Chapter 6

I

Next morning Bob was set to work with young Jack Pollock stringing barbed wire fence. He had never done this before. The spools of wire weighed on him heavily. A crowbar thrust through the core made them a sort of axle with which to carry it. Thus they walked forward, revolving the heavy spool with the greatest care while the strand of wire unwound behind them. Every once in a while a coil would kink, or buckle back, or strike as swiftly and as viciously as a snake. The sharp barbs caught at their clothing, and tore Bob's hands. Jack Pollock seemed familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the stuff, for he suffered little damage. Indeed, he even found leisure, as Bob soon discovered, to scrutinize his companion with a covert curiosity. In the eyes of the countryside, Bob had been "fired," and had been forced to take a job rangering. When the entangling strand had been laid along the ground by the newly planted cedar posts, it became necessary to stretch and fasten it. Here, too, young Jack proved himself a competent teacher. He showed Bob how to get a tremendous leverage with the curve on the back of an ordinary hammer by means of which the wire was held taut until the staples could be driven home. It was aggravating, nervous, painful work for one not accustomed to it. Bob's hands were soon cut and bleeding, no matter how gingerly he took hold of the treacherous wire. To all his comments, heated and otherwise, Jack Pollock opposed the mountaineer's determined inscrutability. He watched Bob's efforts always in silence until that young man had made all his mistakes. Then he spat carefully, and, with quiet patience, did it right.

Bob's sense of humour was tickled. With all his education and his subsequent wide experience and training, he stood in the position of a very awkward subordinate to this mountain boy. The joke of it was that the matter was so entirely his own choice. In the normal relations of industry Bob would have been the boss of a hundred activities and twice that number of men; while Jack Pollock, at best, would be water-boy or fuel-purveyor to a donkey engine. Along in the middle of the morning young Elliott passed carrying a crowbar and a spade.

"How'll you trade jobs?" he called.

"What's yours?" asked Bob.

"I'm going to make two cedar posts grow where none grew before," said Elliott.

At noon they knocked off and went back to the ranger camp where they cooked their own meal. Most of the older rangers were afield. A half-dozen of the newcomers and probationers only were there. Elliott, Jack Pollock, two other young mountaineers, Ware and one of the youths from the valley towns had apparently passed the examinations and filled vacancies. All, with the exception of Elliott and this latter youth--Curtis by name--were old hands at taking care of themselves in the woods, so matters of their own accord fell into a rough system. Some built the fire, one mixed bread, others busied themselves with the rest of the provisions. Elliott rummaged about, and set the rough table with the battered service. Only Curtis, seated with his back against a tree, appeared too utterly exhausted or ignorant to take hold at anything. Indeed, he hardly spoke to his companions, ate hastily, and disappeared into his own quarters without offering to help wash the dishes.

This task accomplished, the little group scattered to its afternoon work. In the necessity of stringing wire without cutting himself to ribbons, Bob forgot everything, even the flight of time.

"I reckon it's about quittin' time," Jack observed to him at last.

Bob looked up in surprise. The sun was indeed dropping low.

"We must be about half done," he remarked, measuring the extent of the meadow with his eye.

"Two more wires to string," Pollock reminded him.

The mountaineer threw the grain sack of staples against the last post, tossed his hammer and the hatchet with them.

"Hold on," said Bob. "You aren't going to leave them there?"

"Shore," said Pollock. "We'll have to begin there to-morrow."

But Bob's long training in handling large bodies of men with tools had developed in him an instinct of tool-orderliness.

"Won't do," he stated with something of his old-time authority in his tones. "Suppose for some reason we shouldn't get back here to-morrow? That's the way such things get mislaid; and they're valuable."

He picked up the hatchet and the axe. Grumbling something under his breath, Pollock shouldered the staples and thrust the hammer in his pocket.

"It isn't as if these things were ours," said Bob, realizing that he had spoken in an unduly minatory tone.

"That's right," agreed Jack more cheerfully.

In addition to the new men, they found Ross Fletcher and Charley Morton at the camp. The evening meal was prepared cheerfully and roughly, eaten under a rather dim lamp. Pipes were lit, and they all began leisurely to clean up. The smoke hung low in the air. One by one the men dropped back into their rough, homemade chairs, or sprawled out on the floor. Some one lit the fire in the stone chimney, for the mountain air nipped shrewdly after the sun had set. A general relaxing after the day's work, a general cheerfulness, a general dry, chaffing wit took possession of them. Two played cribbage under the lamp. One wrote a letter. The rest gossiped of the affairs of the service. Only in the corner by himself young Curtis sat. As at noon, he had had nothing to say to any one, and had not attempted to offer assistance in the communal work. Bob concluded he must be tired from the unaccustomed labour of the day. Bob's own shoulders ached; and he was in pretty good shape, too.

"What makes me mad," Ross Fletcher's voice suddenly clove the murmur, "is the things we have to do. I was breaking rock on a trail all day to-day. Think of that! Day labourer's work! State prison work!"

Bob looked up in amazement, as did every one else.

"When a man hires out to be a ranger," Ross went on, "he don't expect to be a carpenter, or a stone mason; he expects to be a _ranger_!"

Immediately Charley Morton chimed in to the same purpose. Bob listened with a rising indignation. This sort of talk was old, but he had not expected to meet it here; it is the talk of incompetence against authority everywhere, of the sea lawyer, the lumberjack, the soldier, the spoiled subordinate in all walks of life. He had taken for granted a finer sort of loyalty here; especially from such men as Ross and Charley Morton. His face flushed, and he leaned forward to say something. Jack Pollock jogged his elbow fiercely.

"Hush up!" the young mountaineer whispered; "cain't you see they're tryin' for a rise?"

Bob laughed softly to himself, and relaxed. He should have been experienced enough, he told himself, to have recognized so obvious and usual a trick of all campers.

But it was not for Bob, nor his like, that Ross was angling. In fact, he caught his bite almost immediately. For the first time that day Curtis woke up and displayed some interest.

"That's what I say!" he cried.

The older man turned to him.

"What they been making you do to-day, son?" asked Ross.

"I've been digging post holes up in those rocks," said Curtis indignantly.

"You don't mean to tell me they put you at that?" demanded Ross; "why, they're supposed to get _Injins_, just cheap dollar-a-day Digger Injins, for that job. And they put you at it!"

"Yes," said Curtis, "they did. I didn't hire out for any such work. My father's county clerk down below."

"You don't say!" said Ross.

"Yes, and my hands are all blistered and my back is lame, and----"

But the expectant youngsters could hold in no longer. A roar of laughter cut the speaker short. Curtis stared, bewildered. Ross and Charley Morton were laughing harder than anybody else. He started to his feet.

"Hold on, son," Ross commanded him, wiping his eyes. "Don't get hostile at a little joke. You'll get used to the work. Of course we all like to ride off in the mountains, and do cattle work, and figure on things, and do administrative work; and we none of us are stuck on construction." He looked around him at his audience, now quiet and attentive. "But we've got to have headquarters, and barns, and houses, and corrals and pastures. Once they're built, they're built and that ends it. But they got to be built. We're just in hard luck that we happen to be rangers right now. The Service can't hire carpenters for us very well, way up here; and _somebody's_ got to do it. It ain't as if we had to do it for a living, all the time. There's a variety. We get all kinds. Rangering's no snap, any more than any other job. One thing," he ended with a laugh, "we get a chance to do about everything."

The valley youth had dropped sullenly back into the shadows, nor did he reply to this. After a little the men scattered to their quarters, for they were tired.

Bob and Jack Pollock occupied together one of the older cabins, a rough little structure, built mainly of shakes. It contained two bunks, a rough table, and two stools constructed of tobacco boxes to which legs had been nailed. As the young men were preparing for bed, Bob remarked:

"Fletcher got his rise, all right. Much obliged for your tip. I nearly bit. But he wasted his talk in my notion. That fellow is hopeless. Ross labours in vain if he tries to brace him up."

"I reckon Ross knows that," replied Jack, "and I reckon too, he has mighty few hopes of bracin' up Curtis. I have a kind of notion Ross was just usin' that Curtis as a mark to talk at. What he was talkin' _to_ was us."

II

The week's hard physical toil was unrelieved. After Bob and Jack Pollock had driven the last staple in the last strand of barbed wire, they turned their horses into the new pasture. The animals, overjoyed to get free of the picket ropes that had heretofore confined them, took long, satisfying rolls in the sandy corner, and then went eagerly to cropping at the green feed. Bob, leaning on the gate, with the rope still in his hand, experienced a glow of personal achievement greater than any he remembered to have felt since, as a small boy, he had unaided reasoned out the problem of clear impression on his toy printing press. He recognized this as illogical, for he had, in all modesty, achieved affairs of some importance. Nevertheless, the sight of his own animal enjoying its liberty in an enclosure created by his own two hands pleased him to the core. He grinned in appreciation of Elliott's humorous parody on the sentimental slogan of the schools--"to make two cedar posts grow where none grew before." There was, after all, a rather especial satisfaction in that principle.

It next became necessary, he found, that the roof over the new office at headquarters should receive a stain that would protect it against the weather. He acquired a flat brush, a little seat with spikes in its supports, and a can of stain whose base seemed to be a very evil-smelling fish oil. Here all day long he clung, daubing on the stain. When one shingle was done, another awaited his attention, over and over, in unvarying monotony. It was the sort of job he had always loathed, but he stuck to it cheerfully, driving his brush deep in the cracks in order that no crevice might remain for the entrance of the insidious principle of decay. Casting about in his leisure there for the reason of his patience, he discovered it in just that; he was now at no task to be got through with, to be made way with; he was engaged in a job that was to be permanent. Unless he did it right, it would not be permanent.

Below him the life of headquarters went on. He saw it all, and heard it all, for every scrap of conversation rose to him from within the office. He was amazed at the diversity of interests and the complexity of problems that came there for attention.

"Look here, Mr. Thorne," said one of the rangers, "this Use Book says that a settler has a right to graze ten head of stock _actually in use_ free of grazing charge. Now there's Brown up at the north end. He runs a little dairy business, and has about a hundred head of cattle up. He claims we ought not to charge him for ten head of them because they're all 'actually in use.' How about it?"

Thorne explained that the exemption did not apply to commercial uses and that Brown must pay for all. He qualified the statement by saying that this was the latest interpretation of which he had heard.

In like manner the policies in regard to a dozen little industries and interests were being patiently defined and determined--dairies, beef cattle, shake makers, bees, box and cleat men, free timber users, mining men, seekers for water concessions, those who desired rights of way, permits for posts, pastures, mill sites--all these proffered their requests and difficulties to the Supervisor. Sometimes they were answered on the spot. Oftener their remarks were listened to, their propositions taken under advisement. Then one or another of the rangers was summoned, given instructions. He packed his mule, saddled his horse, and rode away to be gone a greater or lesser period of time. Others were sent out to run lines about tracts, to define boundaries. Still others, like Ross Fletcher, pounded drill and rock, and exploded powder on the new trail that was to make more accessible the tremendous cañon of the river. The men who came and went rarely represented any but the smallest interests; yet somehow Bob felt their importance, and the importance of the little problems threshed out in the tiny, rough-finished office below him. These but foreshadowed the greater things to come. And these minute decisions shaped the policies and precedents of what would become mighty affairs. Whether Brown should be allowed to save his paltry three dollars and a half or not determined larger things. To Bob's half-mystic mood, up there under the mottled shadows, every tiny move of this game became portentous with fate. A return of the old exultation lifted him. He saw the shadows of these affairs cast dim and gigantic against the mists of the future. These men were big with the responsibility of a new thing. It behooved them all to act with circumspection, with due heed, with reverence----

Bob applied his broad brush and the evil-smelling stain methodically and with minute care as to every tiny detail of the simple work. But his eyes were wide and unseeing, and all the inner forces of his soul were moving slowly and mightily. His personality had nothing to do with the matter. He painted; and affairs went on with him. His being held itself passive, in suspension, while the forces and experiences and influences of one phase of his life crystallized into their foreordained shapes deep within him. Yesterday he was this; now he was becoming that; and the two were as different beings. New doors of insight were silently swinging open on their hinges, old prejudices were closing, fresh convictions long snugly in the bud were unfolding like flowers. These things were not new. They had begun many years before when as a young boy he had stared wide-eyed, unseeing and uncomprehending, gazing down the sun-streaked, green, lucent depths of an aisle in the forest. Bob painted steadily on, moving his little seat nearer and nearer the eaves. When noon and night came, he hung up his utensils very carefully, washed up, and tramped to the rangers' camp, where he took his part in the daily tasks, assumed his share of the conversation, entered into the fun, and contributed his ideas toward the endless discussions. No one noticed that he was in any way different from his ordinary self. But it was as though some one outside of himself, in the outer circle of his being, carried on these necessary and customary things. He, drawn apart, watched by the shrine of his soul. He did nothing, either by thought or effort--merely watched, patient and rapt, while foreordained and mighty changes took place--

He reached the edge of the roof; stood on the ladder to finish the last row of the riven shingles. Slowly his brush moved, finishing the cracks deep down so that the principle of decay might never enter. Inside the office Thorne sat dictating a letter to some applicant for privilege. The principle was new in its interpretation, and so Thorne was choosing his words with the greatest care. Swiftly before Bob's inner vision the prospect widened. Thorne became a prophet speaking down the years; the least of these men in a great new Service became the austere champions of something high and beautiful. For one moment Bob dwelt in a wonderful, breathless, vast, unreal country where heroic figures moved in the importance of all the unborn future, dim-seen, half-revealed. He drew his brush across the last shingle of all. Something seemed to click. Swiftly the gates shut, the strange country receded into infinite distance. With a rush like the sucking of water into a vacuum the everyday world drew close. Bob, his faculties once more in their accustomed seat, looked about him as one awakened. His hour was over. The change had taken place.

Thorne was standing in the doorway with Amy, their dictation finished.

"All done?" said he. "Well, you did a thorough job. It's the kind that will last."

"I'm right on deck when it comes to painting things red," retorted Bob. "What next?"

"Next," said Thorne, "I want you to help one of the boys split some cedar posts. We've got a corral or so to make."

Bob descended slowly from the ladder, balancing the remainder of the red stain. Thorne looked at him curiously.

"How do you like it as far as you've gone?" he permitted himself to ask. "This isn't quite up to the romantic idea of rangering, is it?"

"Well," said Bob with conviction, "I suppose it may sound foolish; but I never was surer of anything in my life than that I've struck the right job."

As he walked home that night, he looked back on the last few days with a curious bewilderment. It had all been so real; now apparently it meant nothing. Thorne was doing good work; these rangers were good men. But where had vanished all Bob's exaltation? where his feeling of the portent and influence and far-reaching significance of what these men were doing? He realized its importance; but the feeling of its fatefulness had utterly gone. Things with him were back on a work-a-day basis. He even laughed a little, good-humouredly, at himself. At the gate to the new pasture he once more stopped and looked at his horse. A deep content came over him.

"I've sure struck the right job!" he repeated aloud with conviction.

And this, could he have known it, was the outward and visible and only sign of the things spiritual that had been veiled.

III

When Saturday evening came the men washed and shaved and put on clean garments. Bob, dog tired after a hard day, was more inclined to lie on his back.

"Ain't you-all goin' over to-night?" asked Jack Pollock.

"Over where?"

"Why," explained the younger man, "always after supper Saturdays all the boys who are in camp go over to spend the evenin' at headquarters."

Aggressively sleek and scrubbed, the little group marched down through the woods in the twilight. At headquarters Amy Thorne and her brother welcomed them and ushered them into the big room, with the stone fireplace. In this latter a fire of shake-bolts leaped and roared. The men crowded in, a trifle bashfully, found boxes and home-made chairs, and perched about talking occasionally in very low tones to the nearest neighbour. Amy sat in a rocking chair by the table lamp, sewing on something, paying little attention to the rangers, save to throw out an occasional random remark. Thorne had not yet entered. Finally Amy dropped the sewing in her lap.

"You're all as solemn as a camp-meeting," she told them severely. "How many times must I tell you to smoke up and be agreeable? Here, Mr. Ware, set them a good example."

She pushed a cigar box toward the older man. Bob saw it to be half full of the fine-flaked tobacco so much used in the West. Thus encouraged, Ware rolled himself a cigarette. Others followed suit. Still others produced and filled black old pipes. A formidable haze eddied through the apartment. Amy, still sewing, said, without looking up:

"One of you boys go rummage the store room for the corn popper. The corn's in a corn-meal sack on the far shelf."

Just then Thorne came in, bringing a draft of cold air with him.

"Well," said he, "this is a pretty full house for this time of year."

He walked directly to the rough, board shelf and from it took down a book.

"This man Kipling will do again for to-night," he remarked. "He knows more about our kind of fellow than most. I've sent for one or two other things you ought to know, but just now I want to read you a story that may remind you of something you've run against yourself. We've a few wild, red-headed Irishmen ourselves in these hills."

He walked briskly to the lamp, opened the volume, and at once began to read. Every once in a while he looked up from the book to explain a phrase in terms the men would understand, or to comment pithily on some similarity in their own experience. When he had finished, he looked about at them, challenging.

"There; what did I tell you? Isn't that just about the way they hand it out to us here? And this story took place the other side of the world! It's quite wonderful when you stop to think about it, isn't it? Listen to this--"

He pounced on another story. This led him to a second incursion on the meagre library. Bob did not recognize the practical, rather hard Thorne of everyday official life. The man was carried away by his eagerness to interpret the little East Indian to these comrade spirits of the West. The rangers listened with complete sympathy, every once in a while throwing in a comment or a criticism, never hesitating to interrupt when interruption seemed pertinent.

Finally Amy, who had all this time been sewing away unmoved, a half-tender, half-amused smile curving her lips, laid down her work with an air of decision.

"I'll call your attention," said she, "to the fact that I'm hungry. Shut up your book; I won't hear another word." She leaned across the table, and, in spite of Thorne's half-earnest protests, took possession of the volume.

"Besides," she remarked, "look at poor Jack Pollock; he's been popping corn like a little machine, and he must be nearly roasted himself."

Jack turned to her a face very red from the heat of the leaping pine fire.

"That's right," he grinned, "but I got about a dishpan done."

"You'll be in practice to fight fire," some one chaffed him.

"Oh, he'll fight fire all right, if there's somethin' to eat the other side," drawled Charley Morton.

"It's plenty," said Amy, referring to the quantity of popcorn.

"Why," spoke up California John in an aggrieved and surprised tone, "ain't there nobody going to eat popcorn but me?"

Amy disappeared only to return bearing a cake frosted with chocolate. The respect with which this was viewed proved that the men appreciated to the full what was represented by chocolate cake in this altitude of tiny stoves and scanty supplies. Again Amy dove into the store room. This time she bore back a huge enamel-ware pitcher which she set in the middle of the round table.

"There!" she cried, her cheeks red with triumph.

"What you got, Amy?" asked her brother.

Ross Fletcher leaned forward to look.

"Great guns!" he cried.

The men jostled around, striving for a glimpse, half in joke, half in genuine curiosity.

"Lemonade!" cried Ware.

"None of your lime juice either," pronounced California John; "look at the genuine article floatin' around on top."

They turned to Amy.

"Where did you get them?" they demanded.

But she shook her head, smiling, and declined to tell.

They devoured the popcorn and the chocolate cake to the last crumb, and emptied the pitcher of genuine lemonade. Then they went home. It was all simple enough: cheap tobacco; reading aloud; a little rude chaffing; lemonade, cake and popcorn! Bob smiled to himself as he thought of the consternation a recital of these ingredients would carry to the sophisticated souls of most of his friends. Yet he had enjoyed the party, enjoyed it deeply and thoroughly. He came away from it glowing with good-fellowship.

IV

At these and similar occupations the latter days of June slipped by. Bob had little leisure, for the Service was undermanned for the work it must do. Curtis sooned resigned, to everybody's joy and relief.

On only one occasion did Bob gain a chance to ride over to the scenes of his old activities. This was on a Sunday when, by a miracle, nothing unexpected came up to tie him to his duty. He had rather an unsatisfactory visit with Mr. Welton. It was cordial enough on both sides, for the men were genuinely fond of each other; but they had lost touch of each other's interests. Welton persisted in regarding Bob with a covert amusement, as an older man regards a younger who is having his fling, and will later settle down. Bob asked after the work, and was answered. Neither felt any real human interest in the questions nor their replies. A certain constraint held them, to Bob's very genuine regret. He rode back through the westering shadows vaguely uneasy in his mind.

He and two of the new mountain men had been for two days cutting up some dead and down trees that encumbered the enclosure at headquarters. They cross-cut the trunks into handy lengths; bored holes in them with a two-inch augur; loaded the holes with blasting powder and a fuse, and touched them off. The powder split the logs into rough posts small enough to handle. These fragments they carried laboriously to the middle of the meadow, where they stacked them rack-fashion and on end. The idea was to combine business with pleasure by having a grand bonfire the night of the Fourth of July.

For this day other preparations were forward. Amy promised a spread for everybody, if she could get a little help at the last moment. As many of the outlying rangers as could manage it would come in for the occasion. A shooting match, roping and chopping contests, and other sports were in contemplation.

As the time drew near, various mysteries were plainly afoot. Men claimed their turns in riding down the mountain for the mail. They took with them pack horses. These they unpacked secretly and apart. Amy gave Bob to understand that this holiday, when the ranks were fullest and conditions ripe, went far as a substitute for Christmas among these men.

Then at noon of July second Charley Morton dashed down the trail from the Upper Meadow, rode rapidly to Headquarters, flung himself from his horse, and dove into the office. After a moment he reappeared, followed by Thorne.

"Saddle up, boys," said the latter. "Fire over beyond Baldy. Ride and gather in the men who are about here," he told Bob.

Bob sprang on Charley Morton's horse and rode about instructing the workers to gather. When he returned, Thorne gave his instructions.

"We're short-handed," he stated, "and it'll be hard to get help just at this time. Charley, you take Ware, Elliott and Carroll and see what it looks like. Start a fire line, and do the best you can. Orde, you and Pollock can get up some pack horses and follow later with grub, blankets, and so forth. I'll ride down the mountain to see what I can do about help. It may be I can catch somebody by phone at the Power House who can let the boys know at the north end. You say it's a big fire?"

"I see quite a lot of smoke," said Charley.

"Then the boys over Jackass way and by the Crossing ought to see it for themselves."

The four men designated caught up their horses, saddled them, and mounted. Thorne handed them each a broad hoe, a rake and an axe. They rode off up the trail. Thorne mounted on his own horse.

"Pack up and follow as fast as you can," he told the two who still remained.

"What you want we should take?" asked Jack.

"Amy will tell you. Get started early as you can. You'll have to follow their tracks."

Amy took direction of them promptly. While they caught and saddled the pack horses, she was busy in the storeroom. They found laid out for them a few cooking utensils, a variety of provisions tied up in strong little sacks, several more hoes, axes and rakes, two mattocks, a half-dozen flat files, and as many big zinc canteens.

"Now hurry!" she commanded them; "pack these, and then get some blankets from your camp, and some hobbles and picket ropes."

With Bob's rather awkward help everything was made fast. By the time the two had packed the blankets and returned to headquarters on their way to the upper trail, they found Amy had changed her clothes, caught and saddled her own horse, tied on well-filled saddle bags, and stood awaiting them. She wore her broad hat looped back by the pine tree badge of the Service, a soft shirtwaist of gray flannel, a short divided skirt of khaki and high-laced boots. A red neckerchief matched her cheeks, which were glowing with excitement. Immediately they appeared, she swung aboard with the easy grace of one long accustomed to the saddle. Bob's lower jaw dropped in amazement.

"You going?" he gasped, unable even yet to comprehend the everyday fact that so many gently nurtured Western girls are accustomed to those rough-and-ready bivouacs.

"I wouldn't stay away for worlds!" she cried, turning her pony's head up the trail.

Beyond the upper meadow this trail suddenly began to climb. It made its way by lacets in the dry earth, by scrambles in the rocks until, through the rapidly thinning ranks of the scrubby trees, Bob could look back over all the broad shelf of the mountain whereon grew the pines. It lay spread before him as a soft green carpet of tops, miles of it, wrinkling and billowing gently as here and there the conformation of the country changed. At some distance it dropped over an edge. Beyond that, very dimly, he realized the brown shimmer rising from the plain. Far to the right was a tenuous smoke, a suggestion of thinning in the forest, a flash of blue water. This, Bob knew, must be the mill and the lake.

The trail shortly made its way over the shoulder of the ridge and emerged on the wide, gentle rounding of the crest. Here the trees were small, stunted and wind-blown. Huge curving sheets of unbroken granite lay like armour across the shoulder of the mountain. Decomposing granite shale crunched under the horses' hoofs. Here and there on it grew isolated tiny tufts of the hardy upland flowers. Above, the sky was deeply, intensely blue; bluer than Bob had ever seen a sky before. The air held in it a tang of wildness, as though it had breathed from great spaces.

"I suppose this is the top of our ridge, isn't it?" Bob asked Jack Pollock.

The boy nodded.

Suddenly the trail dipped sharp to the left into a narrow and shallow little ravine. The bed of this was carpeted by a narrow stringer of fresh grass and flowers, through which a tiny stream felt its hesitating way. This ravine widened and narrowed, turned and doubled. Here and there groups of cedars on a dry flat offered ideal shelter for a camp. Abruptly the stringer burst through a screen of azaleas to a round green meadow surrounded by the taller trees of the eastern slope of the mountain.

In other circumstances Bob would have liked to stop for a better sight of this little gem of a meadow. It was ankle deep with new grasses, starred with flowers, bordered with pink and white azaleas. The air, prisoned in a pocket, warmed by the sun, perfumed heavily by the flowers, lay in the cup of the trees like a tepid bath. A hundred birds sang in June-tide ecstasy.

But Jack Pollock, without pause, skirted this meadow, crossed the tiny silver creek that bubbled from it down the slope, and stolidly mounted a little knoll beyond. The trained pack horses swung along behind him, swaying gently from side to side that they might carry their packs comfortably and level. Bob turned involuntarily to glance at Amy. Their eyes met. She understood; and smiled at him brightly.

Jack led the way to the top of the knoll and stopped.

Here the edge of the mountain broke into a tiny outcropping spur that shook itself free from the pines. It constituted a natural lookout to the east. Bob drew rein so violently that even his well-trained mountain horse shook its head in protest.

Before him, hushed with that tremendous calm of vast distances, lay the Sierras he had never seen, as though embalmed in the sunlight of a thousand afternoons. A tremendous, deep cañon plunged below him, blue with distance. It climbed again to his level eventually, but by that time it was ten miles away. And over against him, very remote, were pine ridges looking velvety and dark and ruffled and full of shadows, like the erect fur of a beast that has been alarmed. From them here and there projected granite domes. And beyond them bald ranges; and beyond them, splintered granite with snow in the crevices; and beyond this the dark and frowning Pinnacles; and still beyond, other mountains so distant, so ethereal, so delicately pink and rose and saffron that almost he expected they might at any moment dissolve into the vivid sky. And, strangely enough, though he realized the tremendous heights and depths of these peaks and cañons, the whole effect to Bob was as something spread out broad. The sky, the wonderful over-arching, very blue sky, was the most important thing in the universe. Compared to its infinitudes these mountains lay spread like a fair and wrinkled footrug to a horizon inconceivably remote and mysterious.

Then his eye fell to the ridge opposite, across the blue cañon. From one point on it a straight column of smoke rolled upward, to mushroom out and hang motionless above the top of the ridge. Its base was shot by half-seen, half-guessed flaming streaks.

Bob had vaguely expected to see a whole country-side ablaze. This single, slender column was almost absurd. It looked like a camp-fire, magnified to fit the setting, of course.

"There's the fire, all right," said Jack. "We got to get across to it somehow. Trail ends here."

"Why, that doesn't amount to much!" cried Bob.

"Don't it?" said Jack. "Well, I'd call that some shakes of a fire myself. It's covered mighty nigh three hundred acres by now."

"Three hundred acres! Better say ten."

"You're wrong," said Jack; "I've rode all that country with cattle."

"You'll find it fire enough, when you get there," put in Amy. "It's right in good timber, too."

"All right," agreed Bob; "I'll believe anything--after this." He waved his hand abroad. "Jack," he called, as that young man led the way off the edge, "can you see where Jack Main's Cañon is from here?"

"Jack Main's!" repeated young Pollock. "Why, if you was on the top of the farthest mountain in sight, you couldn't see any place you could see it from."

"Good Lord!" said Bob.

The way zigzagged down the slope of the mountain. As Jack had said, there was no trail, but the tracks left by the four rangers were plainly to be discerned. Bob, following the pack horses, had leisure to observe how skilfully this way had been picked out. Always it held to the easy footing, but always it was evident that if certain turns had not been made some distance back this easy footing would have lacked. At times the tracks led far to the left at nearly the same level until one, two or three little streams had been crossed. Then without apparent reason they turned directly down the backbone of a steep ridge exactly like a half-dozen others they had passed over. But later Bob saw that this ridge was the only one of the lot that dipped over gently to lower levels; all the rest broke off abruptly in precipitous rocks. Bob was a good woodsman, but this was his first experience in that mountaineering skill which noses its way by the "lay of the country."

In the meantime they were steadily descending. The trees hemmed them closer. Thickets of willows and alders had to be crossed. Dimly through the tree-tops they seemed to see the sky darkening by degrees as they worked their way down. At first Bob thought it the lateness of the afternoon; then he concluded it must be the smoke of the fire; finally, through a clear opening, he saw this apparent darkening of the horizon was in reality the blue of the cañon wall opposite, rising as they descended. But, too, as they drew nearer, the heavy smoke of the conflagration began to spread over them. In time it usurped the heavens, and Bob had difficulty in believing that it could appear to any one anywhere as so simple a mushroom-head over a slender smoke column.

By the time the horses stepped from the slope to the bed of the cañon, it was quite dark. Jack turned down stream.

"We'll cut the trail to Burro Rock pretty quick," said he.

Within five minutes of travel they did cut it; a narrow brown trough, trodden by the hoofs of many generations of cattlemen bound for the back country. Almost immediately it began to mount the slope.

Now ahead, through the gathering twilight, lights began to show, sometimes scattered, sometimes grouped, like the camp-fires of an immense army. These were the stubs, stumps, down logs and the like left still blazing after all the more readily inflammable material had been burned away. As the little cavalcade laboured upward, stopping every few minutes to breathe the horses, these flickering lights defined themselves. In particular one tall dead yellow pine standing boldly prominent, afire to the top, alternately glowed and paled as the wind breathed or died. A smell of stale burning drifted down the damp night air. Pretty soon Jack Pollock halted for a moment to call back:

"Here's their fire line!"

Bob spurred forward. Just beyond Jack's horse the country lay blackened. The pine needles had burned down to the soil; the seedlings and younger trees had been withered away; the larger trees scorched; the fuel with which every forest is littered consumed in the fierceness of the conflagration. Here and there some stub or trunk still blazed and crackled, outposts of the army whose camp-fires seemed to dot the hills.

The line of demarcation between the burned and the unburned areas seemed extraordinarily well defined. Bob looked closer and saw that this definition was due to a peculiar path, perhaps two yards wide. It looked as though some one had gone along there with a huge broom, sweeping as one would sweep a path in deep dust. Only in this case the broom must have been a powerful implement as well as one of wide reach. The brushed marks went not only through the carpet of pine needles, but through the tarweed, the snow brush, the manzañita. This was technically the fire line. At the sight of the positiveness with which it had checked the spread of the flames, Bob's spirits rose.

"They seem to have stopped it here easy enough, already," he cried.

"Being as how this is the windward side of the fire, and on a down slope, I should think they might," remarked Jack Pollock drily.

Bob chuckled and glanced at the girl.

"I'm finding out every day how little I know," said he; "at my age, too!"

"The hard work is down wind," said Amy.

"Of course."

They entered the burned area, and climbed on up the hill. Though evidently here the ferocity of the conflagration had passed, it had left its rear guard behind. Fallen trees still blazed; standing trees flamed like torches--but all harmlessly within the magic circle drawn by the desperate quick work of the rangers. They threaded their way cautiously among these isolated fires, watching lest some dead giant should fall across their path. The ground smoked under their feet. Against the background of a faint and distant roaring, which now made itself evident, the immediate surroundings seemed very quiet. The individual cracklings of flames were an undertone. Only once in a while a dull heavy crash smote the air as some great tree gave up the unequal struggle.

They passed as rapidly as they could through this stricken field. The night had fallen, but the forest was still bright, the trail still plain. They followed it for an hour until it had topped the lower ridge.

Then far ahead, down through the dark trunks of trees, they saw, wavering, flickering, leaping and dying, a line of fire. In some places it was a dozen feet high; in others it sank to within a few inches of the ground--but nowhere could the eye discern an opening through it. A roar and a crackling filled the air. Sparks were shooting upward in the suction. A blast of heat rushed against Bob's cheek. All at once he realized that a forest fire was not a widespread general conflagration, like the burning of a city block. It was a line of battle, a ring of flame advancing steadily. All they had passed had been negligible. Here was the true enemy, now charging rapidly through the dry, inflammable low growth, now creeping stealthily in the needles and among the rocks; always making way, always gathering itself for one of its wild leaps which should lay an entire new province under its ravaging. Somewhere on the other side of that ring of fire were four men. They were trying to cut a lane over which the fire could not leap.

Bob gazed at the wall of flame with some dismay.

"How we going to get through?" he asked.

"We got to find a rock outcrop somewheres up the ridge," explained Jack, "where there'll be a break in the fire."

He turned up the side of the mountain again, leading the way. After a time they came to an outcrop of the sort described, which, with some difficulty and stumbling, they succeeded in crossing.

Ahead, in the darkness, showed a tiny licking little fire, only a few inches high.

"The fire has jumped!" cried Bob.

"No, that's their backfire," Pollock corrected him.

They found this to be true. The rangers had hastily hoed and raked out a narrow path. Over this a very small fire could not pass; but there could be no doubt that the larger conflagration would take the slight obstacle in its stride. Therefore the rangers had themselves ignited the small fire. This would eat away the fuel, and automatically widen the path. Between the main fire and the back fire were still several hundred yards of good, unburned country. To Bob's expression of surprise Amy added to the two principles of fire-fighting he had learned from Pollock.

"It doesn't do to try to stop a fire anywhere and everywhere," said she. "A good man knows his country, and he takes advantage of it. This fire line probably runs along the line of natural defence."

They followed it down the mountain for a long distance through the eddying smoke. The flames to their right shot up and died and crept. The shadows to their left--their own among the number--leaped and fell. After a while, down through the mists, they made out a small figure, very busy at something. When they approached, they found this to be Charley Morton. The fire had leaped the cleared path and was greedily eating in all directions through the short, pitchy growth of tarweed. It was as yet only a tiny leak, but once let it get started, the whole forest beyond the fire line would be ablaze. The ranger had started to cut around this a half-circle connected at both ends with the main fire line. With short, quick jabs of his hoe, he was tearing away at the tough tarweed.

"Hullo!" said he without looking up. "You'll find camp on the bald ridge north the fire line. There's a little feed there."

Having completed his defence, he straightened his back to look at them. His face was grimed a dingy black through which rivulets of sweat had made streaks.

"Had it pretty hot all afternoon," he proffered. "Got the fire line done, though. How're those canteens--full? I'll trade you my empty one." He took a long draught. "That tastes good. Went dry about three o'clock, and haven't had a drop since."

They left him there, leaning on the handle of his hoe. Jack Pollock seemed to know where the place described as the camp-site was located, for after various détours and false starts, he led them over the brow of a knoll to a tiny flat among the pine needles where they were greeted by whinnies from unseen animals. It was here very dark. Jack scraped together and lit some of the pine needles. By the flickering light they saw the four saddles dumped down in a heap.

"There's a side hill over yander with a few bunches of grass and some of these blue lupins," said Jack. "It ain't much in the way of hoss-feed, but it'll have to do."

He gathered fuel and soon had enough of a fire to furnish light.

"It certainly does seem plumb foolish to be lightin' _more_ fires!" he remarked.

In the meantime Amy had unsaddled her own horse and was busy unpacking one of the pack animals. Bob followed her example.

"There," she said; "now here are the canteens, all full; and here's six lunches already tied together that I put up before we started. You can get them to the other boys. Take your tools and run along. I'll straighten up, and be ready for you when you can come back."

"What if the fire gets over to you?" asked Bob.

"I'll turn the horses loose and ride away," she said gaily.

"It won't get clost to there," put in Jack. "This little ridge is rock all round it. That's why they put the camp here."

"Where's water?" asked Amy.

"I don't rightly remember," confessed Pollock. "I've only been in here once."

"I'll find out in the morning. Good luck!"

Jack handed Bob three of the canteens, a hoe and rake and one of the flat files.

"What's this for?" asked Bob.

"To keep the edge of your hoe sharp," replied Jack.

They shouldered their implements and felt their way in the darkness over the tumbled rock outcrop. As they surmounted the shoulder of the hill, they saw once more flickering before them the fire line.

V

Charley Morton received the lunch with joy.

"Ain't had time to get together grub since we came," said he, "and didn't know when I would."

"What do you want us to do?" asked Bob.

"The fire line's drawn right across from Granite Creek down there in the cañon over to a bald dome. We got her done an hour ago, and pretty well back-fired. All we got to do now is to keep her from crossing anywheres; and if she does cross, to corral her before she can get away from us."

"I wish we could have got here sooner!" cried Bob, disappointed that the little adventure seemed to be flattening out.

"So?" commented Charley drily. "Well, there's plenty yet. If she gets out in one single, lonesome place, this fire line of ours won't be worth a cent. She's inside now--if we can hold her there." He gazed contemplatively aloft at a big dead pine blazing merrily to its very top. Every once in a while a chunk of bark or a piece of limb came flaring down to hit the ground with a thump. "There's the trouble," said he. "What's to keep a spark or a coal from that old coon from falling or rolling on the wrong side of the line? If it happens when none of us are around, why the fire gets a start. And maybe a coal will roll down hill from somewhere; or a breeze come up and carry sparks. One spark over here," he stamped his foot on the brushed line, "and it's all to do over again. There's six of us," added the ranger, "and a hundred of these trees near the line. By rights there ought to be a man camped down near every one of them."

"Give us our orders," repeated Bob.

"The orders are to patrol the fire line," said Morton. "If you find the fire has broken across, corral it. If it gets too strong for you, shoot your six-shooter twice. Keep a-moving, but take it easy and save yourself for to-morrow. About two o'clock, or so, I'll shoot three times. Then you can come to camp and get a little sleep. You got to be in shape for to-morrow."

"Why especially to-morrow?" asked Bob.

"Fire dies in the cool of night; it comes up in the middle of the day," explained Morton succinctly.

Bob took to the right, while Jack went in the opposite direction. His way led down hill. He crossed a ravine, surmounted a little ridge. Now he was in the worse than total darkness of the almost extinct area. Embers and coals burned all over the side hill like so many evil winking eyes. Far ahead, down the mountain, the rising smoke glowed incandescent with the light of an invisible fire beneath, Bob, blinded by this glow, had great difficulty in making his way. Once he found that he had somehow crept out on the great bald roundness of a granite dome, and had to retrace his steps. Twice he lost his footing utterly, but fortunately fell but a short distance. At last he found himself in the V of a narrow ravine.

All this time he had, with one exception, kept close track of the fire line. The exception was when he strayed out over the dome; but that was natural, for the dome had been adopted bodily as part of the system of defence. Everywhere the edge of the path proved to be black and dead. No living fire glowed within striking distance of the inflammable material on the hither side the path.

But here, in the bottom of the ravine, a single coal had lodged, and had already started into flame the dry small brush. It had fallen originally from an oak fully a hundred feet away; and in some mysterious manner had found a path to this hidden pocket. The circumstances somewhat shook Bob's faith in the apparent safety of the country he had just traversed.

However, there were the tiny flames, licking here and there, insignificant, but nevertheless dangerous. Bob carefully laid his canteens and the rake on a boulder, and set to work with his sharpened hoe. It looked to be a very easy task to dig out a path around this little fire.

In the course of the miniature fight he learned considerable of the ways of fire. The brush proved unexpectedly difficult. It would not stand up to the force of his stroke, but bent away. The tarweed, especially, was stubborn under even the most vigorous wielding of his sharpened hoe.

He made an initial mistake by starting to hoe out his path too near the blaze, forgetting that in the time necessary to complete his half-circle the flames would have spread. Discovering this, he abandoned his beginning and fell back twenty feet. This naturally considerably lengthened the line he would have to cut. When it was about half done, Bob discovered that he would have to hustle to prevent the fire breaking by him before he could complete his half-circle. It became a race. He worked desperately. The heat of the flames began to scorch his face and hands, so that it was with difficulty he could face his work. Irrelevantly enough there arose before his mind the image of Jack Pollock popping corn before the fireplace at headquarters. Continual wielding of the hoe tired a certain set of muscles to the aching point. His mouth became dry and sticky, but he could not spare time to hunt up his canteen. The thought flashed across his mind that the fire was probably breaking across elsewhere, just like this. The other men must be in the same fix. There were six of them. Suppose the fire should break across simultaneously in seven places? The little licking flames had at last, by dint of a malignant persistence, become a personal enemy. He fought them absorbedly, throwing his line farther and farther as the necessity arose, running to beat down with green brush the first feeble upstartings of the fire as it leaped here and there his barrier, keeping a vigilant eye on every part of his defences.

"Well," drawled Charley Morton's voice behind him, "what you think you're doing?"

"Corralling this fire, of course," Bob panted, dashing at a marauding little flame.

"What for?" demanded Charley.

Bob looked up in sheer amazement.

"See that rock dike just up the hill behind you?" explained Morton. "Well, our fire line already runs up to that on both sides. Fire couldn't cross it. We expected this to burn."

Bob suddenly felt a little nauseated and dizzy from the heat and violence of his exertions in this high altitude.

"Here's your canteen," Morton went on easily. "Take a swig. Better save a little. Feel better? Let me give you a pointer: don't try to stop a fire going up hill. Take it on top or just over the top. It burns slower and it ain't so apt to jump."

"I know; I forgot," said Bob, feeling a trifle foolish.

"Never mind; you've learned something," said Morton comfortably. "Let's go down below. There's fresh fire there; and it may have jumped past Elliott."

They scrambled down. Elliott and Ware were found to be working desperately in the face of the flames. The fire had not here jumped the line, but it was burning with great ferocity up to the very edge of it. If the rangers could for a half-hour prevent the heat from igniting the growths across the defence, the main fire would have consumed its fuel and died down to comparative safety. With faces averted, heads lowered, handkerchiefs over their mouths, they continually beat down the new little fires which as continually sprang into life again. Here the antagonists were face to face across the narrow line. The rangers could not give back an inch, for an inch of headway on the wrong side the path would convert a kindling little blaze to a real fire. They stood up to their work doggedly as best they might.

