Chapter VI: Part THREE: I (1)

Two weeks later a light buckboard bearing Welton and Bob dashed in the early morning across the plains, wormed its way ingeniously through gaps in the foothills, and slowed to a walk as it felt the grades of the first long low slopes. The air was warm with the sun imprisoned in the pockets of the hills. High chaparral, scrub oaks, and scattered, unkempt digger pines threw their thicket up to the very right of way. It was in general dense, almost impenetrable, yet it had a way of breaking unexpectedly into spacious parks, into broad natural pastures, into bold, rocky points prophetic of the mountains yet to come. Every once in a while the road drew one side to pause at a cabin nestling among fruit trees, bowered beneath vines, bright with the most vivid of the commoner flowers. They were crazily picturesque with their rough stone chimneys, their roofs of shakes, their broad low verandahs, and their split-picket fences. On these verandahs sat patriarchal-looking men with sweeping white beards, who smoked pipes and gazed across with dim eyes toward the distant blue mountains. When Welton, casually and by the way, mentioned topographical names, Bob realized to what placid and contented retirement these men had turned, and who they were. Nugget Creek, Flour Gold, Bear Gulch--these spoke of the strong, red-shirted Argonauts of the El Dorado. Among these scarred but peaceful foothills had been played and applauded the great, wonderful, sordid, inspired drama of the early days, the traces of which had almost vanished from the land.

Occasionally also the buckboard paused for water at a more pretentious place set in a natural opening. There a low, rambling, white ranch-house beneath trees was segregated by a picket fence enclosing blossoms like a basket. At a greater or lesser distance were corrals of all sizes arranged in a complicated pattern. They resembled a huge puzzle. The barns were large; a forge stood under an open shed indescribably littered with scrap iron and fragments of all sorts; saddles hung suspended by the horn or one stirrup; bright milk pails sunned bottom-up on fence posts; a dozen horses cropped in a small enclosed pasture or dozed beneath one or another of the magnificent and spreading live-oak trees. Children of all sizes and states of repair clambered to the fence tops or gazed solemnly between the rails. Sometimes women stood in the doorways to nod cheerfully at the travellers. They seemed to Bob a comely, healthy-looking lot, competent and good-natured. Beyond an occasional small field and an invariable kitchen garden there appeared to be no evidences of cultivation. Around the edges of the natural opening stretched immediately the open jungle of the chaparral or the park-like forests of oaks.

"These are the typical mountain people of California," said Welton. "It's only taken us a few hours to come up this far, but we've struck among a different breed of cats. They're born, live and die in the hills, and they might as well be a thousand miles away as forty or fifty. As soon as the snow is out, they hike for the big mountains."

"What do they do?" inquired Bob.

"Cattle," replied Welton. "Nothing else."

"I haven't seen any men."

"No, and you won't, except the old ones. They've taken their cattle back to the summer ranges in the high mountains. By and by the women and kids will go into the summer camps with the horses."

On a steep and narrow grade they encountered a girl of twenty riding a spirited pinto. She bestrode a cowboy's stock saddle on which was coiled the usual rope, wore a broad felt hat, and smiled at the two men quite frankly in spite of the fact that she wore no habit and had been compelled to arrange her light calico skirts as best she could. The pinto threw his head and snorted, dancing sideways at sight of the buckboard. So occupied was he with the strange vehicle that he paid scant attention to the edge of the road. Bob saw that the passage along the narrow outside strip was going to be precarious. He prepared to descend, but at that moment the girl faced her pony squarely at the edge of the road, dug her little heels into his flanks, and flicked him sharply with the _morale_ or elongated lash of the reins. Without hesitation the pony stepped off the grade, bunched his hoofs and slid down the precipitous slope. So steep was the hill that a man would have had to climb it on all fours.

Bob gasped and rose to his feet. The pony, leaving a long furrow in the side of the mountain, caught himself on the narrow ledge of a cattle trail, turned to the left, and disappeared at a little fox trot.

Bob looked at this companion. Welton laughed.

"There's hardly a woman in the country that doesn't help round up stock. How'd you like to chase a cow full speed over this country, hey?"

As they progressed, mounting slowly, but steadily, the character of the country changed. The cañons through which flowed the streams became deeper and more precipitous; the divides between them higher. At one point where the road emerged on a bold, clear point, Bob looked back to the shimmering plain, and was astonished to see how high they had climbed. To the eastward and only a few miles distant rose the dark mass of a pine-covered ridge, austere and solemn, the first rampart of the Sierras. Welton pointed to it with his whip.

"There's our timber," said he simply.

A little farther along the buckboard drew rein at the top of a long declivity that led down to a broad wooded valley. Among the trees Bob caught a glimpse of the roofs of scattered houses, and the gleam of a river. From the opposite edge of the valley rose the mountain-ridge, sheer and noble. The light of afternoon tinted it with lilac and purple.

"That's the celebrated town of Sycamore Flats," said Welton. "Just at present we're the most important citizens. This fellow here's the first yellow pine on the road."

Bob looked upon what he then considered a rather large tree. Later he changed his mind. The buckboard rattled down the grade, swung over a bridge, and so into the little town. Welton drew up at a low, broad structure set back from the street among some trees.

"We'll tackle the mountain to-morrow," said he.

Bob descended with a distinct feeling of pleasure at being able to use his legs again. He and Welton and the baggage and everything about the buckboard were powdered thick with the fine, white California dust. At every movement he shook loose a choking cloud. Welton's face was a dull gray, ludicrously streaked, and he suspected himself of being in the same predicament. A boy took the horses, and the travellers entered the picketed enclosure. Welton lifted up his great rumbling voice.

