Matters stood thus dependent on the efforts of Jack Orde, at Washington,
when, one evening, Baker rode in to camp and dismounted before the low
verandah of the sleeping quarters. Welton and Bob sat, chair-tilted,
awaiting the supper gong.
"Thrice hail, noble chiefs!" cried Baker, cautiously stretching out
first one sturdy leg, then the other. "Against which post can I lean my
trusty charger?"
Baker was garbed to suit the rôle. His boots were very thick and very
tall, and most bristly with hobnails; they laced with belt laces through
forty-four calibre eyelets, and were strapped about the top with a broad
piece of leather and two glittering buckles. Furthermore, his trousers
were of khaki, his shirt of navy blue, his belt three inches broad, his
neckerchief of red, and his hat both wide and high.
In response to enthusiastic greetings, he struck a pose.
"How do you like it?" he inquired. "Isn't this the candy make-up for the
simple life--surveyor, hardy prospector, mountain climber, sturdy
pedestrian? Ain't I the real young cover design for the Out-of-door
number?"
He accepted their congratulations with a lofty wave.
"That's all right," said he; "but somebody take away this horse before I
bite him. I'm sore on that horse. Joke! Snicker!"
Bob delivered over the animal to the stableman who was approaching.
"Come up to see the tall buildings?" he quoted Baker himself.
"Not so," denied that young man. "My errand is philanthropic. I'm robin
redbreast. Leaves for yours."
"Pass that again," urged Bob; "I didn't get it."
"I hear you people have locked horns with Henry Plant," said Baker.
"Well, Plant's a little on the peck," amended Welton.
"Leaves for yours," repeated the self-constituted robin redbreast.
"Babes in the Woods!"
Beyond this he would vouchsafe nothing until after supper when, cigars
lighted, the three of them sprawled before the fireplace in quarters.
"Now," he began, "you fellows are up against it good and plenty. You
can't wish your lumber out, and that's the only feasible method unless
you get a permit. Why in blazes did you make this break, anyway?"
"What break?" asked Welton.
Baker looked at him and smiled slowly.
"You don't think I own a telephone line without knowing what little
birdies light on the wires, do you?"
"Does that damn operator leak?" inquired Welton placidly but with a
narrowing of the eyes.
"Not on your saccharine existence. If he did, he'd be out among the
scenery in two jumps. But I'm different. That's my _business_."
"Mighty poor business," put in Bob quietly.
Baker turned full toward him.
"Think so? You'll never get any cigars in the guessing contest unless
you can scare up better ones than that. Let's get back to cases. How did
you happen to make this break, anyway?"
"Why," explained Welton, "it was simply a case of build a road and a
flume down a worthless mountain-side. Back with us a man builds his road
where he needs it, and pays for the unavoidable damage. My head was full
of all sorts of details. I went and asked Plant about it, and he said
all right, go ahead. I supposed that settled it, and that he must
certainly have authority on his own job."
Baker nodded several times.
"Sure. I see the point. Just the same, he has you."
"For the time being," amended Welton. "Bob's father, here, is
congressman from our district in Michigan, and he'll fix the matter."
Baker turned his face to the ceiling, blew a cloud of smoke toward it,
and whistled. Then he looked down at Welton.
"I suppose you know the real difficulty?" he asked.
"One thousand dollars," replied Welton promptly--"to hire extra
fire-fighters to protect my timber," he added ironically.
"Well?"
"Well!" the lumberman slapped his knee. "I won't be held up in any such
barefaced fashion!"
"And your congressman will pull you out. Now let me drop a few pearls of
wisdom in the form of conundrums. Why does a fat man who can't ride a
horse hold a job as Forest Supervisor in a mountain country?"
"He's got a pull somewhere," replied Welton.
"Bright boy! Go to the head. Why does a fat man who is hated by every
mountain man, who grafts barefacedly, whose men are either loafers or
discouraged, _hold_ his job?"
"Same answer."
Baker leaned forward, and his mocking face became grave.
"That pull comes from the fact that old Gay is his first cousin, and
that he seems to have some special drag with him."
"The Republican chairman!" cried Welton.
Baker leaned back.
"About how much chance do you think Mr. Orde has of getting a hearing?
Especially as all they have to do is to stand pat on the record. You'd
better buy your extra fire-fighters."
"That would be plain bribery," put in Bob from the bed.
"Fie, fie! Naughty!" chided Baker. "Bribery! to protect one's timber
against the ravages of the devouring element! Now look here," he resumed
his sober tone and more considered speech; "what else can you do?"
"Fight it," said Bob.