With entire understanding of the situation Charley motioned Bob to the front.

"We'll hold her for a minute," he shouted to the others. "Drop back and get a drink."

They fell back to seize eagerly their canteens. Bob gripped his handful of green brush and set to work. For a minute he did not think it possible to face the terrible heat. His garments were literally drenched with sweat which immediately dried into steam. A fierce drain sucked at his strength. He could hardly breathe, and could see only with difficulty. After a moment Elliott and Ware, evidently somewhat refreshed, again took hold.

How they stuck it out for that infernal half-hour Bob could not have told, but stick it out they did. The flames gradually died down; the heat grew less; the danger that the shrivelled brush on the wrong side the fire line would be ignited by sheer heat, vanished. The four men fell back. Their eyebrows and hair were singed; their skin blackened. Bob's face felt sore, and as though it had been stretched. He took a long pull at his canteen. For the moment he felt as though his energy had all been drained away.

"Well, that was a good little scrap," observed Charley Morton cheerfully. "I certainly do wish it was always night when a man had to fight fire. In a hot sun it gets to be hard work."

Elliott rolled his eyes, curiously white like a minstrel's in his blackened face, at Bob, but said nothing.

"We'll leave Elliott here to watch this a few minutes, and go down the line," said Morton.

Bob lifted his canteen, and, to his surprise, found it empty.

"Why, I must have drunk a gallon!" he cried.

"It's dry work," said Morton.

They continued on down the fire line, pausing every once in a while to rake and scrape leisurely at the heavy bark beneath some blazing stub. The fierce, hard work was over. All along the fire line from the dome of granite over the ridge down to Granite Creek the fire had consumed all the light fuel on its own side the defence. No further danger was to be apprehended in the breaking across. But everywhere through the now darkening forest blazed the standing trees. A wind would fill the air with brands; and even in the present dead calm those near the line were a threat.

The men traversed the fire line from end to end a half-dozen times. Bob became acquainted individually and minutely with each of the danger spots. The new temporary features of country took on, from the effects of vigilance and toil, the dignity of age and establishment. Anxiously he widened the path here, kicked back glowing brands there, tried to assure himself that in no possible manner could the seed of a new conflagration find germination. After a long time he heard three shots from up the mountain. This, he remarked, was a signal agreed upon. He shouldered his blackened implements and commenced a laborious ascent.

Suddenly he discovered that he was very tired, and that his legs were weak and wobbly. Stubs and sticks protruded everywhere; stones rolled from under his feet. Once on a steep shale, he fell and rolled ten feet out of sheer weariness. In addition he was again very thirsty, and his canteen empty. A chill gray of dawn was abroad; the smell of stale burning hung in the air.

By the time he had staggered into camp the daylight had come. He glanced about him wearily. Across a tiny ravine the horses dozed, tied each to a short picket rope. Bob was already enough of a mountaineer to notice that the feed was very scant. The camp itself had been made under a dozen big yellow pines. A bright little fire flickered. About it stood utensils from which the men were rather dispiritedly helping themselves. Bob saw that the long pine needles had been scraped together to make soft beds, over which the blankets had been spread. Amy herself, her cheeks red, her eyes bright, was passing around tin cups of strong coffee, and tin plates of food. Her horse, saddled and bridled, stood nearby.

"Take a little of this," she urged Bob, "and then turn in."

Bob muttered his thanks. After swallowing the coffee, however, he felt his energies reviving somewhat.

"How did you leave things at the lower end?" Morton was asking him.

"All out but two or three smouldering old stubs," replied Bob. "Everything's safe."

"Nothing's safe," contradicted Morton. "By rights we ought to watch every minute. But we got to get some rest in a long fight. It's the cool of the morning and the fire burns low. Turn in and get all the sleep you can. May need you later."

"I'm all in," acknowledged Bob, throwing back his blanket; "I'm willing to say so."

"No more fire in mine," agreed young Elliott.

The other men said nothing, but fell to their beds. Only Charley Morton rose a little stiffly to his feet.

"Aren't you going to turn in too, Charley?" asked the girl quickly.

"It's daylight now," explained the ranger, "and I can see to ride a horse. I reckon I'd better ride down the line."

"I've thought of that," said Amy. "Of course, it wouldn't do to let the fire take care of itself. See; I have Pronto saddled. I'll look over the line, and if anything happens I'll wake you."

"You must be about dead," said Charley. "You've been up all night fixing camp and cooking----"

"Up all night!" repeated Amy scornfully. "How long do you think it takes me to make camp and cook a simple little breakfast?"

"But the country's almighty rough riding."

"On Pronto?"

"He's a good mountain pony," agreed Charley Morton; "California John picked him out himself. All right. I do feel some tired."

This was about six o'clock. The men had slept but a little over an hour when Amy scrambled over the rim of the dike and dropped from her horse.

"Charley!" she cried, shaking the ranger by the shoulder; "I'm sorry. But there's fresh smoke about half-way down the mountain. There was nothing left to burn fresh inside the fire line, was there? I thought not."

Twenty minutes later all six were frantically digging, hoeing, chopping, beating in a frenzy against the spread of the flames. In some manner the fire had jumped the line. It might have been that early in the fight a spark had lodged. As long as the darkness of night held down the temperature, this spark merely smouldered. When, however, the rays of the sun gathered heat, it had burst into flame.

This sun made all the difference in the world. Where, in the cool of the night, the flames had crept slowly, now they leaped forward with a fierce crackling; green brush that would ordinarily have resisted for a long time, now sprang into fire at a touch. The conflagration spread from a single point in all directions, running swiftly, roaring in a sheet of fire, licking up all before it.

The work was fierce in its intensity. Bob, in common with the others, had given up trying--or indeed caring--to protect himself. His clothes smoked, his face smarted and burned, his skin burned and blistered. He breathed the hot air in gasps. Strangely enough, he did not feel in the least tired.

He did not need to be told what to do. The only possible defence was across a rock outcrop. To right and left of him the other men were working desperately to tear out the brush. He grubbed away trying to clear the pine needles and little bushes that would carry the fire through the rocks like so many powder fuses.

He had no time to see how the others were getting on; he worked on faith. His own efforts were becoming successful. The fire, trying, one after another, various leads through the rocks, ran out of fuel and died. The infernal roaring furnace below, however, leaped ever to new trial.

Then all at once Bob found himself temporarily out of the game. In trying to roll a boulder out of the way, he caught his hand. A sharp, lightning pain shot up his arm and into the middle of his chest. When he had succeeded in extricating himself, he found that his middle finger was squarely broken.

VI

Bob stood still for a moment, looking at the injured member. Charley Morton touched him on the shoulder. When he looked up, the ranger motioned him back. Casting a look of regret at his half-completed defences, he obeyed. To his surprise he found the other four already gathered together. Evidently his being called off the work had nothing to do with his broken finger, as he had at first supposed.

"Well, I guess we'll have to fall back," said Morton composedly. "It's got away from us."

Without further comment he shouldered his implements and took his way up the hill. Bob handed his hoe and rake to Jack Pollock.

"Carry 'em a minute," he explained. "I hurt my hand a little."

As he walked along he bound the finger roughly to its neighbour, and on both tied a rude splint.

"What's up?" he muttered to Jack, as he worked at this.

"I reckon we must be goin' to start a fire line back of the next cross-bridge somewheres," Jack ventured his opinion.

Bob stopped short.

"Then we've abandoned the old one!" he exclaimed.

"Complete," spoke up Ware, who overheard.

"And all the work we've done there is useless?"

"Absolutely."

"We've got it all to do over again from the beginning?"

"Certain sure."

Bob adjusted his mind to this new and rather overwhelming idea.

"I saw Senator What's-his-name--from Montana--made a speech the other day," spoke up Elliott, "in which he attacked the Service because he said it was a refuge for consumptives and incompetents!"

At this moment Amy rode up draped with canteens and balancing carefully a steaming pail of coffee. She was accompanied by another woman similarly provided.

The newcomer was a decided-looking girl under thirty, with a full, strong figure, pronounced flaxen-blond hair, a clear though somewhat sunburned skin, blue eyes, and a flash of strong, white teeth. Bob had never seen her before, but he recognized her as a mountain woman. She rode a pinto, guided by a hackamore, and was attired quite simply in the universal broad felt hat and a serviceable blue calico gown. In spite of this she rode astride; and rode well. A throwing rope, or riata, hung in the sling at the right side of her saddle pommel; and it looked as though it had been used.

"Where's Charley?" she asked promptly as she rode up. "Is that you? You look like a nigger. How you feeling? You just mind me, and don't you try to do too much. You don't get paid for overtime at this job."

"Hullo, Lou," replied Charley Morton; "I thought it was about time you showed up."

The woman nodded at the others.

"Howdy, Mrs. Morton," answered Tom Carroll, Pollock and Ware. Bob and Elliott bowed.

By now the fire had been left far in the rear. The crackling of flames had died in the distance; even the smoke cleared from the atmosphere. All the forest was peaceful and cool. The Douglas squirrels scampered and barked; the birds twittered and flashed or slanted in long flight through the trees; the sun shone soft; a cool breeze ruffled the feathery tips of the tarweed.

At the top of the ridge Charley Morton called a halt.

"This is pretty easy country," said he. "We'll run the line square down either side. Get busy."

"Have a cup of coffee first," urged Amy.

"Surely. Forgot that."

They drank the coffee, finding it good, and tucked away the lunches Amy, with her unfailing forethought, had brought them.

"Good-bye!" she called gaily; "I've got to get back to camp before the fire cuts me off. I won't see you again till the fire burns me out a way to get to you."

"Take my horse, too," said Mrs. Morton, dismounting. "You don't need me in camp."

Amy took the lead rein and rode away as a matter of course. She was quite alone to guard the horses and camp equipage on the little knoll while the fire spent its fury all around her. Everybody seemed to take the matter for granted; but Bob looked after her with mingled feelings of anxiety and astonishment. This Western breed of girl was still beyond his comprehension.

The work was at once begun. In spite of the cruel throb of his injured hand, Bob found the labour pleasant by sheer force of contrast. The air was cool, the shade refreshing, the frantic necessity of struggle absent. He raked carefully his broad path among the pine needles, laying bare the brown earth; hoed and chopped in the tarweed and brush. Several times Charley Morton passed him. Each time the ranger paused for a moment to advise him.

"You ought to throw your line farther back," he told Bob. "See that 'dead-and-down' ahead? If you let that cross your fire line, it'll carry the fire sooner or later, sure; and if you curve your line too quick to go around it, the fire'll jump. You want to keep your eye out 'way ahead."

Once Bob caught a glimpse of blue calico through the trees. As he came nearer, he was surprised to see Mrs. Morton working away stoutly with a hoe. Her skirts were turned back, her sleeves rolled up to display a white and plump forearm, the neck of her gown loosened to show a round and well-moulded neck. The strokes of her hoe were as vigorous as those of any of the men. In watching the strong, free movements of her body, Bob forgot for a moment what had been intruding itself on him with more and more insistance--the throb of his broken hand.

In the course of an hour the fire line was well under way. But now wisps of smoke began to drift down the tree aisles. Birds shot past, at first by ones and twos, later in flocks. A deer that must have lain perdu to let them pass bounded across the ridge, his head high, his nostrils wide. The squirrels ran chattering down the trees, up others, leaped across the gaps, working always farther and farther to the north. The cool breeze carried with it puffs of hot air. Finally in distant openings could be discerned little busy, flickering flames. All at once the thought gripped Bob hard: the might of the fire was about to test the quality of his work!

"There she comes!" gasped Charley Morton. "My Lord, how she's run to-day! We got to close the line to that stone dike."

By one of the lightning transitions of motive with which these activities seemed to abound, the affair had become a very deadly earnest sort of race. It was simple. If the men could touch the dike before the fire, they won.

The realization of this electrified even the weary spirits of the fire-fighters. They redoubled their efforts. The hoes, mattocks and axes rose and fell feverishly. Mrs. Morton, the perspiration matting her beautiful and shining hair across her forehead, laboured with the best. The fire, having gained the upward-rising slope, came at them with the speed of an enemy charging. Soon they were fairly choked by the dense clouds of smoke, fairly scorched by the waves of heat. Sweat poured from them in streams. Bob utterly forgot his wounded hand.

And then, when they were within a scant fifty yards of the dike which was intended to be their right wing, the flames sprang with a roar to new life. Up the slope they galloped, whirled around the end of the fire line, and began eagerly to lick up the tarweed and needles of the ridge-top.

Bob and Elliott uttered a simultaneous cry of dismay. The victory had seemed fairly in their grasp. Now all chance of it was snatched away.

"Poor guess," said Charley Morton. The men, without other comment, shouldered their implements and set off on a dog-trot after their leader. The ranger merely fell back to the next natural barrier.

"Now, let's see if we can't hold her, boys," said he.

Twice again that day were these scenes reënacted. The same result obtained. Each time it seemed to Bob that he could do no more. His hand felt as big as a pillow, and his whole arm and shoulder ached. Besides this he was tired out. Amy had been cut off from them by the fire. In two days they had had but an hour's sleep. Water had long since given out on them. The sun beat hot and merciless, assisting its kinsman, the fire. Bob would, if left to himself, have given up the contest long since. It seemed ridiculous that this little handful of men should hope to arrest anything so mighty, so proud, so magnificent as this great conflagration. As well expect a colony of ants to stop a break in the levee. But Morton continued to fall back as though each defeat were a matter of course. He seemed unwearied, though beneath the smoke-black his eyes were hollow. Mrs. Morton did her part with the rest, strong as a man for all her feminine attraction, for all the soft lines of her figure.

"I'll drop back far enough this time," Charley muttered to her, as they were thrown together in their last retreat. "Can't seem to get far enough back!"

"There's too few of us to handle such a big fire," his wife replied. "You can't do it with six men."

"Seven," amended Charley. "You're as good as any of us. Don't you worry, Lou. Even if we don't stop her--and I think we will--we're checking the run of her until we get help. We're doing well. There's only two old fire-fighters in the lot--you and me. All the rest is green hands. We're doing almighty well."

Overhearing this Bob plucked up heart. These desperate stands were not then so wasted as he had thought them. At least the fire was checked at each defence--it was not permitted to run wild over the country.

"We ought to get help before long," he said.

"To-morrow, I figure," replied Charley Morton. "The boys are scattered wide, finishing odds and ends before coming in for the Fourth. It'll be about impossible to get hold of any of 'em except by accident. But they'll all come in for the Fourth."

The next defence was successfully completed before the fire reached it. Bob felt a sudden rush of most extraordinary and vivifying emotion. A moment ago he had been ready to drop in his tracks, indifferent whether the fire burned him as he lay. Now he felt ready to go on forever. Bert Elliott found energy enough to throw his hat into the air, while Jack shook his fist at the advancing fire.

"We fooled him that time!" cried Elliott.

"Bet you!" growled Pollock.

The other men and the woman stood leaning on the long handles of their implements staring at the advancing flames.

Morton aroused himself with an effort.

"Do your best boys," said he briefly. "There she comes. Another hour will tell whether we've stopped her. Then we've got to hold her. Scatter!"

The day had passed without anybody's being aware of the fact. The cool of the evening was already falling, and the fierceness of the conflagration was falling in accord.

They held the line until the flames had burned themselves out against it. Then they took up their weary patrol. Last night, when Bob was fresh, this part of fire-fighting had seemed the hardest kind of hard work. Now, crippled and weary as he was, in contrast to the day's greater labour, it had become comparatively easy. About eight o'clock Amy, having found a way through, appeared leading all the horses, saddled and packed.

"You boys came a long way," she explained simply, "and I thought I'd bring over camp."

She distributed food, and made trips down the fire line with coffee.

In this manner the night passed. The line had been held. No one had slept. Sunrise found Bob and Jack Pollock far down the mountain. They were doggedly beating back some tiny flames. The camp was a thousand feet above, and their canteens had long been empty. Bob raised his weary eyes.

Out on a rock inside the burned area, like a sentinel cast in bronze, stood a horseman. The light was behind him, so only his outline could be seen. For a minute he stood there quite motionless, looking. Then he moved forward, and another came up behind him on the rock. This one advanced, and a third took his place. One after the other, in single file, they came, glittering in the sun, their long rakes and hoes slanted over their shoulders like spears.

"Look!" gasped Bob weakly.

The two stood side by side spellbound. The tiny flames licked past them in the tarweed; they did not heed. The horsemen rode up, twenty strong. It seemed to Bob that they said things, and shouted. Certainly a half-dozen leaped spryly off their horses and in an instant had confined the escaping fire. Somebody took Bob's hoe from him. A cheery voice shouted in his ear:

"Hop along! You're through. We're on the job. Go back to camp and take a sleep."

He and Pollock turned up the mountain. Bob felt stupid. After he had gone a hundred feet, he realized he was thirsty, and wondered why he had not asked for a drink. Then it came to him that he might have borrowed a horse, but remembered thickly after a long time the impassable dikes between him and camp.

"That's why I didn't," he said aloud.

By this time it was too late to go back for the drink. He did not care. The excitement and responsibility had drained from him suddenly, leaving him a hollow shell.

They dragged themselves up the dike.

"I'd give a dollar and a half for a drink of water!" said Pollock suddenly.

They stumbled and staggered on. A twig sufficed to trip them. Pollock muttered between set teeth, over and over again, his unvarying complaint: "I'd give a dollar and a half for a drink of water!"

Finally, with a flicker of vitality, Bob's sense of humour cleared for an instant.

"Not high enough," said he. "Make it two dollars, and maybe some angel will hand you out a glass."

"That's all right," returned Pollock resentfully, "but I bet there's some down in that hollow; and I'm going to see!"

"I wouldn't climb down there for a million drinks," said Bob; "I'll sit down and wait for you."

Pollock climbed down, found his water, drank. He filled the canteen and staggered back up the steep climb.

"Here you be," said he.

Bob seized the canteen and drank deep. When he took breath, he said:

"Thank you, Jack. That was an awful climb back."

"That's all right," nodded Jack shortly.

"Well, come on," said Bob.

"The hell!" muttered Jack, and fell over sound asleep.

An hour later Bob felt himself being shaken violently. He stirred and advanced a little way toward the light, then dropped back like a plummet into the abysses of sleep. Afterward he recalled a vague, half-conscious impression of being lifted on a horse. Possibly he managed to hang on; possibly he was held in the saddle--that he never knew.

The next thing he seemed conscious of was the flicker of a camp-fire, and the soft feel of blankets. It was night, but how it came to be so he could not imagine. He was very stiff and sore and burned, and his hand was very painful. He moved it, and discovered, to his vast surprise, that it was bound tightly. When this bit of surgery had been performed he could not have told.

He opened his eyes. Amy and Mrs. Morton were bending over cooking utensils. Five motionless forms reposed in blankets. Bob counted them carefully. After some moments it occurred to his dulled brain that the number represented his companions. Some one on horseback seemed to be arriving. A glitter of silver caught his eye. He recognized finally California John. Then he dozed off again. The sound of voices rumbled through the haze of his half-consciousness.

"Fifty hours of steady fire-fighting with only an hour's sleep!" he caught Thorne's voice saying.

Bob took this statement into himself. He computed painfully over and over. He could not make the figures. He counted the hours one after the other. Finally he saw.

"Fifty hours for all but Pollock and me," he said suddenly; "forty for us."

No one heard him. As a matter of fact, he had not spoken aloud; though he thought he had done so.

"We found the two of them curled up together," he next heard Thorne say. "Orde was coiled around a sharp root--and didn't know it, and Pollock was on top of him. They were out in the full sun, and a procession of red ants was disappearing up Orde's pants leg and coming out at his collar. Fact!"

"They're a good lot," admitted California John. "Best unbroke lot I ever saw."

"We found Orde's finger broken and badly swelled. Heaven knows when he did it, but he never peeped. Morton says he noticed his hand done up in a handkerchief yesterday morning."

Bob dozed again. From time to time he caught fragments--"Four fire-lines--think of it--only one old-timer in the lot--I'm proud of my boys----"

He came next to full consciousness to hear Thorne saying:

"Mrs. Morton fought fire with the best of them. That's the ranger spirit I like--when as of old the women and children----"

"Don't praise me," broke in Mrs. Morton tartly. "I don't give a red cent for all your forests, and your pesky rangering. I've got no use for them. If Charley Morton would quit you and tend to his cattle, I'd be pleased. I didn't fight fire to help you, let me tell you."

"What did you do it for?" asked Thorne, evidently amused.

"I knew I couldn't get Charley Morton home and in bed and _resting_ until that pesky fire was _out_; that's why!" shot back Mrs. Morton.

"Well, Mrs. Morton," said Thorne composedly, "if you're ever fixed so sass will help you out, you'll find it a very valuable quality."

Then Bob fell into a deep sleep.

VII

On returning to headquarters, as Bob was naturally somewhat incapacitated for manual work, he was given the fire patrol. This meant that every day he was required to ride to four several "lookouts" on the main ridge, from which points he could spy abroad carefully over vast stretches of mountainous country. One of these was near the meadow of the cold spring whence the three of them had first caught sight of the Granite Creek fire. Thence he turned sharp to the north along the ridge top. The trail led among great trees that dropped away to right and left on the slopes of the mountain. Through them he caught glimpses of the blue distance, or far-off glittering snow, or unexpected cañon depths. The riding was smooth, over undulating knolls. Every once in a while passing through a "_puerto suelo_," he looked on either side to tiny green meadows, from which streams were born. Occasionally he saw a deer, or more likely small bands of the wild mountain cattle that swung along before him, heads held high, eyes staring, nostrils expanded. Then Bob felt his pony's muscles stiffen beneath his thighs, and saw the animal's little ears prick first forward at the cattle, then back for his master's commands.

After three miles of this he came out on a broad plateau formed by the joining of his ridge with that of the Baldy range. Here Granite Creek itself rose, and the stream that flowed by the mill. It was a country of wild, park-like vistas between small pines, with a floor of granite and shale. Over it frowned the steeps of Baldy, with its massive domes, its sheer precipices, and its scant tree-growth clinging to its sides. Against the sky it looked very rugged, very old, very formidable; and the sky, behind its yellowed age, was inconceivably blue.

Sometimes Bob rode up into the pass. More often he tied his horse and took the steep rough trail afoot. The way was guarded by strange, distorted trees, and rocks carved into fantastic shapes. Some of them were piled high like temples. Others, round and squat, resembled the fat and obscene deities of Eastern religions. There were seals and elephants and crocodiles and allegorical monsters, some of them as tiny as the grotesque Japanese carvings, others as stupendous as Egypt. The trail led by them, among them, between them. At their feet clutched snowbush, ground juniper, the gnarled fingers of manzañita, like devotees. A foaming little stream crept and plunged over bare and splintered rocks. Twisted junipers and the dwarf pines of high elevations crouched like malignant gnomes amongst the boulders, or tossed their arms like witches on the crags. This bold and splintered range rose from the softness and mystery of the great pine woods on the lower ridge as a rock rises above cool water.

The pass itself was not over fifty feet wide. Either side of it like portals were the high peaks. It lay like the notch of a rifle sight between them. Once having gained the tiny platform, Bob would sit down and look abroad over the wonderful Sierra.

Never did he tire of this. At one eye-glance he could comprehend a summer's toilsome travel. To reach yonder snowy peak would consume the greater part of a week. Unlike the Swiss alps, which he had once visited, these mountains were not only high, but wide as well. They had the whole of blue space in which to lie. They were like the stars, for when Bob had convinced himself that his eye had settled on the farthest peak, then still farther, taking half-guessed iridescent form out of the blue, another shone.

But his business was not with these distances. Almost below him, so precipitous is the easterly slope of Baldy, lay cañons, pine forests, lesser ridges, streams, the green of meadows. Patiently, piece by piece, he must go over all this, watching for that faint blue haze, that deepening of the atmosphere, that almost imagined pearliness against the distant hills which meant new fire.

"Don't look for _smoke_," California John had told him. "When a fire gets big enough for smoke, you can't help but see it. It's the new fire you want to spot before it gets started. Then it's easy handled. And new fire's almighty easy to overlook. Sometimes it's as hard for a greenhorn to see as a deer. Look close!"

So Bob, concentrating his attention, looked close. When he had satisfied himself, he turned square around.

From this point of view he saw only pine forests. They covered the ridge below him like a soft green mantle thrown down in folds. They softened the more distant ranges. They billowed and eddied, and dropped into unguessed depths, and came bravely up to eyesight again far away. At last they seemed to change colour abruptly, and a brown haze overcast them through which glimmered a hint of yellow. This Bob knew was the plain, hot and brown under the July sun. It rose dimly through the mist to the height of his eye. Thus, even at eight thousand feet, Bob seemed to stand in the cup of the earth, beneath the cup of the sky.

The other two lookouts were on the edge of the lower ridge. They gave an opportunity of examining various coves and valleys concealed by the shoulder of the ridge from the observer on Baldy. To reach them Bob rode across the plateau of the ridge, through the pine forests, past the mill.

Here, if the afternoon was not too far advanced, he used to allow himself the luxury of a moment's chat with some of his old friends. Welton, coat off, his burly face perspiring and red, always greeted him jovially.

"Spend all your salary this month?" he would ask. "Does the business keep you occupied?" And once or twice, seriously, "Bob, haven't you had enough of this confounded nonsense? You're getting too old to find any great fun riding around in this kid fashion pretending to do things. There's big business to be done in this country, and we need you boys to help. When I was a youngster I'd have jumped hard at half the chance that's offered you."

But Bob never would answer seriously. He knew this to be his only chance of avoiding even a deeper misunderstanding between himself and this man whom he had learned to admire and love.

Once he met Baker. That young man greeted him as gaily as ever, but into his manner had crept the shadow of a cold contempt. The stout youth's standards were his own, and rigid, as is often the case with people of his type. Bob felt himself suddenly and ruthlessly excluded from the ranks of those worthy of Baker's respect. A hard quality of character, hitherto unsuspected, stared from the fat young man's impudent blue eyes. Baker was perfectly polite, and suitably jocular; but he had not much time for Bob; and soon plunged into a deep discussion with Welton from which Bob was unmistakably excluded.

On one occasion, too, he encountered Oldham riding down the trail from headquarters. The older man had nodded to him curtly. His eyes had gleamed through his glasses with an ill-concealed and frosty amusement, and his thin lips had straightened to a perceptible sneer. All at once Bob divined an enemy. He could not account for this, as he had never dealt with the man; and the accident of his discovering the gasoline pump on the Lucky Land Company's creeks could hardly be supposed to account for quite so malignant a triumph. Next time Bob saw Welton, he asked his old employer about it.

"What have I ever done to Oldham?" he inquired. "Do you know?"

"Oldham?" repeated Welton.

"Baker's land agent."

"Oh, yes. I never happened to run across him. Don't know him at all."

Bob put down Oldham's manifest hatred to pettiness of disposition.

Even from Merker, the philosophic storekeeper, Bob obtained scant comfort.

"Men like you, with ability, youth, energy," said Merker, "producing nothing, just conserving, saving. Conditions should be such that the possibility of fire, of trespass, of all you fellows guard against, should be eliminated. Then you could supply steam, energy, accomplishment, instead of being merely the lubrication. It's an economic waste."

Bob left the mill-yards half-depressed, half-amused. All his people had become alien. He opposed them in nothing, his work in no way interfered with their activities; yet, without his volition, and probably without their realization, he was already looked upon as one to be held at arms' length. It saddened Bob, as it does every right-thinking young man when he arrives at setting up his own standards of conduct and his own ways of life. He longed with a great longing, which at the same time he realized to be hopeless, to make these people feel as he felt. It gave him real pain to find that his way of life could never gain anything beyond disapproval or incomprehension. It took considerable fortitude to conclude that he now must build his own structure, unsupported. He was entering the loneliness of soul inseparable from complete manhood.

After such disquieting contacts, the more uncomfortable in that they defied analysis, Bob rode out to the last lookout and gazed abroad over the land. The pineclad bluff fell away nearly four thousand feet. Below him the country lay spread like a relief map--valley, lesser ranges, foothills, far-off plain, the green of trees, the brown of grass and harvest, the blue of glimpsed water, the haze of heat and great distance, the thread-like gossamer of roads, the half-guessed shimmer of towns and cities in the mirage of summer, all the opulence of earth and the business of human activity. Millions dwelt in that haze, and beyond them, across the curve of the earth, hundreds of millions more, each actuated by its own selfishness or charity, by its own conception of the things nearest it. Not one in a multitude saw or cared beyond the immediate, nor bothered his head with what it all meant, or whether it meant anything. Bob, sitting on his motionless horse high up there in the world, elevated above it all, in an isolation of pines, close under his sky, bent his ear to the imagined faint humming of the spheres. Affairs went on. The machine fulfilled its function. All things had their place, the evil as well as the good, the waste as well as the building, balancing like the governor of an engine the opposition of forces. He saw, by the soft flooding of light, rather than by any flash of insight, that were the shortsightedness, the indifference, the ignorance, the crass selfishness to be eliminated before yet the world's work was done, the energies of men, running too easily, would outstrip the development of the Plan, as a machine "races" without its load. A humility came to him. His not to judge his fellows by the mere externals of their deeds. He could only act honestly according to what he saw, as he hoped others were doing.

"Just so a man isn't _mean_, I don't know as I have any right to despise him," he summed it all up to his horse. "But," he added cheerfully, "that doesn't prevent my kicking him into the paths of righteousness if he tries to steal my watch."

The sun dipped toward the heat haze of the plains. It was from a golden world that Bob turned at last to ride through the forest to the cheerfulness of his rude camp.

VIII

Bob took his examinations, passed successfully, and was at once appointed as ranger. Thorne had no intention of neglecting the young man's ability. After his arduous apprenticeship at all sorts of labour, Bob found himself specializing. This, he discovered, was becoming more and more the tendency in the personnel of the Service. Jack Pollock already was being sent far afield, looking into grazing conditions, reporting on the state of the range, the advisable number of cattle, the trespass cases. He had a natural aptitude for that sort of thing. Ware, on the other hand, developed into a mighty builder. Nothing pleased him more than to discover new ways through the country, to open them up, to blast and dig and construct his trails, to nose out bridge sites and on them to build spans hewn from the material at hand. He made himself a set of stencils and with them signed all the forks of the trails, so that a stranger could follow the routes. Always he painstakingly added the letters U.S.F.S. to indicate that these works had been done by his beloved Service. Charley Morton was the fire chief--though any and all took a hand at that when occasion arose. He could, as California John expressed it, run a fire out on a rocky point and lose it there better than any other man on the force. Ross Fletcher was the best policeman. He knew the mountains, their infinite labyrinths, better than any other; and he could guess the location of sheep where another might have searched all summer.

Though each and every man was kept busy enough, and to spare, on all the varied business inseparable from the activities of a National Forest, nevertheless Thorne knew enough to avail himself of these especial gifts and likings. So, early in the summer he called in Bob and Elliott.

"Now," he told them, "we have plenty of work to do, and you boys must buckle into it as you see fit. But this is what I want you to keep in the back of your mind: someday the National Forests are going to supply a great part of the timber in the country. It's too early yet. There's too much private timber standing, which can be cut without restriction. But when that is largely reduced, Uncle Sam will be going into the lumber business on a big scale. Even now we will be selling a few shake trees, and some small lots, and occasionally a bigger piece to some of the lumbermen who own adjoining timber. We've got to know what we have to sell. For instance, there's eighty acres in there surrounded by Welton's timber. When he comes to cut, it might pay us and him to sell the ripe trees off that eighty."

"I doubt if he'd think it would pay," Bob interposed.

"He might. I think the Chief will ease up a little on cutting restrictions before long. You've simply got to over-emphasize a matter at first to make it carry."

"You mean----?"

"I mean--this is only my private opinion, you understand--that lumbering has been done so wastefully and badly that it has been necessary, merely as education, to go to the other extreme. We've insisted on chopping and piling the tops like cordwood, and cutting up the down trunks of trees, and generally 'parking' the forest simply to get the idea into people's heads. They'd never thought of such things before. I don't believe it's necessary to go to such extremes, practically; and I don't believe the Service will demand it when it comes actually to do business."

Elliott and Bob looked at each other a little astonished.

"Mind you, I don't talk this way outside; and I don't want you to do so," pursued Thorne. "But when you come right down to it, all that's necessary is to prevent fire from running--and, of course, to leave a few seed-trees. Yo' can keep fire from running just as well by piling the debris in isolated heaps, as by chopping it up and stacking it. And it's a lot cheaper."

He leaned forward.

"That's coming," he continued. "Now you, Elliott, have had as thorough a theoretical education as the schools can give you; and you, Orde, have had a lot of practical experience in logging. You ought to make a good pair. Here's a map of the Government holdings hereabouts. What I want is a working plan for every forty, together with a topographical description, an estimate of timber, and a plan for the easiest method of logging it. There's no hurry about it; you can do it when nothing else comes up to take you away. But do it thoroughly, and to the best of your judgment, so I can file your reports for future reference when they are needed."

"Where do you want us to begin?" asked Bob.

"Welton is the only big operator," Thorpe pointed out, "so you'd better look over the timber adjoining or surrounded by his. Then the basin and ranges above the Power Company are important. There's a fine body of timber there, but we must cut it with a more than usual attention to water supplies."

This work Bob and Elliott found most congenial. They would start early in the morning, carrying with them their compass on its Jacob's-staff, their chain, their field notes, their maps and their axes. Arrived at the scene of operations, they unsaddled and picketed their horses. Then commenced a search for the "corner," established nearly fifty years before by the dead and gone surveyor, a copy of those field notes now guided them. This was no easy matter. The field notes described accurately the location, but in fifty years the character of a country may change. Great trees fall, new trees grow up, brush clothes an erstwhile bare hillside, fire denudes a slope, even the rocks and boulders shift their places under the coercion of frost or avalanche. The young men separated, shoulder deep in the high brakes and alders of a creek bottom, climbing tiny among great trees on the open slope of a distant hill, clambering busily among austere domes and pinnacles, fading in the cool green depths of the forest. Finally one would shout loudly. The other scrambled across.

"Here we are," Bob said, pointing to the trunk of a huge yellow pine.

On it showed a wrinkle in the bark, only just appreciable.

"There's our line blaze," said Bob. "Let's see if we can find it in the notes." He opened his book. "'Small creek three links wide, course SW,'" he murmured. "'Sugar pine, 48 in. dia., on line, 48 links.' That's not it. 'Top of ridge 34 ch. 6 1. course NE.' Now we come to the down slope. Here we are! 'Yellow pine 20 in. dia., on line, 50 chains.' Twenty inches! Well, old fellow, you've grown some since! Let's see your compass, Elliott."

Having thus cut the line, they established their course and went due north, spying sharply for the landmarks and old blazes as mentioned in the surveyor's field notes.

When they had gone about the required distance, they began to look for the corner. After some search, Elliott called Bob's attention to a grown-over blaze.

"I guess this is our witness tree," said he.

Without a word Bob began to chop above and below the wrinkle in the bark. After ten minutes careful work, he laid aside a thick slab of wood. The inner surface of this was shiny with pitch. The space from which it had peeled was also coated with the smooth substance. This pitch had filmed over the old blaze, protecting it against the new wood and bark which had gradually grown over it. Thus, although the original blaze had been buried six inches in the living white pine wood, nevertheless the lettering was as clear and sharp as when it had been carved fifty years before. Furthermore, the same lettering, only reversed and in relief, showed on the thick slab that Bob had peeled away. So the tree had preserved the record in its heart.

"Now let's see," said Bob. "This witness bears S 80 W. Let's find another."

This proved to be no great matter. Sighting the given directions from the two, they converged on the corner. This was described by the old surveyor as: "Oak post, 4 in. dia., set in pile of rocks," etc. The pile of rocks was now represented by scattered stones; and the oak post had long since rotted. Bob, however, unearthed a fragment on which ran a single grooved mark. It was like those made by borers in dead limbs. Were it not for one circumstance, the searchers would not have been justified in assuming that it was anything else. But, as Bob pointed out, the passageways made by borers are never straight. The fact that this was so, established indisputably that it had been made by the surveyor's steel "scribe."

Having thus located a corner, it was an easy matter to determine the position of a tract of land. At first hazy in its general configuration and extent, it took definition as the young men progressed with the accurate work of timber estimating. Before they had finished with it, they knew every little hollow, ridge, ravine, rock and tree in it. Out of the whole vast wilderness this one small patch had become thoroughly known.

The work was the most pleasant of any Bob had ever undertaken. It demanded accuracy, good judgment, knowledge. It did not require feverish haste. The surroundings were wonderfully beautiful; and if the men paused in their work, as they often did, the spirit of the woods, which as always had drawn aside from the engrossments of human activity, came closer as with fluttering of wings. Sometimes, nervous and impatient from the busy, tiny clatter of facts and figures and guesses, from the restless shuttle-weaving of estimates and plans, Bob looked up suddenly into a deathless and eternal peace. Like the cool green refreshment of waters it closed over him. When he again came to the surface-world of his occupation, he was rested and slowed down to a respectable patience.

Elliott was good company, interested in the work, well-bred, intelligent, eager to do his share--an ideal companion. He and Bob discussed many affairs during their rides to and from the work and during the interims of rest. As time went on, and the tracts to be estimated and plotted became more distant, they no longer attempted to return at night to Headquarters. Small meadows offered them resting places for the day or the week. They became expert in taking care of themselves so expeditiously that the process stole little time from their labours. On Saturday afternoon they rode to headquarters to report, and to spend Sunday.

IX

Toward the end of the season they had worked well past the main ridge on which were situated Welton's operations and the Service Headquarters. Several deep cañons and rocky peaks, by Thorne's instructions, they skipped over as only remotely available as a timber supply. This brought them to the ample circle of a basin, well-timbered, wide, containing an unusual acreage of gently sloping or rolling table-land. Behind this rose the spurs of the Range. A half-hundred streams here had their origin. These converged finally in the Forks, which, leaping and plunging steadily downward from a height of over six thousand feet, was trapped and used again and again to turn the armatures of Baker's dynamos. After serving this purpose at six power houses strung down the contour line of its descent, the water was deflected into wide, deep ditches which forked and forked again until a whole plains province was rendered fertile and productive by irrigation.

All this California John, who rode over to show them some corners, explained to them. They sat on the rim of the basin overlooking it as it lay below them like a green cup.

"You can see the whole of her from here," said California John, "and that's why we use this for fire lookout. It saves a heap of riding, for let me tell you it's a long ways down this bluff. But you bet we keep a close watch on this Basin. It's the most valuable, as a watershed, of any we've got. This is about the only country we've managed to throw a fire-break around yet. It took a lot of time to do it, but it's worth while."

"This is where the Power Company gets its power," remarked Bob.

"Yes," replied California John, drily. "Which same company is putting up the fight of its life in Congress to keep from payin' anything at all for what it gets."

They gave themselves to the task of descending into the Basin by a steep and rough trail. At the end of an hour, their horses stepped from the side of the hill to a broad, pleasant flat on which the tall trees grew larger than any Bob had seen on the ridge.

"What magnificent timber!" he cried. "How does it happen this wasn't taken up long ago?"

"Well," said California John, "a good share of it _is_ claimed by the Power Company; and unless you come up the way we did, you don't see it. From below, all this looks like part of the bald ridge. Even if a cruiser in the old days happened to look down on this, he wouldn't realize how good it was unless he came down to it--it's all just trees from above. And in those days there were lots of trees easier to come at."

"It's great timber!" repeated Bob. "That 'sugar's' eight feet through if it's an inch!"

"Nearer nine," said California John.

"It'll be some years' work to estimate and plot all this," mused Bob. "If it's so important a watershed, what do they _want_ it plotted for? They'll never want to cut it."

"There ain't so much of it left, as you'll see when you look at your map. The Power Company owns most. Anyway, government cutting won't hurt the watershed," stated California John.

As they rode forward through the trees, a half-dozen deer jumped startled from a clump of low brush and sped away.

"That's more deer than I've seen in a bunch since I left Michigan," observed Bob.

"Nobody ever gets into this place," explained California John. "There ain't been a fire here in years, and we don't none of us have any reason to ride down. She's too hard to get out of, and we can see her too well from the lookout. The rest of the country feels pretty much the same way."

"How about sheep?" inquired Elliott.

"They got to get in over some trail, if they get in at all," California John pointed out, "and we can circle the Basin."

By now they were riding over a bed of springy pine needles through a magnificent open forest. Undergrowth absolutely lacked; even the soft green of the bear clover was absent. The straight columns of the trees rose grandly from a swept floor. Only where tiny streams trickled and sang through rocks and shallow courses, grew ferns and the huge leaves of the saxifrage. In this temple-like austerity dwelt a silence unusual to the Sierra forests. The lack of undergrowth and younger trees implied a scarcity of insects; and this condition meant an equal scarcity of birds. Only the creepers and the great pileated woodpeckers seemed to inhabit these truly cloistral shades. The breeze passed through branches too elevated to permit its whisperings to be heard. The very sound of the horses' hoofs was muffled in the thick carpet of pine needles.

California John led them sharp to the right, however, and in a few moments they emerged to cheerful sunlight, alders, young pines among the old, a leaping flashing stream of some size, and multitudes of birds, squirrels, insects and butterflies.

"There's a meadow, and a good camping place just up-stream," said he. "It's easy riding. You'd better spread your blankets there. Now, here's the corner to 34. We reëstablished it four years ago, so as to have _something_ to go by in this country. You can find your way about from there. That bold cliff of rock you see just through the trees there you can climb. From the top you can make out the lookout. If you're wanted at headquarters we'll hang out a signal. That will save a hard ride down. Let's see; how long you got grub for?"

"I guess there's enough to last us ten days or so," replied Elliott.

"Well, if you keep down this stream until you strike a big bald slide rock, you'll run into an old trail that takes you to the Flats. It's pretty old, and it ain't blazed, but you can make it out if you'll sort of keep track of the country. It ain't been used for years."

California John, anxious to make a start at the hard climb, now said good-bye and started back. Bob and Elliott, their pack horse following, rode up the flat through which ran the river. They soon found the meadow. It proved to be a beautiful spot, surrounded by cedars, warm with the sun, bright with colour, alive with birds. A fringe of azaleas, cottonwoods and quaking asps screened it completely from all that lay outside its charmed circle. A cheerful blue sky spread its canopy overhead. Here Bob and Elliott turned loose their horses and made their camp. After lunch they lay on their backs and smoked. Through a notch in the trees showed a very white mountain against a very blue sky. The sun warmed them gratefully. Birds sang. Squirrels scampered. Their horses stood dozing, ears and head down-drooped, eyes half-closed, one hind leg tucked up.

"Confound it!" cried Elliott suddenly, following his unspoken thought. "I feel like a bad little boy stealing jam! By night I'll be scared. If those woods over behind that screen aren't full of large, dignified gods that disapprove of me being so cheerful and contented and light-minded and frivolous, I miss my guess!"

