The establishment of the store attracted a great many campers.
California is the campers' state. Immediately after the close of the
rainy season they set forth. The wayfarer along any of the country roads
will everywhere meet them, either plodding leisurely through the
charming landscape, or cheerfully gipsying it by the roadside. Some of
the outfits are very elaborate, veritable houses on wheels, with doors
and windows, stove pipes, steps that let down, unfolding devices so
ingenious that when they are all deployed the happy owners are
surrounded by complete convenience and luxury. The man drives his ark
from beneath a canopy; the women and children occupy comfortably the
living room of the house--whose sides, perchance, fold outward like
wings when the breeze is cool and the dust not too thick. Carlo frisks
joyously ahead and astern. Other parties start out quite as cheerfully
with the delivery wagon, or the buckboard, or even--at a pinch--with the
top buggy. For all alike the country-side is golden, the sun warm, the
sky blue, the birds joyous, and the spring young in the land. The
climate is positively guaranteed. It will not rain; it will shine; the
stars will watch. Feed for the horses everywhere borders the roads. One
can idle along the highways and the byways and the noways-at-all,
utterly carefree, surrounded by wild and beautiful scenery. No wonder
half the state turns nomadic in the spring.
And then, as summer lays its heats--blessed by the fruit man, the
irrigator, the farmer alike--over the great interior valleys, the people
divide into two classes. One class, by far the larger, migrates to the
Coast. There the trade winds blowing softly from the Pacific temper the
semi-tropic sun; the Coast Ranges bar back the furnace-like heat of the
interior; and the result is a summer climate even nearer
perfection--though not so much advertised--than is that of winter. Here
the populace stays in the big winter hotels at reduced rates, or rents
itself cottages, or lives in one or the other of the unique tent cities.
It is gregarious and noisy, and healthy and hearty, and full of
phonographs and a desire to live in bathing suits. Another, and smaller
contingent, turns to the Sierras.
We have here nothing to do with those who attend the resorts such as
Tahoe or Klamath; nor yet with that much smaller contingent of hardy and
adventurous spirits who, with pack-mule and saddle, lose themselves in
the wonderful labyrinth of granite and snow, of cañon and peak, of
forest and stream that makes up the High Sierras. But rather let us
confine ourselves to the great middle class, the class that has not the
wealth nor the desire for resort hotels, nor the skill nor the equipment
to explore a wilderness. These people hitch up the farm team, or the
grocer's cart, or the family horse, pile in their bedding and their
simple cooking utensils, whistle to the dog, and climb up out of the
scorching inferno to the coolness of the pines.
They have few but definite needs. They must have company, water, and the
proximity of a store where they can buy things to eat. If there is
fishing, so much the better. At any rate there is plenty of material for
bonfires. And since other stores are practically unknown above the
six-thousand-foot winter limit of habitability, it follows that each
lumber-mill is a magnet that attracts its own community of these
visitors to the out of doors.
As early as the beginning of July the first outfit drifted in. Below the
mill a half-mile there happened to be a small, round lake with meadows
at the upper and lower ends. By the middle of the month two hundred
people were camped there. Each constructed his abiding place according
to his needs and ideas, and promptly erected a sign naming it. The
names were facetiously intended. The community was out for a good time,
and it had it. Phonographs, concertinas, and even a tiny transportable
organ appeared. The men dressed in loose rough clothes; the women wore
sun-bonnets; the girls inclined to bandana handkerchiefs, rough-rider
skirts and leggings, cowboy hats caught up at the sides, fringed
gauntlet gloves. They were a good-natured, kindly lot, and Bob liked
nothing better than to stroll down to the Lake in the twilight. There he
found the arrangements differing widely. The smaller ranchmen lived
roughly, sleeping under the stars, perhaps, cooking over an open fire,
eating from tinware. The larger ranchmen did things in better style.
They brought rocking chairs, big tents, chinaware, camp stoves and
Japanese servants to manipulate them. The women had flags and Chinese
lanterns with which to decorate, hammocks in which to lounge, books to
read, tables at which to sit, cots and mattresses on which to sleep. No
difference in social status was made, however. The young people
undertook their expeditions together: the older folks swapped yarns in
the peaceful enjoyment of the forest. Bob found interest in all, for as
yet the California ranchman has not lost in humdrum occupations the
initiative that brought him to a new country nor the influences of the
experience he has gained there. To his surprise several of the parties
were composed entirely of girls. One, of four members, was made up of
students from Berkeley, out for their summer vacation. Late in the
summer these four damsels constructed a pack of their belongings, lashed
it on a borrowed mule, and departed. They were gone for a week in the
back country, and returned full of adventures over the detailing of
which they laughed until they gasped.
