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The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure by Arthur Henry Howard Heming
page 217 of 368 (58%)

"The law against carrying concealed weapons was a big factor in keeping
the peace. Comparatively few men took advantage of their legal right
to carry a revolver in sight. I remember seeing an open box in a
pawnshop containing the most amazing collection of weapons I had ever
set eyes on--revolvers with silver handles, pistols of carved ivory,
antiquated breech-loaders, weapons of fantastic design, and, probably,
of equally fantastic history, strange implements of death that had come
from all climes and bespoke adventures on all the seven seas.

"'Where did you get the lot?' I asked the proprietor.

"'They all sell their shooting irons. No use for them here. I get 'em
for practically nothing. Help yourself if you have any fancy that way.
I'll make you a present of anything you want.'

"So much for the wild Yukon of the novelists! Instead of lurching into
the dance hall and blazing away at the ceiling, picture the
'old-timer', the hardened miner of a hundred camps, planking down his
pistols on the counter of the pawnshop and asking 'How much?' That's
the truer picture."

As part of my boyhood education was derived from the study of American
illustrated magazines, I was led by those periodicals to believe that
the North American wilderness was inhabited by wild and woolly men
bedecked with firearms, and ever since I have been on the lookout for
just such characters. Now while I cannot speak for the Western States,
I can at least speak for Canada; and I must now admit that, during my
thirty-three years of contact with wilderness life, on one
occasion--but on one only--I found that there was justification for
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