"Fight what? Prefer charges against Plant? That's been done a dozen
times. Such things never get beyond the clerks. There's a man in
Washington now who has direct evidence of some of the worst frauds and
biggest land steals ever perpetrated in the West. He's been there now
four months, and he hasn't even _succeeded in getting a hearing_ yet. I
tried bucking Plant, and it cost me first and last, in time, delay and
money, nearly fifty thousand dollars. I'm offering you that expensive
experience free, gratis, for nothing."
"Make a plain statement of the facts public," said Bob. "Publish them.
Arouse public sentiment."
Baker looked cynical.
"Such attacks are ascribed to soreheads," said he, "and public sentiment
_isn't interested_. The average citizen wonders what all the fuss is
about and why you don't get along with the officials, anyway, as long as
they are fairly reasonable." He turned to Welton: "How much more of a
delay can you stand without closing down?"
"A month."
"How soon must your deliveries begin?"
"July first."
"If you default this contract you can't meet your notes."
"What notes?"
"Don't do the baby blue-eyes. You can't start a show like this without
borrowing. Furthermore, if you default this contract, you'll never get
another, even if you do weather the storm."
"That's true," said Welton.
"Furthermore," insisted Baker, "Marshall and Harding will be
considerably embarrassed to fill their contracts down below; and the
building operations will go bump for lack of material, if they fail to
make good. You can't stand or fall alone in this kind of a game."
Welton said nothing, but puffed strongly on his cigar.
"You're still doing the Sister Anne toward Washington," said Baker,
pleasantly. "This came over the 'phone. I wired Mr. Orde in your name,
asking what prospects there were for a speedy settlement. There's what
he says!" He flipped a piece of scratch paper over to Welton.
"Deadlock," read the latter slowly. "No immediate prospect. Will hasten
matters through regular channels. Signed, Orde."
"Mr. Orde is familiar with the whole situation?" asked Baker.
"He is."
"Well, there's what he thinks about it even there. You'd better see to
that fire protection. It's going to be a dry year."
"What's all your interest in this, anyway?" asked Bob.
Baker did not answer, but looked inquiringly toward Welton.
"Our interests are obviously his," said Welton. "We're the only two
business propositions in this country. And if one of those two fail,
how's the other to scratch along?"
"Correct, as far as you go," said Baker, who had listened attentively.
"Now, I'm no tight wad, and I'll give you another, gratis. It's strictly
under your hats, though. If you fellows bust, how do you think I could
raise money to do business up here at all? It would hoodoo the country."
Silence fell on the three, while the fire leaped and fell and crackled.
Welton's face showed still a trace of stubbornness. Suddenly Baker
leaned forward, all his customary fresh spirits shining in his face.
"Don't like to take his na'ty medicine?" said he. "Well, now, I'll tell
you. I know Plant mighty well. He eats out of my hand. He just loves me
as a father. If I should go to him and say; 'Plant, my agile sylph,
these people are my friends. Give them their nice little permit and let
them run away and play,' why, he'd do it in a minute." Baker rolled his
eyes drolly at Welton. "Can this be the shadow of doubt! You disbelieve
my power?" He leaned forward and tapped Welton's knee. His voice became
grave: "I'll tell you what I'll do. _I'll bet you a thousand dollars I
can get your permit for you!"_
The two men looked steadily into each other's eyes.
At last Welton drew a deep sigh.
"I'll go you," said he.
Baker laughed gleefully.
"It's a cinch," said he. "Now, honest, don't you think so? Do you give
up? Will you give me a check now?"
"I'll give you a check, and you can hunt up a good stakeholder," said
Welton. "Shall I make it out to Plant?" he inquired sarcastically.
"Make the check out to me," said Baker. "I'll just let Plant hold the
stakes and decide the bet."
He rose.
"Bring out the fiery, untamed steed!" he cried. "I must away!"
"Not to-night?" cried Bob in astonishment.
"Plant's in his upper camp," said Baker, "and it's only five miles by
trail. There's still a moon."
"But why this haste?"
"Well," said Baker, spreading his sturdy legs apart and surveying first
one and then the other. "To tell you the truth, our old friend Plant is
getting hostile about these prods from Washington, and he intimated he'd
better hear from me before midnight to-day."
"You've already seen him!" cried Bob.
But Baker merely grinned.
As he stood by his horse preparing to mount, he remarked casually.
"Just picked up a new man for my land business--name Oldham."
"Never heard of him," said Welton.
"He isn't the _Lucky Lands_ Oldham, is he?" asked Bob.
"Same chicken," replied Baker; then, as Bob laughed, "Think he's phoney?
Maybe he'll take watching--and maybe he won't. I'm a good little
watcher. But I do know he's got 'em all running up the street with their
hats in their hands when it comes to getting results."
X
Baker must have won his bet, for Welton never again saw his check for
one thousand dollars, until it was returned to him cancelled. Nor did
Baker himself return. He sent instead a note advising some one to go
over to Plant's headquarters. Accordingly Bob saddled his horse, and
followed the messenger back to the Supervisor's summer quarters.