"Same here!" said Bob with, a short laugh. "Let's get busy."

They started out that very afternoon from the corner California John had showed them. It took all that day and most of the following to define and blaze the boundaries of the first tract they intended to estimate. In the accomplishment of this they found nothing out of the ordinary; but when they began to move forward across the forty, they were soon brought to a halt by the unexpected.

"Look here!" Bob shouted to his companion; "here's a brand new corner away off the line."

Elliott came over. Bob showed him a stake set neatly in a pile of rocks.

"It's not a very old one, either," said Bob. "Now what do you make of that?"

Elliott had been spying about him.

"There's another just like it over on the hill," said he. "I should call it the stakes of a mining claim. There ought to be a notice somewhere."

They looked about and soon came across the notice in question. It was made out in the name of a man neither Bob nor Elliott had ever heard of before.

"I suppose that's his ledge," remarked Elliott, kicking a little outcrop, "but it looks like mighty slim mining to me!"

They proceeded with their estimating. In due time they came upon another mining claim, and then a third.

"This is getting funny!" remarked Elliott. "Looks as though somebody expected to make a strike for fair. More timber than mineral here, I should say."

"That's it!" cried Bob, slapping his leg; "I'd just about forgotten! This must be what Baker was talking about one evening over at camp. He had some scheme for getting some timber and water rights somewhere under the mineral act. I didn't pay so very much attention to it at the time, and it had slipped my mind. But this must be it!"

"Do you mean to say that any man was going to take this beautiful timber away from us on that kind of a technicality?"

"I believe that's just what he did."

Two days later Elliott straightened his back after a squint through the compass sights to exclaim:

"I wish we had a dog!"

"Why?" laughed Bob. "Can't you eat your share?"

"I've a feeling that somebody's hanging around these woods; I've had it ever since we got here. And just now while I was looking through the sights I thought I saw something--you know how the sights will concentrate your gaze."

"It's these big woods," said Bob; "I've had the same hunch before. Besides, you can easily look for tracks along your line of sights."

They did so, but found nothing.

"But among these rocks a man needn't leave any tracks if he didn't want to," Elliott pointed out.

"The bogy-man's after you," said Bob.

Elliott laughed. Nevertheless, as the work progressed, from time to time he would freeze to an attitude of listening.

"It's like feeling that there's somebody else in a dark room with you," he told Bob.

"You'll end by giving me the willy-willies, too," complained Bob. "I'm beginning to feel the same way. Quit it!"

By the end of the week it became necessary to go to town after more supplies. Bob volunteered. He saddled his riding horse and the pack animal, and set forth. Following California John's directions he traced the length of the river through the basin to the bald rock where the old trail was said to begin. Here he anticipated some difficulty in picking up the trail, and more in following it. To his surprise he ran immediately into a well-defined path.

"Why, this is as plain as a strip of carpet!" muttered

Bob to himself. "If this is his idea of a dim trail, I'd like to see a good one!"

He had not ridden far, however, before, in crossing a tiny trickle of water, he could not fail to notice a clear-cut, recent hoof print. The mark was that of a barefoot horse. Bob stared at it.

"Now if I were real _good_," he reflected, "like old what-you-may-call-him--the Arabian Sherlock Holmes--I'd be able to tell whether this horse was loose and climbing for pasture, or carrying a rider, and if so, whether the rider had ever had his teeth filled. There's been a lot of travel on this trail, anyway. I wonder where it all went to?" He paused irresolutely. "It isn't more than two jumps back to the rock," he decided; "I'll just find out what direction they take anyway."

Accordingly he retraced his steps to the bald rock, and commenced an examination of its circumference to determine where the trail led away. He found no such exit. Save from the direction of his own camp the way was closed either by precipitous sides or dense brush. The conclusion was unavoidable that those who had travelled the trail, had either ended their journeys at the bald rock or actually taken to the bed of the river.

"Well," concluded Bob, "I'm enough of a sleuth to see that that barefoot horse had a rider and wasn't just looking pasture. No animal in its senses would hike uphill and then hike down again, or wade belly deep up a stream."

Puzzling over this mystery, he again took his way down the trail. He found it easy to follow, for it had been considerably travelled. In some places the brush had been cut back to open easier passage. Examining these cuttings, Bob found their raw ends only slightly weathered. All this might have been done by the men who had staked the mineral claims, to be sure, but even then Bob found it difficult to reconcile all the facts. In the first place, the trail had indubitably been much used since the time the claims were staked. In the second place, if the prospector had wished to conceal anything, it should have been the fact of his going to the Basin at all, not his whereabouts after arriving there. In other words, if desiring to keep his presence secret, he would have blinded the _beginning_ of the trail rather than its end.

He kept a sharp lookout. Near the entrance to the cañon he managed to discover another clear print of the barefoot horse, but headed the other way. Clearly the rider had returned. Bob had hunted deer enough to recognize that the track had been made within the last twenty-four hours.

At Sycamore Flats he was treated to further surprises. Martin, of whom he bought his supplies, at first greeted him with customary joviality.

"Hullo! hullo!" he cried; "quite a stranger! Out in camp, eh?"

"Yes," said Bob, "they've got us working for a change."

"Where you located?"

"We're estimating timber up in the Basin," replied Bob.

The silence that followed was so intense that Bob looked up from the bag he was tying. He met Martin's eyes fixed on him.

"The Basin," repeated Martin slowly, at last. "Since when?"

"About ten days."

"We! Who's we?"

"Elliott and I," answered Bob, surprised. "Why?"

Martin's gaze shifted. He plainly hesitated for a next remark.

"How'd you like it there?" he asked lamely, at length. "I thought none of you fellows ever went there."

"Fine timber," answered Bob, cheerfully. "We don't usually. Somebody does though. California John told me that trail was old and out of use; but it's been used a lot. Who gets up there?"

"The boys drive in some cattle occasionally," replied Martin, with an effort.

Bob stared in surprise. He knew this was not so, and started to speak, but thought better of it. After he had left the store, he looked back. Martin was gazing after him, a frown between his brows.

Before he left town a half-dozen of the mountain men had asked him, with an obvious attempt to make the question casual, how he liked the Basin, how long he thought his work would keep him there. Each, as he turned away, followed him with that long, speculative, brooding look. Always, heretofore, his relations with these mountain people had been easy, sympathetic and cordial. Now all at once, without reason, they held him at arm's length and regarded him with suspicious if not hostile eyes.

Puzzling over this he rode back up the road past the Power House. Thence issued Oldham to hail him. He pulled up.

"I hear you're estimating the timber in the Basin," said the gray man, with more appearance of disturbance than Bob had ever seen him display.

Bob acknowledged the accuracy of his statement.

"Indeed!" said Oldham, pulling at his clipped moustache, and after a little, "Indeed!" he repeated.

So the news had run ahead of him. Bob began to think the news important, but for some reason at which he could not as yet guess. This conviction was strengthened by the fact that from the two mountain cabins he passed on his way to the beginning of the trail, men lounged out to talk with him, and in each case the question, craftily rendered casual, was put to him as to his business in the Basin. Before one of these cabins stood a sweating horse.

"Look here," he demanded of the Carrolls, "why all this interest about our being in the Basin? Every man-jack asks me. What's the point?"

Old man Carroll stroked his long beard.

"Do they so?" he drawled comfortably. "Well, I reckon little things make news, as they say, when you're in a wild country. They ain't been no work done in the Basin for so long that we're all just nat'rally interested; that's all."

He looked Bob tranquilly in the eye with the limpid gaze of innocence before which Bob's scrutiny fell abashed. For a while his suspicions of anything unusual were almost lulled; the countryside _was_ proverbially curious of anything out of the course of events. Then, from a point midway up the steep trail, he just happened to look back, and just happened through an extraordinary combination of openings to catch a glimpse of a rider on the trail. The man was far below. Bob watched a long time, his eye fixed on another opening. Nothing appeared. From somewhere in the cañon a coyote shrilled. Another answered him from up the mountain. A moment later Bob again saw the rider through the same opening as before, but this time descending.

"A signal!" he exclaimed, in reference to the coyote howls.

On arriving at the bare rock, he dismounted and hastily looked it over on all sides. Near the stream it had been splashed. A tiny eddy out of reach of the current still held mud in suspension.

X

On his arrival at camp he found Elliott much interested over discoveries of his own. It seemed that the Easterner had spent the afternoon fishing. At one point, happening to look up, he caught sight of a man surveying him intently from a thicket. As he stared, the man drew back and disappeared.

"I couldn't see him very plainly," said Elliott. "He had a beard and an old gray hat; but that doesn't mean much of course. When I got my nerve up, and had concluded to investigate, I could hardly find a trace of him. He must wear moccasins, I think."

In return Bob detailed his own experiences. The two could make nothing of it all.

"If we were down South I'd say 'moonshiners,'" said Elliott, "but the beautiful objection to that is, that we aren't!"

"It's some mystery to do with the Basin," said Bob, "and the whole countryside is 'on'--except our boys. I don't believe California John knew a thing about it."

"Didn't act so. Question: what possibly could everybody in the mountains be interested in that the Forest Service would object to?"

"Lots of things," replied Bob promptly, "but I don't believe the mountains are unfriendly to us--as a unit. I know Martin isn't, and he was the first one I noticed as particularly worried."

Elliott reflected.

"If he's so friendly, perhaps he was a little uneasy about _us_," he suggested at length. "If somebody doesn't want the Forest Service in this neck of the woods--if that somebody is relying on the fact that we never come down in here farther than the lookout, why then it may not be very healthy here."

"Hadn't thought of that," said Bob. "That looks cheerful. But what's the point? Nine-tenths of this timber is private property anyway. There's certainly no trespass--sheep, timber or otherwise--on the government land. What in blazes is the point?"

"Give it up; but we'd better wear our guns."

Bob laughed.

"I'd have a healthy show against a man who really wanted to get me with a gun. Presumably he'd be an expert, or he wouldn't be sent."

It was agreed, however, "in view of the unsettled state of the country," as Bob gravely characterized the situation, that the young men should stick together in their work.

"There's no use taking chances, of course," Bob summed up, "but there's no sense in making fools of ourselves, either. Lord love you, I don't mind being _haunted_! They can spring as many mysterious apparitions as they please, so long as said apparitions don't take to heaving bricks. We'd look sweet and lovely, wouldn't we, to go back to headquarters and tell them we'd decided to come in because a bad man with whiskers who'd never been introduced came and looked at us out of the trees."

In pursuance of this determination Bob and Elliott combined forces closely in their next day's work. That this was not a useless precaution early became apparent. As, momentarily separated by a few feet, they passed a dense thicket, Bob was startled by a low whistle. He looked up. Within fifty feet of him, but so far in the shadow as to be indistinguishable, a man peered at him. As he caught Bob's eyes he made a violent gesture whose purport Bob could not guess.

"Did you whistle?" asked Elliott at his elbow. "What's up?"

Bob pointed; but the man had vanished. Where he had stood they found the print of moccasins.

Thrice during the day they were interrupted by this mysterious presence. On each occasion Bob saw him first. Always he gestured, but whether in warning or threat Bob could not tell. Each time be vanished as though the earth had swallowed him the instant Elliott turned at Bob's exclamation.

"I believe he's crazy!" exclaimed Elliott impatiently.

"I'd think so, too," replied Bob, "if it weren't for the way everybody acted down below. Do you suppose he's trying to warn us out or scare us off?"

"I'm going to take a crack at him next time he shows up," threatened Elliott. "I'm getting sick of this."

"No, you can't do that," warned Bob.

"I'm going to tell him so anyway."

"That's all right."

For this experiment they had not long to await the opportunity.

"Hi, there!" shouted Elliott at the place from which the mysterious apparition had disappeared; "I give you fair warning! Step out and declare yourself peaceably or accept the consequences. If you show yourself again after five minutes are up, I'll open fire!"

The empty forest gave no sign. For an hour nothing happened. Then all at once, when Elliott was entangled in a tiny thicket close at Bob's elbow, the latter was startled by the appearance of the man not ten feet away. He leaped apparently from below a rounded rock, and now stood in full view of its crown. Bob had time only to catch cognizance of a blue eye and a long beard, to realize that the man was saying something rapidly and in a low voice, when Elliott's six-shooter exploded so near his ear as almost to deafen him. At the report the man toppled backward off the rock.

"Good Lord! You've killed him!" cried Bob.

"I did not; I fired straight up!" panted Elliott, dashing past him. "Quick! We'll catch him!"

But catch him nor see him again they did not.

Ten minutes later while working in a wide open stretch of forest, they were brought to a stand by the report of a rifle. At the same instant the shock of a bullet threw a shower of dead pine needles and humus over Elliott. Another and another followed, until six had thudded into the soft earth at the young man's feet. He stood quite motionless, and though he went a little pale, his coolness did not desert him. After the sixth shot silence fell abruptly. Elliott stood still for some moments, then moved forward a single step.

"Guess the show's over," he remarked with a curt laugh. He stooped to examine the excavation the bullets had made. "Quaint cuss," he remarked a trifle bitterly. "Just wanted to show me how easy it would be. All right, my friend, I'm obliged to you. We'll quit the gun racket; but next time you show your pretty face I'll give you a run for it."

"And get shot," interposed Bob.

"If it's shoot, we'll get ours any minute. Say," went on the young man in absolutely conversational tones, "don't you see I'm mad?"

Bob looked and saw.

"Maybe you think shooting at me is one of my little niece's favourite summer-day stunts?" went on Elliott. "Well, uncle isn't used to it yet."

His tone was quiet, but his eyes burned and the muscles around his mouth were white.

"He's probably crazy, and he's armed," Bob pointed out. "For heaven's sake, go slow."

"I'm going to paddle his pantalettes, if he commands a gatling," stated Elliott.

But the mysterious visitor appeared no more that afternoon, and Elliott's resolutions had time to settle.

That night the young men turned in rather earlier than usual, as they were very tired. Bob immediately dropped into a black sleep. So deep was his slumber that it seemed to him he had just dropped off, when he was awakened by a cool hand placed across his forehead. He opened his eyes quietly, without alarm, to look full into the waning moon sailing high above. His first drowsy motion was one of astonishment, for the luminary had not arisen when he had turned in. The camp fire had fallen to a few faintly glowing coals. These perceptions came to him so gently that he would probably have dropped asleep again had not the touch on his forehead been repeated. Then he started broad awake to find himself staring at a silhouetted man leaning over him.

With a gesture of caution, the stranger motioned him to arise. Bob obeyed mechanically. The man bent toward him.

"Put on your pants and sweater and come along," he whispered guardedly.

Bob peered at him through the moonlight and recognized, vaguely, the man who had been so mysteriously pursuing them all day. He drew back.

"For the Lord's sake do what I tell you!" whispered the man. "Here!"

His hand sought the shadow of his side, and instantly gleamed with a weapon. Bob started back; but the man was holding the revolver's butt to him.

"Now come on!" besought the stranger with a strange note of pleading. "Don't wake your pardner!"

Yielding, with a pleasant thrill, to the adventure of the situation, and it must be confessed, to a strong curiosity, Bob hastily assumed his outer clothing. Then, with the muzzle of the revolver, he motioned the stranger to proceed.

Stepping cautiously they gained the open forest beyond the screen of brush. Here the man led the way more rapidly. Bob followed close at his heels. They threaded the forest aisles without hesitation, crossed a deep ravine where the man paused to drink, and began to clamber the precipitous and rocky sides of Baldy.

"That'll do for that!" growled Bob suddenly.

The man looked around as though for information.

"You needn't go so fast. Keep about three feet in front of me. And when we strike your gang, you keep close to me. _Sabe_?"

"I'm alone," expostulated the man.

Nevertheless he slackened pace.

After five minutes' climb they entered a narrow ravine gashed almost perpendicularly in the side of the mountain. At this point, however, it flattened for perhaps fifty paces, so that there existed a tiny foothold. It was concealed from every point, and nevertheless, directly to the west, Bob, pausing for breath, looked out over California slumbering in the moon. On this ledge flowed a tiny stream, and over it grew a score of cedar and fir trees. A fire smouldered near an open camp. On this the man tossed a handful of pitch pine. Immediately the flames started up.

"Here we are!" he remarked aloud.

"Yes, I see we are," replied Bob, looking suspiciously about him, "but what does all this mean?"

"I couldn't get to talk with you no other way, could I?" said the man in tones of complaint; "I sure tried hard enough! But you and your pardner stick closer than brothers."

"If you wanted to speak to me, why didn't you say so?" demanded Bob, his temper rising.

"Well, I don't know who your pardner is, or whether he's reliable, nor nothin'. A man can't be too careful. I thought mebbe you'd make a chance yourself, so I kept giving you a show to. 'Course I didn't want to be seen by him."

"Not seen by him!" broke in Bob impatiently. "What in blazes are you driving at! Explain yourself!"

"I showed myself plain only to you--except when he cut loose that time with his fool six-shooter. I thought he was further in the brush. Why didn't you make a chance to talk?"

"Why should I?" burst out Bob. "Will you kindly explain to me why I should make a chance to talk to you; and why I've been dragged out here in the dead of night?"

"No call to get mad," expostulated the man in rather discouraged tones; "I just thought as how mebbe you was still feeling friendly-like. My mistake. But I reckon you won't be giving me away anyhow?"

During this speech he had slowly produced from his hip pocket a frayed bandana handkerchief; as slowly taken off his hat and mopped his brow.

The removal of the floppy and shady old sombrero exposed to the mingled rays of the fire and the moon the man's full features. Heretofore, Bob had been able to see indistinctly only the meagre facts of a heavy beard and clear eyes.

"George Pollock!" he cried, dropping the revolver and leaping forward with both hands outstretched.

XI

Pollock took his hands, but stared at him puzzled. "Surely!" he said at last. His clear blue eyes slowly widened and became bigger. "Honest! Didn't you know me! Is that what ailed you, Bobby? I thought you'd done clean gone back on me; and I sure always remembered you for a friend!"

"Know you!" shouted Bob. "Why, you eternal old fool, how should I know you?"

"You might have made a plumb good guess."

"Oh, sure!" said Bob; "easiest thing in the world. Guess that the first shadow you see in the woods is a man you thought was in Mexico."

"Didn't you know I was here?" demanded Pollock earnestly. "Sure pop?"

"How should I know?" asked Bob again.

George Pollock's blue eyes smouldered with anger.

"I'll sure tan that promising nephew of mine!" he threatened; "I've done sent you fifty messages by him. Didn't he never give you none of them?"

"Who; Jack?"

"That's the whelp."

Bob laughed.

"That's a joke," said he; "I've been bunking with him for a year. Nary message!"

"I told Carroll and Martin and one or two more to tell you."

"I guess they're suspicious of any but the mountain people," said Bob. "They're right. How could they know?"

"That's right, they couldn't," agreed George reluctantly. "But I done told them you was my friend. And I thought you'd gone back on me sure."

"Not an inch!" cried Bob, heartily.

George kicked the logs of the fire together, filled the coffee pot at the creek, hung it over the blaze, and squatted on his heels. Bob tossed him a sack of tobacco which he caught.

"Thought you were bound for Mexico," hazarded Bob at length.

"I went," said Pollock shortly, "and I came back."

"Yes," said Bob after a time.

"Homesick," said Pollock; "plain homesick. Wasn't so bad that-a-way at first. I was desp'rit. Took a job punching with a cow outfit near Nogales. Worked myself plumb out every day, and slept hard all night, and woke up in the morning to work myself plumb out again."

He fished a coal from the fire and deftly flipped it atop his pipe bowl. After a dozen deep puffs, he continued:

"Never noticed the country; had nothing to do with the people. All I knew was brands and my bosses. Did good enough cow work, I reckon. For a fact, it was mebbe half a year before I begun to look around. That country is worse than over Panamit way. There's no trees; there's no water; there's no green grass; there's no folks; there's no nothin'! The mountains look like they're made of paper. After about a half year, as I said, I took note of all this, but I didn't care. What the hell difference did it make to me what the country was like? I hadn't no theories to that. I'd left all that back here."

He looked at Bob questioningly, unwilling to approach nearer his tragedy unless it was necessary. Bob nodded.

"Then I begun to dream. Things come to me. I'd see places plain--like the falls at Cascadell--and smell things. For a fact, I smelt azaleas plain and sweet once; and woke up in the damndest alkali desert you ever see. I thought I'd never want to see this country again; the farther I got away, the more things I'd forget. You understand."

Again Bob nodded.

"It wasn't that way. The farther off I got, the more I remembered. So one day I cashed in and come back."

He paused for some time, gazing meditatively on the coffee pot bubbling over the fire.

"It's good to get back!" he resumed at last. "It smells good; it tastes good. For a while that did me well enough.... I used to sneak down nights and look at my old place.... In summer I go back to Jim and the cattle, but it's dangerous these days. The towerists is getting thicker, and you can't trust everybody, even among the mountain folks."

"How many know you are back here?" asked Bob.

"Mighty few; Jim and his family knows, of course, and Tom Carroll and Martin and a few others. They ride up trail to the flat rock sometimes bringing me grub and papers. But it's plumb lonesome. I can't go on livin' this way forever, and I can't leave this yere place. Since I have been living here it seems like--well, I ain't no call as I can see it to desert my wife dead or alive!" he declared stoutly.

"You needn't explain," said Bob.

George Pollock turned to him with sudden relief.

"Well, you know about such things. What am I to do?"

"There are only two courses that I can see," answered Bob, after reflection, "outside the one you're following now. You can give yourself up to the authorities and plead guilty. There's a chance that mitigating circumstances will influence the judge to give you a light sentence; and there's always a possibility of a pardon. When all the details are made known there ought to be a good show for getting off easy."

"What's the other?" demanded Pollock, who had listened with the closest attention.

"The other is simply to go back home."

"They'd arrest me."

"Let them," said Bob. "Plead not guilty, and take your chances on the trial. Their evidence is circumstantial; you don't have to incriminate yourself; I doubt if a jury would agree on convicting you. Have you ever talked with anybody about--about that morning?"

"About me killing Plant?" supplied Pollock tranquilly. "No. A man don't ask about those things."

"Not even to Jim?"

"No. We just sort of took all that for granted."

"Well, that would be all right. Then if they're called on the stand, they can tell nothing. There are at least no witnesses to the deed itself."

"There's you----" suggested George.

Bob brought up short in his train of reasoning.

"But you won't testify agin me?"

"There's no reason why I should be called. Nobody even knows I was out of bed at that time. If my name happens to be mentioned--which isn't at all likely--Auntie Belle or a dozen others will volunteer that I was in bed, like the rest of the town. There's no earthly reason to connect me with it."

"But if you are called?" persisted the mountaineer.

"Then I'll have to tell the truth, of course," said Bob soberly; "it'll be under oath, you know."

Pollock looked at him strangely askant.

"I didn't much look to hear you talk that-a-way," said he.

"George," said Bob, "this will take money. Have you any?"

"I've some," replied the mountaineer sulkily.

"How much?"

"A hundred dollars or so."

"Not enough by a long patch. You must let me help you on this."

"I don't need no help," said Pollock.

"You let me help you once before," Bob reminded him gently, "if it was only to hold a horse."

"By God, that's right!" burst out George Pollock, "and I'm a fool! If they call you on the stand, don't you lie under oath for me! I don't believe you'd do it for yourself; and that's what I'm going to do for myself. I reckon I'll just plead guilty!"

"Don't be in a hurry," Bob warned him. "It isn't a matter to go off half-cock on. Any man would have done what you did. I'd have done it myself. That's why I stood by you. I'm not sure you aren't right to take advantage of what the law can do for you. Plenty do just that with only the object of acquiring other people's dollars. I don't say it's right in theory; but in this case it may be eternally right in practice. Go slow on deciding."

"You're sure a good friend, Bobby," said Pollock simply.

"Whatever you decide, don't even mention my name to any one," warned Bob. "We don't want to get me connected with the case in any man's mind. Hardly let on you remember to have known me. Don't overdo it though. You'll want a real good lawyer. I'll find out about that. And the money--how'll we fix it?"

George thought for a moment.

"Fix it with Jack," said he at length. "He'll stay put. Tell him not to tell his own father. He won't. He's reliable."

"Sure?"

"Well, I'm risking my neck on it."

"I'll simply tell him the name of the lawyer," decided Bob, "and get him actual cash."

"I'll pay that back--the other I can't," said Pollock with sudden feeling. "Here, have a cup of coffee."

Bob swallowed the hot coffee gratefully. Without speaking further, Pollock arose and led the way. When finally they had reached the open forest above the camp, the mountaineer squeezed Bob's fingers hard.

"Good-bye," said the younger man in a guarded voice. "I won't see you again. Remember, even at best it's a long wait in jail. Think it over before you decide!"

"I'm in jail here," replied Pollock.

Bob walked thoughtfully to camp. He found a fire burning and Elliott afoot.

"Thank God, you're here!" cried that young man; "I was getting scared for you. What's up?"

"You are and I am," replied Bob. "Couldn't sleep, so I went for a walk. Think that bogy-man of yours had got me?"

"I surely began to."

"Nothing doing. I guess I can snooze a little now."

"I can't," complained Elliott. "You've got me good and waked up, confound you!"

Bob kicked off his boots, and without further disrobing rolled himself into his gray blanket. As he was dropping asleep two phrases flashed across his brain. They were: "compounding a felony," and "accessory after the fact."

"Don't feel much like a criminal either," murmured Bob to himself; and after a moment: "Poor devil!"

XII

Two days later, from the advantage of the rock designated by California John, Elliott reported the agreed signal for their recall. Accordingly, they packed together their belongings and returned to headquarters.

"We're getting short-handed, and several things have come up," said Thorne. "I have work for both of you."

Having dispatched Elliott, Thorne turned to Bob.

"Orde," said he, "I'm going to try you out on a very delicate matter. At the north end lives an old fellow named Samuels. He and his family are living on a place inside the National forests. He took it up years ago, mainly for the timber, but he's one of these hard-headed old coons that's 'agin the Government,' on general principles. He never proved up, and when his attention was called to the fact, he refused to do anything. No reason why not, except that 'he'd always lived there and always would.' You know the kind."

"Ought to--put in two years in the Michigan woods," said Bob.

"Well, as a matter of fact, he gave up the claim to all intents and purposes, but now that the Yellow Pine people are cutting up toward him, he's suddenly come to the notion that the place is worth while. So he's patched up his cabin, and moved in his whole family. We've got to get a relinquishment out of him."

"If he has no right there, why not put him off?" asked Bob.

"Well, in the first place, this Samuels is a hard old citizen with a shotgun; in the second place, he has some shadow of right on which he could make a fight; in the third place, the country up that way doesn't care much for us anyway, and we want to minimize opposition."

"I see," said Bob.

"You'll have to go up and look the ground over, that's all. Do what you think best. Here are all the papers in the matter. You can look them over at your leisure."

Bob tucked the bundle of papers in his _cantinas_, or pommel bags, and left the office. Amy was rattling the stove in her open-air kitchen, shaking down the ashes preparatory to the fire. Bob stopped to look across at her trim, full figure in its starched blue, immaculate as always.

"Hullo, Colonel!" he called. "How are the legions of darkness and ignorance standing the cannonading these days? Funny paper any new jokes?"

This last was in reference to Amy's habit of reading the Congressional Record in search of speeches or legislation affecting the forests. Bob stoutly maintained, and nobody but Amy disputed him, that she was the only living woman, in or out of captivity, known to read that series of documents.

Amy shook her head, without looking up.

"What's the matter?" asked Bob solicitously. "Nothing wrong with the Hero, nor any of the Assistant Heroes?"

Thus in their banter were designated the President, and such senators as stood behind his policies of conservation.

"Then the villains must have been saying a few triumphant ha! has!" pursued Bob, referring to Fulton, Clark, Heyburn and the rest of the senatorial representatives of the anti-conservationists. "Or is it merely the stove? Let me help."

Amy stood upright, and thrust back her hair.

"Please don't," said she. "I don't feel like joking to-day."

"It _is_ something!" cried Bob. "I do beg your pardon; I didn't realize ... you know I'd like to help, if it's anything I can do."

"It is nothing to do with any of us," said Amy, seating herself for a moment, and letting her hands fall in her lap. "It's just some news that made me feel sorry. Ware came up with the mail a little while ago, and he tells us that George Pollock has suddenly reappeared and is living down at his own place."

"They've arrested him!" cried Bob.

"Not yet; but they will. The sheriff has been notified. Of course, his friends warned him in time; but he won't go. Says he intends to stay."

"Then he'll go to jail."

"And to prison. What chance has a poor fellow like that without money or influence? All he has is his denial."

"Then he denies?" asked Bob eagerly.

"Says he knows nothing about Plant's killing. His wife died that same morning, and he went away because he could not stand it. That's his story; but the evidence is strong against him, poor fellow."

"Do you believe him?" asked Bob.

Amy swung her foot, pondering.

"No," she said at last. "I believe he killed Plant; and I believe he did right! Plant killed his wife and child, and took away all his property. That's what it amounted to."

"There are hardships worked in any administration," Bob pointed out.

Amy looked at him slowly.

"You don't believe that in this case," she pronounced at last.

"Then Pollock will perjure himself," suggested Bob, to try her.

"And if he has friends worth the name, they'll perjure themselves, too!" cried Amy boldly. "They'll establish an alibi, they'll invent a murderer for Plant, they'll do anything for a man as persecuted and hunted as poor George Pollock!"

"Heavens!" returned Bob, genuinely aghast at this wholesale programme. "What would become of morals and honour and law and all the rest of it, if that sort of thing obtained?"

"Law?" Amy caught him up. "Law? It's become foolish. No man lives capable of mastering it so completely that another man cannot find flaws in his best efforts. Reuf and Schmitz are guilty--everybody says so, even themselves. Why aren't they in jail? Because of the law. Don't talk to me of law!"

"But how about ordinary mortals? You can't surely permit a man to lie in a court of justice just because he thinks his friend's cause is just!"

"I don't know anything about it," sighed Amy, as though weary all at once, "except that it isn't right. The law should be a great and wise judge, humane and sympathetic. George Pollock should be able to go to that judge and say: 'I killed Plant, because he had done me an injury for which the perpetrator should suffer death. He was permitted to do this because of the deficiency of the law.' And he should be able to say it in all confidence that he would be given justice, eternal justice, and not a thing so warped by obscure and forgotten precedents that it fits nothing but some lawyer's warped notion of logic!"

"Whew!" whistled Bob, "what a lady of theory and erudition it is!"

Amy eyed him doubtfully, then smiled.

"I'm glad you happened along," said she. "I feel better. Now I believe I'll be able to do something with my biscuits."

"I could do justice to some of them," remarked Bob, "and it would be the real thing without any precedents in that line whatever."

"Come around later and you'll have the chance," invited Amy, again addressing herself to the stove.

Still smiling at this wholesale and feminine way of leaping directly to a despotically desired ideal result, Bob took the trail to his own camp. Here he found Jack Pollock poring over an old illustrated paper.

"Hullo, Jack!" he called cheerfully. "Not out on duty, eh?"

"I come in," said Jack, rising to his feet and folding the old paper carefully. He said nothing more, but stood eyeing his colleague gravely.

"You want something of me?" asked Bob.

"No," denied Jack, "I don't know nothing I want of you. But I was told to come and get a piece of paper and maybe some money that a stranger was goin' to leave by our chimbley. It ain't there. You ain't seen it, by any chance?"

"It may have got shoved among some of my things by mistake," replied Bob gravely. "I haven't had a chance of looking. I'm just in from the Basin." At these last words he looked at Jack keenly, but that young man's expression remained inscrutable. "I'll look when I get back," he continued after a moment; "just now I've got to ride over to the mill to see Mr. Welton."

Jack nodded gravely.

"If you find them, leave them by the chimbley," said he. "I'm going to headquarters."

Bob rode to the mill. By the exercise of some diplomacy he brought the conversation to good lawyers without arousing Welton's suspicions that he could have any personal interest in the matter.

"Erbe's head and shoulders above the rest," said Welton. "He has half the business. He's for Baker's interests, and our own; and he's shrewd. Maybe you'll get into trouble yourself some day, Bob. Better send for him. He's the greatest criminal lawyer in the business."

Bob laughed heartily with his old employer. From Poole he easily obtained currency for his personal check of two hundred dollars. This would do to go on with for the time being. He wrote Erbe's name and address--in a disguised hand--on a piece of rough brown paper. This he wrapped around the money, and deposited by the alarm clock on the rough log mantelpiece of his cabin. The place was empty. When he had returned from his invited supper with the Thornes, the package had disappeared. He did not again catch sight of Jack Pollock, for next morning he started out on his errand to the north end.

XIII

At noon of the second day of a journey that led him up the winding watered valleys of the lower ranges, Bob surmounted a ridge higher than the rest and rode down a long, wide slope. Here the character of the country changed completely. Scrub oaks, young pines and chaparral covered the ground. Among this growth Bob made out the ancient stumps of great trees. The ranch houses were built of sawn lumber, and possessed brick chimneys. In appearance they seemed midway between the farm houses of the older settled plains and the rougher cabins of the mountaineers.

Bob continued on a dusty road until he rode into a little town which he knew must be Durham. Its main street contained three stores, two saloons, a shady tree, a windmill and watering trough and a dozen chair-tilted loafers. A wooden sidewalk shaded by a wooden awning ran the entire length of this collection of commercial enterprises. A redwood hitching rail, much chewed, flanked it. Three saddle horses, and as many rigs, dozed in the sun.

Bob tied his saddle horse to the rail, leaving the pack animal to its own devices. Without attention to the curious stares of the loafers, he pushed into the first store, and asked directions of the proprietor. The man, a type of the transplanted Yankee, pushed the spectacles up over his forehead, and coolly surveyed his questioner from head to foot before answering.

"I see you're a ranger," he remarked drily. "Well, I wouldn't go to Samuels's if I was you. He's give it out that he'll kill the next ranger that sets foot on his place."

"I've heard that sort of talk before," replied Bob impatiently.

"Samuels means what he says," stated the storekeeper. "He drove off the last of you fellows with a shotgun--and he went too."

"You haven't told me how to get there," Bob pointed out.

"All you have to do is to turn to the right at the white church and follow your nose," replied the man curtly.

"How far is it?"

"About four mile."

"Thank you," said Bob, and started out.

The man let him get to the door.

"Say, you!" he called.

Bob stopped.

"You might be in better business than to turn a poor man out of his house and home."

Bob did not wait to hear the rest. As he untied his saddle horse, a man brushed by him with what was evidently intentional rudeness, for he actually jostled Bob's shoulder. The man jerked loose the tie rein of his own mount, leaped to the saddle, and clattered away. Bob noticed that he turned to the right at the white church.

The four-mile ride, Bob discovered, was almost straight up. At the end of it he found himself well elevated above the valley, and once more in the sugar-pine belt. The road wound among shades of great trees. Piles of shakes, gleaming and fragrant, awaited the wagon. Rude signs, daubed on the riven shingles, instructed the wayfarer that this or that dim track through the forest led to So-and-so's shake camp.

It was by now after four of the afternoon. Bob met nobody on the road, but he saw in the dust fresh tracks which he shrewdly surmised to be those of the man who had jostled him. Samuels had his warning. The mountaineer would be ready. Bob had no intention of delivering a frontal attack.

He rode circumspectly, therefore, until he discerned an opening in the forest. Here he dismounted. The opening, of course, might be only that of a natural meadow, but in fact proved to be the homestead claim of which Bob was in search.

The improvements consisted of a small log cabin with a stone and mud chimney; a log stable slightly larger in size; a rickety fence made partly of riven pickets, partly of split rails, but long since weathered and rotted; and what had been a tiny orchard of a score of apple trees. At some remote period this orchard had evidently been cultivated, but now the weeds and grasses grew rank and matted around neglected trees. The whole place was down at the heels. Tin cans and rusty baling wire strewed the back yard; an ill-cared-for wagon stood squarely in front; broken panes of glass in the windows had been replaced respectively by an old straw hat and the dirty remains of overalls. The supports of the little verandah roof sagged crazily. Over it clambered a vine. Close about drew the forest. That was it: the forest! The "homestead" was a mere hovel; the cultivation a patch; the improvements sketchy and ancient; but the forest, become valuable for lumber where long it had been considered available only for shakes, furnished the real motive for this desperate attempt to rehabilitate old and lapsed rights.

The place was populous enough, for all its squalor. A half-dozen small children, scantily clothed, swarmed amongst the tin cans; two women, one with a baby in her arms, appeared and disappeared through the low doorway of the cabin; a horse or two dozed among the trees of the neglected orchard; chickens scratched everywhere. Square in the middle of the verandah, in a wooden chair, sat an old man whom Bob guessed to be Samuels. He sat bolt upright, facing the front, his knees spread apart, his feet planted solidly. A patriarchal beard swept his great chest; thick, white hair crowned his head; bushy white brows, like thatch, overshadowed his eyes. Even at the distance, Bob could imagine the deep-set, flashing, vigorous eyes of the old man. For everything about him, save the colour of his hair and beard, bespoke great vigour. His solidly planted attitude in his chair, the straight carriage of his back, the set of his shoulders, the very poise of his head told of the power and energy of an autocrat. Across his knees rested a shotgun.

As Bob watched, a tall youth sauntered around the corner of the cabin. He spoke to the old man. Samuels did not look around, but nodded his massive head. The young man disappeared in the cabin to return after a moment, accompanied by the individual Bob had seen in Durham. The two spoke again to the old man; then sauntered off in the direction of the barn.

Bob returned, untied his horse; and, leading that animal, approached the cabin afoot. No sooner had he emerged into view when the old man arose and came squarely and uncompromisingly to meet him. The two encountered perhaps fifty yards from the cabin door.

Bob found that a closer inspection of his antagonist rather strengthened than diminished the impression of force. The old man's eyes were flashing fire, and his great chest rose and fell rapidly. He held his weapon across the hollow of his left arm, but the muscles of his right hand were white with the power of his grip.

"Get out of here!" he fairly panted at Bob. "I warned you fellows!"

Bob replied calmly.

"I came in to see if I could get to stay for supper, and to feed my horse."

At this the old man exploded in a violent rage. He ordered Bob off the place instantly, and menaced him with his shotgun. Had Bob been mounted, Samuels would probably have shot him; but the mere position of a horseman afoot conveys subtly an impression of defencelessness that is difficult to overcome. He is, as it were, anchored to the spot, and at the other man's mercy. Samuels raged, but he did not shoot.

At the sounds of altercation, however, the whole hive swarmed. The numerous children scuttled for cover like quail, but immediately peered forth again. The two women thrust their heads from the doorway. From the direction of the stable the younger men came running. One of them held a revolver in his hand.

During all this turmoil and furore Bob had stood perfectly still, saying no word. Provided he did nothing to invite it, he was now safe from personal violence. To be sure, a very slight mistake would invite it. Bob waited patiently.

He remembered, and was acting upon, a conversation he had once held with Ware. The talk had fallen on gunfighting, and Bob, as usual, was trying to draw Ware out. The latter was, also, as usual, exceedingly reticent and disinclined to open up.

"What would you do if a man got your hands up?" chaffed Bob.

Ware turned on him quick as a flash.

"No man ever got my hands up!"

"No?" said Bob, hugely delighted at the success of his stratagem. "What do you do, then, when a man gets the cold drop on you?"

But now Ware saw the trap into which his feet were leading him, and drew back into his shell.

"Oh, shoot out, or bluff out," said he briefly.

"But look here, Ware," insisted Bob, "it's all very well to talk like that. But suppose a man actually has his gun down on you. How can you 'shoot out or bluff out'?"

Ware suddenly became serious.

"No man," said he, "can hold a gun on you for over ten seconds without his eyes flickering. It's too big a strain. He don't let go for mor'n about the hundredth part of a second. After that he has holt again for another ten seconds, and will pull trigger if you bat an eyelash. _But if you take it when his eyes flicker, and are quick, you'll get him!_"

"What about the other way around?" asked Bob.

"I never pulled a gun unless I meant to shoot," said Ware grimly.

The practical philosophy of this Bob was now utilizing. If he had ridden up boldly, Samuels would probably have shot him from the saddle. Having gained the respite, Bob now awaited the inevitable momentary relaxing from this top pitch of excitement. It came.

"I have not the slightest intention of tacking up any notices or serving any papers," he said quietly, referring to the errand of the man whom Samuels had driven off at the point of his weapon. "I am travelling on business; and I asked for shelter and supper."

"No ranger sets foot on my premises," growled Samuels.

"Very well," said Bob, unpinning and pocketing his pine tree badge. (_"Oh, I'd have died rather than do that!" cried Amy when she heard. "I'd have stuck to my guns!" "Heroic, but useless," replied her brother drily._) "I don't care whether the ranger is fed or not. But I'm a lot interested in me. I ask you as a man, not as an official."

"Your sort ain't welcome here; and if you ain't got sense enough to see it, you got to be shown!" the youngest man broke in roughly.

Bob turned to him calmly.

"I am not asking your sufferance," said he, "nor would I eat where I am not welcome. I am asking Mr. Samuels to bid me welcome. If he will not do so, I will ride on." He turned to the old man again. "Do you mean to tell me that the North End is so far behind the South End in common hospitality? We've fed enough men at the Wolverine Company in our time."

Bob let fly this shaft at a venture. He knew how many passing mountaineers paused for a meal at the cook house, and surmised it probable that at least one of his three opponents might at some time have stopped there. This proved to be the case.

"Are you with the Wolverine Company?" demanded the man who had jostled him.

"I was for some years in charge of the woods."

"I've et there. You can stay to supper," said Samuels ungraciously.

He turned sharp on his heel and marched back to the cabin, leaving Bob to follow with his horse. The two younger men likewise went about their business. Bob found himself quite alone, with only this ungracious permission to act on.

Nevertheless, quite imperturbably, Bob unsaddled, led his animal into the dark stable, threw it some of the wild hay stacked therein, washed himself in the nearby creek, and took his station on the deserted verandah. The twilight fell. Some of the children ventured into sight, but remained utterly unmoved by the young man's tentative advances. He heard people moving about inside, but no one came near him. Finally, just at dusk, the youngest man protruded his head from the doorway.

"Come to supper," said he surlily.

Bob ducked his head to enter a long, low room. Its walls were of the rough logs; its floor of hewn timbers; its ceiling of round beams on which had been thrown untrimmed slabs as a floor to the loft above. A board table stood in the centre of this, flanked by homemade chairs and stools of all varieties of construction. A huge iron cooking stove occupied all of one end--an extraordinary piece of ordnance. The light from a single glass lamp cast its feeble illumination over coarse dishes steaming with food.

Bob bowed politely to the two women, who stood, their arms crossed on their stomachs, without deigning his salutation the slightest attention. The children, of all sizes and ages, stared at him unblinking. The two men shuffled to their seats, without looking up at the visitor. Only the old man vouchsafed him the least notice....

"Set thar!" he growled, indicating a stool.

