three other men galloped up and tied their 
mules. In a little while they all came toward 
the cedars. Three of them carried torches and 
three others had long, slender poles. Two had 
guns on their shoulders. Coming down to the 
trees at the edge of the great robin roost, the men 
with torches climbed up ‘ten or twelve feet 
among the branches. Those with the poles 
began striking among the limbs and sometimes 
they shouted. The terrified birds, disturbed 
from their roosts, flew to the torches and fluttered 
about in the limbs near them. They came so 
close, in fact, that a man in a tree while holding 
a torch in one hand could readily seize the birds 
with the other. Then he would kill them and 
drop them to the ground. One close by could 
hear their little bodies as they fell from limb to 
limb, and then with a light thud strike the carpet 
of cedar needles beneath. 
It appeared to be great fun to these rough 
country fellows—the sport of seizing live robins 
in their hands and killing them—and many a 
laughing jest was passed as they carried on their 
bloody work. 
65 
