreary pine trunks line up and shut the view.
THE STRANGE DAYS THAT CAME TO JIMMIE FRIDAY
THE "Abwee-chemun" [Algonquin for "paddle and canoe."] Club was
organized with six charter members at a heavy lunch in the Savarin
restaurant--one of those lunches which make through connections to
dinner without change. One member basely deserted, while two more lost
all their enthusiasm on the following morning, but three of us stuck. We
vaguely knew that somewhere north of the Canadian Pacific and south of
Hudson Bay were big lakes and rapid rivers--lakes whose names we did not
know; lakes bigger than Champlain, with unnamed rivers between them.
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