Bob found on the board that abundance and variety which always so much surprises the stranger to a Sierra mountaineer's cabin. Besides the usual bacon, beans, and bread, there were dishes of canned string-beans and corn, potatoes, boiled beef, tomatoes and pressed glass dishes of preserves. Coffee, hot as fire, and strong as lye, came in thick china cups without handles.

The meal went forward in absolute silence, which Bob knew better than to interrupt. It ended for each as he or she finished eating. The two women were left at the last quite alone. Bob followed his host to the veranda. There he silently offered the old man a cigar; the younger men had vanished.

Samuels took the cigar with a grunt of thanks, smelled it carefully, bit an inch off the end, and lit it with a slow-burning sulphur match. Bob also lit up.

For one hour and a half--two cigars apiece--the two sat side by side without uttering a syllable. The velvet dark drew close. The heavens sparkled as though frosted with light. Bob, sitting tight on what he knew was the one and only plan to accomplish his purpose, began to despair of his chance. Of his companion he could make out dimly only the white of his hair and beard, the glowing fire of his cigar. Inside the house the noises made by the inhabitants thereof increased and died away; evidently the household was seeking its slumber. A tree-toad chirped, loudest in all the world of stillness.

Suddenly, without warning, the old man scraped back his chair. Bob's heart leaped. Was his one chance escaping him? Then to his relief Samuels spoke. The long duel of silence was at an end.

XIV

"What might your name be?" inquired Samuels.

"Orde."

"I heerd of you ... what might you be doing up here?"

"I'm just riding through."

"Best thing any of you can do," commented the old man grimly.

"I wish you'd tell me now why you jumped on me so this evening," said Bob.

"If you don't know, you're a fool," growled Samuels.

"I've knocked around a good deal," persisted Bob, "and I've discovered that one side always sounds good until you hear the other man's story. I've only heard one side of this one."

"And that's all you're like to hear," Samuels told him. "You don't get no evidence out of me against myself."

Bob laughed.

"You're mighty suspicious--and I don't know as I blame you. Bless your soul, what evidence do you suppose I could get from you in a case like this? You've already made it clear enough with that old blunderbuss of yours what you think of the merits of the case. I asked you out of personal interest. I know the Government claims you don't own this place; and I was curious to know why you think you do. The Government reasoning looks pretty conclusive to a man who doesn't know all the circumstances."

"Oh, it is, is it!" cried Samuels, stung to anger. "Well, what claim do you think the Government has?"

But Bob was too wily to be put in the aggressive.

"I'm not thinking; I'm asking," said he. "They say you're holding this for the timber, and never proved up."

"I took it up bony-fidy," fairly shouted Samuels. "Do you think a man plants an orchard and such like on a timber claim. The timber is worth something, of course. Well, don't every man take up timber? What about that Wolverine Company of yours? What about the Yellow Pine people? What about everybody, everywhere? Ain't I got a right to it, same as everybody else?"

He leaned forward, pounding his knee. A querulous and sleepy voice spoke up from the interior of the cabin:

"Oh, pa, for heaven's sake don't holler so!"

The old man paused in mid-career. Over the treetops the moon was rising slowly. Its light struck across the lower part of the verandah, showing clearly the gnarled hand of the mountaineer suspended above his sturdy knee; casting into dimness the silver of his massive head. The hand descended noiselessly.

"Ain't I got my rights, same as another man?" he asked, more reasonably. "Just because I left out some little piece of their cussed red-tape am I a-goin' to be turned out bag and baggage, child, kit, and kaboodle, while fifty big men steal, just plain steal, a thousand acres apiece and there ain't nothing said? Not if I know it!"

He talked on. Slowly Bob came to an understanding of the man's position. His argument, stripped of its verbiage and self-illusion, was simplicity itself. The public domain was for the people. Men selected therefrom what they needed. All about him, for fifty years, homesteads had been taken up quite frankly for the sake of timber. Nobody made any objections. Nobody even pretended that these claims were ever intended to be lived on. The barest letter of the law had been complied with.

"I've seen a house, made out'n willow branches, and out'n coal-oil cans, called resident buildin's under the act," said Samuels, "and _they_ was so lost in the woods that it needed a compass to find 'em."

He, Samuels, on the other hand, had actually planted an orchard and made improvements, and even lived on the place for a time. Then he had let the claim lapse, and only recently had decided to resume what he sincerely believed to be his rights in the matter.

Bob did not at any point suggest any of the counter arguments he might very well have used. He listened, leaning back against the rail, watching the moonlight drop log by log as the luminary rose above the verandah roof.

"And so there come along last week a ranger and started to tack up a sign bold as brass that read: 'Property of the United States.' Property of hell!"

He ceased talking. Bob said nothing.

"Now you got it; what you think?" asked the old man at last.

"It's tough luck," said Bob. "There's more to be said for your side of the case than I had thought."

"There's a lot more goin' to be said yet," stated Samuels, truculently.

"But I'm afraid when it comes right down to the law of it, they'll decide against your claim. The law reads pretty plain on how to go about it; and as I understand it, you never did prove up."

"My lawyer says if I hang on here, they never can get me out," said Samuels, "and I'm a-goin' to hang on."

"Well, of course, that's for the courts to decide," agreed Bob, "and I don't claim to know much about law--nor want to."

"Me neither!" agreed the mountaineer fervently.

"But I've known of a dozen cases just like yours that went against the claimant. There was the Brown case in Idaho, for instance, that was exactly like yours. Brown had some money, and he fought it through up to the Supreme Court, but they decided against him."

"How was that?" asked Samuels.

Bob explained at length, dispassionately, avoiding even the colour of argument, but drawing strongly the parallel.

"Even if you could afford it, I'm almighty afraid you'd run up against exactly the same thing," Bob concluded, "and they'd certainly use the Brown case as a precedent."

"Well, I've got money!" said Samuels. "Don't you forget it. I don't have to live in a place like this. I've got a good, sawn-lumber house, painted, in Durham and a garden of posies."

"I'd like to see it," said Bob.

"Sometime you get to Durham, ask for me," invited Samuels.

"Well, I see how you feel. If I were in your fix, I'd probably fight it too, but I'm morally certain they'd get you in the courts. And it is a tremendous expense for nothing."

"Well, they've got to git me off'n here first," threatened Samuels.

Bob averted the impending anger with a soft chuckle.

"I wouldn't want the job!" said he. "But if they had the courts with them, they'd get you off. You can drive those rangers up a tree quick enough (_"You know that isn't so!" cried Amy at the subsequent recital._), but this is a Federal matter, and they'll send troops against you, if necessary."

"My lawyer----" began Samuels.

"May be dead right, or he _may_ enjoy a legal battle at the other man's expense," put in Bob. "The previous cases are all dead against him; and they're the only ammunition."

"It's a-gittin' cold," said Samuels, rising abruptly. "Let's git inside!"

Bob followed him to the main room of the cabin where the mountaineer lit a tallow candle stuck in the neck of a bottle.

"Oh, pa, come to bed!" called a sleepy voice, "and quit your palavering."

"Shet up!" commanded Samuels, setting the candle in the middle of the table, and seating himself by it. "Ain't there no decisions the other way?"

"I'm no lawyer," Bob pointed out, dropping into a stool on the other side, so that the candle stood between them, "and my opinion is of no value"--the old man grunted what might have been assent, or a mere indication of attention--"but as far as I know, there have been none. I know all the leading cases, I _think_" he added.

"So they can put me off, and leave all these other fellows, who are worse off than I be in keepin' up with what the law wants!" cried Samuels.

"I hope they'll begin action against every doubtful claim," said Bob soberly.

"It may be the law to take away my homestead, but it ain't justice," stated the old man.

Bob ventured his first aggressive movement.

"Did you ever read the Homestead Law?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Well, as you remember, that law states pretty plainly the purpose of the Homestead Act. It is to provide, out of the public lands, for any citizen not otherwise provided, with one hundred and sixty acres as a farm to cultivate or a homestead on which to live. When a man takes that land for any other purpose whatever, he commits an injustice; and when that land is recalled to the public domain, that injustice is righted, not another committed."

"Injustice!" challenged the old man; "against what, for heaven's sake!"

"Against the People," replied Bob firmly.

"I suppose these big lumber dealers need a home and a farm too!" sneered Samuels.

"Because they did wrong is no reason you should."

"Who dares say I done wrong?" demanded the mountaineer. "Look here! Why does the Government pick on me and try to drive me off'n my little place where I'm living, and leave these other fellows be? What right or justice is there in that?"

"I don't know the ins and out of it all," Bob reminded him. "As I said before, I'm no lawyer. But they've at least conformed with the forms of the law, as far as the Government has any evidence. You have not. I imagine that's the reason your case has been selected first."

"To hell with a law that drives the poor man off his home and leaves the rich man on his ill-got spoils!" cried Samuels.

The note in this struck Bob's ear as something alien. "I wonder what that echoes from!" was his unspoken thought. Aloud he merely remarked:

"But you said yourself you have money and a home in Durham."

"That may be," retorted Samuels, "but ain't I got as much right to the timber, I who have been in the country since '55, as the next man?"

"Why, of course you have, Mr. Samuels," agreed Bob heartily. "I'm with you there."

"Well?"

"But you've exercised your rights to timber claims already. You took up your timber claim in '89, and what is more, your wife and her brother and your oldest son also took up timber claims in '90. As I understand it, this is an old homestead claim, antedating the others."

Samuels, rather taken aback, stared uncertainly. He had been lured from his vantage ground of force to that of argument; how he scarcely knew. It had certainly been without his intention.

Bob, however, had no desire that the old man should again take his stand behind the impenetrable screen of threat and bluster from which he had been decoyed.

"We've all got to get together, as citizens, to put a stop to this sort of thing," he shifted his grounds. "I believe the time is at hand when graft and grab by the rich and powerful will have to go. It will go only when we take hold together. Look at San Francisco--" With great skill he drew the old man into a discussion of the graft cases in that city.

"Graft," he concluded, "is just the price the people are willing to pay to get their politics done for them while they attend to the pressing business of development and building. They haven't time nor energy to do everything, so they're willing to pay to have some things taken off their hands. The price is graft. When the people have more time, when the other things are done, then the price will be too high. They'll decide to attend to their own business."

Samuels listened to this closely. "There's a good deal in what you say," he agreed. "I know it's that way with us. If I couldn't build a better road with less money and less men than our Supervisor, Curtis, does, I'd lie down and roll over. But I ain't got time to be supervisor, even if anybody had time to elect me. There's a bunch of reformers down our way, but they don't seem to change Curtis much."

"Reformers are no good unless the rank and file of the people come to think the way they do," said Bob. "That's why we've got to start by being good citizens ourselves, no matter what the next man would do."

Samuels peered at him strangely, around the guttering candle. Bob allowed him no time to express his thought.

"But to get back to your own case," said he. "What gets me is why you destroy your homestead right for a practical certainty."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Why, I personally think it's a certainty that you will be dispossessed here. If you wait for the law to put you off, you'll have no right to take up another homestead--your right will be destroyed."

"What good would a homestead right do me these days?" demanded Samuels. "There's nothing left."

"New lands are thrown open constantly," said Bob, "and it's better, other things being equal, to have a right than to want it. On the other hand, if you voluntarily relinquish this claim, your right to take up another homestead is still good."

At the mention of relinquishment the old mountaineer shied like a colt. With great patience Bob took up the other side of the question. The elements of the problem were now all laid down--patriotism, the certainty of ultimate loss, the advisability of striving to save rights, the desire to do one's part toward bringing the land grabbers in line. Remained only so to apply the pressure of all these cross-motives that they should finally bring the old man to the point of definite action.

Bob wrestled with the demons of selfishness, doubt, suspicion, pride, stubbornness, anger, acquisitiveness that swarmed in the old man's spirit, as Christian with Apollyon. The labour was as great. At times, as he retraced once more and yet again ground already covered, his patience was overcome by a great weariness; almost the elemental obstinacy of the man wore him down. Then his very soul clamoured within him with the desire to cut all this short, to cry out impatiently against the slow stupidity or mulishness, or avariciousness, or whatever it was, that permitted the old man to agree to every one of the premises, but to balk finally at the conclusion. The night wore on. Bob realized that it was now or never; that he must take advantage of this receptive mood a combination of skill and luck had gained for him. The old man must be held to the point. The candle burned out. The room grew chill. Samuels threw an armful of pitch pine on the smouldering logs of the fireplace that balanced the massive cook stove. By its light the discussion went on. The red flames reflected strangely from unexpected places, showing the oddest inconsequences. Bob, at times, found himself drifting into noticing these things. He stared for a moment hypnotically on the incongruous juxtaposition of a skillet and an ink bottle. Then he roused himself with a start; for, although his tongue had continued saying what his brain had commanded it to say, the dynamics had gone from his utterance, and the old man was stirring restlessly as though about to bring the conference to a close. Warned by this incident, he forced his whole powers to the front. His head was getting tired, but he must continuously bring to bear against this dead opposition all the forces of his will.

At last, with many hesitations, the old man signed. The other two men, rubbing their eyes sleepily, put down their names as witnesses, and, shivering in the night chill, crawled back to rest, without any very clear idea of what they had been called on to do. Bob leaned back in his chair, the precious document clasped tight. The taut cords of his being had relaxed. For a moment he rested. To his consciousness dully penetrated the sound of a rooster crowing.

"Don't see how you keep chickens," he found himself saying; "we can't. Coyotes and cats get 'em. I wish you'd tell me."

Opposite him sat old Samuels, his head forward, motionless as a graven image. Between them the new candle, brought for the signing of the relinquishment, flared and sputtered.

Bob stumbled to his feet.

"Good night," said he.

Samuels neither moved nor stirred. He might have been a figure such as used to be placed before the entrances of wax works exhibitions, so still he sat, so fixed were his eyes, so pallid the texture of his weather-tanned flesh after the vigil.

Bob went out to the verandah. The chill air stirred his blood, set in motion the run-down machinery of his physical being. From the darkness a bird chirped loudly. Bob looked up. Over the still, pointed tops of the trees the sky had turned faintly gray. From the window streamed the candle light. It seemed unwontedly yellow in contrast to a daylight that, save by this contrast, was not yet visible. Bob stepped from the verandah. As he passed the window, he looked in. Samuels had risen to his feet, and stood rigid, his clenched fist on the table.

At the stable Bob spoke quietly to his animals, saddled them, and led them out. For some instinctive reason which he could not have explained, he had decided to be immediately about his journey. The cold gray of dawn had come, and objects were visible dimly. Bob led his horses to the edge of the wood. There he mounted. When well within the trees he looked back. Samuels stood on the edge of the verandah, peering out into the uncertain light of the dawn. From the darkness of the trees Bob made out distinctly the white of his mane-like hair and the sweep of his patriarchal beard. Across the hollow of his left arm he carried his shotgun.

Bob touched spur to his saddle horse and vanished in the depths of the forest.

XV

Bob delivered his relinquishment at headquarters, and received the news.

George Pollock had been arrested for the murder of Plant, and now lay in jail. Erbe, the White Oaks lawyer, had undertaken charge of his case. The evidence was as yet purely circumstantial. Erbe had naturally given out no intimation of what his defence would be.

Then, within a week, events began to stir in Durham County. Samuels wrote a rather violent letter announcing his change of mind in regard to the relinquishment. To this a formal answer of regret was sent, together with an intimation that the matter was now irrevocable. Somebody sent a copy of the local paper containing a vituperative interview with the old mountaineer. This was followed by other copies in which other citizens contributed letters of expostulation and indignation. The matter was commented on ponderously in a typical country editorial containing such phrases as "clothed in a little brief authority," "arrogant minions of the law," and so forth. Tom Carroll, riding through Durham on business, was treated to ugly looks and uglier words. Ross Fletcher, visiting the county seat, escaped a physical encounter with belligerent members of an inflamed populace only by the exercise of the utmost coolness and good nature. Samuels moved further by petitioning to the proper authorities for the setting aside of the relinquishment and the reopening of the whole case, on the ground that his signature had been obtained by "coercion and undue influence." On the heels of this a mass meeting in Durham was called and largely attended, at which a number of speakers uttered very inflammatory doctrines. It culminated in resolutions of protest against Thorne personally, against his rangers, and his policy, alleging that one and all acted "arbitrarily, arrogantly, unjustly and oppressively in the abuse of their rights and duties." Finally, as a crowning absurdity, the grand jury, at its annual session, overstepping in its zeal the limits of its powers, returned findings against "one Ashley Thorne and Robert Orde, in the pay of the United States Government, for arbitrary exceeding of their rights and authorities; for illegal interference with the rights of citizens; for oppression," and so on through a round dozen vague counts.

All this tumult astonished Thorne.

"I had no idea this Samuels case interested them quite so much up there; nor did I imagine it possible they would raise such a row over that old long-horn. I haven't been up in that country as much as I should have liked, but I did not suspect they were so hostile to the Service."

"They always have been," commented California John.

"All this loud mouthing doesn't mean much," said Thorne, "though of course we'll have to undergo an investigation. Their charges don't mean anything. Old Samuels must be a good deal of a demagogue."

"He's got a good lawyer," stated California John briefly.

"Lawyer? Who?"

"Erbe of White Oaks."

Thorne stared at him puzzled.

"Erbe? Are you sure of that? Why, the man is a big man; he's generally a cut or so above cases of this sort--with as little foundation for them. He's more in the line of fat fees. Here's two mountain cases he's undertaken."

"I never knew Johnny Erbe to refuse any sort of case he'd get paid for," observed California John.

"Well, he's certainly raising a dust up north," said Thorne. "Every paper all at once is full of the most incendiary stuff. I hate to send a ranger up there these days."

"I reckon the boys can take care of themselves!" put in Ross Fletcher.

California John turned to look at him.

"Sure thing, Ross," he drawled, "and a first-class row between a brutal ranger--who could take care of himself--and an inoffensive citizen would read fine in print."

"That's the idea," approved Thorne. "We can't afford a row right now. It would bring matters to a head."

"There's the Harris case, and the others," suggested Amy; "what are you going to do about them, now?"

"Carry them through according to my instructions, unless I get orders to the contrary," said Thorne. "It is the policy of the Service throughout to clear up and settle these doubtful land cases. We must get such things decided. We can't stop because of a little localized popular clamour."

"Are there many such cases up in the Durham country?" asked Bob.

"Probably a dozen or so."

"Isn't it likely that those men have got behind Samuels in order to discourage action on their own cases?"

"I think there's no doubt of it," answered Thorne, "but the point is, they've been fighting tooth and nail from the start. We had felt out their strength from the first, and it developed nothing like this."

"That's where Erbe comes in," suggested Bob.

"Probably."

"It don't amount to nothin'," said California John. "In the first place, it's only the 'nesters,' [A] the saloon crowd, who are after you for Austin's case; and the usual muck of old-timers and loafers who either think they own the country and ought to have a free hand in everything just as they're used to, or who are agin the Government on general principles. I don't believe the people at Durham are behind this. I bet a vote would give us a majority right now."

"Well, the majority stays in the house, then," observed Ross Fletcher drily. "I didn't observe none of them when I walked down the street."

"I believe with John," said Thorne. "This crowd makes an awful noise, but it doesn't mean much. The Office cannot fail to uphold us. There's nobody of any influence or importance behind all this."

Nevertheless, so skilfully was the campaign conducted, pressure soon made itself felt from above. The usual memorials and largely-signed protests were drawn up and presented to the senators from California, and the representatives of that and neighbouring districts. Men in the employ of the saloon element rode actively in all directions obtaining signatures. A signature to anything that does not carry financial obligation is the easiest thing in the world to get. Hundreds who had no grievance, and who listened with the facile indignation of the ignorant to the representations of these emissaries, subscribed their names as voters and constituents to a cause whose merits or demerits were quite uncomprehended by them. The members of Congress receiving these memorials immediately set themselves in motion. As Thorne could not officially reply to what had not as yet been officially urged, his hands were tied. A clamour that had at first been merely noisy and meaningless, began now to gain an effect.

Thorne confessed himself puzzled.

"If it isn't a case of a snowball growing bigger the farther it rolls, I can't account for it," said he. "This thing ought to have died down long ago. It's been fomented very skilfully. Such a campaign as this one against us takes both ability and money--more of either than I thought Samuels could possibly possess."

In the meantime, Erbe managed rapidly to tie up the legal aspects of the situation. The case, as it developed, proved to be open-and-shut against his client, but apparently unaffected by the certainty of this, he persisted in the interposition of all sorts of delays. Samuels continued to live undisturbed on his claim, which, as Thorne pointed out, had a bad moral effect on the community.

The issue soon took on a national aspect. It began to be commented on by outside newspapers. Publications close to the administration and thoroughly in sympathy with its forest policies, began gravely to doubt the advisability of pushing these debatable claims at present.

"They are of small value," said one, "in comparison with the large public domain of which they are part. At a time when the Forest Service is new in the saddle and as yet subjected to the most violent attacks by the special interests on the floors of Congress, it seems unwise to do anything that might tend to arouse public opinion against it."

As though to give point to this, there now commenced in Congress that virulent assault led by some of the Western senators, aimed at the very life of the Service itself. Allegations of dishonesty, incompetence, despotism; of depriving the public of its heritage; of the curtailments of rights and liberties; of folly; of fraud were freely brought forward and urged with impassioned eloquence. Arguments special to cattlemen, to sheepmen, to lumbermen, to cordwood men, to pulp men, to power men were emphasized by all sorts of misstatements, twisted statements, or special appeals to greed, personal interest and individual policy. To support their eloquence, senators supposedly respectable did not hesitate boldly to utter sweeping falsehoods of fact. The Service was fighting for its very life.

Nevertheless, persistently, the officials proceeded with their investigations. Bob had conducted his campaign so skilfully against Samuels that Thorne used him further in similar matters. Little by little, indeed, the young man was withdrawn from other work. He now spent many hours with Amy in the little office going over maps and files, over copies of documents and old records. When he had thoroughly mastered the ins and outs of a case, he departed with his pack animal and saddle horse to look the ground over in person.

Since the _éclat_ of the Samuels case, he had little hope of obtaining relinquishments, nor did he greatly care to do so. A relinquishment saved trouble in the courts, but as far as avoiding adverse public notice went, the Samuels affair showed the absolute ineffectiveness of that method. But by going on the ground he was enabled to see, with his own eyes, just what sort of a claim was in question, the improvements that had been made on it, the value both to the claimant and the Government. Through an interview he was able to gauge the claimant, to weigh his probable motives and the purity of both his original and present intentions. A number of cases thus he dropped, and that on no other than his own responsibility. They were invariably those whose issue in the courts might very well be in doubt, so that it was impossible to tell, without trying them, how the decision would jump. Furthermore, and principally, he was always satisfied that the claimant had meant well and honestly throughout, and had lapsed through ignorance, bad advice, or merely that carelessness of the letter of the legal form so common among mountaineers. Such cases were far more numerous than he had supposed. The men had, in many instances, come into the country early in its development. They had built their cabins by the nearest meadow that appealed to them; for, to all intents and purposes, the country was a virgin wilderness whose camping sites were many and open to the first comer. Only after their households had been long established as squatters did these pioneers awake to an imperfect understanding that further formality was required before these, their homes, could be legally their own. Living isolated these men, even then, blundered in their applications or in the proving up of their claims. Such might be legally subject to eviction, but Bob in his recommendations gave them the benefit of the doubt and advised that full papers be issued. In the hurried days of the Service such recommendations of field inspectors were often considered as final.

There were other cases, however, for which Bob's sympathies were strongly enlisted, but which presented such flagrant irregularities of procedure that he could not consistently recommend anything but a court test of the rights involved. To this he added a personal note, going completely into details, and suggesting a way out.

And finally, as a third class, he was able, as in Samuels's case, to declare war on behalf of the Government. Men who had already taken up all the timber claims to which they or their families were legally entitled, nevertheless added an alleged homestead to the lot. Other men were taking advantage of twists and interpretations of the law to gain possession of desirable tracts of land still included in the National Forests. These men knew the letter of the law well enough, and took pains to conform accurately to it. Their lapses were of intention. The excuses were many--so-called mineral claims, alleged agricultural land, all the exceptions to reservation mentioned in the law; the actual ends aimed at were two--water rights or timber. In these cases Bob reported uncompromisingly against the granting of the final papers. Thousands of acres, however, had been already conveyed. Over these, naturally, he had no jurisdiction, but he kept his eyes open, and accumulated evidence which might some day prove useful in event of a serious effort to regain those lands that had been acquired by provable fraud.

But on the borderland between these sharply defined classes lay many in the twilight zone. Bob, without knowing it, was to a certain extent exercising a despotic power. He possessed a latitude of choice as to which of these involved land cases should be pushed to a court decision. If the law were to be strictly and literally interpreted, there could be no doubt but that each and every one of these numerous claimants could be haled to court to answer for his short-comings. But that, in many instances, could not but work an unwarranted hardship. The expenses alone, of a journey to the state capital, would strain to the breaking point the means of some of the more impecunious. Insisting on the minutest technicalities would indubitably deprive many an honest, well-meaning homesteader of his entire worldly property. It was all very well to argue that ignorance of the law was no excuse; that it is a man's own fault if he does not fulfill the simple requirements of taking up public land. As a matter of cold fact, in such a situation as this, ignorance is an excuse. Legalizing apart, the rigid and invariable enforcement of the law can be tyrannical. Of course, this can never be officially recognized; that would shake the foundations. But it is not to be denied that the literal and universal and _invariable_ enforcement of the minute letter of any law, no matter how trivial, for the space of three months would bring about a mild revolution. As witness the sweeping and startling effects always consequent on an order from headquarters to its police to "enforce rigidly"--for a time--some particular city ordinance. Whether this is a fault of our system of law, or a defect inherent in the absolute logic of human affairs, is a matter for philosophy to determine. Be that as it may, the powers that enforce law often find themselves on the horns of a dilemma. They must take their choice between tyranny and despotism.

So, in a mild way, Bob had become a despot. That is to say, he had to decide to whom a broken law was to apply, and to whom not, and this without being given any touchstone of choice. The matter rested with his own experience, knowledge and personal judgment. Fortunately he was a beneficent despot. A man evilly disposed, like Plant, could have worked incalculable harm for others and great financial benefit to himself. That this is not only possible but inevitable is another defect of law or system. No sane man for one single instant believes that literal enforcement of every law at all times is either possible or desirable. No sane man for one single instant believes that the law can be excepted to or annulled for especial occasions without undermining the public confidence and public morals. Yet where is the middle ground?

In Bob's capacity as beneficent despot, he ran against many problems that taxed his powers. It was easy to say that Samuels, having full intention to get what he very well knew he had no right to have, and for acquiring which he had no excuse save that others were allowed to do likewise, should be proceeded against vigorously. It was likewise easy to determine that Ward, who had lived on his mountain farm, and cultivated what he could, and had himself made shakes of his timber, but who had blundered his formal processes, should be given a chance to make good. But what of the doubtful cases? What of the cases wherein apparently legality and equity took opposite sides?

Bob had adventures in plenty. For lack of a better system, he started at the north end and worked steadily south, examining with patience the pedigree of each and every private holding within the confines of the National Forests. These were at first small and isolated. Only one large tract drew his attention, that belonging to old Simeon Wright in the big meadows under Black Peaks. These meadows, occupying a wide plateau grown sparsely with lodgepole pine, covered perhaps a thousand acres of good grazing, and were held legally, but without the shadow of equity, by the old land pirate who owned so much of California. In going over both the original records, the newer geological survey maps, and the country itself, Bob came upon a discrepancy. He asked and obtained leave for a resurvey. This determined that Wright's early-day surveyor had made a mistake--no extraordinary matter in a wild country so remote from base lines. Simeon's holdings were actually just one mile farther north, which brought them to the top of a bald granite ridge. His title to this was indubitable; but the broad and valuable meadows belonged still to the Government. As the case was one of fact merely, Wright had no opportunity to contest, or to exercise his undoubtedly powerful influence. The affair served, however, to draw Bob's name and activities into the sphere of his notice.

Among the mountain people Bob was at first held in a distrust that sometimes became open hostility. He received threats and warnings innumerable. The Childs boys sent word to him, and spread that word abroad, that if this government inspector valued his life he would do well to keep off Iron Mountain. Bob promptly saddled his horse, rode boldly to the Childs' shake camp, took lunch with them, and rode back, speaking no word either of business or of threats. Having occasion to take a meal with some poor, squalid descendants of hog-raising Pike County Missourians, he detected a queer bitterness to his coffee, managed unseen to empty the cup into his canteen, and later found, as he had suspected, that an attempt had been made to poison him. He rode back at once to the cabin. Instead of taxing the woman with the deed--for he shrewdly suspected the man knew nothing of it--he reproached her with condemning him unheard.

"I'm the best friend you people have," said he. "It isn't my fault that you are in trouble with the regulations. The Government must straighten these matters out. Don't think for a minute that the work will stop just because somebody gets away with me. They'll send somebody else. And the chances are, in that case, they'll send somebody who is instructed to stick close to the letter of the law: and who will turn you out mighty sudden. I'm trying to do the best I can for you people."

This family ended by giving him its full confidence in the matter. Bob was able to save the place for them.

Gradually his refusal to take offence, his refusal to debate any matter save on the impersonal grounds of the Government servant acting solely for his masters, coupled with his willingness to take things into consideration, and his desire to be absolutely fair, won for Bob a reluctant confidence. At the north end men's minds were as yet too inflamed. It is a curious matter of flock psychology that if the public mind ever occupies itself fully with an idea, it thereby becomes for the time being blind, impervious, to all others. But in other parts of the mountains Bob was not wholly unwelcome; and in one or two cases--which pleased him mightily--men came in to him voluntarily for the purpose of asking his advice.

In the meantime the Samuels case had come rapidly to a crisis. The resounding agitation had resulted in the sending of inspectors to investigate the charges against the local officials. The first of these inspectors, a rather precise and formal youth fresh from Eastern training, was easily handled by the versatile Erbe. His report, voluminous as a tariff speech, and couched in very official language, exonerated Thorne and Orde of dishonesty, of course, but it emphasized their "lack of tact and business ability," and condemned strongly their attitude in the Durham matter. This report would ordinarily have gone no farther than the district office, where it might have been acted on by the officers in charge to the great detriment of the Service. At that time the evil of sending out as inspectors men admirably trained in theory but woefully lacking in practice and the knowledge of Western humankind was one of the great menaces to effective personnel. Fortunately this particular report came into the hands of the Chief, who happened to be touring in the West. A fuller investigation exposed to the sapient experience of that able man the gullibility of the inspector. From the district a brief statement was issued upholding the local administration.

The agitation, thus deprived of its chief hope, might very well have been expected to simmer down, to die away slowly. As a matter of fact, it collapsed. The newspaper attacks ceased; the public meetings were discontinued; the saloons and other storm centres applied their powers to a discussion of the Gans-Nelson fight. Samuels was very briefly declared a trespasser by the courts. Erbe disappeared from the case. The United States Marshal, riding up with a posse into a supposedly hostile country, found no opposition to his enforcement of the court's decree. Only old Samuels himself offered an undaunted defence, but was soon dislodged and led away by men who half-pitied, half-ridiculed his violence. The sign "Property of the U.S." resumed its place. Thorne made of the ancient homestead a ranger's post.

"It's incomprehensible as a genuine popular movement," said he on one of Bob's periodical returns to headquarters. The young man now held a commission, and lived with the Thornes when at home. "The opposition up there was so rabid and it wilted too suddenly."

"'The mutable many,'" quoted Amy.

But Thorne shook his head.

"It's as though they'd pricked a balloon," said he. "They don't love us up there, yet; but it's no worse now than it used to be here. Last week it was actually unsafe on the streets. If they were so strong for Samuels then, why not now? A mere court decision could not change their minds so quickly. I should have expected the real bitterness and the real resistence when the Marshal went up to put the old man off."

"That's the way I sized it up," admitted Bob.

"It's as if somebody had turned off the steam and the engine quit running," said Thorne, "and for that reason I'm more than ever convinced that it was a made agitation. Samuels was only an excuse."

"What for?" asked Bob.

"Struck me the same way," put in California John. "Reminded me of the war. Looked like they held onto this as a sort of first defence as long as they could, and then just abandoned it and dropped back."

"That's it," nodded Thorne. "That's my conclusion. Somebody bigger than Samuels fears investigation; and they hoped to stop our sort of investigation short at Samuels. Well, they haven't succeeded."

Amy arose abruptly and ran to her filing cases.

"That ought to be easily determined," she cried, looking over her shoulder with shining eyes. "I have the papers about all ready for the whole of our Forest. Here's a list of the private holdings, by whom held, how acquired and when." She spread the papers out on the table. "Now let's see who owns lots of land, and who is powerful enough to enlist senators, and who would fear investigation."

All four bent over the list for a few moments. Then Thorne made five dots with his pencil opposite as many names.

"All the rest are little homesteaders," said he. "One of these must be our villain."

"Or all of them," amended California John drily.

[Footnote A: "Nester"--Western term meaning squatters, small settlers--generally illegally such.]

XVI

The little council of war at once commenced an eager discussion of the names thus indicated.

"There's your own concern, the Wolverine Company," suggested Thorne. "What do you know about the way it acquired its timber?"

"Acquired in 1879," replied Amy, consulting her notes. "Partly from the Bank, that held it on mortgage, and partly from individual owners."

"Welton is no crook," struck in Bob. "Even if he'd strained the law, which I doubt; he wouldn't defend himself at this late date with any method as indirect as this."

"I think you're right on the last point," agreed Thorne. "Proceed."

"Next is the Marston N. Leavitt firm."

"They bought their timber in a lump from a broker by the name of Robinson; and Robinson got it of the old Joncal [A] Mill outfit; and heaven knows where they got it," put in California John.

"How long ago?"

"'84--the last transfer," said Amy.

"Doesn't look as though the situation ought to alarm them to immediate and violent action," observed Thorne. "Aren't there any more recent claims?" he asked Amy.

"Here's one; the Modoc Mining Company, about one thousand mineral claims, amounting to approximately 28,000 acres, filed 1903."

"That looks more promising. Patents issued in the reign of our esteemed predecessor, Plant."

"Where are most of the claims?" asked California John.

"_All_ the claims are in the same place," replied Amy.

"The Basin!" said Bob.

Amy recited the "descriptions" within whose boundaries lay the bulk of the claims.

"That's it," said Bob.

"Is there any real mineral there?" inquired Thorne.

"Not that anybody ever heard of," said California John, who was himself an old miner; "but gold is where you find it," he added cautiously.

"How's the timber?"

"It's the best stand I've seen in the mountains," said Bob.

"Well," observed Thorne, "of course it wouldn't do to say so, but I think we've run against the source of our opposition in the Samuels case."

"That explains Erbe's taking the case," put in Bob; "he's counsel for most of these corporations."

"The fact that this is not a mineral country," continued Thorne, "together with the additional considerations of a thousand claims in so limited an area, and the recent date, makes it look suspicious. I imagine the Modoc Mining Company intends to use a sawmill, rather more than a stamp mill."

"Who are they?" asked California John.

"We must find that out. Also we must ourselves ascertain just what colour of mineral there is over there."

"That ought to be on the records somewhere already," Amy pointed out.

"Plant's records," said Thorne drily.

"I'm ashamed to say I haven't looked up the mineral lands act," confessed Bob. "How did they do it?"

"Well, it's simple enough. The company made application under the law that allows mineral land in National Forests to be 'freely prospected, located, developed and patented.' It is necessary to show evidence of 'valuable deposits.'"

"Gold and silver?"

"Not necessarily. It may be even building stone, or fine clay, limestone or slate. Then it's up to the Forest Officer to determine whether the deposits are actually 'valuable' or not. You can drive a horse and cart through the law; and it's strictly up to the Forest Officer--or has been in the past. If he reports the deposits valuable, and on that report a patent is issued, why that settles it."

"Even if the mineral is a fake?"

"A patent is a patent. The time to head off the fraud is when the application is made."

"Cannot the title be upset if fraud is clearly proved?"

"I do not see how," replied Thorne. "Plant is dead. The law is very liberal. Predetermining the value of mineral deposits is largely a matter of personal judgment. The company could, as we have seen, bring an enormous influence to bear."

"Well," said Bob, "that land will average sixty thousand feet to the acre. That's about a billion and a half feet. It's a big stake."

"If the company wasn't scared, why did they try so hard to head us off?" observed California John shrewdly.

"It will do us no harm to investigate," put in Bob, his eye kindling with eagerness. "It won't take long to examine the indications those claims are based on."

"It's a ticklish period," objected Thorne. "I hate to embarrass the Administration with anything ill-timed. We have much to do straightening out what we now have on hand. You must remember we are short of men; we can't spare many now."

"I'll tell you," suggested Amy. "Put it up to the Chief. Tell him just how the matter stands. Let him decide."

"All right; I'll do that," agreed Thorne.

In due time the reply came. It advised circumspection in the matter; but commanded a full report on the facts. Time enough, the Chief wrote, to decide on the course to be pursued when the case should be established in their own minds.

Accordingly Thorne detached Bob and Ware to investigate the mineral status of the Basin. The latter's long experience in prospecting now promised to stand the Service in good stead.

The two men camped in the Basin for three weeks, until the close of which time they saw no human being. During this period they examined carefully the various ledges on which the mineral claims had been based. Ware pronounced them valueless, as far as he could judge.

"Some of them are just ordinary quartz dikes," said he. "I suppose they claim gold for them. There's nothing in it; or if this does warrant a man developing, then every citizen who lives near rock has a mine in his back yard."

Nevertheless he made his reports as detailed as possible. In the meantime Bob accomplished a rough, or "cruiser's" estimate of the timber.

As has been said, they found the Basin now quite deserted. The trail to Sycamore Flats had apparently not been travelled since George Pollock had ridden down it to give himself up to authority. Their preliminary labours finished, the two Forest officers packed, and were on the very point of turning up the steep mountain side toward the lookout, when two horsemen rode over the flat rock.

Naturally Bob and Ware drew up, after the mountain custom, to exchange greetings. As the others drew nearer, Bob recognized in one the slanting eyeglasses, the close-lipped, gray moustache and the keen, cold features of Oldham. Ware nodded at the other man, who returned his salutation as curtly.

"You're off your beat, Mr. Oldham," observed Bob.

"I'm after a deer," replied Oldham. "You are a little off your own beat, aren't you?"

"My beat is everywhere," replied Bob carelessly.

"What devilment you up to now, Sal?" Ware was asking of the other man, a tall, loose-jointed, freckle-faced and red-haired individual with an evil red eye.

"I'm earnin' my salary; and I misdoubt you ain't," sneered the individual thus addressed.

"As what; gun man?" demanded Ware calmly.

"You may find that out sometime."

"I'm not as easy as young Franklin was," said Ware, dropping his hand carelessly to his side. "Don't make any mistakes when you get around to your demonstration."

The man said nothing, but grinned, showing tobacco-stained, irregular teeth beneath his straggling, red moustache.

After a moment's further conversation the little groups separated. Bob rode on up the trail. Ware followed for perhaps ten feet, or until out of sight behind the screen of willows that bordered the stream. Then, without drawing rein, he dropped from his saddle. The horse, urged by a gentle slap on the rump, followed in the narrow trail after Bob and the pack animal. Ware slipped quietly through the willows until he had gained a point commanding the other trail. Oldham and his companion were riding peacefully. Satisfied, Ware returned, climbed rapidly until he had caught up with his horse, and resumed his saddle. Bob had only that moment noticed his absence.

"Look here, Bob," said Ware, "that fellow with Mr. Oldham is a man called Saleratus Bill. He's a hard citizen, a gun man, and brags of eleven killin's in his time. Mr. Oldham or no one else couldn't pick up a worse citizen to go deer hunting with. When you track up with him next, be sure that he starts and keeps going before you stir out of your tracks."

"You don't believe that deer hunting lie, do you?" asked Bob.

Ware chuckled.

"I was wondering if _you_ did," said he.

"I guess there's no doubt as to who the Modoc Mining Company is."

"Oldham?"

"No," said Bob; "Baker and the Power Company. Oldham is Baker's man."

Ware whistled.

"Well, I suppose you know what you're talking about," said he, "but it's pretty generally understood that Oldham is on the other side of the fence. He's been bucking Baker in White Oaks on some franchise business. Everybody knows that."

Bob opened his eyes. Casting his mind back over the sources of his information, he then remembered that intimation of the connection between the two men had come to him when he had been looked on as a member of the inner circle, so that all things were talked of openly before him; that since Plant's day Oldham had in fact never appeared in Baker's interests.

"He's up in this country a good deal," Bob observed finally. "What's he say is his business?"

"Why, he's in a little timber business, as I understand it; and he buys a few cattle--sort of general brokerage."

"I see," mused Bob.

He rode in silence for some time, breathing his horse mechanically every fifty feet or so of the steep trail. He was busily recalling and piecing together the fragments of what he had at the time considered an unimportant discussion, and which he had in part forgotten.

"It's a blind," he said at last; "Oldham is working for Baker."

"What makes you think that?"

"Something I heard once."

He rode on. The Basin was dropping away beneath them; the prospect to the north was broadening as peak after peak raised itself into the line of ascending vision. The pines, clinging to the steep, cast bars of shadow across the trail, which zigzagged and dodged, taking advantage of every ledge and each strip of firm earth. Occasionally they crossed a singing brook, shaded with willows and cottonwoods, with fragrant bay and alders, only to clamber out again to the sunny steeps.

Now Bob remembered and pieced together the whole. Baker had been bragging that he intended to pay nothing to the Government for his water power. Bob could almost remember the very words. "'They've swiped about everything in sight for these pestiferous reserves,'" he murmured to himself, "'but they encourage the honest prospector.... Oldham's got the whole matter ... '" and so on, in the unfolding of the very scheme by which these acres had been acquired. "Near headwaters," he had said; and that statement, combined with the fact that nothing had occurred to stir indistinct memories, had kept Bob in the dark. At the time "near headwaters" had meant to him the tract of yellow pine near the head of Sycamore Creek. So he had dismissed the matter. Now he saw clearly that a liberal construction could very well name the Basin as the headwaters of the drainage system from which Sycamore Creek drew, if not its source, at least its main volume of water. He exclaimed aloud in disgust at his stupidity; which, nevertheless, as all students of psychology know, typified a very common though curious phenomenon in the mental world. Suddenly he sat up straight in his saddle. Here, should Baker and the Modoc Mining Company prove to be one and the same, was the evidence of fraudulent intent! Would his word suffice? Painfully reconstructing the half-forgotten picture, he finally placed the burly figure of Welton. Welton was there too. His corroboration would make the testimony irrefutable.