"O Auntie Belle!" he roared.

Within the dark depths of the house life stirred. In a moment a capable and motherly woman had taken them in charge. Amid a rapid-fire of greetings, solicitudes, jokes, questions, commands and admonitions Bob was dusted vigorously and led to ice-cold water and clean towels. Ten minutes later, much refreshed, he stood on the low verandah looking out with pleasure on the little there was to see. Eight dogs squatted themselves in front of him, ears slightly uplifted, in expectancy of something Bob could not guess. Probably the dogs could not guess either. Within the house two or three young girls were moving about, singing and clattering dishes in a delightfully promising manner. Down the winding hill, for Sycamore Flats proved after all to be built irregularly on a slope, he could make out several other scattered houses, each with its dooryard, and the larger structures of several stores. Over all loomed the dark mountain. The sun had just dropped below the ridge down which the road had led them, but still shone clear and golden as an overlay of colour laid against the sombre pines on the higher slopes.

After an excellent chicken supper, Bob lit his pipe and wandered down the street. The larger structures, three in number, now turned out to be a store and two saloons. A dozen saddle horses dozed patiently. On the platform outside the store a dozen Indian women dressed in bright calico huddled beneath their shawls. After squatting thus in brute immobility for a half-hour, one of them would purchase a few pounds of flour or a half-pound of tea. Then she would take her place again with the others. At the end of another half-hour another, moved by some sudden and mysterious impulse, would in turn make her purchases. The interior of the store proved to be no different from the general country store anywhere. The proprietor was very busy and occupied and important and interested in selling a two-dollar bill of goods to a chance prospector, which was well, for this was the storekeeper's whole life, and he had in defence of his soul to make his occupations filling. Bob bought a cigar and went out.

Next he looked in at one of the saloons. It was an ill-smelling, cheap box, whose sole ornaments were advertising lithographs. Four men played cards. They hardly glanced at the newcomer. Bob deciphered Forest Reserve badges on three of them.

As he emerged from this joint, his eyes a trifle dazzled by the light, he made out drawn up next the elevated platform a buckboard containing a single man. As his pupils contracted he distinguished such details as a wiry, smart little team, a man so fat as almost to fill the seat, a moon-like, good-natured face, a vest open to disclose a vast white shirt, "Hullo!" the stranger rumbled in a great voice. "Any of my boys in there?"

"Don't believe I know your boys," replied Bob pleasantly.

The fat man heaved his bulk forward to peer at Bob.

"Consarn your hide!" he roared with the utmost good humour; "stand out of the light so I can see your fool face. You lie like a hound! Everybody knows my boys!"

There was no offence in the words.

Bob laughed and obligingly stepped one side the lighted doorway.

"A towerist!" wheezed the fat man. "Say, you're too early. Nothing doing in the mountains yet. Who sent you this early, anyway?"

"No tourist; permanent inhabitant," said Bob. "I'm with Welton."

"Timber, by God!" exploded the fat man. "Well, you and I are like to have friendly doings. Your road goes through us, and you got to toe the mark, young fellow, let me tell you! I'm a hell of a hard man to get on with!"

"You look it," said Bob. "You own some timber?"

The fat man exploded again.

"Hell, no!" he roared. "Why, you don't even know me, do you? I'm Plant, Henry Plant. I'm Forest Supervisor."

"My name's Orde," said Bob. "If you're after Forest Rangers, there's three in there."

"The rascals!" cried Plant. He raised his voice to a bellow. "Oh, you Jim!"

The door was darkened.

"Say, Jim," said Plant. "They tell me there's a fire over Stone Creek way. Somebody's got to take a look at it. You and Joe better ride over in the morning and see what she looks like."

The man stretched his arms over his head and yawned. "Oh, hell!" said he with deep feeling. "Ain't you got any of those suckers that _like_ to ride? I've had a headache for three days."

"Yes, it's hard luck you got to do anything, ain't it," said Plant. "Well, I'll see if I can find old John, and if you don't hear from me, you got to go."

The Supervisor gathered up his reins and was about to proceed when down through the fading twilight rode a singular figure. It was a thin, wiry, tall man, with a face like tanned leather, a clear, blue eye and a drooping white moustache. He wore a flopping old felt hat, a faded cotton shirt and an ancient pair of copper-riveted blue-jeans overalls tucked into a pair of cowboy's boots. A time-discoloured cartridge belt encircled his hips, supporting a holster from which protruded the shiny butt of an old-fashioned Colt's 45. But if the man was thus nondescript and shabby, his mount and its caparisons were magnificent. The horse was a glossy, clean-limbed sorrel with a quick, intelligent eye. The bridle was of braided rawhide, the broad spade-bit heavily inlaid with silver, the reins of braided and knotted rawhide. Across the animal's brow ran three plates of silver linked together. Below its ears were wide silver _conchas_. The saddle was carved elaborately, and likewise ornamented with silver. The whole outfit shone--new-polished and well kept.

"Oh, you John!" called Plant.

The old man moved his left hand slightly. The proud-stepping sorrel instantly turned to the left, and, on a signal Bob could not distinguish, stopped to statue-like immobility. Then Bob could see the Forest Ranger badge pinned to one strap of the old man's suspender.

"John," said Plant, "they tell me there's a fire over at Stone Creek. Ride over and see what it amounts to."

