Most of them, however, had a wholesome fear of
Barbazon, and also most of them wished to stand well with him--credit was
a good thing, even in a saloon.
For a little time the room was packed, then some of the more restless
spirits, their thirst assuaged, sallied forth to taste the lager and old
rye elsewhere, and "raise Cain" in the streets. When they went, it became
possible to move about more freely in the big bar-room, at the end of
which was a billiard-table. It was notable, however, that the more sullen
elements stayed. Some of them were strangers to each other. Manitou was a
distributing point for all radiations of the compass, and men were thrown
together in its streets who only saw one another once or twice a
year-when they went to the woods in the Fall or worked the rivers in the
Summer. Some were Mennonites, Doukhobors and Finlanders, some Swedes,
Norwegians and Icelanders. Others again were birds of passage who would
probably never see Manitou in the future, but they were mostly French,
and mostly Catholic, and enemies of the Orange Lodges wherever they were,
east or west or north or south. They all had a common ground of
unity--half-savage coureurs-de-bois, river-drivers, railway-men, factory
hands, cattlemen, farmers, labourers; they had a gift for prejudice, and
taking sides on something or other was as the breath of the nostrils to
them.
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