Certainties now rushed to Bob's mind in flocks. If he had been stupid in the matter, it was evident that Baker and Oldham had not. The fight in Durham was now explained. All the demagogic arousing of the populace, the heavy guns brought to bear in the newspaper world, the pressure exerted through political levers, even the concerted attacks on the Service from the floors of Congress traced, by no great stretch of probabilities, to the efforts of the Power Company to stop investigation before it should reach their stealings. That, as California John had said, was the first defence. If all investigation could be called off, naturally Baker was safe. Now that he realized the investigation must, in the natural course of events, come to his holdings, what would be his second line?

Of course, he knew that Bob possessed the only testimony that could seriously damage him. Even Thorne's optimism had realized the difficulties of pressing to a conviction against such powerful interests without some evidence of a fraudulent intent. Could it be that the presence of this Saleratus Bill in company with Oldham meant that Baker was contemplating so sinister a removal of damaging testimony?

A moment's thought disabused him of this notion, however. Baker was not the man to resort to violence of this sort; or at least he would not do so before exhausting all other means. Bob had been, in a way, the capitalist's friend. Surely, before turning a gun man loose, Baker would have found out definitely whether, in the first place, Bob was inclined to push the case; and secondly, whether he could not be persuaded to refrain from introducing his personal testimony. The longer Bob looked at the state of affairs, the more fantastic seemed the hypothesis that the gun man had been brought into the country for such a purpose.

"Why do you suppose Oldham is up there with this Saleratus Bill?" he asked Ware at length.

"Search me!"

"Is Bill good for anything beside gun work?"

"Well," said Ware, judicially, "he sure drinks without an effort."

"I don't believe Oldham is interested in the liquor famine," laughed Bob. "Anything else?"

"They _may_ be after deer," acknowledged Ware, reluctantly, "though I hate to think that rattlesnake is out for anything legitimate. I will say he's a good hunter; and an A1 trailer."

"Oh, he's a good trailer, is he?" said Bob. "Well, I rather suspected you'd say that. Now I know why they're up there; they want to figure out from the signs we've left just what we've been up to."

"That's easy done," remarked Ware.

This explanation fitted. Bob had been in the Basin before, but on the business of estimating government timber. Baker knew this. Now that the Forest officer had gone in for a second time, it might be possible that he was doing the same thing; or it might be equally possible that he was engaged in an investigation of Baker's own property. This the power man had decided to find out. Therefore he had sent in, with his land man, an individual expert at deducing from the half-obliterated marks of human occupation the activities that had left them. That Oldham and his sinister companion had encountered the Forest men was a sheer accident due to miscalculation.

Having worked this out to his own satisfaction, Bob knew what next to expect. Baker must interview him. Bob was sure the young man would take his own time to the matter, for naturally it would not do to make the fact of such a meeting too public. Accordingly he submitted his report to Thorne, and went on about his further investigations, certain that sooner or later he would again see the prime mover of all these dubious activities.

He was not in the least surprised, therefore, to look up when riding one day along the lonely and rugged trail that cuts across the lower cañon of the River, to see Baker seated on the top of a round boulder. The incongruity, however, brought a smile to his lips. The sight of the round, smooth face, the humorous eyes, and the stout, city-fed figure of this very urban individual on a rock in a howling figure of this very urban individual on a rock in a howling wilderness, with the eternal mountains for a background, was inexpressibly comical.

"Hullo, merry sunshine!" called Baker, waving his hand as soon as he was certain Bob had seen him. "Welcome to our thriving little hamlet."

"Hullo, Baker," said Bob; "what are you doing 'way off here?"

"Just drifting down the Grand Canal and listening to the gondoliers; and incidentally, waiting for you. Climb off your horse and come up here and get a tailor-made cigarette."

"I'm on my way over to Spruce Top," said Bob, "and I've got to keep moving."

"Haste not, hump not, hustle not," said Baker, with the air of one quoting a hand-illuminated motto. "It will only get you somewhere. Come, gentle stranger, I would converse with thee; and I've come a long way to do it."

"I live nearer home than this," grinned Bob.

"I wanted to see you in your office," grinned back Baker appreciatively, "and this is strictly business."

Bob dismounted, threw the reins over his horse's head, and ascended to the top of the boulder.

"Fire ahead," said he; "I keep union hours."

[Footnote A: Pronounced Hone-kal.]

XVII

"Union hours suit me," said Baker. "Why work while papa has his health? What I want to know is, how high is the limit on this game anyway?"

"What do you mean?"

"This confounded so-called 'investigation' of yours? In other words, do you intend to get after me?"

"As how?"

Baker's shrewd eyes looked at him gravely from out his smiling fat face.

"Modoc Mining Company's lands."

"Then you are the Modoc Mining Company?" asked Bob.

Baker eyed him again.

"Look here, my angel child," said he in a tone of good-humoured pity, "I can make all that kind of talk in a witness box--if necessary. In any case, I didn't come 'way out here to exchange that sort with you. You know perfectly well I'm the Modoc Mining Company, and that I've got a fine body of timber under the mineral act, and all the rest of it. You know all this not only because you've got some sense, but because I told you so before a competent witness. It stands to reason that I don't mind telling you again where there are no witnesses. Now smoke up and join the King's Daughters--let's have a heart-to-heart and find out how we stand."

Bob laughed, and Baker, with entirely whole-hearted enjoyment, laughed too.

"You're next on the list," said Bob, "and, personally, I think----"

Baker held up his hand.

"Let's not exchange thinks," said he. "I've got a few thinks coming myself, you know. Let's stick to facts. Then the Government is going to open up on us?"

"Yes."

"On the grounds of fraudulent entry, I suppose."

"That's it."

"Well, they'll never win----"

"Let's not exchange thinks," Bob reminded him.

"Right! I can see that you're acting under orders, and the suit must be brought. Now I tell you frankly, as one Modern Woods-pussy of the World to another, that you're the only fellow that has any real testimony. What I want to know is, are you going to use it?"

Bob looked at his companion steadily.

"I don't see why, even without witnesses, I should give away government plans to you, Baker."

Baker sighed, and slid from the boulder.

"I'm practically certain how the cat jumps, and I've long since made my plans accordingly. Whatever you say does not alter my course of action. Only I hate to do a man an injustice without being sure. You needn't answer. Your last remark means that you are. I have too much sense to do the little Eva to you, Orde. You've got the gray stuff in your head, even if it is a trifle wormy. Of course, it's no good telling you that you're going back on a friend, that you'll be dragging Welton into the game when he hasn't got a chip to enter with, that you're betraying private confidence--well, I guess the rest is all 'thinks.'"

"I'm sorry, Baker," said Bob, "and I suppose I must appear to be a spy in the matter. But it can't be helped."

Baker's good-humoured, fat face had fallen into grave lines. He studied a distant spruce tree for a moment.

"Well," he roused himself at last, "I wish this particular attack of measles had passed off before you bucked up against us. Because, you know, that land's ours, and we don't expect to give it up on account of this sort of fool agitation. We'll win this case. I'm sorry you're mixed up in it."

"Saleratus Bill?" hinted Bob.

Baker's humorous expression returned.

"What do you take me for?" he grinned. "No, that's Oldham's bodyguard. Thinks he needs a bodyguard these days. That's what comes from having a bad conscience, I tell him. Some of those dagoes he's sold bum farms to are more likely to show up with a desire to abate him, than that anything would happen to him in these hills. Now let's get this straight; the cases go on?"

"Yes."

"And you testify?"

"Yes."

"And call Welton in for corroboration?"

"I hardly think that's necessary."

"It will be, as you very well know. I just wanted to be sure how we stood toward each other. So long."

He turned uncompromisingly away, and stumped off down the trail on his fat and sturdy legs.

Bob looked after him amazed, at this sudden termination of the interview. He had anticipated argument, sophistry, appeal to old friendship, perhaps a more dark and doubtful approach. Though conscious throughout of Baker's contempt for what the promoter would call his childish impracticability, his disloyalty and his crankiness, Bob realized that all of this had been carefully subdued. Baker's manner at parting expressed more of regret than of anger or annoyance.

XVIII

To this short and inconclusive interview, however, Baker did not fail to add somewhat through Oldham. The agent used none of the circumspection Baker had considered necessary, but rode openly into camp and asked for Bob. The latter, remembering Oldham's reputed antagonism to Baker, could not but admire the convenience of the arrangement. The lank and sinister figure of Saleratus Bill was observed to accompany that of the land agent, but the gun man, at a sign from his principal; did not dismount. He greeted no one, but sat easily across his saddle, holding the reins of both horses in his left hand, his jaws working slowly, his evil, little eyes wandering with sardonic interest over the people and belongings at headquarters. Ware nodded to him. The man's eyes half closed and for an instant the motion of his jaw quickened. Otherwise he made no sign.

Oldham drew Bob one side.

"I want to talk to you where we won't be interrupted," he requested.

"Talk on," said Bob, seating himself on a log. "The open is as good a place as another; you can see your eavesdroppers there."

Oldham considered this a moment, then nodded his head, and took his place by the young man's side.

"It's about those Modoc lands," said he.

"I suppose so," said Bob.

"Mr. Baker tells me you fully intend to prosecute a suit for their recovery."

"I believe the Government intends to do so. I am, of course, only the agent of the Government in this or any other matter."

"In other words, you have received orders to proceed?"

"I would hardly be acting without them, would I?"

"Of course; I see. Mr. Baker is sometimes hasty. Assuming that you cared to do so, is there no way you could avoid this necessity?"

"None that I can discover. I must obey orders as long as I'm a government officer."

"Exactly," said Oldham. "Now we reach the main issue. What if you were not a government officer?"

"But I am."

"Assume that you were not."

"Naturally my successor would carry out the same orders."

"But," suggested Oldham, "it might very well be that another man would not be--well, quite so qualified to carry out the case--"

"You mean I'm the only one who heard Baker say he was going to cheat the Government," put in Bob bluntly.

"You and Mr. Welton and Mr. Baker were the only ones present at a certain interview," he amended. "Now, in the event that you were not personally in charge of the case would you feel it necessary to volunteer testimony unsuspected by anybody but you three?"

"If I were to resign, I should volunteer nothing," stated Bob.

Oldham's frosty eyes gleamed with satisfaction behind their glasses.

"That's good!" he cried.

"But I have no intention of resigning," Bob concluded.

"That is a matter open to discussion," Oldham took him up. "There are a great many reasons that you have not yet considered."

"I'm ready to hear them," said Bob.

"Look at the case as it stands. In the first place, you cannot but admit that Mr. Baker and the men associated with him have done great things for this country. When they came into it, it was an undeveloped wilderness, supplying nothing of value to civilization, and supporting only a scattered and pastoral people. The valley towns went about their business on horse cars; they either paid practically a prohibitive price for electricity and gas, or used oil and candles; they drank well water and river water. The surrounding country was either a desert given over to sage brush and jack rabbits, or raised crops only according to the amount of rain that fell. You can have no conception, Mr. Orde, of the condition of the country in some of these regions before irrigation. In place of this the valley people now enjoy rapid transportation, not only through the streets of their towns, but also by trolley lines far out in all directions. They have cheap and abundant electric light and power. They possess pure drinking water. Above all they raise their certain crops irrespective of what rains the heavens may send."

Bob admitted that electricity and irrigation are good things.

"These advantages have drawn people. I am not going to bore you with a lot of statistics, but the population of all White Oaks County, for instance, is now above fifty thousand people, where before was a scant ten. But how much agricultural wealth do you suppose these people _export_ each year? Not how much they _produce_, but their net exportations?"

"Give it up."

"Fifty million dollars worth! That's a marvellous per capita."

"It is indeed," said Bob.

"Now," said Oldham impressively, "that wealth would be absolutely non-existent, that development could not have taken place, _did_ not take place, until men of Mr. Baker's genius and courage came along to take hold. I have personally the greatest admiration for Mr. Baker as a type of citizen without whom our resources and possibilities would be in the same backward condition as obtains in Canada."

"I'm with you there," said Bob.

"Mr. Baker has added a community to the state, cities to the commonwealth, millions upon millions of dollars to the nation's wealth. He took long chances, and he won out. Do not you think in return the national resources should in a measure reward him for the advantages he has conferred and the immense wealth he has developed? Mind you, Mr. Baker has merely taken advantage of the strict letter of the law. It is merely open to another interpretation. He needs this particular body of timber for the furtherance of one of his greatest quasi-public enterprises; and who has a better right in the distribution of the public domain than the man who uses it to develop the country? The public land has always been intended for the development of resources, and has always been used as such."

Oldham talked fluently and well. He argued at length along the lines set forth above.

"You have to use lubricating oil to overcome friction on a machine," he concluded. "You have to subsidize a railroad by land grants to enter a new country. By the same immutable law you must offer extraordinary inducements to extraordinary men. Otherwise they will not take the risks."

"I've nothing to do with the letter of the law," Bob replied; "only with its spirit and intention. The main idea of the mineral act is to give legitimate miners the timber they need for legitimate mining. Baker does not pretend, except officially, that he ever intends to do anything with his claims. He certainly has done a great work for the country. I'll agree to everything you say there. But he came into California worth nothing, and he is now reputed to be worth ten millions and to control vast properties. That would seem to be reward enough for almost anybody. He does not need this Basin property for any of his power projects, except that its possession would let him off from paying a very reasonable tax on the waterpower he has been accustomed to getting free. Cutting that timber will not develop the country any further. I don't see the value of your argument in the present case."

"Mr. Baker has invested in this project a great many millions of dollars," said Oldham. "He must be adequately safeguarded. To further develop and even to maintain the efficiency of what he has, he must operate to a large extent on borrowed capital. Borrowing depends on credit; and credit depends on confidence. If conditions are proved to be unstable, capital will prove more than cautious in risking itself. That is elementary. Surely you can see that point."

"I can see that, all right," admitted Bob.

"Well," went on Oldham, taking heart, "think of the responsibility you are assuming in pushing forward a mere technicality, and a debatable technicality at that. You are not only jeopardizing a great and established business--I will say little of that--but you are risking the prosperity of a whole countryside. If Mr. Baker's enterprises should quit this section, the civilization of the state would receive a serious setback. Thousands of men would be thrown out of employment, not only on the company's works, but all along the lines of its holdings; electric light and power would increase in price--a heavy burden to the consumer; the country trolley lines must quit business, for only with water-generated power can they compete with railroads at all; fertile lands would revert to desert--"

"I am not denying the value of Mr. Baker's enterprises," broke in Bob; "but what has a billion and a half of timber to do with all this?"

"Mr. Baker has long been searching for an available supply for use in the enterprises," said Oldham, eagerly availing himself of this opening. "You probably have a small idea of the immense lumber purchases necessary for the construction of the power plants, trolley lines, and roads projected by Mr. Baker. Heretofore the company has been forced to buy its timber in the open market."

"This would be cheaper," suggested Bob.

"Much."

"That would increase net profits, of course. I suppose that would result in increased dividends. Or, perhaps, the public would reap the benefit in decreased cost of service."

"Undoubtedly both. Certainly electricity and transportation would cheapen."

"The same open markets can still supply the necessary timber?"

"At practically prohibitive cost," Oldham reminded.

"Which the company has heretofore afforded--and still paid its dividends," said Bob calmly. "Well, Mr. Oldham, even were I inclined to take all you say at its face value; even were I willing to admit that unless Mr. Baker were given this timber his business would fail, the country would be deprived of the benefits of his enterprise, and the public seriously incommoded, I would still be unable to follow the logic of your reasoning. Mind you, I do not admit anything of the kind. I do not anticipate any more dire results than that the dividends will remain at their present per cent. But even supposing your argument to be well founded, this timber belongs to the people of the United States. It is part of John Jones's heritage, whether John Jones lives in White Oaks or New York. Why should I permit Jones of New York to be robbed in favour of Jones of White Oaks--especially since Jones of New York put me here to look after his interests for him? That's the real issue; and it's very simple."

"You look at the matter from a wrong point of view----" began Oldham, and stopped. The land agent was shrewd, and knew when he had come to an _impasse_.

"I always respect a man who does his duty," he began again, "and I can see how you're tied up in this matter. But a resignation could be arranged for very easily. Mr. Baker knows thoroughly both your ability and experience, and has long regretted that he has not been able to avail himself of them. Of course, as you realize, the great future of all this country is not along the lines even of such great industries as lumber manufacture, but in agriculture and in waterpower engineering. Here, more than anywhere else in the world, Water is King!"

A recollection tickled Bob. He laughed outright. Oldham glanced at him sharply.

"Oh, the Lucky Lands," said he at last; "I'd forgotten you had ever been there. Well, the saying is as true now as it was then. The great future for any young man is along those lines. I am sure--in fact, I am told to say with authority--that Mr. Baker would be only too pleased to have you come in with him on this new enterprise he is opening up."

"As how?"

"As stockholder to the extent of ten thousand shares preferred, and a salaried position in the field, of course. But, that is a small matter compared with the future opportunities--"

"It's cheering to know that I'm worth so much," interrupted Bob. "Shares now worth par?"

"A fraction over."

"One hundred thousand and some odd dollars," observed Bob. "It's a nice tidy bribe; and if I were any sort of a bribe taker at all, I'd surely feel proud and grateful. Only I'm not. So you might just as well have made it a million, and then I'd have felt still more set up over it."

"I hope you don't think I'm a bribe giver, either," said Oldham. "I admit my offer was not well-timed; but it has been long under contemplation, and I mentioned it as it occurred to me."

Having thus glided over this false start, the land agent promptly opened another consideration.

"Perhaps we are at fatal variance on our economics," said he; "but how about the justice of the thing? When you get right down to cases, how about the rest of them? I'll venture to say there are not two private timber holdings of any size in this country that have been acquired strictly within the letter of the law. Do you favour general confiscation?"

"I believe in the law," declared Bob, "and I do not believe your statement."

Oldham rose.

"I tell you this, young man," he said coldly: "you can prosecute the Modoc Company or not, as you please--or, perhaps, I should say, you can introduce your private testimony or not, as you please. We are reasonable; and we know you cannot control government prosecutions. But the Modoc Company intends that you play no favourites."

"I do not understand you," said Bob with equal coldness.

"If the Modoc Company is prosecuted, we will make it our business to see that every great land owner holding title in this Forest is brought into the courts for the same offence. If the letter of the law is to be enforced against us, we'll see that it is enforced against all others."

Bob bowed. "Suits me," said he.

"Does it?" sneered Oldham. He produced a bundle of papers bound by a thick elastic. "Well, I've saved you some trouble in your next case. Here are certified copies of the documents for it, copied at Sacramento, and subscribed to before a notary. Of course, you can verify them; but you'll find them accurate."

He handed them to Bob, who took them, completely puzzled. Oldham's next speech enlightened him.

"You'll find there," said the older man, tapping the papers in Bob's hand, "the documents in full relating to the Wolverine Company's land holdings, and how they were acquired. After looking them over, we shall expect you to bring suit. If you do not do so, we will take steps to force you to do so--or, failing this, to resign!"

With these words, Oldham turned square on his heel and marched to where Saleratus Bill was stationed with the horses. Bob stared after him, the bundle of papers in his hand. When Oldham had mounted, Bob looked down on these papers.

"The second line of defence!" said he.

XIX

Bob's first interest was naturally to examine these documents. He found them, as Oldham had said, copies whose accuracy was attested by the copyist before a notary. They divided themselves into two classes. The first traced the titles by which many small holdings had come into the hands of the corporation known as the Wolverine Company. The second seemed to be some sort of finding by an investigating commission. This latter was in the way of explanation of the title records, so that by referring from one to the other, Bob was able to trace out the process by which the land had been acquired. This had been by "colonizing," as it was called. According to Federal law, one man could take up but one hundred and sixty acres of government land. It had, therefore, been the practice to furnish citizens with the necessary capital so to do; after which these citizens transferred their land to the parent company. This was, of course, a direct evasion of the law; as direct an evasion as Baker's use of the mineral lands act.

For a time Bob was unable to collect his reasoning powers adequately to confront this new fact. His thoughts were in a whirl. The only thing that stood out clearly was the difference in the two cases. He knew perfectly that after Baker's effort to lift bodily from the public domain a large block of its wealth every decent citizen should cry, "Stop thief!" Instinctively he felt, though as yet he could not analyze the reasons for so feeling, that to deprive the Wolverine Company of its holdings would work a crying injustice. Yet, to all intents and purposes, apparently, the cases were on all fours. Both Welton and Baker had taken advantage of a technicality.

When Bob began to think more clearly, he at first laid this difference to a personal liking, and was inclined to blame himself for letting his affections cloud his sense of justice. Baker was companionable, jolly, but at the same time was shrewd, cold, calculating and unscrupulous in business. He could be as hard as nails. Welton, on the other hand, while possessing all of Baker's admirable and robust qualities, had with them an endearing and honest bigness of purpose, limited only--though decidedly--by his point of view and the bounds of his practical education. Baker would steal land without compunction; Welton would take land illegally without thought of the illegality, only because everybody else did it the same way.

But should the mere fact of personality make any difference in the enforcing of laws? That one man was amiable and the other not so amiable had nothing to do with eternal justice. If Bob were to fulfil his duty only against those he disliked, and in favour of his friends, he had indeed slipped back to the old days of henchman politics from which the nation was slowly struggling. He reared his head at this thought. Surely he was man enough to sink private affairs in the face of a stern public duty!

This determined, Bob thought the question settled. After a few minutes, it returned as full of interrogation points as ever. Leaving Baker and Welton entirely out of the question, the two cases still drew apart. One was just, the other unjust. Why? On the answer depended the peace of Bob's conscience. Of course he would resign rather than be forced to prosecute Welton. That was understood, and Bob resolutely postponed contemplation of the necessity. He loved this life, this cause. It opened out into wider and more beautiful vistas the further he penetrated into it. He conceived it the only life for which he was particularly fitted by temperament and inclination. To give it up would be to cut himself off from all that he cared for most in active life; and would be to cast him into the drudgery of new and uncongenial lines. That sacrifice must be made. It's contemplation and complete realization could wait. But a deeper necessity held Bob, the necessity of resolving the question of equities which the accident of his personal knowledge of Welton and Baker had evoked. He had to prove his instincts right or wrong.

He was not quite ready to submit the matter officially, but he wished very much to talk it over with some one. Glancing up he caught sight of the glitter of silver and the satin sheen of a horse. Star was coming down through the trees, resplendent in his silver and carved leather trappings, glossy as a bird, stepping proudly and daintily under the curbing of his heavy Spanish bit. In the saddle lounged the tall, homely figure of old California John, clad in faded blue overalls, the brim of his disreputable, ancient hat flopped down over his lean brown face, and his kindly blue eyes. Bob signalled him.

"John!" he called, "come here! I want to talk with you!"

The stately, beautiful horse turned without any apparent guiding motion from his master, stepped the intervening space and stopped. California John swung from the saddle. Star, his head high, his nostril wide, his eye fixed vaguely on some distant vision, stood like an image.

"I want a good talk with you," repeated Bob.

They sat on the same log whereon Oldham and Bob had conferred.

"John," said Bob, "Oldham has been here, and I don't know what to do."

California John listened without a single word of comment while Bob detailed all the ins and outs of the situation. When he had finished, the old man slowly drew forth his pipe, filled it, and lit it.

"Son," said he, "I'm an old man, and I've lived in this state since the early gold days. That means I've seen a lot of things. In all that time the two most valuable idees I've dug up are these: in the first place, it don't never do to go off half-cock; and in the second place, if you want to know about a thing, go to headquarters for it."

He removed his pipe and blew a cloud.

"Half of that's for me and the other half's for you," he resumed. "I ain't going to give you my notions until I've thought them over a little; that's for me. As for you, if I was you, I'd just amble over and talk the whole matter over with Mr. Welton and see what he thinks about his end of it."

XX

This advice seemed so good that Bob acted upon it at his earliest opportunity. He found Welton riding his old brindle mule in from the bull donkey where he had been inspecting the work. The lumberman's red, jolly face lit up with a smile of real affection as he recognized Bob, an expression quickly changed, however, as he caught sight of the young man's countenance.

"What's up, Bobby?" he inquired with concern; "anything happened?"

"Nothing yet; but I want to talk with you."

Welton immediately dismounted, with the laborious clumsiness of the man brought up to other means of locomotion, tied Jane to a tree, and threw himself down at the foot of a tall pine.

"Let's have it," said he.

"There have come into my hands some documents," said Bob, "that embarrass me a great deal. Here they are."

He handed them to Welton. The lumberman ran them through in silence.

"Well," he commented cheerfully, "they seem to be all right. What's the matter?"

"The matter is with the title to the land," said Bob.

Welton looked the list of records over more carefully.

"I'm no lawyer," he confessed at last; "but it don't need a lawyer to see that this is all regular enough."

"Have you read the findings of the commission?"

"That stuff? Sure! That don't amount to anything. It's merely an expression of opinion; and mighty poor opinion at that."

"Don't you see what I'm up against?" insisted Bob. "It will be in my line of duty to open suit against the Wolverine Company for recovery of those lands."

"Suit!" echoed Welton. "You talk foolish, Bob. This company has owned these lands for nearly thirty years, and paid taxes on them. The records are all straight, and the titles clear."

"It begins to look as if the lands were taken up contrary to law," insisted Bob; "and, if so, I'll be called upon to prosecute." "Contrary to your grandmother," said Welton contemptuously. "Some of your young squirts of lawyers have been reading their little books. If these lands were taken up contrary to law, why so were every other timber lands in the state."

"That may be true, also," said Bob. "I don't know."

"Well, will you tell me what's wrong with them?" asked Welton.

"It appears as though the lands were 'colonized,'" said Bob; "or, at least, such of them as were not bought from the bank."

"I guess you boys have a new brand of slang," confessed Welton.

"Why, I mean the tract was taken direct from many small holders in hundred-and-sixty-acre lots," explained Bob.

Welton stared at him.

"Well, will you tell me how in blazes you were going to get together a piece of timber big enough to handle in any other way?" he demanded at last. "All one firm could take up by itself was a quarter section, and you're not crazy enough to think any concern could afford to build a plant for the sake of cutting that amount! That's preposterous! A man certainly has a right under the law to sell what is his to whom-ever he pleases."

"But the 'colonists,'" said Bob, "took up this land merely for the purpose of turning it over to the company. The intention of the law is that the timber is for the benefit of the original claimant."

"Well, it's for his benefit, if he gets paid for it, ain't it?" demanded Welton ingenuously. "You can't expect him to cut it himself."

"That is the intent of the law," insisted Bob, "and that's what I'll be called upon to do. What shall I do about it?"

"Quit the game!" said Welton, promptly and eagerly. "You can see yourself how foolish it is. That crew of young squirts just out of school would upset the whole property values of the state. Besides, as I've just shown you, it's foolish. Come on back in a sensible business. We'd get on fine!"

Bob shook his head.

"Then go ahead; bring your case," said Welton. "I don't mind."

"I do," said Bob. "It looks like a strong case to me."

"Don't bring it. You don't need to report in your evidence as you call it. Just forget it."

"Even if I were inclined to do so," said Bob, "I wouldn't be allowed. Baker would force the matter to publicity."

"Baker," repeated Welton; "what has he got to do with it?"

"It's in regard to the lands in the Basin. He took them up under the mineral act, and plainly against all law and decency. It's the plainest case of fraud I know about, and is a direct steal right from under our noses."

"I think myself he's skinning things a trifle fine," admitted Welton; "but I can't see but what he's complied with the law all right. He don't have any right to that timber, I'll agree with you there; but it looks to me like the law had a hole in it."

"If he took that land up for other purposes than an honest intention to mine on it, the title might be set aside," said Bob.

"You'd have a picnic proving anything of the sort one way or another about what a man intends to do," Welton pointed out.

"Do you remember one evening when Baker was up at camp and was kicking on paying water tolls? It was about the time Thorne first came in as Supervisor, and just before I entered the Service."

"Seems to me I recall something of the sort."

"Well, you think it over. Baker told us then that he had a way of beating the tolls, and mentioned this very scheme of taking advantage of the mineral laws. At the time he had a notion of letting us in on the timber."

"Sure! I remember!" cried Welton.

"Well, if you and I were to testify as to that conversation, we'd establish his intent plainly enough."

"Sure as you're a foot high!" said Welton slowly.

"Baker knows this; and he's threatened, if I testify against him, to bring the Wolverine Company into the fight. _Now_ what should I do about it?"

Welton turned on him a troubled eye.

"Bob," said he, "there's more to this than you think. I didn't have anything to do with this land until just before we came out here. One of the company got control of it thirty year ago. All that flapdoodle," he struck the papers, "didn't mean nothing to me when I thought it came from your amatoore detectives. But if Baker has this case looked up there's something to it. Go slow, son."

He studied a moment.

"Have you told your officers of your own evidence against Baker?"

"Not yet."

"Or about these?" he held up the papers.

"No."

"Well, that's all right. Don't."

"It's my duty----"

"Resign!" cried Welton energetically; "then it won't be your duty. Nobody knows about what you know. If you're not called on, you've nothing to say. You don't have to tell all you know."

A vision swept before Bob's eyes of a noble forest supposedly safe for all time devoted by his silence to a private greed.

"But concealing evidence is as much of a perjury as falsifying it--" he began. A second vision flashed by of a ragged, unshorn fugitive, now in jail, whom his testimony could condemn. He fell silent.

"Let sleeping dogs lie," said Welton, earnestly. "You don't know the harm you may do. Your father's reelection comes this fall, you know, and even if it's untrue, a suit of this character--" He in his turn broke off.

"I don't see how this could hurt father's chances--either way," said Bob, puzzled.

"Well, you know how I think about it," said Welton curtly, rising. "You asked me."

He stumped over to Jane, untied the rope with his thick fingers, clambered aboard. From the mule's back he looked down on Bob, his kindly, homely face again alight with affection.

"If you never have anything worse on your conscience than keeping your face shut to protect a friend from injustice, Bobby," he said, "I reckon you won't lose much sleep."

With these words he rode away. Bob, returning to camp, unsaddled, and, very weary, sought his cabin. His cabin mate was stolidly awaiting him, seated on the single door step.

"My friend that was going to leave me some money in my bunk was coming to-day," said Jack Pollock. "It ain't in your bunk by mistake?"

"Jack," said Bob, weariedly throwing all the usual pretence aside, "I'm ashamed to say I clean forgot it; I had such a job on hand. I'll ride over and get it now."

"Don't understand you," said Jack, without moving a muscle of his face.

Bob smiled at the serious young mountaineer, playing loyally his part even to his fellow-conspirator.

"Jack," said he, "I guess your friend must have been delayed. Maybe he'll get here later."

"Quite like," nodded Jack gravely.

XXI

Bob made the earliest chance to obtain California John's promised advice. The old man was unlettered, but his understanding was informed by a broad and gentle spirit and long experience of varied things. On this the head ranger himself touched.

"Bob," he began, "I'm an old man, and I've lived through a lot. When I come into this state the elk and deer and antelope was running out on the plains like sheep. I mined and prospected up and down these mountains when nobody knew their names. There's hardly a gold camp you can call over that I ain't been in on; nor a set of men that had anything to do with making the state that I ain't tracked up with. Most of the valley towns wasn't in existence those days, and the rest was little cattle towns that didn't amount to anything. The railroad took a week to come from Chicago. There wasn't any railroad up the coast. They hadn't begun to irrigate much. Where the Redlands and Riverside orange groves are there was nothing but dry washes and sage-brush desert. It cost big money to send freight. All that was shipped out of the country in a season wouldn't make up one shipment these days. I suppose to folks back East this country looked about as far off as Africa. Even to folks living in California the country as far back as these mountains looked like going to China. They got all their lumber from the Coast ranges and the lower hills. This back here was just wilderness, so far off that nobody rightly thought of it as United States at all.

"Of course, by and by the country settled up a little more but even then nobody ever thought of timber. You see, there was no market to amount to anything out here; and a few little jerk-water mills could supply the whole layout easy. East, the lumber in Michigan and Wisconsin and Minnesota never was going to give out. In those days you could hardly _give_ away land up in this country. The fellow that went in for timber was looked on as a lunatic. It took a big man with lots of sand to see it at all."

Bob nodded, his eye kindling with the beginnings of understanding.

"There was a few of them. They saw far enough ahead, and they come in here and took up some timber. Other folks laughed at them; but I guess they're doing most of the laughing now. It took nerve, and it took sense, and it took time, and it took patience." California John emphasized each point with a pat of his brown, gnarled hand.

"Now those fellows started things for this country. If they hadn't had the sheer nerve to take up that timber, nobody would have dared do anything else--not for years anyhow. But just the fact that the Wolverine Company bought big, and other big men come in--why it give confidence to the people. The country boomed right ahead. If nobody had seen the future of the country, she'd have been twenty year behind. Out West that means a hell of a lot of value, let me tell you!"

"The timber would have belonged to the Government," Bob reminded him.

"I'm a Forest officer," said California John, "and what's more, I was a Forest officer for a good many years when there was nothin' to it but kicks. There can't nobody beat me in wishing a lot of good forest land was under the Service instead of being due to be cut up by lumbermen. But I've lived too long not to see the point. You can't get benefits without paying for 'em. The United States of America was big gainers because these old fellows had the nerve just to come in and buy. It ain't so much the lumber they saw and put out where it's needed--though that's a good deal; and it ain't so much the men they bring into the country and give work to--though that's a lot, too. _It's the confidence they inspire_, it's the lead they give. That's what counts. All the rest of these little operators, and workmen, and storekeepers, and manufacturers wouldn't have found their way out here in twenty years if the big fellows hadn't led the way. If you should go over and buy ten thousand acres of land by Table Mountain to-morrow, next year there'd be a dozen to follow you in and do whatever you'd be doing. And while it's the big fellow that gives the lead, _it's the little fellow that makes the wealth of the country!_"

Bob stared at the old man in fascinated surprise. This was a new California John, this closely reasoning man, with, clear, earnest eyes, laying down the simple doctrine taught by a long life among men.

"The Government gives alternate sections of land to railroads to bring them in the country," went on California John. "In my notion all this timber land in private hands is where it belongs. It's the price the Government paid for wealth."

"And the Basin----" cried Bob.

"What the hell more confidence does this country need now?" demanded California John fiercely; "what with its mills and its trolleys, its vineyards and all its big projects. What right has this man Baker to get pay for what he ain't done?"

The distinction Bob had sensed, but had not been able to analyze, leaped at him. The equities hung in equal balance. On one side he saw the pioneer, pressing forward into an unknown wilderness, breaking a way for those that could follow, holding aloft a torch to illumine dark places, taking long and desperate chances, or seeing with almost clairvoyant power beyond the immediate vision of men; waiting in faith for the fulfillment of their prophecies. On the other he saw the plunderer, grasping for a wealth that did not belong to him, through values he had not made. This fundamental difference could never again, in Bob's mind, be gainsaid.

Nevertheless though a difference in deeper ethics, it did not extend to the surface of things by which men live. It explained; but did it excuse, especially in the eye of abstract ethics? Had not these men broken the law, and is not the upholding of the law important in its moral effect on those that follow?

"Just the same," he voiced this thought to California John, "the laws read then as they do to-day."

"On the books, yes," replied the old man, slowly; "but not in men's ideas. You got to remember that those fellows held pretty straight by what the law _says_. They got other men to take up the timber, and then had it transferred to themselves. That's according to law. A man can do what he wants with his own. You know."

"But the intention of the law is to give every man a----"

"That's what we go by now," interrupted California John.

"What other way is there to go by?"

"None--now. But in those days that was the settled way to get timber land. They didn't make any secret of it. They just looked at it as the process to go through with, like filing a deed, or getting two witnesses. It was a nuisance, and looked foolish, but if that was the way to do it, why they'd do it that way. Everybody knew that. Why, if a man wanted to get enough timber to go to operating on, his lawyer would explain to him how to do it; any of his friends that was posted would show him the ropes; and if he'd take the trouble to go to the Land Office itself, the clerk would say: 'No, Mr. Man, I can't transfer to you, personally, more'n a hundred and sixty acres, but you can get some of your friends to take it up for you.'[Footnote: A fact.] Now will you tell me how Mr. Man could get it any straighter than that?"

Bob was seeing a great light. He nodded.

"They've changed the rules of the game!" said California John impressively, "and now they want to go back thirty year and hold these fellows to account for what they did under the old rules. It don't look to me like it's fair."

He thought a moment.

"I suppose," he remarked reflectively, going off on one of his strange tangents, and lapsing once more into his customary picturesque speech, "that these old boys that burned those Salem witches was pretty well thought of in Salem--deacons in the church, and all such; p'ticular elect, and held up to the kids for high moral examples? had the plumb universal approval in those torchlight efforts of theirn?"

"So I believe," said Bob.

"Well," drawled California John, stretching his lank frame, "suppose one of those old bucks had lived to now--of course, he couldn't, but suppose he did--and was enjoying himself and being a good citizen. And suppose some day the sheriff touched him on the shoulder and says: 'Old boy, we're rounding up all the murderers. I've just got Saleratus Bill for scragging Franklin. You come along, too. Don't you know that burnin' witches is murder?'" California John spat with vigour. "Oh, hell!" said he.

"Now, Baker," he went on, after a moment, "is Saleratus Bill because he knows he's agin what the people knows is the law; and the other fellows is old Salem because they lived like they were told to. Even old Salem would know that he couldn't burn no witches nowadays. These old timers ain't the ones trying to steal land now, you notice. They're too damn honest. You don't need to tell me that you believe for one minute when he took up this Wolverine land, that your father did anything that he, _or anybody else_, courts included, thought was off-colour."

"My father!" cried Bob.

"Why, yes," said California John, looking at him curiously; "you don't mean to say you didn't know he is the Wolverine Company!"

XXII

"Well," said California John, after a pause, "after you've made your jump there ain't much use in trying to turn back. If you didn't know it, why it was evident you wasn't intended to know it. But I was in the country when your father bought the land, so I happened to know about it."

Bob stared at the old man so long that the latter felt called upon to reassure him.

"I wouldn't take it so hard, if I was you, son," said he. "I really don't think all these bluffs of Baker's amount to much. The findings of that commission ain't never been acted on, which would seem to show that it didn't come to nothing at the time; and I don't have the slightest notion in the world but what the whole thing will blow up in smoke."

"As far as that is concerned, I haven't either," said Bob; "though you never can tell, and defending such a suit is always an expensive matter. But here's the trouble; my father is Congressman from Michigan, he's been in several pretty heavy fights this last year, and has some powerful enemies; he is up for reelection this fall."

"Suffering cats!" whistled California John.

"A lot could be made of a suit of that nature," said Bob, "whether it had any basis, or not."

"I've run for County Supervisor in my time," said California John simply.

"Well, what is your advice?" asked Bob.

"Son, I ain't got none," replied the old man.

That very evening a messenger rode over from the mill bringing a summons from Welton. Bob saddled up at once. He found the lumberman, not in the comfortable sitting room at his private sleeping camp, but watching the lamp alone in the office. As Bob entered, his former associate turned a troubled face toward the young man.

"Bob," said he at once, "they've got the old man cinched, unless you'll help out."

"How's that?"

"You remember when we first came in here how Plant closed the road and the flume right-of-way on us because we didn't have the permit?"

"Of course."

"Now, Bob, you remember how we was up against it, don't you? If we hadn't gone through that year we'd have busted the business absolutely. It was just a case of hold-up and we had to pay it. You remember?"

"Yes."

"Well!" burst out Welton, bringing his fist down, "now this hound, Baker, sends up his slick lawyer to tell me that was bribery, and that he can have me up on a criminal charge!"

"He's bluffing," said Bob quietly. "I remember all about that case. If I'd known as much then of inside workings as I do now, I'd have taken a hand. But Baker himself ran the whole show. If he brings that matter into court, he'll be subject to the same charge; for, if you remember, he paid the money."

"Will he!" shouted Welton. "You don't know the lowlived skunk! Erbe told me that if this suit was brought and you testified in the matter, that Baker would turn state's evidence against me! That would let him off scot-free."

"What!" said Bob incredulously. "Brand himself publicly as a criminal and tell-tale just to get you into trouble! Not likely. Think what that would mean to a man in his position! It would be every bit as bad as though he were to take his jail sentence. He's bluffing again."

"Do you really think so?" asked Welton, a gleam of relief lightening the gloom of his red, good-natured face. "I'll agree to handle the worst river crew you can hand out to me; but this law business gets me running in circles."

"It does all of us," said Bob with a sigh.

"I concluded from Erbe's coming up here that you had decided to tell about what you knew. That ain't so, is it?"

"I don't know; I can't see my duty clearly yet."

"For heaven's sake, Bobby, what's it to you!" demanded Welton exasperated.

But Bob did not hear him.

"I think the direct way is the best," he remarked, by way of thinking aloud. "I'm going to keep on going to headquarters. I'm going to write father and put it straight to him how he did get those lands and tell him the whole situation; and I'm going down to interview Baker, and discover, if I can, just how much of a bluff he is putting up."

"In the meantime----" said Welton apparently not noting the fact that Bob had become aware of the senior Orde's connection with the land.

"In the meantime I'm going to postpone action if I can."

"They're summoning witnesses for the Basin trial."

"I'll do the best I can," concluded Bob.

Accordingly he wrote the next day to his father. In this letter he stated frankly the situation as far as it affected the Wolverine lands, but said nothing about the threatened criminal charges against Welton. That was another matter. He set out the great value of the Basin lands and the methods by which they had been acquired. He pointed out his duty, both as a forest officer and as a citizen, but balanced this by the private considerations that had developed from the situation.

This dispatched, he applied for leave.

"This is the busy season, and we can spare no one," said Thorne. "You have important matters on hand."

"This is especially important," urged Bob.

"It is absolutely impossible. Come two months later, and I'll be glad to lay you off as long as I can."

"This particular affair is most urgent business."

"Private, of course?"

"Not entirely."

"Couldn't be considered official?"

"It might become so."

"What is it?"

"That I am not at liberty to tell you."

Thorne considered.

"No; I'm sorry, but I don't see how I can spare you."

"In that case," said Bob quietly, "you will force me to tender my resignation."

Thorne looked up at him quickly, and studied his face.

"From anybody else, Orde," said he, "I'd take that as a threat or a hold-up, and fire the man on the spot. From you I do not. The matter must be really serious. You may go. Get back as soon as you can."

"Thank you," said Bob. "It is serious. Three days will do me."

He set about his preparations at once, packing a suit case with linen long out of commission, smoothing out the tailored clothes he had not had occasion to use for many a day. He then transported this--and himself--down the mountain on his saddle horse. At Auntie Belle's he changed his clothes. The next morning he caught the stage, and by the day following walked up the main street of Fremont.

He had no trouble in finding Baker's office. The Sycamore Creek operations were one group of many. As one of Baker's companies furnished Fremont with light and power, it followed that at night the name of that company blazed forth in thousands of lights. The sign was not the less legible, though not so fiery, by day. Bob walked into extensive ground-floor offices behind plate-glass windows. Here were wickets and railings through which and over which the public business was transacted. A narrow passageway sidled down between the wall and a row of ground-glass doors, on which were lettered the names of various officers of the company. At a swinging bar separating this passage from the main office sat a uniformed boy directing and stamping envelopes.