"All right," replied the Ranger. "What help do I get?"

"Oh, you just ride over and see what it amounts to," repeated Plant.

"I can't do nothing alone fighting fire."

"Well I can't spare anybody now," said Plant, "and it may not amount to nothing. You go see."

"All right," said John. "But if it does amount to something, it'll get an awful start on us."

He rode away.

"Old California John," said Plant to Bob with a slight laugh. "Crazy old fool." He raised his voice. "Oh, you Jim! John, he's going to ride over. You needn't go."

Bob nodded a good night, and walked back up the street. At the store he found the sorrel horse standing untethered in the road. He stopped to examine more closely the very ornate outfit. California John came out carrying a grain sack half full of provisions. This he proceeded to tie on behind the saddle, paying no attention to the young man.

"Well, Star, you got a long ways to go," muttered the old man.

"You aren't going over those mountains to-night, are you?" cried Bob.

The old man turned quite deliberately and inspected his questioner in a manner to imply that he had committed an indiscretion. But the answer was in a tone that implied he had not.

"Certain sure," he replied. "The only way to handle a fire is to stick to it like death to a dead nigger."

Bob returned to the hotel very thoughtful. There he found Mr. Welton seated comfortably on the verandah, his feet up and a cigar alight.

"This is pretty good medicine," he called to Bob. "Get your feet up, you long-legged stork, and enjoy yourself. Been exploring?"

"Listening to the band on the plaza," laughed Bob. He drew up a chair. At that moment the dim figure of California John jingled by. "I wouldn't like that old fellow's job. He's a ranger, and he's got to go and look up a forest fire."

"Alone?" asked Welton. "Couldn't they scare up any more? Or are they over there already?"

"There's three playing poker at the saloon. Looked to me like a fool way to do. He's just going to take a look and then come back and report."

"Oh, they're heavy on reports!" said Welton. "Where is the fire; did you hear?"

"Stone Creek--wherever that is."

"Stone Creek!" yelled Welton, dropping the front legs of his chair to the verandah with a thump. "Why, our timber adjoins Stone Creek! You come with me!"

II

Welton strode away into the darkness, followed closely by Bob. He made his way as rapidly as he could through the village to an attractive house at the farther outskirts. Here he turned through the picket gate, and thundered on the door.

It was almost immediately opened by a meek-looking woman of thirty.

"Plant in?" demanded Welton.

The meek woman had no opportunity to reply.

"Sure! Sure! Come in!" roared the Supervisor's great voice.

They entered to find the fat man, his coat off, leaning luxuriously back in an office chair, his feet up on another, a cigar in his mouth. He waved a hospitable hand.

"Sit down! Sit down!" he wheezed. "Glad to see you."

"They tell me there's a fire over in the Stone Creek country," said Welton.

"So it's reported," said Plant comfortably. "I've sent a man over already to investigate."

"That timber adjoins ours," went on Welton. "Sending one ranger to investigate don't seem to help the old man a great deal."

"Oh, it may not amount to much," disclaimed Plant vaguely.

"But if it does amount to much, it'll be getting one devil of a start," persisted Welton. "Why don't you send over enough men to give it a fight?"

"Haven't got 'em," replied Plant briefly.

"There's three playing poker now, down in the first saloon," broke in Bob.

Plant looked at him coldly for ten seconds.

"Those men are waiting to tally Wright's cattle," he condescended, naming one of the most powerful of the valley ranch kings.

But Welton caught at Bob's statement.

"All you need is one man to count cattle," he pointed out. "Can't you do that yourself, and send over your men?"

"Are you trying to tell me my business, Mr. Welton?" asked the Supervisor formally.

Welton laughed one of his inexpressible chuckles.

"Lord love you, no!" he cried. "I have all I can handle. I'm merely trying to protect my own. Can't you hire some men, then?"

"My appropriation won't stand it," said Plant, a gleam coming into his eye. "I simply haven't the money to pay them with." He paused significantly.

"How much would it take?" inquired Welton.

Plant cast his eyes to the ceiling.

"Of course, I couldn't tell, because I don't know how much of a fire it is, or how long it would take to corral it. But I'll tell you what I'll do: suppose you leave me a lump sum, and I'll look after such matters hereafter without having to bother you with them. Of course, when I have rangers available I'll use 'em; but any time you need protection, I can rush in enough men to handle the situation without having to wait for authorizations and all that. It might not take anything extra, of course."

"How much do you suppose it would require to be sure we don't run short?" asked Welton.

"Oh, a thousand dollars ought to last indefinitely," replied Plant.

The two men stared at each other for a moment. Then Welton laughed.

"I can hire a heap of men for a thousand dollars," said he, rising. "Goodnight."

Plant rumbled something. The two went out, leaving the fat man chewing his cigar and scowling angrily after them.

Once clear of the premises Welton laughed loudly.

"Well, my son, that's your first shy at the government official, isn't it? They're not all as bad as that. At first I couldn't make out whether he was just fat and lazy. Now I know he's a grafter. He ought to get a nice neat 'For Sale' sign painted. Did you hear the nerve of him? Wanted a thousand dollars bribe to do his plain duty."

"Oh, that was what he was driving at!" cried Bob.

"Yes, Baby Blue-eyes, didn't you tumble to that? Well, I don't see a thousand in it whether he's for us or against us."

"Was that the reason he didn't send over all his men to the fire?" asked Bob.