After an hour and a half of pleasant riding through the great forest,
the trail dropped into a wagon road which soon led them to a fine, open
meadow.
"Where does the road go to in the other direction?" Bob asked his guide.
"She 'jines onto your road up the mountain just by the top of the rise,"
replied the ranger.
"How did you get up here before we built that road?" inquired Bob.
"Rode," answered the man briefly.
"Pretty tough on Mr. Plant," Bob ventured.
The man made no reply, but spat carefully into the tarweed. Bob
chuckled to himself as the obvious humour of the situation came to him.
Plant was evidently finding the disputed right of way a great
convenience.
The meadow stretched broad and fair to a distant fringe of aspens. On
either side lay the open forest of spruce and pines, spacious, without
undergrowth. Among the trees gleamed several new buildings and one or
two old and weather-beaten structures. The sounds of busy saws and
hammers rang down the forest aisles.
Bob found the Supervisor sprawled comfortably in a rude, homemade chair
watching the activities about him. To his surprise, he found there also
Oldham, the real-estate promoter from Los Angeles. Two men were nailing
shakes on a new shed. Two more were busily engaged in hewing and sawing,
from a cross-section of a huge sugar pine, a set of three steps. Plant
seemed to be greatly interested in this, as were still two other men
squatting on their heels close by. All wore the badges of the Forest
Reserves. Near at hand stood two more men holding their horses by the
bridle. As Bob ceased his interchange with Oldham, he overhead one of
these inquire:
"All right. Now what do you want us to do?"
"Get your names on the pay-roll and don't bother me," replied Plant.
Plant caught sight of Bob, and, to that young man's surprise, waved him
a jovial hand.
"'Bout time you called on the old man!" he roared. "Tie your horse to
the ground and come look at these steps. I bet there ain't another pair
like 'em in the mountains!"
Somewhat amused at this cordiality, Bob dismounted.
Plant mentioned names by way of introduction.
"Baker told me that you were with him, but not that you were on the
mountain," said Bob. "Better come over and see us."
"I'll try, but I'm rushed to get back," replied Oldham formally.
"How's the work coming on?" asked Plant. "When you going to start
fluming 'em down?"
"As soon as we can get our permit," replied Bob.
Plant chuckled.
"Well, you did get in a hole there, didn't you? I guess you better go
ahead. It'll take all summer to get the permit, and you don't want to
lose a season, do you?"
Astonished at the effrontery of the man, Bob could with difficulty
control his expression.
"We expect to start to-morrow or next day," he replied. "Just as soon
as we can get our teams organized. Just scribble me a temporary permit,
will you?" He offered a fountain pen and a blank leaf of his notebook.
Plant hesitated, but finally wrote a few words.
"You won't need it," he assured Bob. "I'll pass the word. But there you
are."
"Thanks," said Bob, folding away the paper. "You seem to be comfortably
fixed here."
Plant heaved his mighty body to its legs. His fat face beamed with
pride.
"My boy," he confided to Bob, laying a pudgy hand on the young man's
shoulder, "this is the best camp in the mountains--without any
exception."
He insisted on showing Bob around. Of course, the young fellow,
unaccustomed as yet to the difficulties of mountain transportation,
could not quite appreciate to the full extent the value in forethought
and labour of such things as glass windows, hanging lamps, enamelled
table service, open fireplaces, and all the thousand and one
conveniences--either improvised or transported mule-back--that Plant
displayed. Nevertheless he found the place most comfortable and
attractive.
They caught a glimpse of skirts disappearing, but in spite of Plant's
roar of "Minnie!" the woman failed to appear.
"My niece," he explained.
In spite of himself, Bob found that he was beginning to like the fat
man. There could be no doubt that the Supervisor was a great rascal;
neither could there be any doubt but that his personality was most
attractive. He had a bull-like way of roaring out his jokes, his orders,
or his expostulations; a smashing, dry humour; and, above all, an
invariably confident and optimistic belief that everything was going
well and according to everyone's desires. His manner, too, was hearty,
his handclasp warm. He fairly radiated good-fellowship and good humour
as he rolled about. Bob's animosity thawed in spite of his half-amused
realization of what he ought to feel.
When the tour of inspection had brought them again to the grove where
the men were at work, they found two new arrivals.
These were evidently brothers, as their square-cut features proclaimed.
They squatted side by side on their heels. Two good horses with the
heavy saddles and coiled ropes of the stockmen looked patiently over
their shoulders. A mule, carrying a light pack, wandered at will in the
background. The men wore straight-brimmed, wide felt hats, short
jumpers, and overalls of blue denim, and cowboy boots armed with the
long, blunt spurs of the craft. Their faces were stubby with a week's
growth, but their blue eyes were wide apart and clear.