Bob wrote his name on a blank form offered by this youth. The young man gazed at it a moment superciliously, then sauntered with an air of great leisure down the long corridor. He reappeared after a moment's absence behind the last door, to return with considerably more alacrity.

"Come right in, sir," he told Bob, in tones which mingled much deference with considerable surprise.

Bob had no reason to understand how unusual was the circumstance of so prompt a reception of a visitor for whom no previous appointment had been made. He entered the door held open for him by the boy, and so found himself in Baker's presence.

XXIII

The office was expensively but plainly furnished in hardwoods. A thick rug covered the floor, easy chairs drew up by a fireplace, several good pictures hung off the wall. Near the windows stood a small desk for a stenographer, and a wide mahogany table. Behind this latter, his back to the light, sat Baker.

The man's sturdy figure was absolutely immobile, and the customary facetiously quizzical lines of his face had given place to an expression of cold attention. When he spoke, Bob found that the picturesque diction too had vanished.

At Bob's entrance, Baker inclined his head coldly in greeting, but said nothing. Bob deliberately crossed the room and rested his two fists, knuckle down, on the polished desktop. Baker waited stolidly for him to proceed. Bob jerked his head toward the stenographer.

"I want to talk to you in private," said he.

The stenographer glanced toward her employer. The latter nodded, whereupon she gathered a few stray leaves of paper and departed. Bob looked after her until the door had closed behind her. Then, quite deliberately, he made a tour of the office, trying doors, peering behind curtains and portières. He ended at the desk, to find Baker's eye fixed on him with sardonic humour. "Melodramatic, useless--and ridiculous," he said briefly.

"If I have any evidence to give, it will be in court, not in a private office," replied Bob composedly.

"What do you want?" demanded Baker.

"I have come this far solely and simply to get a piece of information at first hand. I was told you had threatened to become a blackmailer, and I wanted to find out if it is true?"

"In a world of contrary definitions, it is necessary to come down to facts. What do you mean by blackmailer?"

"It has been told me that you intend to aid criminal proceedings against Mr. Welton in regard to the right-of-way trouble and the 'sugaring' of Plant."

"Well?"

"And that in order to evade your own criminal responsibility in the matter you intended to turn state's evidence."

"Well?" repeated Baker.

"It seemed inconceivable to me that a man of your social and business standing would not only confess himself a petty criminal, but one who shelters himself by betrayal of his confederate."

"I do not relish any such process," stated Baker formally, "and would avoid it if possible. Nevertheless, if the situation comes squarely up to me, I shall meet it."

"I suppose you have thought what decent men----"

Baker held up one hand. This was the first physical movement he had made.

"Pardon me," he interrupted. "Let us understand, once and for all, that I intend to defend myself when attacked. Personally I do not think that either Mr. Welton or myself are legally answerable for what we have done. I regret to observe that you, among others, think differently. If the whole matter were to be dropped at this point, I should rest quite content. But if the matter is not dropped"--at last he let his uplifted hand fall, "if the matter is not dropped," he repeated, "my sense of justice is strong enough to feel that every one should stand on the same footing. If I am to be dragged into court, so must others."

Bob stood thoughtful for a moment.

"I guess that's all," said he, and walked out.

As the door closed behind him, Baker reached forward to touch one of several buttons. To the uniformed messenger who appeared he snapped out the one word, "Oldham!" A moment later the land agent stood before the wide mahogany desk.

"Orde has just been here," stated Baker crisply. "He wanted to know if I intended to jail Welton on that old bribery charge. I told him I did."

"How did he take it?"

"As near as I can tell he is getting obstinate. You claimed very confidently you could head off his testimony. Up to date you haven't accomplished much. Make good."

"I'll head him off," stated Oldham grimly, "or put him where he belongs. I've saved a little persuasion until all the rest had failed."

"How?"

"That I'll tell you in time, but not now. But I don't mind telling you that I've no reason to love this Orde--or any other Orde--and I intend to get even with him on my own account. It's a personal and private matter, but I have a club that will keep him."

"Why the secrecy?"

"It's an affair of my own," insisted Oldham, "but I have it on him. If he attempts to testify as to the Basin lands, I'll have him in the penitentiary in ten days."

"And if he agrees?"

"Then," said Oldham quietly, "I'll have him in the pen a little later--after the Basin matter is settled once and for all."

Baker considered this a little.

"My judgment might be worth something as to handling this," he suggested.

"The matter is mine," said Oldham firmly, "and I must choose my own time and place."

"Very well," Baker acquiesced; "but I'd advise you to tackle Orde at once. Time is short. Try out your club to see if it will work."

"It will work!" stated Oldham confidently.

"Of course," remarked Baker, relaxing abruptly his attitude, physical and mental, and lighting a cigar, "of course, it is all very well to yank the temples down around the merry Philistines, but it doesn't do your Uncle Samson much good. We can raise hell with Welton and Orde and a half-dozen others, and we will, if they push us too hard--but that don't keep us the Basin if this crazy reformer testifies and pulls in Welton to corroborate him. I'd rather keep the Basin. If we could stop Orde----"

"I'll stop him," said Oldham.

"I hope," said Baker impressively, "that you have more than one string to your bow. I am not inquiring into your methods, you understand"--his pause was so significantly long at this point, that Oldham nodded--"_but your sole job is to keep Orde out of court_."

Baker looked his agent squarely in the eye for fifteen seconds. Then abruptly he dropped his gaze.

"That's all," said he, and reached for some papers.

XXIV

Oldham obeyed his principal's orders by joining Bob on the train back to the city. He dropped down by the young man's side, produced a cigar which he rolled between his lips, but did not light, and at once opened up the subject of his negotiations.

"I wish to point out to you, with your permission," he began, "just where you stand in this matter. In the confusion and haste of a busy time you may not have cast up your accounts. First," he checked off the point on his long, slender forefinger, "in injuring Mr. Baker in this ill-advised fashion you are injuring your old-time employer and friend, Mr. Welton, and this in two ways: you are jeopardizing his whole business, and you are rendering practically certain his conviction on a criminal charge. Mr. Welton is an old man, a simple man, and a kindly man; this thing is likely to kill him." Oldham glanced keenly at the young man's sombre face, and went on. "Second"--he folded back his middle finger--"you are injuring your own father, also in two ways: you are bringing his lawful property into danger, and you are giving his political enemies the most effective sort of a weapon to swing in his coming campaign. And do not flatter yourself they will not make the best of it. It happens that your father has stood strongly with the Conservation members in the late fight in Congress. This would be a pretty scandal. Third," said Oldham, touching his ring finger, "you are injuring yourself. You are throwing away an opportunity to get in on the ground floor with the biggest man in the West; you are making for yourself a powerful enemy; and you are indubitably preparing the way for your removal from office--if removal from such an office can conceivably mean anything to any one." He removed the cigar from his mouth, gazed at the wetted end, waited a moment for the young man to comment, then replaced it, and resumed. "And fourth," he remarked closing his fist so that all fingers were concealed. There he stopped until Bob was fairly compelled to start him on again.

"And fourth----" he suggested, therefore.

"Fourth," rapped out Oldham, briskly, "you injure George Pollock."

"George Pollock!" echoed Bob, trying vainly to throw a tone of ingenuous surprise into his voice.

"Certainly; George Pollock," repeated Oldham. "I arrived in Sycamore Flats at the moment when Pollock murdered Plant. I know positively that you were an eye-witness to the deed. If you testify in one case, I shall certainly call upon you to testify in the other. Furthermore," he turned his gray eyes on Bob, and for the second time the young man was permitted to see an implacable hostility, "although not on the scene itself, I can myself testify, and will, that you held the murderer's horse during the deed, and assisted Pollock to escape. Furthermore, I can testify, and can bring a competent witness, that while supposed to be estimating Government timber in the Basin, you were in communication with Pollock."

"Saleratus Bill!" cried Bob, enlightened as to the trailer's recent activities in the Basin.

"It will be easy to establish not only Pollock's guilt, but your own as accessory. That will put you hard and fast behind the bars--where you belong."

In this last speech Oldham made his one serious mistake of the interview. So long as he had appealed to Bob's feelings for, and sense of duty toward, other men, he had succeeded well in still further confusing the young man's decision. But at the direct personal threat, Bob's combative spirit flared. Suddenly his troubled mind was clarified, as though Oldham's menace had acted as a chemical reagent to precipitate all his doubts. Whatever the incidental hardships, right must prevail. And, as always, in the uprooting of evil, some unlucky innocent must suffer. It is the hardship of life, inevitable, not to be blinked at if a man is to be a man, and do a man's part. He leaned forward with so swift a movement that Oldham involuntarily dodged back.

"You tell your boss," said Bob, "that nothing on God's earth can keep me out of court."

He threw away his half-smoked cigar and went back to the chair car. The sight of Oldham was intolerable to him.

The words were said, and the decision made. In his heart he knew the matter irrevocable. For a few moments he experienced a feeling of relief and freedom, as when a swimmer first gets his head above the surf that has tumbled him. These fine-spun matters of ethical balance had confused and wearied his spirit. He had become bewildered among such varied demands on his personal decision. It was a comfort to fall back on the old straight rule of right conduct no matter what the consequences. The essentials of the situation were not at all altered: Baker was guilty of the rankest fraud; Welton was innocent of every evil intent and should never be punished for what he had been unwillingly and doubtfully persuaded to permit; Orde senior had acquired his lands quite according to the customs and ideas of the time; George Pollock should have been justified a thousand times over in sight of God and man. Those things were to Bob's mind indisputable. To deprive the one man of a very small portion of his fraudulently acquired property, it was apparently necessary to punish three men who should not be punished. These men were, furthermore, all dear to Bob personally. It did not seem right that his decision should plunge them into undeserved penalties. But now the situation was materially altered. Bob also stood in danger from his action. He, too, must suffer with the others. All were in the same boat. The menace to his own liberty justified his course. The innocent must suffer with the guilty; but now the fact that he was one of those who must so suffer, raised his decision from a choice to a necessity. Whatever the consequences, the simplest, least perplexing, most satisfying course was to follow the obvious right. The odium of ingratitude, of lack of affection, of disloyalty, of self-reproach was lifted from him by the very fact that he, too, was one of those who must take consequences. In making the personal threat against the young man's liberty, Oldham had, without knowing it, furnished to his soul the one valid reason for going ahead, conscience-clear.

Though naturally Oldham could not follow out this psychology, he was shrewd enough to understand that he had failed. This surprised him, for he had entertained not the slightest doubt that the threat of the penitentiary would bring Bob to terms.

On arriving in the city, Oldham took quarters at the Buena Vista and sent for Saleratus Bill, whom he had summoned by wire as soon as he had heard from that individual of Bob's intended visit to Fremont.

The spy arrived wearing a new broad, black hat, a celluloid collar, a wrinkled suit of store clothes, and his same shrewd, evil leer. Oldham did not appear, but requested that the visitor be shown into his room. There, having closed the transom, he issued his instructions.

"I want you to pay attention, and not interrupt," said he. "Within a month a case is coming up in which Orde, the Forest man, is to appear as witness. He must not appear. I leave that all to you, but, of course, I want no more than necessary violence. He must be detained until after the trial, and for as long after that as I say. Understand?"

"Sure," said Saleratus Bill. "But when he comes back, he'll fix you just the same."

"I'll see to that part of it. The case will never be reopened. Now, mind you, no shooting----"

"There might be an accident," suggested Saleratus Bill, opening his red eyes and staring straight at his principal.

"Accidents," said Oldham, speaking slowly and judicially, "are always likely to happen. Sometimes they can't be helped." He paused to let these words sink in.

Saleratus Bill wrinkled his eyes in an appreciative laugh. "Accidents is of two kinds: lucky and unlucky," he remarked briefly, by way of parenthesis.

"But, of course, it is distinctly understood," went on Oldham, as though he had not heard, "that this is your own affair. You have nothing to expect from me if you get into trouble. And if you mention my name, you'll merely get jugged for attempted blackmail."

Saleratus Bill's eyes flared.

"Cut it," said he, with a rasp in his voice.

"Nevertheless, that is the case," repeated Oldham, unmoved.

The flame slowly died from Saleratus Bill's eyes.

"I'll want a little raise for that kind of a job," said he.

"Naturally," agreed Oldham.

They entered into discussion of ways and means.

In the meantime Bob had encountered an old friend.

XXV

Bob always stayed at the Monterosa Hotel when in town; a circumstance that had sent Oldham to the Buena Vista. Although it wanted but a few hours until train time, he drifted around to his customary stopping place, resolved to enjoy a quiet smoke by the great plate-glass windows before which the ever-varying theatre crowds stream by from Main Street cars. He had been thus settled for some time, when he heard his name pronounced by the man occupying the next chair.

"Bob Orde!" he cried; "but this is luck!"

Bob looked around to see an elderly, gray-haired, slender man, of keen, intelligent face, pure white hair and moustache, in whom he recognized Mr. Frank Taylor, a lifelong friend of his father's and one of the best lawyers his native state had produced. He sprang to his feet to grasp the older man's hand. The unexpected meeting was especially grateful, for Bob had been long enough without direct reminders of his old home to be hungry for them. Ever since he could remember, the erect, military form of Frank Taylor had been one of the landmarks of memory, like the sword that had belonged to Georgie Cathcart's father, or like the kindly, homely, gray figure of Mr. Kincaid in his rickety, two-wheeled cart--the man who had given Bob his first firearm.

After first greetings and inquiries, the two men sank back to finish their smoke together.

"It's good to see you again," observed Bob, "but I'm sorry your business brings you out here at this time of year. This is our dry season, you know. Everything is brown. I like it myself, as do most Californians, but an Easterner has to get used to it. After the rains, though, the country is wonderful."

"This isn't my first trip," said Taylor. "I was out here for some months away back in--I think it was '79. I remember we went in to Santa Barbara on a steamer that fired a gun by way of greeting! Strangely enough, the same business brings me here now."

"You are out here on father's account?" hazarded Bob, to whom the year 1879 now began to have its significance.

"Exactly. Didn't you get your father's letter telling of my coming?"

"I've been from headquarters three days," Bob explained.

"I see. Well, he sent you this message: 'Tell Bob to go ahead. I can take care of myself.'"

"Bully for dad!" cried Bob, greatly heartened.

"He told me he did not want to advise you, but that in the old days when a fight was on, the spectators were supposed to do their own dodging."

"I'd about come to that conclusion," said Bob, "but it surely does me good to feel that father's behind me in it."

"My trip in '79--or whenever it was--was exactly on this same muss-up." Mr. Taylor went on: "Your father owned this timber land then, and wanted to borrow money on it. At the time a rascally partner was trying to ruin him; and, in order to prevent his getting this money, which would save him, this partner instigated investigations and succeeded temporarily in clouding the title. Naturally the banks declined to lend money on doubtful titles; which was all this partner wanted.[A] Perhaps you know all this?"

Bob shook his head. "I was a little too young to know anything of business."

"Your father sent me out to straighten things. The whole matter was involved in endless red tape, obscured in every ingenious way possible. Although there proved to be nothing to the affair, to prove that fact took time, and time was what your father's partner was after. As a matter of fact, he failed; but that was not the result of miscalculation. Now I strongly suspect that your friend Baker, or his lawyers, have dug up a lot of this old evidence on the records and are going to use it to annoy us. There is nothing more in it how than there was at the beginning, but it's colourable enough to start a noisy suit on, and that's all these fellows are after."

"But if it was decided once, how can they bring it up again?" Bob objected.

"It was never brought to court. When the delay had been gained--or rather, when I unravelled the whole matter--it was dropped."

"I see," said Bob. "Then the titles are all right?"

"Every bit of that tract is as good as gold," said Taylor impressively. "Your father bought only from men who had taken up land with their own money. He paid as high as fifteen or sixteen hundred dollars for claims where by straight 'colonizing' he could have had them for three or four hundred."

"I'm glad to hear that," said Bob. "But are you sure you can handle this?"

"As for a suit, they can never win this in the world," said Taylor. "But that isn't the question. What they want is a chance for big headlines."

"Well, can you head them off?"

"I'm going to try, after I look over the situation. If I can't head it off completely, I'll at least be in a position to reply publicly at once. It took me three months to dig this thing out, but it won't take me half an hour to get it in the papers."

"I should think they'd know that."

"I don't think their lawyer really knows about it. As I say, it took me three months to dig it all out. My notion is that while they have no idea they can win the case, they believe that we did actually colonize the lands. In other words, they think they have it on us straight enough. The results of my investigations will surprise them. I'll keep the thing out of court if I can; but in any case we're ready. It will be a trial in the newspapers."

"Well," said Bob, "you want to get acquainted then. Western newspapers are not like those in the East. They certainly jump in with both feet on any cause that enlists them one way or another. It is a case of no quarter to the enemy, in headlines, subheads, down to the date--reading matter, of course. They have a powerful influence, too, for they are very widely read."

"Can they be bought?" asked Taylor shrewdly.

Bob glanced at him.

"I was thinking of the Power Company," explained Taylor.

"Blessed if I know," confessed Bob; "but I think not. I disagree with them on so many things that I'd like to think they are bought. But they are more often against those apt to buy, than for them. They lambaste impartially and with a certain Irish delight in doing the job thoroughly. I must say they are not fair about it. They hit a man just as hard when he is down. What you want to do is to be better news than Baker."

"I'll be all of that," promised Taylor, "if it comes to a newspaper trial."

Bob glanced at his watch and jumped to his feet with an exclamation of dismay.

"I've five minutes to get to the station," he said. "Goodbye."

He rushed out of the hotel, caught a car, ran a block--and arrived in time to see the tail lights slipping away. He had to wait until the morning train, but that mattered little to him now. His wait and the journey back to the mountains were considerably lightened by this partial relief of the situation. At the first sign of trouble his father had taken the field to fight out his own fights. That much responsibility was lifted from Bob's shoulders. He might have known!

Of the four dangerous elements of his problem one was thus unexpectedly, almost miraculously, relieved. Remained, however, poor Welton's implication in the bribery matter, and Pollock's danger. Bob could not count in himself. If he could only relieve the others of the consequences of his action, he could face his own trouble with a stout heart.

At White Oaks he was forced to wait for the next stage. This put him twenty-four hours behind, and he was inclined to curse his luck. Had he only known it, no better fortune could have fallen him. The news came down the line that the stage he would have taken had been held up by a lone highwayman just at the top of Flour Gold grade. As the vehicle carried only an assortment of perishable fruit and three Italian labourers, for the dam, the profits from the transaction were not extraordinary. The sheriff and a posse at once set out in pursuit. Their efforts at overtaking the highwayman were unavailing, for the trail soon ran out over the rocky and brushy ledges, and the fugitive had been clever enough to sprinkle some of his tracks liberally with red pepper to baffle the dogs. The sheriff made a hard push of it, however, and for one day held closely enough on the trail. Bob's journey to Sycamore Flats took place on this one day--during which Saleratus Bill was too busy dodging his pursuers to resume a purpose which Bob's delay had frustrated.

On arriving at Auntie Belle's, Bob resolved to push on up the mountain that very night, instead of waiting as usual until the following morning. Accordingly, after supper, he saddled his horse, collected the camp mail, and set himself in motion up the steep road.

Before he had passed Fern Falls, the twilight was falling. Hermit thrushes sang down through the cooling forest. From the side hill, exposed all the afternoon to the California summer sun, rose tepid odours of bear-clover and snowbush, which exhaled out into space, giving way to the wandering, faint perfumes of night. Bob took off his hat, and breathed deep, greatly refreshed after the long, hot stage ride of the day. Darkness fell. In the forest the strengthening moonlight laid its wand upon familiar scenes to transform them. New aisles opened down the woodlands, aisles at the end of which stood silvered, ghostly trees thus distinguished by the moonbeams from their unnumbered brethren. The whole landscape became ghostly, full of depths and shadows, mysteries and allurements, heights and spaces unknown to the more prosaic day. Landmarks were lost in the velvet dark; new features sprang into prominence. Were it not for the wagon trail, Bob felt that in this strange, enchanted, unfamiliar land he might easily have become lost. His horse plodded mechanically on. One by one he passed the homely roadside landmarks, exempt from the necromancies of the moon--the pile of old cedar posts, split heaven knows when, by heaven knows whom, and thriftlessly abandoned; the water trough, with the brook singing by; the S turn by the great boulders; the narrow defile of the Devil's Grade--and then, still under the spell of the night, Bob surmounted the ridge to look out over the pine-clad plateau slumbering dead-still under the soft radiance of the moon.

He rode the remaining distance to headquarters at a brisker pace. As he approached the little meadow, and the group of buildings dark and silent, he raised joyously the wild hallo of the late-comer with mail. Immediately lights were struck. A moment later, by the glimmer of a lantern, he was distributing the coveted papers, letters and magazines to the half-dressed group that surrounded him. Amy summoned him to bring her share. He delivered it to the hand and arm extended from the low window.

"You must be nearly dead," said Amy, "after that long stage ride--to come right up the mountain."

"It's the finest sort of a night," said Bob. "I wouldn't have missed it for anything. It's H-O-T, hot, down at the Flats. This ride just saved my life."

This might have been truer than Bob had thought, for at almost that very moment Saleratus Bill, having successfully shaken off his pursuers, was making casual and guarded inquiries at Austin's saloon. When he heard that Orde had arrived at the Flats on the evening's stage, he manifested some satisfaction. The next morning, however, that satisfaction vanished, for only then he learned that the young man must be already safe at headquarters.

[Footnote A: See "The Riverman."]

XXVI

In delivering his instructions to Oldham, Baker had, of course, no thought of extreme measures. Indeed, had the direct question been put to him, he would most strongly and emphatically have forbidden them. Nevertheless, he was glad to leave his intentions vague, feeling that in thus wilfully shutting his eyes he might avoid personal responsibility for what might happen. He had every confidence that Oldham--a man of more than average cultivation--while he might contemplate lawlessness, was of too high an order to consider physical violence. Baker was inclined to believe that on mature reflection Bob would yield to the accumulation of influence against him. If not, Oldham intimated with no uncertain confidence, that he possessed information of a sort to coerce the Forest officer into silence. If that in turn proved unavailing--a contingency, it must be remembered that Baker hardly thought worth entertainment--why, then, in some one of a thousand perfectly legal ways Oldham could entangle the chief witness into an enforced absence from the trial. This sort of manoeuvre was, later, actually carried out in the person of Mr. Fremont Older, a witness in the graft prosecutions of San Francisco. In short, Baker's intentions, while desperately illegal, contemplated no personal harm to their victim. He gave as general orders to his subordinate: "Keep Orde's testimony out of court"; and shrugged off minute responsibilities.

This command, filtered through a second and inimical personality, gained in strength. Oldham was not of a temperament to contemplate murder. His nerves were too refined; his training too conventional; his imagination too developed. He, too, resolutely kept his intentions a trifle vague. If Orde persisted, then he must be kidnapped for a time.

But Saleratus Bill, professional gun-man, well paid, took his instructions quite brutally. In literal and bald statement he closed the circle and returned to Baker's very words: "Keep Orde's testimony out of court." Only in this case Saleratus Bill read into the simple command a more sinister meaning.

The morning after his return from the lower country, Bob saddled up to ride over to the mill. He wished to tell Welton of his meeting Taylor; and to consult him on the best course to pursue in regard to the bribery charges. With daylight many of his old perplexities had returned. He rode along so deep in thought that the only impression reaching him from the external world was one of the warmth of the sun.

Suddenly a narrow shadow flashed by his eyes. Before his consciousness could leap from its inner contemplation, his arms were pulled flat to his sides, a shock ran through him as though he had received a heavy blow, and he was jerked backward from his horse to hit the ground with great violence.

The wind was knocked from his body, so that for five seconds, perhaps, he was utterly confused. Before he could gather himself, or even comprehend what had happened, a heavy weight flung itself upon him. The beginnings of his feeble struggles were unceremoniously subdued. When, in another ten seconds, his vision had cleared, he found himself bound hand and foot. Saleratus Bill stood over him, slowly recoiling the _riata,_ or throwing rope, with which he had so dexterously caught Bob from behind. After contemplating his victim for a moment, Saleratus Bill mounted his own animal, and disappeared.

Bob, his head humming from the violence of its impact with the ground, listened until the hoof beats had ceased to jar the earth. Then with a methodical desperation he began to wrench and work at his bonds. All his efforts were useless; Saleratus Bill understood "hog-tying" too well. When, finally, he had convinced himself that he could not get away, Bob gave over his efforts. The forest was very still and warm. After a time the sun fell upon him, and he began to feel its heat uncomfortably. The affair was inexplicable. He began to wonder whether Saleratus Bill intended leaving him there a prey to what fortune chance might bring. Although the odds were a hundred to one against his being heard, he shouted several times. About as he had begun once more to struggle against his bonds, his captor returned, leading Bob's horse, and cursing audibly over the difficulty he had been put to in catching it.

Ignoring Bob's indignant demands, the gun-man loosed his ankles, taking, however, the precaution of throwing the riata over the young man's shoulders.

"Climb your horse," he commanded briefly.

"How do you expect me to do that, with my hands tied behind me?" demanded Bob.

"I don't know. Just do it, and be quick," replied Saleratus Bill.

Bob's horse was nervous and restive. Three times he dropped his master heavily to earth. Then Saleratus Bill, his evil eye wary, extended a helping hand. This was what Bob was hoping for; but the gun-man was too wily and experienced to allow himself within the captive's fettered reach.

When Bob had finally gained his saddle, Saleratus Bill, leading the horse, set off at a rapid pace cross country. To all of Bob's questions and commands he turned a deaf ear, until, finally, seeing it was useless to ask, Bob fell silent. Only once did he pause, and then to breathe and water the horses. The country through which they passed was unfamiliar to Bob. He knew only that they were going north, and were keeping to westward of the Second Ranges.

Late that evening Saleratus Bill halted for the night at a little meadow. He fed Bob a thick sandwich, and offered him a cup of water; after which he again shackled the young man's ankles, bound his elbows, and attached the helpless form to a tree. Bob spent the night in this case, covered only by his saddle blanket. The cords cut into his swelled flesh, the retarded circulation pricked him cruelly. He slept little. At early dawn his captor offered him the same fare. By sun-up they were under way again.

All that day they angled to the northwest. The pine forests gave way to oaks, buckthorn, chaparral, as they entered lower country. Several times Saleratus Bill made long detours to avoid clearings and ranches. Bob, in spite of his strength and the excellence of his condition, reeled from sheer weariness and pain. They made no stop at noon.

At two o'clock, or so, they left the last ranch and began once more leisurely to climb. The slope was gentle. A badly washed and eroded wagon grade led them on. It had not been used for years. The horses, now very tired, plodded on dispiritedly.

Then, with the suddenness of a shift of scenery, they topped what seemed to be a trifling rounded hill. On the other side the slope dropped sheer away. Opposite and to north and south were the ranks of great mountains, some dark with the blue of atmosphere before pines, others glittering with snow. Directly beneath, almost under him, Bob saw a valley.

It was many thousand feet below, mathematically round, and completely surrounded by lofty mountains. Indeed, already evening had there spread its shadows, although to the rest of the world the sun was still hours high. Through it flowed a river. From the height it looked like a piece of translucent green glass in the still depths; like cotton-wool where the rapids broke; for the great distance robbed it of all motion. This stream issued from a gorge and flowed into another, both so narrow that the lofty mountains seemed fairly to close them shut.

Through the clear air of the Sierras this valley looked like a toy, a miniature. Every detail was distinct. Bob made out very plainly the pleasant trees, and a bridge over the river, and the roofs of many houses, and the streets of a little town.

To the left the wagon road dropped away down the steep side of the mountain. Bob's eye could follow it, at first a band, then a ribbon, finally a tiny white thread, as it wound and zigzagged, seeking its contours, until finally it ran out on the level and rested at the bridge end. Opposite, on the other mountain, he thought to make out here and there faint suggestions of another way.

Though his eye thus embraced at a glance the whole length of the route, Bob found it a two-hours' journey down. Always the walls of the mountains rose higher and higher above him, gaining in majesty and awe as he abandoned to them the upper air. Always the round valley grew larger, losing its toy-like character. Its features became, not more distinct, but more detailed. Bob saw the streets of the town were pleasantly shaded by cotton woods and willows; he distinguished dwelling houses, a store, an office building, a mill building for crushing of ore. The roar of the river came up to him more clearly. As though some power had released the magic of the stream, the water now moved. Rushing foam and white water tumbled over the black and shining rocks; deep pools eddied, dark and green, shot with swirls.

As it became increasingly evident that the road could lead nowhere but through this village, Bob's spirits rose. The place was well built. Bob caught the shimmer of ample glass in the windows, the colour of paint on the boards, and even the ordered rectangles of brick chimneys! Evidently these things must have been freighted in over the devious steep grade he was at that moment descending. Bob well knew that, even nearer the source of supplies, such mining camps as this appeared to be were most often but a collection of rude, unpainted shanties, huddled together for a temporary need. The orderly, well-kept, decent appearance of this hamlet, more like a shaded New England village than a Western camp, argued old establishment, prosperity, and self-respect. The inhabitants could be no desperate fly-by-nights, such as Saleratus Bill would most likely have sought as companions. Bob made up his mind that the gun-man would shortly try to threaten him into a temporary secrecy as to the condition of affairs. This Bob instantly resolved to refuse.

Saleratus Bill, however, rode on in an unbroken silence. Long after the brawl of the river had become deafening, the road continued to dip and descend. It is a peculiar phenomenon incidental to the descent of the sheer cañons of the Sierra Nevada that the last few hundred feet down seem longer than the thousands already passed. This is probably because, having gained close to the level of the tree-tops, the mind, strung taut to the long descent, allows itself prematurely to relax its attention. Bob turned in his saddle to look back at the grade. He could not fail to reflect on how lucky it was that the inhabitants of this village could haul their materials and supplies _down_ the road. It would have been prohibitively difficult to drag anything up.

After a wearisome time the road at last swung out on the flat, and so across the meadow to the bridge. Feed was belly deep to the horses. The bridge proved to be a suspension affair of wire cables, that swung alarmingly until the horses had to straddle in order to stand at all. Below it boiled the river, swirling, dashing, turning lazily and mysteriously over its glass-green depths, the shimmers and folds of eddies rising and swaying like air currents made visible.

They climbed out on solid ground. The road swung to the left and back, following a contour to the slight elevation on which the houses stood. Saleratus Bill, however, turned up a brief short-cut, which landed them immediately on the main street.

Bob saw two stores, an office building and a small hotel, shaded by wooden awnings. Beyond them, and opposite them, were substantial bunk houses and dwelling houses, painted red, each with its elevated, roofed verandah. Large trees, on either side, threw a shade fairly across the thoroughfare. An iron pump and water trough in front of the hotel saved the wayfarer from the necessity of riding his animals down to the river. The vista at the end of the street showed a mill building on a distant mountain side, with the rabbit-burrow dumps of many shafts and prospect holes all about it.

They rode up the street past two or three of the houses, the hotel and the office. Bob, peering in through the windows, saw tables and chairs, old chromos and newer lithographs on the walls. Under the tree at the side of the hotel hung a water _olla_ with a porcelain cup atop. Near the back porch stood a screen meat safe.

But not a soul was in sight. The street was deserted, the houses empty, the office unoccupied. As they proceeded Bob expected from one moment to the next to see a door open, a figure saunter around a corner. Save for the jays and squirrels, the place was absolutely empty.

For some minutes the full realization of this fact was slow in coming. The village exhibited none of the symptoms of abandonment. The window glass was whole; the furniture of such houses as Bob had glanced into while passing stood in its accustomed places. A few strokes of the broom might have made any one of them immediately fit for habitation. The place looked less deserted than asleep; like one of the enchanted palaces so dear to tales of magic. It would not have seemed greatly wonderful to Bob to have seen the town spring suddenly to life in obedience to some spell. If the mill stamps in the distant crusher had creaked and begun to pound; if dogs had rushed barking around corners and from under porches; if from the hotel mine host had emerged, yawning and rubbing his eyes; if from the shops and offices and houses had issued the slow, grumbling sounds of life awakening, it would all have seemed natural and to be expected. Under the influence of this strange effect a deathly stillness seemed to fall, in spite of the bawling and roaring of the river, and the trickle of many streamlets hurrying down from the surrounding hills.

So extraordinary was this effect of suspended animation that Bob again essayed his surly companion.

"What place do you call this?" he inquired.

Saleratus Bill had dismounted, and was stretching his long, lean arms over his head. Evidently he considered this the end of the long and painful journey, and as evidently he was, in his relief, inclined to be better natured.

"Busted minin' camp called Bright's Cove," said he; "they took about ten million dollars out of here before she bust."

"How long ago was that?" asked Bob.

"Ten year or so."

The young man gazed about him in amazement. The place looked as though it might have been abandoned the month before. In his subsequent sojourn he began more accurately to gauge the reasons for this. Here were no small boys to hurl the casual pebble through the delightfully shimmering glass; here was no dust to be swirled into crevices and angles, no wind to carry it; to this remote cove penetrated no vandals to rob, mutilate or wantonly disfigure; and the elevation of the valley's floor was low enough even to avoid the crushing weights of snow that every winter brought to the peaks around it. Only the squirrels, the birds and the tiny wood rats represented in their little way the forces of destruction. Furthermore, the difficulties of transportation absolutely precluded moving any of the small property whose absence so strongly impresses the desertion of a building. When Bright's Cove moved, it had merely to shut the front door. In some cases it did not shut the front door.

Saleratus Bill assisted Bob from the saddle. This had become necessary, for the long ride in bonds had so cramped and stiffened the young man that he was unable to help himself. Indeed, he found he could not stand. Saleratus Bill, after looking at him shrewdly, untied his hands.

"I guess you're safe enough for now," said he.

Bob's wrists were swollen, and his arms so stiff he could hardly use them. Saleratus Bill paused in throwing the saddles off the wearied animals.

"Look here," said he gruffly; "if you pass yore word you won't try to get away or make no fight, I'll turn you loose."

"I'll promise you that for to-night, anyway," returned Bob quickly.

Saleratus Bill immediately cast the ropes into a corner of the verandah.

XXVII

The shadows of evening were falling when Saleratus Bill returned from pasturing the wearied horses. Bob had been too exhausted to look about him, even to think. From a cache the gun-man produced several bags of food and a side of bacon. Evidently Bright's Cove was one of his familiar haunts. After a meal which Bob would have enjoyed more had he not been so dead weary, his captor motioned him to one of the bunks. Only too glad for an opportunity to rest, Bob tumbled in, clothes and all.

About midnight he half roused, feeling the mountain chill. He groped instinctively; his hand encountered a quilt, which he drew around his shoulders.

When he awoke it was broad daylight. A persistent discomfort which had for an hour fought with his drowsiness for the ascendancy, now disclosed itself as a ligature tying his elbows at the back. Evidently Saleratus Bill had taken this precaution while the young man slept. Bob could still use his hands and wrists, after a fashion; he could walk about but he would be unable to initiate any effective offence. The situation was admirably analogous to that of a hobbled horse. Moreover, the bonds were apparently of some broad, soft substance like sacking or harness webbing, so that, after Bob had moved from his constrained position, they did not excessively discommode him.

He had no means of guessing what the hour might be, and no sounds reached him from the other parts of the house. His muscles were sore and bruised. For some time he was quite content to lie on his side, thinking matters over.

From his knowledge of the connection between Baker and Oldham, Oldham and his captor, Bob had no doubt as to the purpose of his abduction; nor did he fail to guess that now, with the chief witness out of the way, the trial would be hurried where before it had been delayed. Personally he had little to fear beyond a detention--unless he should attempt to escape, or unless a searching party might blunder on his traces. Bob had already made up his mind to use his best efforts to get away. As to the probabilities of a rescue blundering on this retreat, he had no means of guessing; but he shrewdly concluded that Saleratus Bill was taking no chances.

That individual now entered; and, seeing his captive awake, gruffly ordered him to rise. Bob found an abundant breakfast ready, to which he was able to do full justice. In the course of the meal he made several attempts on his jailer's taciturnity, but without success. Saleratus Bill met all his inquiries, open and guarded, with a sullen silence or evasive, curt replies.

"It don't noways matter why you're here, or how you're here. You _are_ here, and that's all there's to it."

"How long do I stay?"

"Until I get ready to let you go."

"How can you get word from Mr. Oldham when to let me off?" asked Bob.

But Saleratus Bill refused to rise to the bait.

"I'll let you go when I get ready," he repeated.

Bob was silent for some time.

"You know this lets me off from my promise," said he, nodding backward toward his elbows. "I'll get away if I can."

Saleratus Bill, for the first time, permitted himself a smile.

"There's two ways out of this place," said he--"where we come in, and over north on the trail. You can see every inch--both ways--from here. Besides, don't make no mistakes. I'll shoot you if you make a break."

Bob nodded.

"I believe you," said he.

As though to convince Bob of the utter helplessness of any attempt, Saleratus Bill, leaving the dishes unwashed, led the way in a tour of the valley. Save where the wagon road descended and where the steep side hill of the north wall arose, the boundaries were utterly precipitous. From a narrow gorge, flanked by water-smoothed rock aprons, the river boiled between glassy perpendicular cliffs.

"There ain't no swimming-holes in that there river," remarked Saleratus Bill grimly.

Bob, leaning forward, could just catch a glimpse of the torrent raging and buffeting in the narrow box cañon, above which the mountains rose tremendous. No stream growths had any chance there. The place was water and rock--nothing more. In the valley itself willows and alders, well out of reach of high water, offered a partial screen to soften the savage vista.

The round valley itself, however, was beautiful. Ripening grasses grew shoulder high. Shady trees swarmed with birds. Bees and other insects hummed through the sun-warmed air.

In vain Bob looked about him for the horses, or for signs of them. They were nowhere to be seen. Saleratus Bill, reading his perplexity, grinned sardonically.

"Yore friends might come in here," said he, evidently not unwilling to expose to Bob the full hopelessness of the latter's case. "And if so, they can trail us in; _and then trail us out again!_" He pointed to the lacets of the trail up the north wall. He grinned again. "You and I'd just crawl down a mile of mine shaft."

Having thus, to his satisfaction, impressed Bob with the utter futility of an attempt to escape, Saleratus Bill led the way back to the deserted village. There he turned deliberately on his captive.

"Now, young feller, you listen to me," said he. "Don't you try no monkey business. There won't be no questions asked, none whatever. As long as you set and look at the scenery, you won't come to no harm; but the minute you make even a bluff at gettin' funny--even if yore sorry the next minute--I'll shoot. And don't you never forget and try to get nearer to me than three paces. Don't forget that! I don't rightly want to hurt you; but I'd just as leave shoot you as anybody else."

To this view of the situation Bob gave the expected assent.

The next three days were ones of routine. Saleratus Bill spent his time rolling brown-paper cigarettes at a spot that commanded both trails. Bob was instructed to keep in sight. He early discovered the cheering fact that trout were to be had in the glass-green pools; and so spent hours awkwardly manipulating an improvised willow pole equipped with the short line and the Brown Hackle without which no mountaineer ever travels the Sierras. His bound elbows and the crudity of his tackle lost him many fish. Still, he caught enough for food; and his mind was busy.

Canvassing the possibilities, Bob could not but admit that Saleratus Bill knew his job. The river was certain death, and led nowhere except into mysterious and awful granite gorges; the outlets by roads were well in sight. For one afternoon Bob seriously contemplated hazarding a personal encounter. He conceived that in some manner he could get rid of his bonds at night; that Saleratus Bill must necessarily sleep; and that there might be a chance to surprise the gun-man then. But when night came, Saleratus Bill disappeared into the outer darkness; nor did he return until morning. He might have spent the hours camped under the trees of the more remote meadow, whence in the brilliant moonlight he could keep tabs on the trails, or he might be lying near at hand; Bob had no means of telling. Certainly, again the young man reluctantly acknowledged to himself, Saleratus Bill knew his job!

Nevertheless, as the days slipped by; and Bob's physical strength returned in its full measure, his active and bold spirit again took the initiative. A slow anger seized possession of him. The native combative stubbornness of the race asserted itself, the necessity of doing something, the inability tamely to submit to imposed circumstances. Bob's careful analysis of the situation as a whole failed to discover any feasible plan. Therefore he abandoned trying to plan ahead, and fell back on those always-ready and comfortable aphorisims of the adventurous--"sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," and "one thing at a time." Obviously, the first thing to do was to free his arms; after that he would see what he would see.

Every evening Saleratus Bill took the candle and departed, leaving Bob to find his own way to his bunk. This was the time to cut his bonds; if at all. Unfortunately Bob could find nothing against which to cut them. Saleratus Bill had carefully removed every abrasive possibility in the two rooms. Bob very wisely relinquished the idea of passing the threshold in search of a suitable rock or piece of tin. He had no notion of risking a bullet until something was likely to be gained by it.

Finally his cogitations brought him an idea. Saleratus Bill was attentive enough to such of the simple creature comforts as were within his means. Bob's pipe had been well supplied with tobacco. On the fourth evening Bob filled it just as his jailor was about to take away the candle for the night.

"Just a minute," said Bob. "Let me have a light."

Bill set the candle on the table again, and retired the three paces which he never forgot rigidly to maintain between himself and his captive. Bob thereupon lit his pipe and nodded his thanks. As soon as Saleratus Bill had well departed, however, he retired to his bunk room, shutting the door carefully after him. There, with great care, he deliberately set to work to coax into flame a small fire on the old hearth, using as fuel the rounds of a broken chair, and as ignition the glowing coal in the bowl of his pipe. Before the hearth he had managed to hang the heavy quilt from his bunk, so that the flicker of the flames should not be visible from the outside.

The little fire caught, blazed for a few moments, and fell to a steady glow. Bob fished out one of the chair rungs, jammed the cool end firmly in one of the open cracks between the timbers of the room, turned his back, and deliberately pressed the band around his elbows against the live coal.

A smell of burning cloth immediately filled the air. After a moment the coal went out. Bob replaced the charred rung in the fire, extracted another, and repeated the operation.

It was exceedingly difficult to gauge the matter accurately, as Bob soon found out to his cost. He managed to burn more holes in his garment--and himself--than in the bonds. However, he kept at it, and after a half hour's steady and patient effort he was able to snap asunder the last strands. He stretched his arms over his head in an ecstasy of physical freedom.

That was all very well, but what next? Bob was suddenly called to a decision which had up to that moment seemed inconceivably remote. Heretofore, an apparent impossibility had separated him from it. Now that impossibility was achieved.