"Partly. Principally because he wanted to help old Simeon Wright's men in with the cattle. Simeon probably has a ninety-nine year lease on his fat carcass--with the soul thrown in for a trading stamp. It don't take but one man to count cattle, but three extra cowboys comes mighty handy in the timber."

"Would Wright bribe him, do you suppose?"

Welton stopped short.

"Let me tell you one thing about old Simeon, Bob," said he. "He owns more land than any other man in California. He got it all from the government. Eight sections on one of his ranches he took up under the Swamp Act by swearing he had been all over them in a boat. He had. The boat was drawn by eight mules. That's just a sample. You bet Simeon owns a Supervisor, if he thinks he needs one; and that's why the cattle business takes precedence over the fire business."

"It's an outrage!" cried Bob. "We ought to report him for neglect of duty."

Welton chuckled.

"I didn't tell you this to get you mad, Bobby," he drawled with his indescribable air of good humour; "only to show you the situation. What difference does it make? As for reporting to Washington! Look here, I don't know what Plant's political backing is, but it must be 99.84 per cent. pure. Otherwise, how would a man as fat as that get a job of Forest Supervisor? Why, he can't ride a horse, and it's absurd to suppose he ever saw any of the Reserve he's in charge of."

Welton bestirred himself to good purpose. Inside of two hours a half-dozen men, well-mounted and provisioned, bearing the usual tools of the fire-fighter, had ridden off into the growing brightness of the moon.

"There," said the lumberman with satisfaction. "That isn't going to cost much, and we'll feel safe. Now let's turn in."

III

The next morning Bob was awakened to a cold dawn that became still more shivery when he had dressed and stepped outside. Even a hot breakfast helped little; and when the buckboard was brought around, he mounted to his seat without any great enthusiasm. The mountain rose dark and forbidding, high against the eastern sky, and a cold wind breathed down its defiles. When the wiry little ponies slowed to the first stretches of the tiresome climb, Bob was glad to walk alongside.

Almost immediately the pines began. They were short and scrubby as yet, but beautiful in the velvet of their dark green needles. Bob glanced at them critically. They were perhaps eighty to a hundred feet high and from a foot to thirty inches in diameter.

"Fair timber," he commented to his companion.

Welton snorted. "Timber!" he cried. "That isn't timber; it's weeds. There's no _timber_ on this slope of the mountain."

Slowly the ponies toiled up the steep grade, pausing often for breath. Among the pines grew many oaks, buckthorns, tall manzañitas and the like. As the valley dropped beneath, they came upon an occasional budding dogwood. Over the slopes of some of the hills spread a mantle of velvety vivid green, fair as the grass of a lawn, but indescribably soft and mobile. It lent those declivities on which it grew a spacious, well-kept, park appearance, on which Bob exclaimed with delight.

But Welton would have none of it.

"Bear clover," said he, "full of pitch as an old jack-pine. Burns like coal oil, and you can't hardly cut it with a hoe. Worst stuff to carry fire and to fight fire in you ever saw. Pick a piece and smell it."

Bob broke off one of the tough, woody stems. A pungent odour exactly like that of extract of hamamelis met his nostrils. Then he realized that all the time he had been aware of this perfume faintly disengaging itself from the hills. In spite of Mr. Welton's disgust, Bob liked its clean, pungent suggestion.

The road mounted always, following the contour of the mountains. Thus it alternately emerged and crept on around bold points, and bent back into the recesses of ravines. Clear, beautiful streams dashed and sang down the latter; from the former, often, Bob could look out over the valley from which they had mounted, across the foothills, to the distant, yellowing plains far on the horizon, lost finally in brown heat waves. Sycamore Flats lay almost directly below. Always it became smaller, and more and more like a coloured relief-map with tiny, Noah's-ark houses. The forest grew sturdily on the steep mountain. Bob's eyes were on a level with the tops of trees growing but a few hundred feet away. The horizon line was almost at eleven o'clock above him.

"How'd you handle this kind of a proposition?" he inquired. "Looks to me like hard sledding."

"This stuff is no good," said Welton. "These little, yellow pines ain't worth cutting. This is all Forest Reserve stuff."

Bob glanced again down the aisles of what looked to him like a noble forest, but said nothing. He was learning, in this land of surprises, to keep his mouth shut.

At the end of two hours Welton drew up beside a new water trough to water the ponies.

"There," he remarked casually, "is the first sugar pine."

Bob's eye followed the indication of his whip to the spreading, graceful arms of a free so far up the bed of the stream that he could make out only its top. The ponies, refreshed, resumed their methodical plodding.

Insensibly, as they mounted, the season had changed. The oaks that, at the level of Sycamore Flats, had been in full leaf, here showed but the tender pinks and russets of the first foliage. The dogwoods were quite dormant. Rivulets of seepage and surface water trickled in the most unexpected places as though from snow recently melted.

Of climbing there seemed no end. False skylines recurrently deceived Bob into a belief that the buckboard was about to surmount the top. Always the rise proved to be preliminary to another. The road dipped behind little spurs, climbed ravines, lost itself between deep cuts. Only rarely did the forest growths permit a view, and then only in glimpses between the tops of trees. In the valley and against the foothills now intervened the peaceful and calm blue atmosphere of distance.

"I'd no idea from looking at it this mountain was so high," he told Welton.

"You never do," said Welton. "They always fool you. We're pretty nigh the top now."

Indeed, for a little space the forest had perforce to thin because of lack of footing. The slope became almost a precipice, ending in a bold comb above which once more could be glimpsed the tops of trees. Quite ingeniously the road discovered a cleft up which it laboured mightily, to land breathless after a heart-breaking pull. Just over the top Welton drew rein to breathe his horses--and to hear what Bob had to say about it.

