Part 49 (2/2)

”How long would it take you?” asked Bob.

”By riding hard, about a week.”

Rather the loyalty seemed to be gropingly to the idea back of it all, to something broad and dim and beautiful which these rough, untutored men had drawn from their native mountains and which thus they rendered back.

As Bob gradually came to understand more of the situation his curiosity grew. The lumberman's instinctive hostility to government control and interference had not in the slightest degree modified; but he had begun to differentiate this small, devoted band from the machinery of the Forest Reserves as they were then conducted. He was a little inclined to the fanatic theory; he knew by now that the laziness hypothesis would not apply to these.

”What is there in it?” he asked. ”You surely can't hope for a boost in salary; and certainly your bosses treat you badly.”

At first he received vague and evasive answers. They liked the work; they got along all right; it was a lot better than the cattle business just now, and so on. Then as it became evident that the young man was genuinely interested, California John gradually opened up. One strange and beautiful feature of American partisans.h.i.+p for an ideal is its shyness. It will work and endure, will wait and suffer, but it will not go forth to proselyte.

”The way I kind of look at it is this,” said the old man one evening.

”I always did like these here mountains--and the big trees--and the rocks and water and the snow. Everywhere else the country belongs to some one: it's staked out. Up here it belongs to me, because I'm an American. This country belongs to all of us--the people--all of us. We most of us don't know we've got it, that's all. I kind of look at it this way: suppose I had a big pile of twenty-dollar gold pieces lying up, say in Siskiyou, that I didn't know nothing whatever about; and some fellow come along and took care of it for me and hung onto it even when I sent out word that anybody was welcome to anything I owned in Siskiyou--I not thinking I really owned anything there, you understand--why--well, you see, I sort of like to feel I'm one of those fellows!”

”What good is there in hanging onto a lot of land that would be better developed?” asked Bob.

But California John refused to be drawn into a discussion. He had his faith, but he would not argue about it. Sometime or other the people would come to that same faith. In the meantime there was no sense in tangling up with discussions.

”They send us out some reading that tells about it,” said California John. ”I'll give you some.”

He was as good as his word. Bob carried away with him a dozen government publications of the sort that, he had always concluded, everybody received and n.o.body read. Interested, not in the subject matter of the pamphlets, but in their influence on these mountain men, he did read them. In this manner he became for the first time acquainted with the elementary principles of watersheds and water conservation. This was actually so. Nor did he differ in this respect from any other of the millions of well-educated youth of the country. In a vague way he knew that trees influence climate. He had always been too busy with trees to bother about climate.

The general facts interested him, and appealed to his logical common sense. He saw for the first time, because for the first time it had been presented to his attention, the real use and reason for the forest reserves. Hitherto he had considered the whole inst.i.tution as semi-hostile, at least as something in potential antagonism. Now he was willing fairly to recognize the wisdom of preserving some portion of the mountain cover. He had not really denied it; simply he hadn't considered it.

Early in this conviction he made up to Ross Fletcher for his brusqueness in ordering the ranger off the mill property.

”I just cla.s.sed you with your gang, which was natural,” said Bob.

”I am one of my gang, of course,” said Fletcher.

”Do you consider yourself one of the same sort of d.i.c.ky bird as Plant and that crew?” demanded Bob.

”There ain't no humans all alike,” replied the mountaineer.

Although Bob was thus rebuffed in immediately getting inside of the man's loyalty to his service and his superiors, he was from that moment made to feel at his ease. Later, in a fuller intimacy, he was treated more frankly.

Welton laughed openly at Bob's growing interest in these matters.

”You're the first man I ever saw read any of those things,” said he in regard to the government reports. ”I once read one,” he went on in delightful contradiction to his first statement. ”It told how to cut timber. When you cut down a tree, you pile up the remains in a neat pile and put a little white picket fence around them. It would take a thousand men and cost enough to buy a whole new tract to do all the monkey business they want you to do. I've only been in the lumber business forty years! When a college boy can teach me, I'm willing to listen; but he can't teach me the A B C of the business.”

Bob laughed. ”Well, I can't just see us taking time in a short season to back-track and pile up ornamental brush piles,” he admitted.

”Experimental farms, and experimental chickens, and experimental lumbering are all right for the gentleman farmer and the gentleman poultry fancier and the gentleman lumberman--if there are any. But when it comes to business----”

Bob laughed. ”Just the same,” said he, ”I'm beginning to see that it's a good thing to keep some of this timber standing; and the only way it can be done is through the Forest Reserves.”

”That's all right,” agreed Welton. ”Let'em reserve. I don't care. But they are a nuisance. They keep stepping on my toes. It's too good a chance to annoy and graft. It gives a hard lot of loafers too good a chance to make trouble.”

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