"Hullo, Pollock," greeted Plant, as he dropped, blowing, into his chair.
The men nodded briefly, never taking their steady gaze from Plant's
face. After a due and deliberate pause, the elder spoke.
"They's a thousand head of Wright's cattle been drove in on our ranges
this year," said he.
"I issued Wright permits for that number, Jim," replied Plant blandly.
"But that's plumb crowdin' of our cattle off'n the range," protested the
mountaineer.
"No, it ain't," denied Plant. "That range will keep a thousand cattle
more. I've had complete reports on it. I know what I'm doing."
"It'll _keep_ them, all right," spoke up the younger, "which is saying
they won't die. But they'll come out in the fall awful pore."
"I'm using my judgment as to that," said Plant.
"Yore judgment is pore," said the younger Pollock, bluntly. "You got to
be a cattleman to know about them things."
"Well, I know Simeon Wright don't put in cattle where he's going to
lose on them," replied Plant. "If he's willing to risk it, I'll back his
judgment."
"Wright's a crowder," the older Pollock took up the argument quietly.
"He owns fifty thousand head. Me and George, here, we have five hunderd.
He just aims to summer his cattle, anyhow. When they come out in the
fall, he will fat them up on alfalfa hay. Where is George and me and the
Mortons and the Carrolls, and all the rest of the mountain folks going
to get alfalfa hay? If our cattle come out pore in the fall, they ain't
no good to us. The range is overstocked with a thousand more cattle on
it. We're pore men, and Wright he owns half of Californy. He's got a
million acres of his own without crowdin' in on us."
"This is the public domain, for all the public----" began Plant,
pompously, but George Pollock, the younger, cut in.
"We've run this range afore you had any Forest Reserves, afore you came
into this country, Henry Plant, and our fathers and our grandfathers!
We've built up our business here, and we've built our ranches and we've
made our reg'lations and lived up to 'em! We ain't going to be run off
our range without knowin' why!"
"Just because you've always hogged the public land is no reason why you
should always continue to do so," said Plant cheerfully.
"Who's the public? Simeon Wright? or the folks up and down the
mountains, who lives in the country?"
"You've got the same show as Wright or anybody else."
"No, we ain't," interposed Jim Pollock, "for we're playin' a different
game."
"Well, what is it you want me to do, anyway?" demanded Plant. "The man
has his permit. You can't expect me to tell him to get to hell out of
there when he has a duly authorized permit, do you?"
The Pollocks looked at each other.
"No," hesitated Jim, at last. "But we're overstocked. Don't issue no
such blanket permits next year. The range won't carry no more cattle
than it always has."
"Well, I'll have it investigated," promised Plant. "I'll send out a
grazing man to look into the matter."
He nodded a dismissal, and the two men, rising slowly to their feet,
prepared to mount. They looked perplexed and dissatisfied, but at a
loss. Plant watched them sardonically. Finally they swung into the
saddle with the cowman's easy grace.
"Well, good day," said Jim Pollock, after a moment's hesitation.
"Good day," returned Plant amusedly.
They rode away down the forest aisles. The pack mule fell in behind
them, ringing his tiny, sweet-toned bell, his long ears swinging at
every step.
Plant watched them out of sight.
"Most unreasonable people in the world," he remarked to Bob and Oldham.
"They never can be made to see sense. Between them and these confounded
sheepmen--I'd like to get rid of the whole bunch, and deal only with
_business_ men. Takes too much palaver to run this outfit. If they gave
me fifty rangers, I couldn't more'n make a start." He was plainly out of
humour.
"How many rangers do you get?" asked Bob.
"Twelve," snapped Plant.
Bob saw eight of the twelve in sight, either idle or working on such
matters as the steps hewed from the section of pine log. He said
nothing, but smiled to himself.
Shortly after he took his leave. Plant, his good humour entirely
recovered, bellowed after him a dozen jokes and invitations.
Down the road a quarter-mile, just before the trail turned off to the
mill, Bob and his guide, who was riding down the mountain, passed a man
on horseback. He rode a carved-leather saddle, without
tapaderos.[Footnote: Stirrup hoods] A rawhide riata hung in its loop on
the right-hand side of the horn. He wore a very stiff-brimmed hat
encircled by a leather strap and buckle, a cotton shirt, and belted
trousers tucked into high-heeled boots embroidered with varied patterns.
He was a square-built but very wiry man, with a bold, aggressive,
half-hostile glance, and rode very straight and easy after the manner of
the plains cowboy. A pair of straight-shanked spurs jingled at his
heels, and he wore a revolver.
"Shelby," explained the guide, after this man had passed. "Simeon
Wright's foreman with these cattle you been hearing about. He ain't
never far off when there's something doing. Guess he's come to see about
how's his fences."