The buckboard stood at the head of a long, gentle slope descending, perhaps fifty feet, to a plateau; which, in turn, rose to another crest some miles distant. The level of this plateau, which comprised, perhaps, thirty thousand acres all told, supported a noble and unbroken forest.

Mere statistics are singularly unavailing to convey even an idea of a California woodland at its best. We are not here dealing with the so-called "Big Trees," but with the ordinary--or extraordinary--pines and spruces. The forest is free from dense undergrowths; the individual trees are enormous, yet so symmetrical that the eye can realize their size only when it catches sight of some usual and accustomed object, such as men or horses or the buildings in which they live. Even then it is quite as likely that the measures will appear to have been struck small, as that the measured will show in their true grandeur of proportion. The eye refuses to be convinced off-hand that its education has been faulty.

"Now," said Welton decidedly. "We may as well have it over with right now. How big is that young tree over there?"

He pointed out a half-grown specimen of sugar pine.

"About twenty inches in diameter," replied Bob promptly.

Welton silently handed him a tape line. Bob descended.

"Thirty-seven!" he cried with vast astonishment, when his measurements were taken and his computations made.

"Now that one," commanded Welton, indicating a larger tree.

Bob sized it up.

"No fair looking at the other for comparison," warned the older man.

"Forty," hesitated Bob, "and I don't believe it's that!" he added. "Four feet," he amended when he had measured.

"Climb in," said Welton; "now you're in a proper frame of mind to listen to me with respect. The usual run of tree you see down through here is from five to eight feet in diameter. They are about all over two hundred feet tall, and some run close to three hundred."

Bob sighed. "All right. Drive on. I'll get used to it in time." His face lighted up with a grin. "Say, wouldn't you like to see Roaring Dick trying to handle one of those logs with a peavie? As for driving a stream full of them! Oh, Lord! You'd have to send 'em down one at a time, fitted out with staterooms for the crew, a rudder and a gasoline engine!"

The ponies jogged cheerfully along the winding road. Water ran everywhere, or stood in pools. Under the young spruces were the last snowbanks. Pushing up through the wet soil, already showed early snowplants, those strange, waxlike towers of crimson. After a time they came to a sidehill where the woods thinned. There still stood many trees, but as the buckboard approached, Bob could see that they were cedars, or spruce, or smaller specimens of the pines. Prone upon the ground, like naked giants, gleamed white and monstrous the peeled bodies of great trees. A litter of "slash," beaten down by the winter, cumbered the ground, and retained beneath its faded boughs soggy and melting drifts.

"Had some 'fallers' in here last year," explained Welton briefly. "Thought we'd have some logs on hand when it came time to start up."

"Wait a minute," requested Bob. He sprang lightly from the vehicle, and scrambled over to stand alongside the nearest of the fallen monsters. He could just see over it comfortably. "My good heavens!" said he soberly, resuming his seat. "How in blazes do you handle them?"

Welton drove on a few paces, then pointed with his whip. A narrow trough made of small peeled logs laid parallel and pegged and mortised together at the ends, ran straight over the next hill.

"That's a chute," he explained briefly. "We hitch a wire cable to the log and just naturally yank it over to the chute."

"How yank it?" demanded Bob.

"By a good, husky donkey engine. Then the chute poles are slushed, we hitch cables on four or five logs, and just tow them over the hill to the mill."

Bob's enthusiasm, as always, was growing with the presentation of this new and mighty problem of engineering so succinctly presented. It sounded simple; but from his two years' experience he knew better. He was becoming accustomed to filling in the outlines of pure theory. At a glance he realized the importance of such things as adequate anchors for the donkey engines; of figuring on straight pulls, horse power and the breaking strain of steel cables; of arranging curves in such manner as to obviate ditching the logs, of selecting grades and routes in such wise as to avoid the lift of the stretched cable; and more dimly he guessed at other accidents, problems and necessities which only the emergency could fully disclose. All he said was:

"So that's why you bark them all--so they'll slide. I wondered."

But now the ponies, who had often made this same trip, pricked up their ears and accelerated their pace. In a moment they had rounded a hill and brought their masters into full view of the mill itself.

The site was in a wide, natural clearing occupied originally by a green meadow perhaps a dozen acres in extent. From the borders of this park the forest had drawn back to a dark fringe. Now among the trees at the upper end gleamed the yellow of new, unpainted shanties. Square against the prospect was the mill, a huge structure, built of axe-hewn timbers, rough boards, and the hand-rived shingles known as shakes. Piece by piece the machinery had been hauled up the mountain road until enough had been assembled on the space provided for it by the axe men to begin sawing. Then, like some strange monster, it had eaten out for itself at once a space in the forest and the materials for its shell and for the construction of its lesser dependents, the shanties, the cook-houses, the offices and the shops. Welton pointed out with pride the various arrangements; here the flats and the trestles for the yards where the new-sawn lumber was to be stacked; there the dump for the sawdust and slabs; yonder the banking ground constructed of great logs laid close together, wherein the timber-logs would be deposited to await the saw.

From the lower end of the yard a trestle supporting a V-shaped trough disappeared over the edge of a hill. Near its head a clear stream cascaded down the slope.

