x 
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AT THE PAINTED WOODS 148 
of evasion or dispute. It is not a question of whom 
among those of the two callings courted disaster by 
- following their bent, as to those who had been lucky 
enough to escape the vengeance of those mysterious 
genii that visit their displeasure on the destroyers of our 
woodlands. 
The readers of Irving’s ‘‘Astoria” will remember 
that in tracing up the various expeditions sent out in 
the interest of the fur trade he brings each and every 
one of them—from the sailing of the Tonquin at the 
outing, to the last of the trapper expeditions on the 
tributary streams of the Yellowstone—to an inglorious 
close. 
It was well forthe cheerful Tonquin crew as they 
gaily spread sail to catch the summer breeze that bore 
them from New York harbor in 1810, or the reckless 
dare-devil trappers that started out from the Aricaree 
village under Ramsey and Crooks the year after, that 
neither prophet, sorcerer or clarivoyant revealed the 
_future to them as they turned their faces westward. 
So it was with the first woodyard men along the Up- 
per Missouri River. Careful observation with a little 
common sense revealed their danger, but these pioneer 
woodchoppers were from a class that courted it. And 
they did not court in vain. Danger and trouble came 
‘ 
: 
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x 
“4 
in so many forms that no services of a seer were needed 
te tell of the end. But like the flag bearers in a hotly 
contested battle, when one falls another is ever ready 
to take his place in upholding the waving emblem, so 
the ‘‘woodhawk’’ that fell in his line was easily replaced 
by another, and he yet by another. 
The sketches of woodyard life as told in ‘‘The letter 