A moment's thought convinced him of the senseless hazard of attempting to slip out through any of the doors or windows. The moon was bright, and Saleratus Bill would have taken his precautions. Bob attacked the floor. Several boards proved to be loose. He pried them up cautiously, and so was enabled to drop through into the open space beneath the house. Thence it was easy to crawl away. Saleratus Bill's precautions were most likely taken, Bob argued to himself, with a view toward a man bound at the elbows, not to a man with two hands. In this he was evidently correct, for after a painful effort, he found himself among the high grasses of the meadow.

There were now, as he recognized, two courses open to him: he could either try to discover Saleratus Bill's sleeping place and by surprise overpower that worthy as he slept; or he could make the best of the interim before his absence was discovered to get as far away as possible. Both courses had obvious disadvantages. The most immediate to the first alternative was the difficulty, failing some clue, of finding Saleratus Bill's sleeping place without too positive a risk of discovery; the most immediate to the second was the difficulty of getting to the other side of the river. As Saleratus Bill might be at any one of a thousand places, in or out of doors; whereas the river could be crossed only by the bridge. Bob, without hesitation, chose the latter.

Therefore he made his way cautiously to that structure. It proved to be lying in broad moonlight. As it constituted the only link with the outside world to the south, Bob could not doubt that his captor had arranged to keep it in sight.

The bridge was, as has been said, suspended across a strait between two rocks by means of heavy wire cables. Slipping beneath these rocks and into the shadow, Bob was rejoiced to find that between the stringers and the shore, smaller cables had been bent to act as guy lines. If he could walk "hand over hand," the distance comprised by the width of the stream he could pass the river below the level of the bridge floor. He measured the distance with his eye. It did not look farther than the length of the gymnasium at college. He seized the cable and swung himself out over the waters.

Immediately the swift and boiling current, though twenty feet below, seemed to suck at his feet. The swirling and flashing of the water dizzied his brain with the impression of falling upstream. He had to fix his eyes on the black flooring above his head. The steel cable, too, was old and rusted and harsh. Bob's hands had not for many years grasped a rope strongly, and in that respect he found them soft. His muscles, cramped more than he had realized by the bonds of his captivity, soon began to drag and stretch. When halfway across, suspended above a ravening torrent; confronted, tired, by an effort he had needed all his fresh energies to put forth, Bob would have given a good deal to have been able to clamber aboard the bridge, risk or no risk. It was, however, a clear case of needs must. He finished the span on sheer nerve and will power; and fell thankfully on the rocks below the farther abutment. For a half minute he lay there, stretching slowly his muscles and straightening his hands, which had become cramped like claws. Then he crept, always in the shadow, to the level of the meadow.

Bob was learning to be a mountaineer. Therefore, on the way down, he had subconsciously noted that from the head of the meadow a steep dry wash climbed straight up to intersect the road. The recollection came to the surface of his mind now. If he could make his way up this wash, he would gain three advantages: he would materially shorten his journey by cutting off a mile or so of the road-grade's twists and doublings; he would avoid the necessity of showing himself so near the Cove in the bright moonlight; and he would leave no tracks where the road touched the valley. Accordingly he turned sharp to the left and began to pick his way upstream, keeping in close to the river and treading as much as possible on the water-worn rocks. The willows and elders protected him somewhat. In this manner he proceeded until he had come to the smooth rock aprons near the gorge from which the river flowed. Here, in accordance with his intention of keeping close in the shadow of the mountain, he was to turn to the right until he should have arrived at the steep "chimney" of the wash. He was about to leave the shelter of the last willows when he looked back. As his eyes turned, a flash of moonlight struck them full, like the heliographing of a mirror. He fixed his gaze on the bushes from which the flicker had come. In a moment it was repeated. Then, stooping low, a human figure hurried across a tiny opening, and once again the moonlight reflected from the worn and shining revolver in its hand.

XXVIII

In some manner Saleratus Bill had discovered the young man's escape, and had already eliminated the other possibilities of his direction of flight. Bob shuddered at this evidence of the rapidity with which the expert trailer had arrived at the correct conclusion. He could not now skirt the mountain, as he had intended, for that would at once expose him in full view; he could not return by the way he had come, for that would bring him face to face with his enemy. It would avail him little to surrender, for the gun-man would undoubtedly make good his threats; fidelity to such pledges is one of the few things sacred to the race. With some vague and desperate idea of defence, Bob picked up a heavy branch of driftwood. Then, as the man drew nearer, Bob scrambled hastily over the smooth apron to the tiny beach that the eddies had washed out below the precipice.

Here for the moment he was hidden, but he did not flatter himself he would long remain so. He cast his eyes about him for a way of escape. To the one side was the river, in front of him was the rock apron with his enemy, to the other side and back of him was a sheer precipice. In his perplexity he looked down. A gleam of metal caught his eye. He stooped and picked up the half of a worn horseshoe. Even in his haste of mind, he cast a passing wonderment on how it had come there.

If Bob had not been trained by his river work in the ways of currents, he might sooner have thought of the stream. But well he knew that Saleratus Bill had spoken right when he had said that there were "no swimming holes" here. The strongest swimmer could not have taken two strokes in that cauldron of seething white water. But now, as Bob looked, he saw that a little back eddy along the perpendicularity of the cliff slowed the current close to the sheer rock. It might be just possible, with luck, to win far enough along this cliff to lie concealed behind some outjutting boulder until Saleratus Bill had examined the beach and gone his way. Bob was too much in haste to consider the unexplained tracks he must leave on the sand.

He thrust the branch he carried into the still black water. To his surprise it hit bottom at a foot's depth. Promptly he waded in. Sounding ahead, he walked on. The underwater ledge continued. The water never came above his knees. Out of curiosity he tapped with his branch until he had reached the edge of the submerged shelf. It proved to be some four feet wide. Beyond it the water dropped off sheer, and the current nearly wrenched the staff from Bob's hand.

In this manner he proceeded cautiously for perhaps a hundred feet. Then he waded out on another beach.

He found himself in a pocket of the cliffs, where the precipice so far drew back as to leave a clear space of four or five acres in the river bottom. Such pockets, or "coves," are by no means unusual in the inaccessible depths of the great box cañons of the Sierras. Often the traveller can look down on them from above, lying like green gems in their settings of granite, but rarely can he descend to examine them. Thankfully Bob darted to one side. Here for a moment he might be safe, for surely no one not driven by such desperation as his own would dream of setting foot in the river.

A loud snort almost at his elbow, and a rush of scurrying shapes, startled him almost into crying aloud. Then out into the moonlight from the shadow of the cliffs rushed two horses. And Bob, seeing what they were, sprang from his fancied security into instant action, for in a flash he saw the significance of the broken horseshoe on the beach, the sunken ledge, and the secret of the horses' pasture. By sheer chance he had blundered on one of Saleratus Bill's outlaw retreats.

Hastily he skirted the walls of the tiny valley. They were unbroken. The river swept by tortured and tumbled. He ran to the head of the cove. No sunken ledge there rewarded him. Instead, the river at that point swept inward, so that the full force of the current washed the very shores.

Bob searched the prospect with eager eye. Twelve or fifteen feet upstream, and six or seven feet out from the cliff, stood a huge round boulder. That alone broke the shadowy expanse of the river, which here rushed down with great velocity. Manifestly it was impossible to swim to this boulder. Bob, however, conceived a daring idea. At imminent risk and by dint of frantic scrambling he worked his way along the cliff until he had gained a point opposite the boulder and considerably above it. Then, without hesitation, he sprang as strongly as he was able sidewise from the face of the cliff.

He landed on the boulder with great force, so that for a moment he feared he must have broken some bones. Certainly his breath was all but knocked from his body. Spread out flat on the top of the rock, he moved his limbs cautiously. They seemed to work all right. He backed cautiously until he lay outspread on the upstream slope of the boulder. At just this moment he caught the sinister figure of Saleratus Bill moving along the sunken ledge.

For the first time Bob remembered the tracks he must have left and the man's skill at trailing. A rapid review of his most recent actions reassured him at one point; in order to gain to the first of the minor cliff projections by means of which he had spread-eagled along the face of the rock, he had been forced to step into the very shallow water at the stream's edge. Thus his last footprints led directly into the river.

The value of this impression, conjoined with the existence of a ledge below over which he had already waded safely, was not lost on Bob's preception. As has been stated, his earlier experience in river driving had given him an intimate knowledge of the action of currents. Casting his eye hastily down the moonlit river, he seized his hat from his head and threw it low and skimming toward an eddy opposite him as he lay. The river snatched it up, tossed it to one side or another, and finally carried it, as Bob had calculated, within a few feet of the ledge along which Saleratus Bill was still making his way.

The gun-man, of course, caught sight of it, and even made an attempt to capture it as it floated past, but without avail. It served, however, to prepossess his mind with the idea that Bob had been swept away by the river, so that when, after a careful examination of the tiny cove, he came to the trail leading into the water, he was prepared to believe that the young man had been carried off his feet in an attempt to wade out past the cliff. He even picked up a branch, with which he poked at the bottom. A short and narrow rock projection favoured his hypothesis, for it might very well happen that merely an experimental venture on so slanting and slippery a footing would prove fatal. Saleratus Bill examined again for footprints emerging; threw his branch into the river, and watched the direction of its course; and then, for the first time, slipped the worn and shiny old revolver into its holster. He spent several moments more reexamining the cove, glanced again at the river, and finally disappeared, wading slowly back around the sunken ledge.

Bob's next task was to regain solid land. For some minutes he sat astride the boulder, estimating the force and directions of the current. Then he leaped. As he had calculated, the stream threw him promptly against the bank below. There his legs were immediately sucked beneath the overhanging rock that had convinced Saleratus Bill of his captive's fate. It seemed likely now to justify that conviction. Bob clung desperately, until his muscles cracked, but was unable so far to draw his legs from underneath the rock as to gain a chance to struggle out of water. Indeed, he might very well have hung in that equilibrium of forces until tired out, had not a slender, water-washed alder root offered itself to his grasp. This frail shrub, but lightly rooted, nevertheless afforded him just the extra support he required. Though he expected every instant that the additional ounces of weight he from moment to moment applied to it would tear it away, it held. Inch by inch he drew himself from the clutch of the rushing water, until at length he succeeded in getting the broad of his chest against the bank. A few vigorous kicks then extricated him.

For a moment or so he lay stretched out panting, and considering what next was to be done. There was a chance, of course--and, in view of Saleratus Bill's shrewdness, a very strong chance--that the gun-man would add to his precautions a wait and a watch at the entrance to the cove. If Bob were to wade out around the ledge, he might run fairly into his former jailer's gun. On the other hand, Saleratus Bill must be fairly well convinced of the young man's destruction, and he must be desirous of changing his wet clothes. Bob's own predicament, in this chill of night, made him attach much weight to this latter consideration. Besides, any delay in the cove meant more tracks to be noticed when the gun-man should come after the horses. Bob, his teeth chattering, resolved to take the chance of instant action.

Accordingly he waded back along the sunken ledge, glided as quickly as he could over the rock apron, and wormed his way through the grasses to the dry wash leading up the side of the mountains. Here fortune had favoured him, and by a very simple, natural sequence. The moon had by an hour sailed farther to the west; the wash now lay in shadow.

Bob climbed as rapidly as his wind would let him, and in that manner avoided a chill. He reached the road at a broad sheet of rock whereon his footsteps left no trace. After a moment's consideration, he decided to continue directly up the mountainside through the thick brush. This travel must be uncertain and laborious; but if he proceeded along the road, Saleratus Bill must see the traces he would indubitably leave. In the obscurity of the shady side of the mountain he found his task even more difficult than he had thought possible. Again and again he found himself puzzled by impenetrable thickets, impassable precipices, rough outcrops barring his way. By dint of patience and hard work, however, he gained the top of the mountain. At sunrise he looked back into Bright's Cove. It lay there peacefully deserted, to all appearance; but Bob, looking very closely, thought to make out smoke. The long thread of the road was quite vacant.

XXIX

Bob had no very clear idea of where he was, except that it was in the unfriendly Durham country. It seemed well to postpone all public appearances until he should be beyond a chance that Saleratus Bill might hear of him. Bob was quite satisfied that the gun-man should believe him to have been swept away by the current.

Accordingly, after he had well rested from his vigorous climb, he set out to parallel the dim old road by which the two had entered the Cove. At times this proved so difficult a matter that Bob was almost on the point of abandoning the hillside tangle of boulders and brush in favour of the open highway. He reflected in time that Saleratus Bill must come out by this route; and he shrewdly surmised the expert trailer might be able from some former minute observation to recognize his footprints. Therefore he struggled on until the road dipped down toward the lower country. He remembered that, on the way in, his captor had led him first down the mountain, and then up again. Bob resolved to abandon the road and keep to the higher contours, trusting to cut the trail where it again mounted to his level. To be sure, it was probable that there existed some very good reason why the road so dipped to the valley--some dike, ridge or deep cañon impassable to horses. Bob knew enough of mountains to guess that. Still, he argued, that might not stop a man afoot.

The rest of a long, hard day he spent in proving this latter proposition. The country was very broken. A dozen times Bob scrambled and slid down a gorge, and out again, doing thus an hour's work for a half mile gain. The sun turned hot, and he had no food. Fortunately water was abundant. Toward the close of the afternoon he struck in to a long slope of pine belt, and conceived his difficulties over.

After the heat and glare of the rocks, the cool shadows of the forest were doubly grateful. Bob lifted his face to the wandering breezes, and stepped out with fresh vigour. The way led at first up the narrow spine of a "hogback," but soon widened into one of the ample and spacious parks peculiar to the elevations near the summits of the First Rampart. Occasional cattle tracks meandered here and there, but save for these Bob saw no signs of man's activities--no cuttings, no shake-bolts, no blazes on the trees to mark a way. Nevertheless, as he rose on the slow, even swell of the mountain the conviction of familiarity began to force its way in him. The forest was just like every other forest; there was no outlook in any direction; but all the same, with that instinct for locality inherent in a natural woodsman, he began to get his bearings, to "feel the lay of the country," as the saying is. This is probably an effect of the subconscious mind in memory; a recognition of what the eye has seen without reporting to the conscious mind. However that may be, Bob was not surprised when toward sunset he came suddenly on a little clearing, a tiny orchard, and a house built rudely of logs and shakes.

Relieved that he was not to spend the night without food and fire, he vaulted the "snake" fence, and strode to the back door. A woman was frying venison steaks.

"Hullo, Mrs. Ward," Bob shouted at her. "That smells good to me; I haven't had a bite since last night!"

The woman dropped her pan and came to the door. A lank and lean Pike County Missourian rose from the shadows and advanced.

"Light and rest yo' hat, Mr. Orde!" he called before he came well into view. "But yo' already lighted, and you ain't go no hat!" he cried in puzzled tones. "Whar yo'all from?"

"Came from north," Bob replied cheerfully, "and I lost my horse down a cañon, and my hat in a river."

"And yere yo' be plumb afoot!"

"And plumb empty," supplemented Bob. "Maybe Mrs. Ward will make me some coffee," he suggested with a side glance at the woman who had once tried to poison him.

She turned a dull red under the tan of her sallow complexion.

"Shore, Mr. Orde--" she began.

"We didn't rightly understand each other," Bob reassured her. "That was all."

"Did she-all refuse you coffee onct?" asked Ward. "What yo' palaverin' about?"

"She isn't refusing to make me some now," said Bob.

He spent the night comfortably with his new friends who a few months ago had been ready to murder him. The next morning early, supplied with an ample lunch, he set out. Ward offered him a riding horse, but he declined.

"I'd have to send it back," said he, "and, anyway, I'd neither want to borrow your saddle nor ride bareback. I'd rather walk."

The old man accompanied him to the edge of the clearing.

"By the way," Bob mentioned, as he said farewell, "if some one asks you, just tell them you haven't seen me."

The old man stopped short.

"What-for a man?" he asked.

"Any sort."

A frosty gleam crept into the old Missourian's eye.

"I'll keep hands off," said he. He strode on twenty feet. "I got an extra gun--" said he.

"Thanks," Bob interrupted. "But I'll get organized better when I get home."

"Hope you git him," said the old man by way of farewell. "He won't git nothing out of me," he shot back over his shoulder.

Bob now knew exactly where he was going. Reinvigorated by the food, the night's rest, and the cool air of these higher altitudes, he made good time. By four o'clock of the afternoon he at last hit the broad, dusty thoroughfare over which were hauled the supplies to Baker's upper works. Along this he swung, hands in pockets, a whistle on his lips, the fine, light dust rising behind his footsteps. The slight down grade released his tired muscles from effort. He was enjoying himself.

Then he came suddenly around a corner plump against a horseman climbing leisurely up the grade. Both stopped.

If Bob had entertained any lingering doubt as to Oldham's complicity in his abduction, the expression on the land agent's face would have removed it. For the first time in public Oldham's countenance expressed a livelier emotion than that of cynical interest. His mouth fell open and his eyeglasses dropped off. He stared at Bob as though that young man had suddenly sprung into visibility from clear atmosphere. Bob surveyed him grimly.

"Delighted to see me, aren't you?" he remarked. A slow anger surged up within him. "Your little scheme didn't work, did it? Wanted me out of the way, did you? Thought you'd keep me out of court! Well, I'm here, just as I said I'd be here. You can pay your villainous tool or kick him out, as you please. He's failed, and he won't get another chance. You miserable whelp!"

But Oldham had recovered his poise.

"Get out of my way. I don't know what you are talking about. I'll land you in the penitentiary a week after you appear in court. You're warned."

"Oh, I've been warned for some time. But first I'll land you."

"Really! How?"

"Right here and now," said Bob stepping forward.

Oldham reined back his horse, and drew from his side pocket a short, nickel-plated revolver.

"Let me pass!" he commanded harshly. He presented the weapon, and his gray eyes contracted to pin points.

"Throw that thing away," said Bob, laying his hand on the other man's bridle. "_I'm going to give you the very worst licking you ever heard tell of!_"

The young man's muscles were tense with the expectation of a shot. To his vast astonishment, at his last words Oldham turned deadly pale, swayed in the saddle, and the revolver clattered past his stirrup to fall in the dust. With a snarl of contempt at what he erroneously took for a mere physical cowardice, Bob reached for his enemy and dragged him from the saddle.

The chastisement was brief, but effective. Bob's anger cooled with the first blow, for Oldham was no match for his younger and more vigorous assailant. In fact, he hardly offered any resistance. Bob knocked him down, shook him by the collar as a terrier shakes a ground squirrel, and cast him fiercely in the dust. Oldham sat up, his face bleeding slightly, his eyes bewildered with the suddenness of the onslaught. The young man leaned over him, speaking vehemently to rivet his attention.

"Now you listen to me," said he. "You leave me alone. If I ever hear any gossip, even, about what you will or will not do to me, I'll know where it started from. The first word I hear from any one anywhere, I'll start for you."

He looked down for a moment at the disorganized man seated in the thick, white dust that was still floating lazily around him. Then he turned abruptly away and resumed his journey.

XXX

For ten seconds Oldham sat as Bob had left him. His hat and eyeglasses were gone, his usually immaculate irongray hair rumpled, his clothes covered with dust. A thin stream of blood crept from beneath his close-clipped moustache. But the most striking result of the encounter, to one who had known the man, was in the convulsed expression of his countenance. A close friend would hardly have recognized him. His lips snarled, his eyes flared, the muscles of his face worked. Ordinarily repressed and inscrutable, this crisis had thrown him so far off his balance that, as often happens, he had fallen to the other extreme. Sniffling and half-sobbing, like a punished schoolboy, he dragged himself to where his revolver lay forgotten in the dust. Taking as deliberate aim as his condition permitted, he pulled at the trigger. The hammer refused to rise, or the cylinder to revolve. Abandoning the self-cocking feature of the arm, he tried to cock it by hand. The mechanism grated sullenly against the grit from the road. Oldham worked frantically to get the hammer to catch. By the time he had succeeded, his antagonist was out of reach. With a half-scream of baffled rage, he hurled the now useless weapon in the direction of the young man's disappearance. Then, as Oldham stood militant in the dusty road, a change came over him. Little by little the man resumed his old self. A full minute went by. Save for the quicker breathing, a spectator might have thought him sunk in reverie. At the end of that time the old, self-contained, reserved, cynical Oldham stepped from his tracks, and set methodically to repair damages.

First he searched for and found his glasses, fortunately unbroken. At the nearest streamlet he washed his face, combed his hair, brushed off his clothes. The saddle horse browsed not far away. Finally he walked down the road, picked up the revolver, cleaned it thoroughly of dust, tested it and slipped it into his pocket. Then he resumed his journey, outwardly as self-possessed as ever.

Near the upper dam he had another encounter. The dust of some one approaching warned him some time before the traveller came in sight. Oldham reined back his horse until he could see who it was; then he spurred forward to meet Saleratus Bill.

The gun-man was lounging along at peace with all the world, his bridle rein loose, his leg slung over the pommel of his saddle. At the sight of his employer, he grinned cheerfully.

Oldham rode directly to him.

"Why aren't you attending to your job?" he demanded icily.

"Out of a job," said Saleratus Bill cheerfully.

"Why haven't you kept your man in charge?"

"I did until he just naturally had one of those unavoidable accidents."

"Explain yourself."

"Well. I ain't never been afraid of words. He's dead; that's what."

"Indeed," said Oldham, "Then I suppose I met his ghost just now; and that a spirit gave me this cut lip."

Saleratus Bill swung his leg from the saddle horn and straightened to attention.

"Did he have a hat on?" he demanded keenly.

"Yes--no--I believe not. No, I'm sure he didn't."

"It's him, all right." He shook his head reflectively, "I can't figure it."

Oldham was staring at him with deadly coldness.

"Perhaps you'll be good enough to explain," he sneered--"five hundred dollars worth at any rate."

Saleratus Bill detailed what he knew of the whole affair. Oldham listened to the end. His cynical expression did not change; and the unlighted cigar that he held between his swollen lips never changed its angle.

"And so he just nat'rally disappeared," Saleratus Bill ended his recital. "I can't figure it out."

Then Oldham spat forth the cigar. His calm utterly deserted him. He thrust his livid countenance out at his man.

"Figure it out!" he cried. "You pin-headed fool! You had an unarmed man tied hand and foot, in a three-thousand-foot hole, and you couldn't keep him! And one of the smallest interests involved is worth more than everything your worthless hide can hold! I picked you out for this job because I thought you reliable. And now you come to me with 'I can't figure it out!' That's all the explanation or excuse you bring! You miserable, worthless cur!"

Saleratus Bill was looking at him steadily from his evil, red-rimmed eyes.

"Hold on," he drawled. "Go slow. I don't stand such talk."

Oldham spurred up close to him.

"Don't you try any of your gun-play or intimidation on me," he fairly shouted. "I won't stand for it. You'll hear what I've got to say, just as long as I choose to say it."

He eyed the gun-man truculently. Certainly even Bob could not have accused him of physical cowardice at that moment.

Saleratus Bill stared back at him with the steady, venomous glare of a rattlesnake. Then his lips, under his straggling, sandy moustache, parted in a slow grin.

"Say your say," he conceded. "I reckon you're mad; I reckon that boy man-handled you something scand'lous."

At the words Oldham's face became still more congested.

"But you look a-here," said Saleratus Bill, suddenly leaning across from his saddle and pointing a long, lean finger. "You just remember this: I took this yere job with too many strings tied to it. I mustn't hurt him; and I must see no harm comes to him; and I must be noways cruel to mama's baby. You had me hobbled, and then you cuss me out because I can't get over the rocks. If you'd turned me loose with no instructions except to disappear your man, I'd have earned my money."

He dropped his hand to the butt of his six-shooter, and looked his principal in the eye.

"I'm just as sorry as you are that he made this get-away," he continued slowly. "Now I got to pull up stakes and get out. Nat'rally he'll make it too hot for me here. Then I could use that extry twenty-five hundred that was coming to me on this job. But it ain't too late. He's got away once; but he ain't in court yet. I can easy keep him out, if the original bargain stands. Of course, I'm sorry he punched your face."

"Damn his soul!" burst out Oldham.

"Just let me deal with him my way, instead of yours," repeated Saleratus Bill.

"Do so," snarled Oldham; "the sooner the better."

"That's all I want to hear," said the gun-man, and touched spurs to his horse.

XXXI

Bob's absence had occasioned some speculation, but no uneasiness, at headquarters. An officer of the Forest Service was too often called upon for sudden excursions in unexpected emergencies to make it possible for his chiefs to keep accurate track of all his movements. A day's trip to the valley might easily be deflected to a week's excursion to the higher peaks by any one of a dozen circumstances. The report of trespassing sheep, a tiny smoke above distant trees, a messenger sent out for arbitration in a cattle dispute, are samples of the calls to which Bob must have hastened no matter on what errand he had been bound.

He arrived at headquarters late in the afternoon. Already a thin wand of smoke wavered up through the trees from Amy's little, open kitchen. The open door of the shed office trickled forth a thin clicking of typewriters. Otherwise the camp seemed deserted.

At Bob's halloo, however, both Thorne and old California John came to the door. In two minutes he had all three gathered about the table under the three big firs.

"In the first place, I want to say right now," he began, "that I have the evidence to win the land case against the Modoc Mining Company."

"How?" demanded Thorne, leaning forward eagerly.

"Baker has boasted, before two witnesses, that his mineral entries were fraudulent and made simply to get water rights and timber."

"Those witnesses will testify?"

"They will."

"Who are they?"

"Mr. Welton and myself."

"Glory be!" cried Thorne, springing to his feet and clapping Bob on the back. "We've got him!"

"So that's what you've been up to for the past week!" cried Amy. "We've been wondering where you had disappeared to!"

"Well, not precisely," grinned Bob; "I've been in durance vile."

In response to their questionings he detailed a semi-humorous account of his abduction, detention and escape. His three auditors listened with the deepest attention.

As the recital progressed to the point wherein Bob described his midnight escape, Amy, unnoticed by the others, leaned back and closed her eyes. The colour left her face for a moment, but the next instant had rushed back to her cheeks in a tide of deeper red. She thrust forward, her eyes snapping with indignation.

"They are desperate; there's no doubt of it," was Thorne's comment. "And they won't stop at this. I wish the trial was to-morrow. We must get your testimony in shape before anything happens."

Amy was staring across the table at them, her lips parted with horror.

"You don't think they'll try anything worse!" she gasped.

Bob started to reassure her, but Thorne in his matter-of-fact way broke in.

"I don't doubt they'll try to get him proper, next time. We must get out papers and the sheriff after this Saleratus Bill."

"He'll be almighty hard to locate," put in California John.

"And I think we'd better not let Bob, here, go around alone any more."

"I don't think he ought to go around at all!" Amy amended this vigorously.

Bob shot at her an obliquely humorous glance, before which her own fell. Somehow the humour died from his.

"Bodyguard accepted with thanks," said he, recovering himself. "I've had enough Wild West on my own account." His words and the expression of his face were facetious, but his tones were instinct with a gravity that attracted even Thorne's attention. The Supervisor glanced at the young man curiously, wondering if he were going to lose his nerve at the last. But Bob's personal stake was furthest from his mind. Something in Amy's half-frightened gesture had opened a new door in his soul. The real and insistent demands of the situation had been suddenly struck shadowy while his forces adjusted themselves to new possibilities.

"Ware's your man," suggested California John. "He's a gun-man, and he's got a nerve like a saw mill man."

"Where is Ware?" Thorne asked Amy.

"He's over at Fair's shake camp. He will be back to-morrow."

"That's settled, then. How about Welton? Is he warned? You say he'll testify?"

"If he has to," replied Bob, by a strong effort bringing himself back to a practical consideration of the matter in hand. "At least he'll never perjure himself, if he's called. Welton's case is different. Look here; it's bound to come out, so you may as well know the whole situation."

He paused, glancing from one to another of his hearers. Thorne's keen face expressed interest of the alert official; California John's mild blue eye beamed upon him with a dawning understanding of the situation; Amy, intuitively divining a more personal trouble, looked across at him with sympathy.

"John, here, will remember the circumstance," said Bob. "It happened about the time I first came out here with Mr. Welton. It seems that Plant had assured him that everything was all arranged so our works and roads could cross the Forest, so we went ahead and built them. In those days it was all a matter of form, anyway. Then when we were ready to go ahead with our first season's work, up steps Plant and asks to see our permission, threatening to shut us down! Of course, all he wanted was money."

"And Welton gave it to him?" cried Amy.

"It wasn't a case of buy a privilege," explained Bob, "but of life itself. We were operating on borrowed money, and just beginning our first year's operations. The season is short in these mountains, as you know, and we were under heavy obligations to fulfil a contract for sawed lumber. A delay of even a week meant absolute ruin to a large enterprise. Mr. Welton held off to the edge of danger, I remember, exhausting every means possible here and at Washington to rush through the necessary permission."

"Why didn't he tell the truth--expose Plant? Surely no department would endorse that," put in Amy, a trifle subdued in manner.

"That takes time," Bob pointed out. "There was no time."

"So Welton came through," said Thorne drily. "What has that got to do with it?"

"Baker paid the money for him," said Bob.

"Well, they're both in the same boat," remarked Thorne tranquilly. "I don't see that that gives him any hold on Welton."

"He threatens to turn state's evidence in the matter, and seems confident of immunity on that account."

"He can't mean it!" cried Amy.

"Sheer bluff," said Thorne.

"I thought so, and went to see him. Now I am sure not. He means it; and he'll do it when this case against the Modoc Company is pushed."

"I thought you said Welton would testify?" observed Thorne.

"He will. But naturally only if he is summoned."

"Then what----"

"Oh, I see. Baker never thought he could keep Welton from telling the truth, but knew perfectly well he would not volunteer the evidence. He used his hold over Welton to try to keep me from bringing forward this testimony. Sort of relied on our intimacy and friendship."

"But you will testify?"

"I think I see my duty that way," said Bob in a troubled voice.

"Quite right," said Thorne, dispassionately; "I'm sorry." He arose from the table. "This is most important. I don't often issue positive prohibitions in my capacity of superior officer; but in this instance I must. I am going to request you not to leave camp on any errand unless accompanied by Ranger Ware."

Bob nodded a little impatiently. California John paused before following his chief into the office.

"It's good sense, boy," said he, "and nobody gives a darn for your worthless skin, you know. It's just the information you got inside it."

"Right," laughed Bob, his brow clearing. "I forgot."

California John nodded at him, and disappeared into the office.

Bob turned to Amy with a laughing comment that died on his lips. The girl was standing very straight on the other side of the table. One little brown hand grasped and crushed the edge of her starched apron; her black brows were drawn in a straight line of indignation beneath which her splendid eyes flashed; her rounded bosom, half-defined by the loose, soft blue of her simple gown, rose and fell rapidly.

"And you're going to do it?" she threw across at him.

Bob, bewildered, stared at her.

"You're going to deliver over your friend to prison?" She moved swiftly around the table to stand close to him. "Surely you can't mean to do that! You've worked with him, and lived with him--and he's a dear, jolly old man!"

"Hold on!" cried Bob, recovering from the first shock, and beginning to enjoy the situation. "You don't understand. If I don't give my testimony, think what the Service will lose in the Basin."

"Lose!" she cried indignantly. "What of it? Do you think if I had a friend who was near and dear to me I'd sacrifice him for all the trees in the mountains? How can you!"

"_Et tu Brute_!" said Bob a little wearily. "Where is all the no-compromise talk I've heard at various times, and the high ideals, and the loyalty to the Service at any cost, and all the rest of it? You're not consistent."

Amy eyed him a little disdainfully.

"You've got to save that poor old man," she stated. "It's all very easy for you to talk of duty and the rest of it, but the fact remains that you're sending that poor old man to prison for something that isn't his fault, and it'll break his heart."

"He isn't there yet," Bob pointed out. "The case isn't decided."

"It's all very well for you to talk that way," said Amy, "for all you have to do is to satisfy your conscience and bear your testimony. But if testifying would land you in danger of prison, you might feel differently about it."

Bob thought of George Pollock, and smiled a trifle bitterly. Welton might get off with a fine, or even suspended sentence. There was but one punishment for those accessory before the fact to a murder. Amy was eyeing him reflectively. The appearance of anger had died. It was evident that she was thinking deeply.

"Why doesn't Mr. Welton protect himself?" she inquired at length. "If he turned state's evidence before that man Baker did, wouldn't it work that way around?"

"I don't believe it would," said Bob. "Baker was not the real principal in the offence, only an accessory. Besides, even if it were possible, Mr. Welton would not do such a thing. You don't know Welton."

Amy sank again to reflection, her eyes losing themselves in a gaze beyond the visible world. Suddenly she threw up her head with a joyous chuckle.

"I believe I have it!" she cried. She nodded her head several times as though to corroborate with herself certain points in her plan. "Listen!" she said at last. "As I understand it, Baker is really liable on this charge of bribing Plant as much as Mr. Welton is."

"Yes; he paid the money."

"So that if it were not for the fact that he intends to gain immunity by telling what he knows, he would get into as much trouble as Mr. Welton."

"Of course."

"Well, don't you know enough about it all to testify? Weren't you there?"

Bob reflected.

"Yes, I believe I was present at all the interviews."

"Then," cried Amy triumphantly, "you can issue complaint against _both_ Baker and Mr. Welton on a charge of bribery, and Baker can't possibly wriggle out by turning state's evidence, because your evidence will be enough."

"Do you expect me to have Mr. Welton arrested on this charge?" cried Bob.

"No, silly! But you can go to Baker, can't you, and say to him: 'See here, if you try to bring up this old bribery charge against Welton, I'll get in ahead of you and have you _both_ up. I haven't any desire to raise a fuss, nor start any trouble; but if you are bound to get Mr. Welton in on this, I might as well get you both in.' He'd back out, you see!"

"I believe he would!" cried Bob. "It's a good bluff to make."

"It mustn't be a bluff," warned Amy. "You must mean it. I don't believe he wants to face a criminal charge just to get Mr. Welton in trouble, if he realizes that you are both going to testify anyway. But if he thinks you're bluffing, he'll carry it through."

"You're right," said Bob slowly. "If necessary, we must carry it through ourselves."

Amy nodded.

"I'll take down a letter for you to Baker," she said, "and type it out this evening. We'll say nothing to anybody."

"I must tell Welton of our plan," said Bob; "I wouldn't for the world have to spring this on him unprepared. What would he think of me?"

"We'll see him to-morrow--no, next day; we have to wait for Ware, you know."

"Am I forgiven for doing my plain duty?" asked Bob a trifle mischievously.

"Only if our scheme works," declared Amy. Her manner changed to one of great seriousness. "I know your way is brave and true, believe me I do. And I know what it costs you to follow it. I respect and admire the quality in men that leads them so straightly along the path. But I could not do it. Ideas and things are inspiring and great and to be worked for with enthusiasm and devotion, I know. No one loves the Service more than I, nor would make more personal sacrifices for her. But people are warm and living, and their hearts beat with human life, and they can be sorry and glad, happy and brokenhearted. I can't tell you quite what I mean, for I cannot even tell myself. I only feel it. I could turn my thumbs down on whole cohorts of senators and lawyers and demagogues that are attacking us in Washington and read calmly in next day's paper how they had been beheaded recanting all their sins against us. But I couldn't get any nearer home. Why, the other day Ashley told me to send a final and peremptory notice of dispossession to the Main family, over near Bald Knob, and I couldn't do it. I tried all day. I knew old Main had no business there, and is worthless and lazy and shiftless. But I kept remembering how his poor old back was bent over. Finally I made Ashley dictate it, and tried to keep thinking all the time that I was nothing but a machine for the transmission of his ideas. When it comes to such things I'm useless, and I know I fall short of all higher ideals of honour and duty and everything else."

"Thank God you do," said Bob gravely.

XXXII

Ware returned to headquarters toward evening of the next day. He had ridden hard and long, but he listened to Thorne's definition of his new duties with kindling eye, and considerable appearance of quiet satisfaction. Bob met him outside the office.

"You aren't living up to your part, Ware," said he, with mock anxiety. "According to Hoyle you ought to draw your gun, whirl the cylinder, and murmur gently, Aha!"

"Why should I do that?" asked Ware, considerably mystified.

"To see if your weapon is in order, of course."

"How would a fool trick like that show whether my gun's in shape?"

"Hanged if I know," confessed Bob, "but they always do that in books and on the stage."

"Well, my gun will shoot," said Ware, shortly.

It was then too late to visit Welton that evening, but at a good hour the following morning Bob announced his intention of going over to the mill.

"If you're going to be my faithful guardian, you'll have to walk," he told Ware. "My horse is up north somewhere, and there isn't another saddle in camp."

"I'm willing," said Ware; "my animals are plumb needy of a rest."

At the last moment Amy joined them.

"I have a day off instead of Sunday," she told them, "and you're the first humans that have discovered what two feet are made for. I never can get anybody to walk two steps with me," she complained.

"Never tried before you acquired those _beautiful_ gray elkskin boots with the _ravishing_ hobnails in 'em," chaffed Bob.

Amy said nothing, but her cheeks burned with two red spots. She chatted eagerly, too eagerly, trying to throw into the expedition the air of a holiday excursion. Bob responded to her rather feverish gaiety, but Ware looked at her with an eye in which comprehension was slowly dawning. He had nothing to add to the rapid-fire conversation. Finally Amy inquired with mock anxiety, over his unwonted silence.

"I'm on my job," replied Ware briefly.

This silenced her for a moment or so, while she examined the woods about them with furtive, searching glances as though their shadows might conceal an enemy.

To Bob, at least, the morning conduced to gaiety, for the air was crisp and sparkling with the wine of early fall. Down through the sombre pines, here and there, flamed the delicate pink of a dogwood, the orange of the azaleas, or the golden yellow of aspens ripening already under the hurrying of early frosts. The squirrels, Stellar's jays, woodpeckers, nuthatches and chickadees were very busy scurrying here and there, screaming gossip, or moving diligently and methodically as their natures were. All the rest of the forest was silent. Not a breath of wind stirred the tallest fir-tip or swayed the most lofty pine branch. Through the woodland spaces the sunlight sparkled with the inconceivable brilliance of the higher levels, as though the air were filled with glittering particles in suspension, like the mica snowstorms of the peep shows inside a child's candy egg.

They dipped into the cañon of the creek and out again through the yellow pines of the other side. They skirted the edge of the ancient clearing for the almost prehistoric mill that had supplied early settlers with their lumber, and thence looked out through trees to the brown and shimmering plain lying far below.

"My, I'm glad I'm not there!" exclaimed Amy fervently; "I always say that," she added.

"A hundred and eleven day before yesterday, Jack Pollock says," remarked Bob.

So at last they gained the long ridge leading toward the mill and saw a hundred feet away the mill road, and the forks where their own wagon trail joined it.

At this point they again entered the forest, screened by young growth and a thicket of alders.

"Look there," Amy pointed out. "See that dogwood, up by the yellow pine. It's the most splendiferous we've seen yet. Wait a minute. I'm going to get a branch of it for Mr. Welton's office. I don't believe anybody ever picks anything for him."

"Let me--" began Bob; but she was already gone, calling back over her shoulder.

"No; this is my treat!"

The men stopped in the wagon trail to wait for her. Bob watched with distinct pleasure her lithe, active figure making its way through the tangle of underbrush, finally emerging into the clear and climbing with swift, sure movements to the little elevation on which grew the beautiful, pink-leaved dogwoods. She turned when she had gained the level of the yellow pine, to wave her hand at her companions. Even at the distance, Bob could make out the flush of her cheeks and divine the delighted sparkle of her eyes.

But as she turned, her gesture was arrested in midair, and almost instantly she uttered a piercing scream. Bob had time to take a half step forward. Then a heavy blow on the back of his neck threw him forward. He stumbled and fell on his face. As he left his feet, the crash of two revolver shots in quick succession rang in his ears.

XXXIII

Oldham's cold rage carried him to the railroad and into his berth. Then, with the regular beat and throb of the carwheels over the sleepers, other considerations forced themselves upon him. Consequences demanded recognition.

The land agent had not for many years permitted himself to act on impulse. Therefore this one lapse from habit alarmed him vaguely by the mere fact that it was a lapse from habit. He distrusted himself in an unaccustomed environment of the emotions.

But superinduced on this formless uneasiness were graver considerations. He could not but admit to himself that he had by his expressed order placed himself to some extent in Saleratus Bill's power. He did not for a moment doubt the gun-man's loyal intentions. As long as things went well he would do his best by his employer--if merely to gain the reward promised him only on fulfillment of his task. But it is not easy to commit a murder undetected. And if detected, Oldham had no illusions as to Saleratus Bill. The gun-man, would promptly shelter himself behind his principal.

As the night went on, and Oldham found himself unable to sleep in the terrible heat, the situation visualized itself. Step by step he followed out the sequence of events as they might be, filling in the minutest details of discovery, exposure and ruin. Gradually, in the tipped balance of after midnight, events as they might be became events as they surely would be. Oldham began to see that he had made a fearful mistake. No compunction entered his mind that he had condemned a man to death; but a cold fear gripped him lest his share should be discovered, and he should be called upon to face the consequences. Oldham enjoyed and could play only the game that was safe so far as physical and personal retribution went.

So deeply did the guilty panic invade his soul that after a time he arose and dressed. The sleepy porter was just turning out from the smoking compartment.

"What's this next station?" Oldham demanded.

"Mo-harvey," blinked the porter.

"I get off there," stated Oldham briefly.

The porter stared at him.

"I done thought you went 'way through," he confessed. "I'se scairt I done forgot you."

"All right," said Oldham curtly, and handing him a tip. "Never mind that confounded brush; get my suit case."

Ten seconds later he stood on the platform of the little station in the desert while the tail lights of the train diminished slowly into the distance.

The desert lay all about him like a calmed sea on which were dim half-lights of sage brush or alkali flats. On a distant horizon slept black mountain ranges, stretched low under a brilliant sky that arched triumphant. In it the stars flamed steadily like candles, after the strange desert fashion. Although by day the heat would have scorched the boards on which he stood, now Oldham shivered in the searching of the cool insistent night wind that breathed across the great spaces.

He turned to the lighted windows of the little station where a tousled operator sat at a telegraph key. A couch in the corner had been recently deserted. The fact that the operator was still awake and on duty argued well for another train soon. Oldham proffered his question.

"Los Angeles express due now. Half-hour late," replied the operator wearily, without looking up.

Oldham caught the train, which landed him in White Oaks about noon. There he hired a team, and drove the sixty miles to Sycamore Flats by eleven o'clock that night. The fear was growing in his heart, and he had to lay on himself a strong retaining hand to keep from lashing his horses beyond their endurance and strength. Sycamore Flats was, of course, long since abed. In spite of his wild impatience Oldham retained enough sense to know that it would not do to awaken any one for the sole purpose of inquiring as to the whereabouts of Saleratus Bill. That would too obviously connect him with the gun-man. Therefore he stabled his horses, roused one of the girls at Auntie Belle's, and retired to the little box room assigned him.

There nature asserted herself. The man had not slept for two nights; he had travelled many miles on horseback, by train, and by buckboard; he had experienced the most exhausting of emotions and experiences. He fell asleep, and he did not awaken until after sun-up.