"That's the flume," explained the lumberman. "Brought the stream around from the head of the meadow in a ditch. We'll flume the sawn lumber down the mountain. For the present we'll have to team it out to the railroad. Your friend Baker's figuring on an electric road to meet us, though, and I guess we'll fix it up with him inside a few years, anyway."

"Where's Stone Creek from here?" asked Bob.

"Over the farther ridge. The mountain drops off again there to Stone Creek three or four thousand feet."

"We ought to hear from the fire, soon."

"If we don't, we'll ride over that way and take a look down," replied Welton.

They drove down the empty yards to a stable where already was established their old barn-boss of the Michigan woods. Four or five big freight wagons stood outside, and a score of powerful mules rolled and sunned themselves in the largest corral. Welton nodded toward several horses in another enclosure.

"Pick your saddle horse, Bob," said he. "Straw boss has to ride in this country."

"Make it the oldest, then," said Bob.

At the cookhouse they were just in time for the noon meal. The long, narrow room, fresh with new wood, new tables and new benches in preparation for the crew to come, looked bare and empty with its handful of guests huddled at one end. These were the teamsters, the stablemen, the caretakers and a few early arrivals. The remainder of the crew was expected two days later.

After lunch Bob wandered out into the dazzling sunlight. The sky was wonderfully blue, the trees softly green, the new boards and the tiny pile of sawdust vividly yellow. These primary colours made all the world. The air breathed crisp and bracing, with just a dash of cold in the nostrils that contrasted paradoxically with the warm balminess of the sunlight. It was as though these two opposed qualities, warmth and cold, were here held suspended in the same medium and at the same time. Birds flashed like spangles against the blue. Others sang and darted and scratched and chirped everywhere. Tiny chipmunks no bigger than half-grown rats scampered fearlessly about. What Bob took for larger chipmunks--the Douglas Squirrels--perched on the new fence posts. The world seemed alive--alive through its creatures, through the solemn, uplifting vitality of its forests, through the sprouting, budding spring growths just bursting into green, through the wine-draught of its very air, through the hurrying, busy preoccupied murmur of its streams. Bob breathed his lungs full again and again, and tingled from head to foot.

"How high are we here?" he called to Welton.

"About six thousand. Why? Getting short-winded?"

"I could run ten miles," replied Bob. "Come on. I'm going to look at the stream."

"Not at a run," protested Welton. "No, sir! At a nice, middle-aged, dignified, fat _walk_!"

They sauntered down the length of the trestle, with its miniature steel tracks, to where the flume began. It proved to be a very solidly built V-trough, alongside which ran a footboard. Welton pointed to the telephone wire that paralleled it.

"When we get going," said he, "we just turn the stream in here, clamp our sawn lumber into bundles of the right size, and 'let her went!' There'll be three stations along the line, connected by 'phone, to see that things go all right. That flume's six mile long."

Bob strode to the gate, and after some heaving and hauling succeeded in throwing water into the flume.

"I wanted to see her go," he explained.

"Now if you want some real fun," said Welton, gazing after the foaming advance wave as it ripped its way down the chute. "You make you a sort of three-cornered boat just to fit the angle of the flume; and then you lie down in it and go to Sycamore Flats, in about six minutes more or less."

"You mean to say that's done?" cried Bob.

"Often. It only means knocking together a plank or so."

"Doesn't the lumber ever jump the flume?"

"Once in a great while."

"Suppose the boat should do it?"

"Then," said Welton drily, "it's probable you'd have to begin learning to tune a harp."

"Not for mine," said Bob with fervour. "Any time I yearn for Sycamore Flats real hard, I'll go by hand."

He shut off the water, and the two walked a little farther to a bold point that pressed itself beyond the trees.

Below them the cliff dropped away so steeply that they looked out above the treetops as from the summit of a true precipice. Almost directly below them lay the wooded valley of Sycamore Flats, maplike, tiny. It was just possible to make out the roofs of houses, like gray dots. Roads showed as white filaments threading the irregular patches of green and brown. From beneath flowed the wide oak and brush-clad foothills, rising always with the apparent cup of the earth until almost at the height of the eye the shimmering, dim plains substituted their brown for the dark green of the hills. The country that yesterday had seemed mountainous, full of cañons, ridges and ranges, now showed gently undulating, flattened, like a carpet spread before the feet of the Sierras. To the north were tumbled, blue, pine-clad mountains as far as the eye could see, receding into the dimness of great distance. At one point, but so far away as to be distinguishable only by a slight effort of the imagination, hovered like soap-bubbles against an ethereal sky the forms of snow mountains. Welton pointed out the approximate position of Yosemite.

They returned to camp where Welton showed the clean and painted little house built for Bob and himself. It was quite simply a row of rooms with a verandah in front of them all. But the interiors were furnished with matting for the floors, curtains to the windows, white iron bedsteads, running water and open fireplaces.

"I'm sick of camping," said Welton. "This is our summer quarters for some time. I'm going to be comfortable."

Bob sighed.

"This is the bulliest place I ever saw!" he cried boyishly.

"Well, you're going to have time enough to get used to it," said Welton drily.

IV

The Stone Creek fire indeed proved not to amount to much, whereby sheer chance upheld Henry Plant. The following morning the fire fighters returned; leaving, however, two of their number to "guard the line" until the danger should be over. Welton explained to Bob that only the fact that Stone Creek bottom was at a low elevation, filled with brush and tarweed, and grown thick with young trees rendered the forest even inflammable at this time of year.

"Anywhere else in this country at this time of year it wouldn't do any harm," he told Bob, "and Plant knew it couldn't get out of the basin. He didn't give a cuss how much it did there. But we've got some young stuff that would easy carry a top fire. Later in the season you may see some tall rustling on the fire lines."

