River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1906-06-21

rabbits, and iG was sight worth go
ing miles to see if it had been some
body else than pa that was holding the
center of the stage, and all the crowd
laughing at pa, and yelling to him to
stand his ground.
Well, pa swung his ak handle and
killed an occasional rabbit, but there
were thousands all around, and pa
seemed to be wading up to his middle
in rabbits, and they would jump all
over him, and bunt him with their
heads, and scratch him with their toe
nails, and the dogs would grab rabbits
and shake them, and pa would fall
till you couldn't see pa at all. Then
he would raise up again and maui the
animals with his club, and his clothes
were SO covered with rabbit hair that
he looked like a big rabbit himself.
He lost his hat and looked as though
he was getting exhausted, and then he
stopped and spit on his hands and
dismounted and were lined up at the
edge of the corral, and said: "You
condemned loafers, why don't you
come in here and help us dogs kill off
these vermin, cause I don't. want to
have all the fun. Come on in, the wa
ter is fine,'' and pa laughed as though
he was in swimming and wanted the
rest of the gang to come in.
The crowd thought they had given
the distinguished stranger his inning,
and SO they all rushed in with clubs
and began to kill rabbits and drive
them away from pa. In an hour or
SO the most of them were killed, and
pa was SO tired he went and sat down
on the ground to rest, and I got down
off my perch and went to pa and asked
him what he thought of this latest ex-
perience, and began to pick rabbit
hairs off pas clothes.
'I'll tell you what it is, Hennery,"
said pa, as he breathed hard, as though
he had been running foot race, "this
rabbit drive reminds me of the way
the rich corporations look upon the
poor people, just as we look upon the
Jackrabbits. We pity single jack
rabbit, and he runs when he sees us,
and seems to say: please, mister, let
me alone. and let me nibble around
and eat the stuff you do not want, and
we drive them into bunch, the way
the rich and mean irOn-handed trusts
drive the people, and then we turn in
and club them with the ak handle of
graft and greed, and we keep our pow
er over them, if enough are killed off
SO we are in the majority, but the
jackrabbits that escape the drive keep
on, breeding, like the poor people that
the trusts try to eXterminate. Some
day the jackrabbit and the poor people
will get nerve enough to fight back,
and then the jackrabbit and the poor
people will outnumber the men who
fight them and kill them, and they will
turn on the cowboys with the clubs,
and the trusts with the big head, and
drive those who now pursue them into
corrals on the prairies and into peni-
tentiaries in the states, and those who
are pfg-headed and cruel will get
theirs, see?"
/ told pa I thought could see,
though there were rabbit hairs in my
eyes, and then I got pa to get up and
mount his horse, and we rode back to
town with the gang, while the 5000
rabbit carcasses were hauled to town
in wagons and loaded on the cars.
Where do you send those jackrab-
bits?" asked pa of the leader Of the
slayers, as he watched them loading
the rabbits.
''To the Chicago packing houses"
said the man. ''They make the finest
canned chicken you ever et."
''The devil, you say" said pa. "Then
we have been working all day to make
packing houses rich. Wouldn't that
skin your"
Then we went to the hotel and I put
courtplaster on pa where the rabbits
had scratched the skin off, and pa ar
ranged to go out next day to the ranch
where the herd of buffaloes live, to
look for bigger game for the show,
though he would like to have a rabbit
drive in the circus ring next year if
he could train the rabbits.