Promptly he began his inquiries. Saleratus Bill had passed through the night before; he had ridden up the mill road.

Oldham ate his breakfast, saddled one of the team horses, and followed. Ordinarily, he was little of a woodsman, but his anxiety sharpened his wits and his eyes, so that a quarter mile from the summit he noticed where a shod horse had turned off from the road. After a moment's hesitation he turned his own animal to follow the trail. The horse tracks were evidently fresh, and Oldham surmised that it was hardly probable two horsemen had as yet that morning travelled the mill road. While he debated, young Elliott swung down the dusty way headed toward the village. He greeted Oldham.

"Is Orde back at headquarters yet?" the latter asked, on impulse.

"Yes, he got back day before yesterday," the young ranger replied; "but you won't find him there this morning. He walked over to the mill to see Welton. You'd probably get him there."

Oldham waited only until Elliott had rounded the next corner, then spurred his horse up the mountain. The significance of the detour was now no longer in doubt, for he remembered well how and where the wagon trail from headquarters joined the mill road. Saleratus Bill would leave his horse out of sight on the hog-back ridge, sneak forward afoot, and ambush his man at the forks of the road.

And now, in the clairvoyance of this guilty terror, Oldham saw as assured facts several further possibilities. Saleratus Bill was known to have ridden up the mill road; he, Oldham, was known to have been inquiring after both Saleratus Bill and Orde--in short, out of wild improbabilities, which to his ordinary calm judgment would have meant nothing at all, he now wove a tissue of danger. He wished he had thought to ask Elliott how long ago Orde had started out from headquarters.

The last pitch up the mountain was by necessity a fearful grade, for it had to surmount as best it could the ledge at the crest of the plateau. Horsemen here were accustomed to pause every fifty feet or so to allow their mounts a gulp of air. Oldham plied lash and spur. He came out from his frenzy of panic to find his horse, completely blown, lying down under him. The animal, already weary from its sixty-mile drive of yesterday, was quite done. After a futile effort to make it rise, Oldham realized this fact. He pursued his journey afoot.

Somewhat sobered and brought to his senses by this accident, Oldham trudged on as rapidly as his wind would allow. As he neared the crossroads he slackened his pace, for he saw that no living creature moved on the headquarters fork of the road. As a matter of fact, at that precise instant both Bob and Ware were within forty yards of him, standing still waiting for Amy to collect her dogwood leaves. A single small alder concealed them from the other road. If they had not happened to have stopped, two seconds would have brought them into sight in either direction. Therefore, Oldham thought the road empty, and himself came to a halt to catch his breath and mop his brow.

As he replaced his hat, his eye caught a glimpse of a man crouching and gliding cautiously forward through the low concealment of the snowbush. His movements were quick, his head was craned forward, every muscle was taut, his eyes fixed on some object invisible to Oldham with an intensity that evidently excluded from the field of his vision everything but that toward which his lithe and snake-like advance was bringing him. In his hand he carried the worn and shining Colts 45 that was always his inseparable companion.

Oldham made a single step forward. At the same moment somewhere above him on the hill a woman screamed. The cry was instantly followed by two revolver shots.

XXXIV

Ware was an expert gun-man who had survived the early days of Arizona, New Mexico, and the later ruffianism of the border on Old Mexico. His habit was at all times alert. Now, in especial, behind his casual conversation, he had been straining his finer senses for the first intimations of danger. For perhaps six seconds before Amy cried out he had been aware of an unusual faint sound heard beneath rather than above the cheerful and accustomed noises of the forest. It baffled him. If he had imposed silence on his companion, and had set himself to listening, he might have been able to identify and localize it, but it really presented nothing alarming enough. It might have been a squirrel playfully spasmodic, or the leisurely step forward of some hidden and distant cow browsing among the bushes. Ware lent an attentive ear to the quiet sounds of the woodland, but continued to stand at ease and unalarmed.

The scream, however, released instantly the springs of his action. With the heel of his left palm he dealt Bob so violent a shoving blow that the young man was thrown forward off his feet. As part of the same motion his right hand snatched his weapon from its holster, threw the muzzle over his left shoulder, and discharged the revolver twice in the direction from which Ware all at once realized the sound had proceeded. So quickly did the man's brain act, so instantly did his muscles follow his brain, that the scream, the blow, and the two shots seemed to go off together as though fired by one fuse.

Bob bounded to his feet. Ware had whirled in his tracks, had crouched, and was glaring fixedly across the openings at the forks. The revolver smoked in his hand.

"Oh, are you hurt? Are you hurt?" Amy was crying over and over, as, regardless of the stiff manzañita and the spiny deer brush, she tore her way down the hill.

"All right! All right!" Bob found his breath to assure her.

She stopped short, clenched her hands at her sides, and drew a deep, sobbing breath. Then, quite collectedly, she began to disentangle herself from the difficulties into which her haste had precipitated her.

"It's all right," she called to Ware. "He's gone. He's run."

Still tense, Ware rose to his full height. He let down the hammer of his six-shooter, and dropped the weapon back in its holster.

"What was it, Amy?" he asked, as the girl rejoined them.

"Saleratus Bill," she panted. "He had his gun in his hand."

Bob was looking about him a trifle bewildered.

"I thought for a minute I was hit," said he.

"I knocked you down to _get_ you down," explained Ware. "If there's shooting going on, it's best to get low."

"Thought I was shot," confessed Bob. "I heard two shots."

"I fired twice," said Ware. "Thought sure I must have hit, or he'd have fired back. Otherwise I'd a' kept shooting. You say he run?"

"Immediately. Didn't you see him?"

"I just cut loose at the noise he made. Why do you suppose he didn't shoot?"

"Maybe he wasn't gunning for us after all," suggested Bob.

"Maybe you've got another think coming," said Ware.

During this short exchange they were all three moving down the wagon trail. Ware's keen old eyes were glancing to right, left and ahead, and his ears fairly twitched. In spite of his conversation and speculations, he was fully alive to the possibilities of further danger.

"He maybe's laying for us yet," said Bob, as the thought finally occurred to him. "Better have your gun handy."

"My gun's always handy," said Ware.

"You're bearing too far south," interposed the girl. "He was more up this way."

"Don't think it," said Ware.

"Yes," she insisted. "I marked that young fir near where I first saw him; and he ran low around that clump of manzañita."

Still skeptical, Ware joined her.

"That's right," he admitted, after a moment. "Here's his trail. I'd have swore he was farther south. That's where I fired. I only missed him by about a hundred yards," he grinned. "He sure made a mighty tall sneak. I'm still figuring why he didn't open fire."

"Waiting for a better chance, maybe," suggested Amy.

"Must be. But what better chance does he want, unless he aims to get Bob here, with a club?"

They followed the tracks left by Saleratus Bill until it was evident beyond doubt that the gun-man had in reality departed. Then they started to retrace their steps.

"Why not cut across?" asked Bob.

"I want to see whereabouts I _was_ shooting," said Ware.

"We'll cut across and wait for you on the road."

"All right," Ware agreed.

They made their short-cut, and waited. After a minute or so Ware shouted to them.

"Hullo!" Bob answered.

"Come here!"

They returned down the dusty mill road. Just beyond the forks Ware was standing, looking down at some object. As they approached he raised his face to them. Even under its tan, it was pale.

"Guess this is another case of innocent bystander," said he gravely.

Flat on his back, arms outstretched in the dust, lay Oldham, with a bullet hole accurately in the middle of his forehead.

XXXV

"Good heavens!" cried Amy. "What an awful thing!"

"Yes, ma'am," said Ware; "this is certainly tough. But I can't see but it was a plumb accident. Who'd have thought he'd be coming along the road just at that minute."

"Of course, you're not to blame," Amy reassured him quickly. "We must get help. Of course, he's quite dead."

Ware nodded, gazing down at his victim reflectively.

"I was shootin' a little high," he remarked at last.

Up to this moment Bob had said nothing.

"If it will relieve your mind, any," he told Ware, "it isn't such a case of innocent bystander as you may think. This man is the one who hired Saleratus Bill to abduct me in the first place; and probably to kill me in the second. I have a suspicion he got what he deserved."

"Oh!" cried Amy, looking at him reproachfully.

"It's a fact," Bob insisted. "I know his connection with all this better than you do, and his being on this road was no accident. It was to see his orders carried out."

Ware was looking at him shrewdly.

"That fits," he declared. "I couldn't figure why my old friend Bill didn't cut loose. But he's got a head on him."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, when he see Oldham dropped, what use was there of going to shooting? It would just make trouble for him and he couldn't hope for no pay. He just faded."

"He's a quick thinker, then," said Bob.

"You bet you!"

The two men laid Oldham's body under the shade. As they disposed it decently, Bob experienced again that haunting sense of having known him elsewhere that had on several occasions assailed his memory. The man's face was familiar to him with a familiarity that Bob somehow felt antedated his California acquaintance.

"We must get to the mill and send a wagon for him," Ware was saying.

But Amy suddenly turned faint, and was unable to proceed.

"It's perfectly silly of me!" she cried indignantly. "The idea of my feeling faint! It makes me so angry!"

"It's perfectly natural," Bob told her. "I think you've shown a heap of nerve. Most girls would have flopped over."

The men helped her to a streamlet some hundreds of yards away. Here it was agreed that Ware should proceed in search of a conveyance; and that Bob and Amy should there await his return.

XXXVI

Ware disappeared rapidly up the dusty road, Bob and Amy standing side by side in silence, watching him go. When the lean, long figure of the old mountaineer had quite disappeared, and the light, eddying dust, peculiar to the Sierra country, had died, Amy closed her eyes, raised her hand to her heart, and sank slowly to the bank of the little creek. Her vivid colour, which had for a moment returned under the influence of her strong will and her indignation over her weakness, had again ebbed from her cheeks.

Bob, with an exclamation of alarm, dropped to her side and passed his arm back of her shoulders. As she felt the presence of his support, she let slip the last desperate holdings of physical command, and leaned back gratefully, breathing hard, her eyes still closed.

After a moment she opened them long enough to smile palely at the anxious face of the young man.

"It's all right," she said. "I'm all right. Don't be alarmed. Just let me rest a minute. I'll be all right."

She closed her eyes again. Bob, watching, saw the colour gradually flowing up under her skin, and was reassured.

The girl lay against his arm limply. At first he was concerned merely with the supporting of the slight burden; careful to hold her as comfortably as possible. Then the warmth of her body penetrated to his arm. A new emotion invaded him, feeble in the beginning, but gaining strength from instant to instant. It mounted his breast as a tide would mount, until it had shortened his breath, set his heart to thumping dully, choked his throat. He looked down at her with troubled eyes, following the curve of her upturned face, the long line of her throat exposed by the backward thrown position of her head, the swell of her breast under the thin gown. The helplessness of the pose caught at Bob's heart. For the first time Amy--the vivid, self-reliant, capable, laughing Amy--appealed to him as a being demanding protection, as a woman with a woman's instinctive craving for cherishing, as a delicious, soft, feminine creature, calling forth the tendernesses of a man's heart. In the normal world of everyday association this side of her had never been revealed, never suspected; yet now, here, it rose up to throw into insignificance all the other qualities of the girl he had known. Bob spared a swift thought of gratitude to the chance that had revealed to him this unguessed, intimate phase of womanhood.

And then the insight with which the significant moment had endowed him leaped to the simple comprehension of another thought--that this revelation of intimacy, of the woman-appeal lying unguessed beneath the comradeship of everyday life, was after all only a matter of chance. It had been revealed to him by the accident of a moment's faintness, by which the conscious will of the girl had been driven back from the defences. In a short time it would be over. She would resume her ordinary demeanour, her ordinary interest, her ordinary bright, cheerful, attractive, matter-of-fact, efficient self. Everything would be as before. But--and here Bob's breath came quickest--in the great goodness of the world lay another possibility; that sometime, at the call of some one person, for that one and no other, this inner beautiful soul of the feminine appeal would come forth freely, consciously, willingly.

Amy opened her eyes, sat up, shook herself slightly, and laughed.

"I'm all right now," she told Bob, "and certainly very much ashamed."

"Amy!" he stammered.

She shot a swift look at him, and immediately arose to her feet.

"We will have to testify at a coroner's inquest, I presume," said she, in the most matter-of-fact tones.

"I suppose so," agreed Bob morosely. It is impossible to turn back all the strongly set currents of life without at least a temporary turmoil.

Amy glanced at him sideways, and smiled a faint, wise smile to herself. For in these matters, while men are more analytical after the fact, women are by nature more informed. She said nothing, but stooped to the creek for a drink. When she had again straightened to her feet, Bob had come to himself. The purport of Amy's last speech had fully penetrated his understanding, and one word of it--the word _testify_--had struck him with an idea.

"By Jove!" he cried, "that lets out Pollock!"

"What?" said Amy.

"This man Oldham was the only witness who could have convicted George Pollock of killing Plant."

"What do you mean?" asked Amy, leaning forward interestedly. "Was he there? How do you know about it?"

A half-hour before Bob would have hesitated long before confiding his secret to a fourth party; but now, for him, the world of relations had shifted.

"I'll tell you about it," said he, without hesitation; "but this is serious. You must never breathe even a word of it to any one!"

"Certainly not!" cried Amy.

"Oldham wasn't an actual witness of the killing; but I was, and he knew it. He could have made me testify by informing the prosecuting attorney."

Bob sketched rapidly his share in the tragedy: how he had held Pollock's horse, and been in a way an accessory to the deed. Amy listened attentively to the recital of the facts, but before Bob had begun to draw his conclusions, she broke in swiftly.

"So Oldham offered to let you off, if you would keep out of this Modoc Land case," said she.

Bob nodded.

"That was it."

"But it would have put you in the penitentiary," she pointed out.

"Well, the case wasn't quite decided yet."

She made her quaint gesture of the happily up-thrown hands.

"Just what you said about Mr. Welton!" she cried. "Oh, I'm _glad_ you told me this! I was trying so hard to think you were doing a high and noble duty in ignoring the consequences to that poor old man. But I could not. Now I see!"

"What do you mean?" asked Bob curiously, as she paused.

"You could do it because your act placed you in worse danger," she told him.

"Too many for me," Bob disclaimed. "I simply wasn't going to be bluffed out by that gang!"

"That was it," said Amy wisely. "I know you better than you do yourself. You don't suppose," she cried, as a new thought alarmed her, "that Oldham has told the prosecuting attorney that your evidence would be valuable."

Bob shook his head.

"The trial is next week," he pointed out. "In case the prosecution had intended calling me, I should have been summoned long since. There's dust; they are coming. You'd better stay here."

She agreed readily to this. After a moment a light wagon drove up. On the seat perched Welton and Ware. Bob climbed in behind.

They drove rapidly down to the forks, stopped and hitched the team.

"Ware's been telling me the whole situation, Bobby," said Welton. "That gang's getting pretty desperate! I've heard of this man Oldham around this country for a long while, but I always understood he was interested against the Power Company."

"Bluff," said Bob briefly. "He's been in their employ from the first, but I never thought he'd go in for quite this kind of strong-arm work. He doesn't look it, do you think?"

"I never laid eyes on him," replied Welton. "He's never been near the mill, and I never happened to run across him anywhere else."

By this time they had secured the team. Ware led the way to the tree under which lay the body of the land agent. Welton surveyed the prostrate figure for some time in silence. Then turned to Bob, a curious expression on his face.

"It wasn't an accident that I never met him," said he. "He saw to it. Don't you remember this man, Bobby?"

"I saw him in Los Angeles some years ago."

"Before that--in Michigan--many years ago."

"His face has always seemed familiar to me," said Bob slowly. "I can't place it--yes--hold on!"

A picture defined itself from the mists of his boyhood memories. It was of an open field, with a fringe of beech woods in the distance. A single hickory stood near its centre, and under this a group lounged, smoking pipes. A man, perched on a cracker box, held a blank book and pencil. Another stood by a board, a gun in his hand. The smell of black powder hung in the atmosphere. Little glass balls popped into the air, and were snuffed out. He saw Oldham distinctly, looking younger and browner, but with the same cynical mouth, the same cold eyes, the same slanted eyeglasses. Even before his recollections reproduced the scorer's drawling voice calling the next contestant, his memory supplied the name.

"It's Newmark!" he cried aloud.

"Joe Newmark, your father's old partner! He hasn't changed much. He disappeared from Michigan when you were about eight years old; didn't he! Nobody ever knew how or why, but everybody had suspicions.... Well; let's get him in."

They disposed the body in the wagon, and drove back up the road. At the little brook they stopped to let off Ware. It was agreed that all danger to Bob was now past, and that the gun-man would do better to accompany Amy back to headquarters. Of course, it would be necessary to work the whole matter out at the coroner's inquest, but in view of the circumstances, Ware's safety was assured.

At the mill the necessary telephoning was done, the officials summoned, and everything put in order.

"What I really started over to see you about," then said Bob to Welton, "is this matter of the Modoc Company." He went on to explain fully Amy's plan for checkmating Baker. "You see, if I get in my word first, Baker is as much implicated as you are, and it won't do him any good to turn state's evidence."

"I don't see as that helps me," remarked Welton gloomily.

"Baker might be willing to put himself in any position," said Bob; "but I doubt if he'll care to take the risk of criminal punishment. I think this will head him off completely; but if it doesn't, every move he makes to save his own skin saves yours too."

"It may do some good," agreed Welton. "Try it."

"I've already written Baker. But I didn't want you to think I was starting up the bloodhounds against you without some blame good reason."

"I'd know that anyway, Bobby," said Welton kindly. He stared moodily at the stovepipe. "This is getting too thick for an old-timer," he broke out at last. "I'm just a plain, old-fashioned lumberman, and all I know is to cut lumber. I pass this mess up. I wired your father he'd better come along out."

"Is he coming?" asked Bob eagerly.

"I just got a message over the 'phone from the telegraph office. He'll be in White Oaks as fast as he can get there. Didn't I tell you?"

"Wire him aboard train to go through to Fremont, and that we'll meet him there," said Bob instantly. "It's getting about time to beard the lion in his den."

XXXVII

The coroner's inquest detained Bob over until the week following. In it Amy's testimony as to the gun-man's appearance and evident intention was quite sufficient to excuse Ware's shooting; and the fact that Oldham, as he was still known, instead of Saleratus Bill, received the bullet was evidently sheer unavoidable accident. Bob's testimony added little save corroboration. As soon as he could get away, he took the road to Fremont.

Orde was awaiting his son at the station. Bob saw the straight, heavy figure, the tanned face with the snow-white moustache, before the train had come to a stop. Full of eagerness, he waved his hat over the head of the outraged porter barricaded on the lower steps by his customary accumulation of suit cases.

"Hullo, dad! Hullo, there!" he shouted again and again, quite oblivious to the amusement of the other passengers over this tall and bronzed young man's enthusiasm.

Orde caught sight of his son at last; his face lit up, and he, too, swung his hat. A moment later they had clasped hands.

After the first greetings, Bob gave his suit case in charge to the hotel bus-man.

"We'll take a little walk up the street and talk things over," he suggested.

They sauntered slowly up the hill and down the side streets beneath the pepper and acacia trees of Fremont's beautiful thoroughfares. So absorbed did they become that they did not realize in the slightest where they were going, so that at last they had topped the ridge and, from the stretch of the Sunrise Drive, they looked over into the cañon.

"So you've been getting into trouble, have you?" chaffed Orde, as they left the station.

"I don't know about that," Bob rejoined. "I do know that there are quite a number of people in trouble."

Orde laughed.

"Tell me about this Welton difficulty," said he. "Frank Taylor has our own matters well in hand. The opposition won't gain much by digging up that old charge against the integrity of our land titles. We'll count that much wiped off the slate."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Bob heartily. "Well, the trouble with Mr. Welton is that the previous administration held him up--" He detailed the aspects of the threatened bribery case; while Orde listened without comment. "So," he concluded, "it looked at first as if they rather had him, if I testified. It had me guessing. I hated the thought of getting a man like Mr. Welton in trouble of that sort over a case in which he was no way interested."

"What did you decide?" asked Orde curiously.

"I decided to testify."

"That's right."

"I suppose so. I felt a little better about it, because they had me in the same boat. That let me out in my own feelings, naturally."

"How?" asked Orde swiftly.

"There had been trouble up there between Plant--you remember I wrote you of the cattle difficulties?"

"With Simeon Wright? I know all that."

"Well, one of the cattlemen was ruined by Plant's methods; his wife and child died from want of care on that account. He was the one who killed Plant; you remember that."

"Yes."

"I happened to be near and I helped him escape."

"And some one connected with the Modoc Company was a witness," conjectured Orde. "Who was it?"

"A man who went under the name of Oldham. A certain familiarity puzzled me for a long time. Only the other day I got it. He was Mr. Newmark."

"Newmark!" cried Orde, stopping short and staring fixedly at his son.

"Yes; the man who was your partner when I was a very small boy. You remember?"

"Remember!" repeated Orde; then in tones of great energy: "He and I both have reason to remember well enough! Where is he now? I can put a stop to him in about two jumps!"

"You won't need to," said Bob quietly; "he's dead--shot last week."

For some moments nothing more was said, while the two men trudged beneath the hanging peppers near the entrance to Sunrise Drive.

"I always wondered why he had it in for me, and why he acted so queerly," Bob broke the silence at last. "He seemed to have a special and personal enmity for me. I always felt it, but I couldn't make it out."

"He had plenty of reasons for that. But it's funny Welton didn't recognize the whelp."

"Mr. Welton never saw him," Bob explained--"that is, until Newmark was dead. Then he recognized him instantly. What was it all about?"

Orde indicated the bench on the cañon's edge.

"Let's sit," said he. "Newmark and I made our start together. For eight years we worked together and built up a very decent business. Then, all at once, I discovered that he was plotting systematically to do me out of every cent we had made. It was the most cold-blooded proposition I ever ran across."

"Couldn't you prove it on him?" asked Bob.

"I could prove it all right; but the whole affair made me sick. He'd always been the closest friend, in a way, I had ever had; and the shock of discovering what he really was drove everything else out of my head. I was young then. It seemed to me that all I wanted was to wipe the whole affair off the slate, to get it behind me, to forget it--so I let him go."

"I don't believe I'd have done that. Seems to me I'd have had to blow off steam," Bob commented.

Orde smiled reminiscently.

"I blew off steam," [A] said he. "It was rather fantastic; but I actually believe it was one of the most satisfactory episodes in my life. I went around to his place--he lived rather well in bachelor quarters, which was a new thing in those days--and locked the door and told him just why I was going to let him off. It tickled him hugely--for about a minute. Then I finished up by giving him about the very worst licking he ever heard tell of."

[Footnote A: See "The Riverman."]

"Was that what you told him?" cried Bob.

"What?"

"Did you say those words to him?--'I'm going to give you the very worst licking you ever heard tell of'?"

"Why, I believe I did."

Bob threw back his head and laughed.

"So did I!" he cried; and then, after a moment, more soberly. "I think, incidentally, it saved my life."

"Now what are you driving at?" asked Orde.

"Listen, this is funny: Newmark had me kidnapped by one of his men, and lugged off to a little valley in the mountains. The idea was to keep me there until after the trial, so my testimony would not appear. You see, none of our side knew I had that testimony. I hadn't told anybody, because I had been undecided as to what I was going to do."

Orde whistled.

"I got away, and had quite a time getting home. I'll tell you all the details some other time. On the road I met Newmark. I was pretty mad, so I lit into him stiff-legged. After a few words he got scared and pulled a gun on me. I was just mad enough to keep coming, and I swear I believe he was just on the point of shooting, when I said those very same words: 'I'm going to give you the very worst licking you ever heard tell of.' He turned white as a sheet and dropped his gun. I thought he was a coward; but I guess it was conscience and luck. Now, wouldn't that come and get you?"

"Did you?" asked Orde.

"Did I what?"

"Give him that licking?"

"I sure did start out to; but I couldn't bring myself to more than shake him up a little."

Orde rose, stretching his legs.

"What are your plans now?"

"To see Baker. I'm going to tell him that on the first indications of his making trouble I'm going to enter complaint for bribery against _both_ him and Mr. Welton. You see, I was there too. Think it'll work?"

"The best way is to go and see."

"Come on," said Bob.

XXXVIII

The two men found Baker seated behind his flat-top desk. He grinned cheerfully at them; and, to Bob's surprise, greeted him with great joviality.

"All hail, great Chief!" he cried. "I've had my scalp nicely smoke-tanned for you, so you won't have to bother taking it." He bowed to Orde. "I'm glad to see you, sir," said he. "Know you by your picture. Please be seated."

Bob brushed the levity aside.

"I've come," said he, "to get an explanation from you as to why, in the first place, you had me kidnapped; and why, in the second place, you tried to get me murdered."

Baker's mocking face became instantly grave; and, leaning forward, he hit the desk a thump with his right fist.

"Orde," said he, "I want you to believe me in this: I never was more sorry for anything in my life! I wouldn't have had that happen for anything in the world! If I'd had the remotest idea that Oldham contemplated something of that sort, I should have laid very positive orders on him. He said he had something on you that would keep your mouth shut, but I never dreamed he meant gun play."

"I don't suppose you dreamed he meant kidnapping either," observed Bob.

Baker threw himself back with a chuckle.

"Being kidnapped is fine for the health," said he. "Babies thrive on it. No," he continued, again leaning forward gravely, "Oldham got away from his instructions completely. Shooting or that kind of violence was absurd in such a case. You mustn't lay that to me, but to his personal grudge."

"What do you know of a personal grudge?" Bob flashed back.

"Ab-so-lute-ly nothing; but I suspected. It's part of my job to be a nifty young suspector--and to use what I guess at. He just got away from me. As for the rest of it, that's part of the game. This is no croquet match; you must expect to get your head bumped if you play it. I play the game."

"I play the game, too," returned Bob, "and I came here to tell you so. I'll take care of myself, but I want to say that the moment you offer any move against Welton, I shall bring in my testimony against both of you on this bribery matter."

"Sapient youth!" said Baker, amused; "did that aspect of it just get to you? But you misinterpreted the spirit of my greeting when you came in the room. In words of one syllable, you've got us licked. We lie down and roll over. We stick all four paws in the air. We bat our august forehead against the floor. Is that clear?"

"Then you drop this prosecution against Welton?"

"Nary prosecution, as far as I am concerned."

"But the Modoc Land case----"

"Take back your lands," chaffed Baker dramatically. "Kind of bum lands, anyway. No use skirmishing after the battle is over. Your father would tell you that."

"Then you don't fight the suit?"

"That," said Baker, "is still a point for compromise. You've got us, I'm willing to admit that. Also that you are a bright young man, and that I underestimated you. You've lifted my property, legally acquired, and you've done it by outplaying my bluff. I still maintain the points of the law are with me--we won't get into that," he checked himself. "But criminal prosecution is a different matter. I don't intend to stand for that a minute. Your gang don't slow-step me to any bastiles now listed in the prison records. Nothing doing that way. I'll fight her to a fare-ye-well on that." His round face seemed to become square-set and grim for an instant, but immediately reassumed its customary rather careless good-nature. "No, we'll just call the whole business off."

"That is not for me to decide," said Bob.

"No; but you've got a lot to say about it--and I'll see to the little details; don't fret. By the way," mentioned Baker, "just as a matter of ordinary curiosity, _did_ Oldham have anything on you, or was he just a strong-arm artist?" He threw back his head and laughed aloud at Bob's face. At the thought of Pollock the young man could not prevent a momentary expression of relief from crossing his countenance. "There's a tail-holt on all of us," Baker observed.

He flipped open a desk drawer and produced a box of expensive-looking cigars which he offered to his visitors. Orde lit one; but Bob, eyeing the power-man coldly, refused. Baker laughed.

"You'll get over it," he observed--"youth, I mean. Don't mix your business and your personal affairs. That came right out of the copy book, page one, but it's true. I'm the one that ought to feel sore, seems to me." He lit his own cigar, and puffed at it, swinging his bulky form to the edge of the desk. "Look here," said he, shaking the butt at the younger man. "You're making a great mistake. The future of this country is with water, and don't you forget it. Fuel is scarce; water power is the coming force. The country can produce like a garden under irrigation; and it's only been scratched yet, and that just about the big cities. We are getting control; and the future of the state is with us. You're wasting yourself in all this toy work. You've got too much ability to squander it in that sort of thing. Oldham made you an offer from us, didn't he?"

"He tried to bribe me, if that's what you mean," said Bob.

"Well, have it your way; but you'll admit there's hardly much use of bribing you now. I repeat the offer. Come in with us on those terms."

"Why?" demanded Bob.

"Well," said Baker quaintly, "because you seem to have licked me fair and square; and I never want a man who can lick me to remain where he is likely to do so."

At this point Orde, who had up to now remained quietly a spectator, spoke up.

"Bob," said he, "is already fairly intimately connected with certain interests, which, while not so large as water power, are enough to keep him busy."

Baker turned to him joyously.

"List' to the voice of reason!" he cried. "I'm sorry he won't come with us; but the next best thing is to put him where he won't fight us. I didn't know he was going back to your timber--"

Bob opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again at a gesture from his father.

Baker glanced at the clock.

"Well," he remarked cheerfully, "come over to the Club with me to lunch, anyway."

Bob stared at him incredulously. Here was the man who had employed against him every expedient from blackmail to physical violence; who had but that instant been worsted in a bald attempt at larceny, nevertheless, cheerfully inviting him out to lunch as though nothing had happened! Furthermore, his father, against whose ambitions one of the deadliest blows had been aimed, was quietly reaching for his hat. Baker looked up and caught Bob's expression.

"Come, come!" said he; "forget it! You and I speak the language of the same tribe, and you can't get away from it. I'm playing my game, you're playing yours. Of course, we want to win. But what's the use of cutting out lots of bully good people on that account?"

"You don't stick to the rules," insisted Bob stoutly.

"I think I do," said Baker. "Who's to decide? You believe one way, I believe another. I know what you think of my methods in business; and I'd hate to say what I think of you as the blue ribbon damn fool in that respect. But I like you, and I'm willing to admit you've got stuff in you; and I know damn well you and your father and I can have a fine young lunch talking duck-shooting and football. And with all my faults you love me still, and you know you do." He smiled winningly, and hooked his arm through Bob's on one side and his father's on the other. "Come on, you old deacon; play the game!" he cried.

Bob laughed, and gave in.

XXXIX

Bob took his father with him back to headquarters. They rode in near the close of day; and, as usual, from the stovepipe of the roofless kitchen a brave pillar of white smoke rose high in the shadows of the firs. Amy came forth at Bob's shout, starched and fresh, her cheeks glowing with their steady colour, her intelligent eyes alight with interest under the straight, serene brows. At sight of Orde, the vivacity of her manner quieted somewhat, but Bob could see that she was excited about something. He presented his father, who dismounted and greeted her with a hearty shake of the hand.

"We've heard of you, Miss Thorne," said he simply, but it was evident he was pleased with the frankness of her manner, the clear steadiness of her eye, the fresh daintiness of her appearance, and the respect of her greeting. On the other hand, she looked back with equal pleasure on the tanned, sturdy old man with the white hair and moustache, the clear eyes, and the innumerable lines of quaint good-humour about them. After they had thus covertly surveyed each other for a moment, the aforesaid lines about Orde's eyes deepened, his eyes twinkled with mischief, and he thrust forth his hand for the second time. "Shake again!" he offered. Amy gurgled forth a little chuckle of good feeling and understanding, and laid her fingers in his huge palm.

After this they turned and walked slowly to the hitch rails where the men tied their horses.

"Where's the Supervisor?" Bob asked of Amy.

"In the office," she replied; and then burst out excitedly: "I've the greatest news!"

"So have I," returned Bob, promptly. "Best kind."

"Oh, what is it?" she cried, forgetting all about her own. "Is it Mr. Welton?"

"It'll take some time to tell mine," said Bob, "and we must hunt up Mr. Thorne. Yours first."

"Pollock is free!"

"Pollock free!" echoed Bob. "How is that? I thought his trial was not until next week!"

"The prosecuting attorney quashed the indictment--or whatever it is they do. Anyhow, he let George go for lack of evidence to convict."

"I guess he was relying on evidence promised by Oldham, which he never got," Bob surmised.

"And never will," Orde cautioned them. "You two young people must be careful never to know anything of this."

Bob opened his mouth to say something; was suddenly struck by a thought, and closed it again.

"Why do you say that?" he asked at last. "Why do you think Miss Thorne must know of this?"

But Orde only smiled amusedly beneath his white moustache.

They found Ashley Thorne, and acquainted him with the whole situation. He listened thoughtfully.

"The matter is over our heads, of course; but we must do our best. Of course, by all rights the man ought to be indicted; but there can be no question that there is a common sense that takes the substance of victory and lets the shadow go."

Orde stayed to supper and over night. In the course of the evening California John drifted in, and Ware, and Jack Pollock, and such other of the rangers as happened to be in from the Forest. Orde was at his best; and ended, to Bob's vast pride, in getting himself well liked by these conservative and quietly critical men of the mountains.

The next morning Bob and his father saddled their horses and started early for the mill, Bob having been granted a short leave of absence. For some distance they rode in silence.

"Father," said Bob, "why did you stop me from contradicting Baker the other day when he jumped to the conclusion that I was going to quit the Service?"

"I think you are."

"But--"

"Only if you want to, Bob. I don't want to force you in any way; but both Welton and I are getting old, and we need younger blood. We'd rather have you." Bob shook his head. "I know what you mean, and I realize how you feel about the whole matter. Perhaps you are right. I have nothing to say against conservation and forestry methods theoretically. They are absolutely correct. I agree that the forests should be cut for future growths, and left so that fire cannot get through them; but it is a grave question in my mind whether, as yet, it can be done."

"But it is being done!" cried Bob. "There is no difficulty in doing it."

"That's for you to prove, if you want to," said Orde. "If you care to resign from the Service, we will for two years give you full swing with our timber, to cut and log according to your ideas--or rather the ideas of those over you. In that time you can prove your point, or fail. Personally," he repeated, "I have grave doubts as to whether it can be done at present; it will be in the future of course."

"Why, what do you mean?" asked Bob. "It is being done every day! There's nothing complicated about it. It's just a question of cutting and piling the tops, and--"

"I know the methods advocated," broke in Orde. "But it is not being done except on Government holdings where conditions as to taxation, situation and a hundred other things are not like those of private holdings; or on private holdings on an experimental scale, or in conjunction with older methods. The case has not been proved on a large private tract. Now is your chance so to prove it."

Bob's face was grave.

"That means a pretty complete about-face for me, sir," said he. "I fought this all out with myself some years back. I feel that I have fitted myself into the one thing that is worth while for me."

"I know," said Orde. "Don't hurry. Think it over. Take advice. I have a notion you'll find this--if its handled right, and works out right--will come to much the same thing."

He rode along in silence for some moments.

"I want to be fair," he resumed at last, "and do not desire to get you in this on mistaken premises. This will not be a case of experiment, of plaything, but of business. However desirable a commercial theory may be, if it's commercial, _it must pay_! It's not enough if you don't lose money; or even if you succeed in coming out a little ahead. You must make it pay on a commercial basis, or else it's as worthless in the business world as so much moonshine. That is not sordid; it is simply common sense. We all agree that it would be better to cut our forests for the future; but _can it be done under present conditions?_"

"There is no question of that," said Bob confidently.

"There is quite a question of it among some of us old fogies, Bobby," stated Orde good-humouredly. "I suppose we're stupid and behind the times; but we've been brought up in a hard school. We are beyond the age when we originate much, perhaps; but we're willing to be shown."

He held up his hand, checking over his fingers as he talked.

"Here's the whole proposition," said he. "You can consider it. Welton and I will turn over the whole works to you, lock, stock and barrel, for two years. You know the practical side of the business as well as you ever will, and you've got a good head on you. At the end of that time, turn in your balance sheet. We'll see how you come out, and how much it costs a thousand feet to do these things outside the schoolroom."

"If I took it up, I couldn't make it pay quite as well as by present methods," Bob warned.

"Of course not. Any reasonable man would expect to spend something by way of insurance for the future. But the point is, the operations must pay. Think it over!"

They emerged into the mill clearing. Welton rolled out to greet them, his honest red face aglow with pleasure over greeting again his old friend. They pounded each other on the back, and uttered much facetious and affectionate abuse. Bob left them cursing each other heartily, broad grins illuminating their weatherbeaten faces.

XL

Bob's obvious course was to talk the whole matter over with his superior officer, and that is exactly what he intended to do. Instead, he hunted up Amy. He justified this course by the rather sophistical reflection that in her he would encounter the most positive force to the contrary of the proposition he had just received. Amy stood first, last and all the time for the Service; her heart was wholly in its cause. In her opinion he would gain the advantage of a direct antithesis to the ideas propounded by his father. This appeared to Bob an eminently just arrangement, but failed to account for a certain rather breathless excitement as he caught sight of Amy's sleek head bending over a pan of peas.

"Amy," said he, dropping down at her feet, "I want your advice."

She let fall her hands and looked at him with the refreshing directness peculiarly her own.

"Father wants me to take charge of the Wolverine Company's operations," he began.

"Well?" she urged him after a pause.

"What do you think of it?"

"I thought you had worked that all out for yourself some time ago."

"I had. But father and Mr. Welton are getting a little too old to handle such a proposition, and they are looking to me--" he paused.

"That situation is no different than it has been," she suggested. "What else?"

Bob laughed.

"You see through me very easily, don't you? Well, the situation is changed. I'm being bribed."

"Bribed!" Amy cried, throwing her head back.

"Extra inducements offered. They make it hard for me to refuse, without seeming positively brutal. They offer me complete charge--to do as I want. I can run the works absolutely according to my own ideas. Don't you see how I am going to hurt them when I refuse under such circumstances?"

"Refuse!" cried Amy. "Refuse! What do you mean!"

"Do you think I ought to leave the Service?" stammered Bob blankly.

"Why, it's the best chance the Service has ever had!" said Amy, the words fairly tumbling over one another. "You must never dream of refusing. It's your chance--it's our chance. It's the one thing we've lacked, the opportunity of showing lumbermen everywhere that the thing can be made to pay. It's the one thing we've lacked. Oh, _what_ a chance!"

"But--but," objected Bob--"it means giving up the Service--after these years--and all the wide interests--and the work----"

"You must take it," she swept him away, "and you must do it with all your power and all the ability that is in you. You must devote yourself to one idea--make money, make it pay!"

"This from you," said Bob sadly.

"Oh, I am so _glad_!" cried Amy. "Your father is a dear! it's the one fear that has haunted me--lest some visionary incompetent should attempt it, and should fail dismally, and all the great world of business should visit our methods with the scorn due only his incompetence. It was our great danger! And now it is no longer a danger! You can do it, Bob; you have the knowledge and the ability and the energy--and you must have the enthusiasm. Can't you see it? You _must!_"

She leaned over, her eyes shining with the excitement of her thought, to shake him by both shoulders. The pan of peas promptly deluged him. They both laughed.

"I'd never looked at it that way," Bob confessed.

"It's the only way to look at it."

"Why!" cried Bob, in the sudden illumination of a new idea. "The more money I make, the more good I'll do--that's a brand new idea for you!"

He rose to his feet, slowly, and stood for a moment lost in thought. Then he looked down at her, a fresh admiration shining in his eyes.

"Yours is the inspiration and the insight--as always," he said humbly. "It has always been so. I have seemed to myself to have blundered and stumbled, groping for a way; and you have flown, swift as a shining arrow, straight to the mark."

"No, no, no, no!" she disclaimed, coming close to him in the vigour of her denial. "You are unfair."

She looked up into his face, and somehow in the earnestness of her disclaimer, the feminine soul of her rose to her eyes, so that again Bob saw the tender, appealing helplessness, and once more there arose to full tide in his breast the answering tenderness that would care for her and guard her from the rough jostling of the world. The warmth of her young body tingled in recollection along his arm, and then, strangely enough, without any other direct cause whatever, the tide rose higher to flood his soul. He drew her to him, crushing her to his breast. For an instant she yielded to him utterly; then drew away in a panic.

"My dear, my dear!" she half whispered; "not here!"

XLI

Bob rode home through the forest, singing at the top of his voice. When he met his father, near the lower meadow, he greeted the older man boisterously.

"That," said Orde to him shrewdly, "sounds to me mighty like relief. Have you decided for or against?"

"For," said Bob. "It's a fine chance for me to do just what I've always wanted to do--to work hard at what interests me and satisfies me."

"Go to it, then," said Orde. "By the way, Bobby, how old are you now?"

"Twenty-nine."

"Well, you're a year younger than I was when I started in with Newmark. You're ahead of me there. But in other respects, my son, your father had a heap more sense; he got married, and he didn't waste any time on it. How long have you been living around in range of that Thorne girl, anyway? Somebody ought to build a fire under you."

Bob hesitated a moment; but he preferred that his good news should come to his father when Amy could be there, too.

"I'm glad you like her, father," said he quietly.

Orde looked at his son, and his voice fell from its chaffing tone. "Good luck, boy," said he, and leaned from his saddle to touch the young man on the shoulder.

They emerged into the clearing about the mill. Bob looked on the familiar scene with the new eyes of a great spiritual uplift. The yellow sawdust and the sawn lumber; the dark forest beyond; the bulk of the mill with its tall pines; the dazzling plume of steam against the very blue sky, all these appealed to him again with many voices, as they had years before in far-off Michigan. Once more he was back where his blood called him; but under conditions which his training and the spirit of the new times could approve. His heart exulted at the challenge to his young manhood.

As he rode by the store he caught sight within its depths of Merker methodically waiting on a stolid squaw.

"No more economic waste, Merker!" he could not forbear shouting; and then rocked in his saddle with laughter over the man's look of slow surprise. "It's his catchword," he explained to Orde. "He's a slow, queer old duck, but a mighty good sort for the place. There's Post, in from the woods. He's woods foreman. I expect I'll have lively times with Post at first, getting him broken into new ways. But he's a good sort, too."

"Everybody's a good sort to-day, aren't they, son?" smiled Orde.

Welton met them, and expressed his satisfaction over the way everything had turned out.

"I'm going duck shooting for fair," said he, "and I'm going fishing at Catalina. Out here," he explained to Orde, "you sit in nice warm sun and let the ducks insult you into shooting at 'em! No freeze-your-fingers-and-break-the-ice early mornings! I'm willing to let the kid go it! He can't bust me in two years, anyway."

Later, when the two were alone together, he clapped Bob on the back and wished him success.

"I'm too old at the game to believe much in new methods to what I've been brought up to, Bob," said he; "but I believe in you. If anybody can do it, you can; and I'd be tickled to see you win out. Things change; and a man is foolish to act as though they didn't. He's just got to keep playing along according to the rules of the game. And they keep changing, too. It's good to have lived while they're making a country. I've done it. You're going to."

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Rules of the Game, by Stewart Edward White