But before noon of that day a new complication arose. Up the road came a short, hairy man on a mule. His beard grew to his high cheek bones, his eyebrows bristled and jutted out over his black eyes, and a thick shock of hair pushed beneath the rim of his hat to meet the eyebrows. The hat was an old black slouch, misshapen, stained and dusty. His faded shirt opened to display a hairy throat and chest. As for the rest he was short-limbed, thick and powerful.

This nondescript individual rode up to the verandah on which sat Welton and Bob, awaiting the lunch bell. He bowed gravely, and dismounted.

"Dis ees Meestair Welton?" he inquired with a courtesy at strange variance with his uncouth appearance.

Welton nodded.

"I am Peter Lejeune," said the newcomer, announcing one of those hybrid names so common among the transplanted French and Basques of California. "I have de ship."

"Oh, yes," said Welton rising and going forward to offer his hand. "Come up and sit down, Mr. Leejune."

The hairy man "tied his mule to the ground" by dropping the end of the reins, and mounted the two steps to the verandah.

"This is my assistant, Mr. Orde," said Welton. "How are the sheep coming on? Mr. Leejune," he told Bob, "rents the grazing in our timber."

"Et is not coming," stated Lejeune with a studied calm. "Plant he riffuse permit to cross."

"Permit to what?" asked Welton.

"To cross hees fores', gov'ment fores'. I can' get in here widout cross gov'ment land. I got to get permit from Plant. Plant he riffuse."

Welton rose, staring at his visitor.

"Do you mean to tell me," he cried at last, "that a man hasn't got a right to get into his own land? That they can keep a man out of his own _land_?"

"Da's right," nodded the Frenchman.

"But you've been in here for ten years or so to my knowledge."

Abruptly the sheepman's calm fell from him. He became wildly excited. His black eyes snapped, his hair bristled, he arose from his chair and gesticulated.

"Every year I geev heem three ship! Three ship!" he repeated, thrusting three stubby fingers at Welton's face. "Three little ship! I stay all summer! He never say permit. Thees year he kip me out."

"Give any reason?" asked Welton.

"He say my ship feed over the line in gov'ment land."

"Did they?"

"Mebbe so, little bit. Mebbe not. Nobody show me line. Nobody pay no 'tention. I feed thees range ten year."

"Did you give him three sheep this year?"

"Sure."

Welton sighed.

"I can't go down and tend to this," said he. "My foremen are here to be consulted, and the crews will begin to come in to-morrow. You'll have to go and see what's eating this tender Plant, Bob. Saddle up and ride down with Mr. Leejune."

Bob took his first lesson in Western riding behind Lejeune and his stolid mule. He had ridden casually in the East, as had most young men of his way of life, but only enough to make a fair showing on a gentle and easy horse. His present mount was gentle and easy enough, but Bob was called upon to admire feats of which a Harlem goat might have been proud. Lejeune soon turned off the wagon road to make his way directly down the side of the mountain. Bob possessed his full share of personal courage, but in this unaccustomed skirting of precipices, hopping down ledges, and sliding down inclines too steep to afford a foothold he found himself leaning inward, sitting very light in the saddle, or holding his breath until a passage perilous was safely passed. In the next few years he had occasion to drop down the mountainside a great many times. After the first few trips he became so thoroughly accustomed that he often wondered how he had ever thought this scary riding. Now, however, he was so busily occupied that he was caught by surprise when Lejeune's mule turned off through a patch of breast-high manzañita and he found himself traversing the gentler slope at the foot of the mountain. Ten minutes later they entered Sycamore Flats.

Then Bob had leisure to notice an astonishing change of temperature. At the mill the air had been almost cold--entirely so out of the direct rays of the sun. Here it was as hot as though from a furnace. Passing the store, Bob saw that the tall thermometer there stood at 96 degrees. The day was unseasonable, but later, in the August heats, Bob had often, to his sorrow, to test the difference between six thousand and two thousand feet of elevation. From a clear, crisp late-spring climate he would descend in two hours to a temperature of 105 degrees.

Henry Plant was discovered sprawled out in an armchair beneath a spreading tree in the front yard. His coat was off and his vest unbuttoned to display a vast and billowing expanse of soiled white shirt. In his hand was a palm-leaf fan, at his elbow swung an _olla_, newspapers littered the ground or lay across his fat knees. When Bob and Lejeune entered, he merely nodded surlily, and went on with his reading.

"Can I speak to you a moment on business?" asked Bob.

By way of answer the fat man dropped his paper, and mopped his brow.

"We've rented our sheep grazing to Mr. Lejeune, here, as I understand we've been doing for some years. He tells me you have refused him permission to cross the Forest Reserve with his flocks."

"That's right," grunted Plant.

"What for?"

"I believe, young man, granting permits is discretionary with the Supervisor," stated that individual.

"I suppose so," agreed Bob. "But Mr. Lejeune has always had permission before. What reason do you assign for refusing it?"

"Wilful trespass," wheezed Plant. "That's what, young man. His sheep grazed over our line. He's lucky that I don't have him up before the United States courts for damages as well."

Lejeune started to speak, but Bob motioned him to silence.

"I'm sure we could arrange for past damages, and guarantee against any future trespass," said he.

"Well, I'm sure you can't," stated Plant positively. "Good day."

But Bob was not willing to give up thus easily. He gave his best efforts either to arguing Plant into a better frame of mind, or to discovering some tangible reason for his sudden change of front in regard to the sheep.

"It's no use," he told Lejeune, later, as they walked down the street together. "He's undoubtedly the right to refuse permits for cause; and technically he has cause if your sheep got over the line."

"But what shall I do!" cried Lejeune. "My ship mus' have feed!"

"You pasture them or feed them somewhere for a week or so, and I'll let you know," said Bob. "We'll get you on the land or see you through somewhere else."

He mounted his horse stiffly and rode back up the street. Plant still sat in his armchair like a bloated spider. On catching sight of Bob, however, he heaved himself to his feet and waddled to the gate.

"Here!" he called. Bob drew rein. "It has been reported to me that your firm has constructed a flume across 36, and a wagon road across 14, 22, 28, and 32. Those are government sections. I suppose, of course, your firm has permits from Washington to build said improvements?"

"Naturally," said Bob, who, however, knew nothing whatever of those details.

"Well, I'll send a man up to examine them to-morrow," said Plant, and turned his back.

V

Bob took supper at Auntie Belle's, and rode up the mountain after dark. He did not attempt short cuts, but allowed his horse to follow the plain grade of the road. After a time the moon crept over the zenith, and at once the forest took on a fairylike strangeness, as though at the touch of night new worlds had taken the place of the vanished old. Somewhere near midnight, his body shivering with the mountain cold, his legs stiff and chafed from the long, unaccustomed riding, but his mind filled with the wonder and beauty of the mountain night, Bob drew rein beside the corrals. After turning in his horse, he walked through the bright moonlight to Welton's door, on which he hammered.

"Hey!" called the lumberman from within.

"It's I, Bob."

Welton scratched a match.

"Why in blazes didn't you come up in the morning?" he inquired.

"I've found out another and perhaps important hole we're in."

"Can we do anything to help ourselves out before morning?" demanded Welton. "No? Well, sleep tight! I'll see you at six."

Next morning Welton rolled out, as good-humoured and deliberate as ever.

"My boy," said he. "When you get to be as old as I am, you'll never stir up trouble at night unless you can fix it then. What is it?"

Bob detailed his conversation with Plant.

"Do you mean to tell me that that old, fat _skunk_ had the nerve to tell you he was going to send a ranger to look at our permit?" he demanded.

"Yes. That's what he said."

"The miserable hound! Why I went to see him a year ago about crossing this strip with our road--we had to haul a lot of stuff in. He told me to go ahead and haul, and that he'd fix it up when the time came. Since then I've tackled him two or three times about it, but he's always told me to go ahead; that it was all right. So we went ahead. It's always been a matter of form, this crossing permit business. It's _meant_ to be a matter of form!"

After breakfast Welton ordered his buckboard and, in company with Bob, drove down the mountain again. Plant was discovered directing the activities of several men, who were loading a light wagon with provisions and living utensils.

"Moving up to our summer camp," one of them told Bob. "Getting too hot down here."

Plant received them, his fat face expressionless, and led them into the stuffy little office.

"Look here, Plant," said Welton, without a trace of irritation on his weatherbeaten, round countenance. "What's all this about seeing a permit to cross those government sections? You know very well I haven't any permit."

"I have been informed by my men that you have constructed or caused to be constructed a water flume through section 36, and a road through sections 14, 22, 28 and 32. If this has been done without due authorization you are liable for trespass. Fine of not less than $200 or imprisonment for not less than twelve months--or both." He delivered this in a voice absolutely devoid of expression.

"But you told me to go ahead, and that you'd attend to the details, and it would be all right," said Welton.

"You must have misunderstood me," replied Plant blandly. "It is against my sworn duty to permit such occupation of public land without due conformity to law. It is within my discretion whether to report the trespass for legal action. I am willing to believe that you have acted in this matter without malicious intent. But the trespass must cease."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Welton.

"You must not use that road as a highway, nor the flume, and you must remove the flume within a reasonable time. Or else you may still get a permit."

"How long would that take?" asked Welton. "Could it be done by wire?"

Plant lifted a glazed and fishy eye to survey him.

"You would be required to submit in writing specifications of the length and location of said road and flume. This must be accompanied by a topographical map and details of construction. I shall then send out field men to investigate, after which, endorsed with my approval, it goes for final decision to the Secretary of the Interior."

"Good Lord, man!" cried Welton, aghast. "That would take all summer! And besides, I made out all that tomfoolery last summer. I supposed you must have unwound all that red tape long ago!"

Plant for the first time looked his interlocutor square in the eye.

"I find among my records no such application," he said deliberately.

Welton stared at him a moment, then laughed.

"All right, Mr. Plant, I'll see what's to be done," said he, and went out.

In silence the two walked down the street until out of earshot. Then Bob broke out.

"I'd like to punch his fat carcass!" he cried. "The old liar!"

Welton laughed.

"It all goes to show that a man's never too old to learn. He's got us plain enough just because this old man was too busy to wake up to the fact that these government grafters are so strong out here. Back our way when you needed a logging road, you just built it, and paid for the unavoidable damage, and that's all there was to it."

"You take it cool," spluttered Bob.

"No use taking it any other way," replied Welton. "But the situation is serious. We've got our plant in shape, and our supplies in, and our men engaged. It would be bad enough to shut down with all that expense. But the main trouble is, we're under contract to deliver our mill run to Marshall & Harding. We can't forfeit that contract and stay in business."

"What are you going to do about it?" asked Bob.