To Bob's astonishment none of the men seemed particularly wrought up
over this escapade.
"They're used to the mountains," he was assured, "and they'll get along
all right with that old mule."
"Does anybody live over there?" asked Bob.
"No, it's just a wild country, but the trails is good."
"Suppose they get into trouble?"
"What trouble? And 'tain't likely they'd all get into trouble to once."
"I should think they'd be scared."
"Nothin' to be scared of," replied the man comfortably.
Bob thought of the great, uninhabited mountains, the dark forests, the
immense loneliness and isolation, the thousand subtle and psychic
influences which the wilderness exerts over the untried soul. There
might be nothing to be scared of, as the man said. Wild animals are
harmless, the trails are good. But he could not imagine any of the girls
with whom he had acquaintance pushing off thus joyous and unafraid into
a wilderness three days beyond the farthest outpost. He had yet to
understand the spirit, almost universal among the native-born
Californians, that has been brought up so intimately with the large
things of nature that the sublime is no longer the terrible. Perhaps
this states it a little too pompously. They have learned that the mere
absence of mankind is 'nothing to be scared of'; they have learned how
to be independent and to take care of themselves. Consequently, as a
matter of course, as one would ride in the park, they undertake
expeditions into the Big Country.
Many of these travellers, especially toward the close of the summer,
complained bitterly of the scarcity of horse-feed. In the back country
where the mountains were high and the wilderness unbroken, they depended
for forage on the grasses of the mountain meadows. This year they
reported that the cattle had eaten the forage down to the roots. Where
usually had been abundance and pleasant camping, now were hard, close
lawns, and cattle overrunning and defiling everything. Under the heavy
labour of mountain travel the horses fell off rapidly in flesh and
strength.
"We're the public just as much as them cattlemen," declaimed one
grizzled veteran waving his pipe. "I come to these mountains first in
sixty-six, and the sheep was bad enough then, but you always had some
horse meadows. Now they're just plumb overrunning the country. There's
thousands and thousands of folks that come in camping, and about a dozen
of these yere cattlemen. They got no right to hog the public land."
With so much approval did this view meet that a delegation went to
Plant's summer quarters to talk it over. The delegation returned
somewhat red about the ears. Plant had politely but robustly told it
that a supervisor was the best judge of how to run his own forest. This
led to declamatory denunciation, after the American fashion, but without
resulting in further activity. Resentment seemed to be about equally
divided between Plant and the cattlemen as a class.
This resentment as to the latter, however, soon changed to sympathy. In
September the Pollock boys stopped overnight at the Lake Meadow on their
way out. Their cattle, in charge of the dogs, they threw for the night
into a rude corral of logs, built many years before for just that
purpose. Their horses they fed with barley hay bought from Merker. Their
camp they spread away from the others, near the spring. It was dark
before they lit their fire. Visitors sauntering over found George and
Jim Pollock on either side the haphazard blaze stolidly warming through
flapjacks, and occasionally settling into a firmer position the huge
coffee pot. The dust and sweat of driving cattle still lay thick on
their faces. A boy of eighteen, plainly the son of one of the other two,
was hanging up the saddles. The whole group appeared low-spirited and
tired. The men responded to the visitors by a brief nod only. The latter
there-upon sat down just inside the circle of lamplight and smoked in
silence. Presently Jim arose stiffly, frying pan in hand.
"It's done," he announced.
They ate in silence, consuming great quantities of half-cooked
flapjacks, chunks of overdone beef, and tin-cupfuls of scalding coffee.
When they had finished they thrust aside the battered tin dishes with
the air of men too weary to bother further with them. They rolled brown
paper cigarettes and smoked listlessly. After a time George Pollock
remarked:
"We ain't washed up."
The statement resulted in no immediate action. After a few moments more,
however, the boy arose slowly, gathered the dishes clattering into a
kettle, filled the latter with water, and set it in the fire. Jim and
his brother, too, bestirred themselves, disappearing in the direction of
the spring with a bar of mottled soap, an old towel, and a battered pan.
They returned after a few moments, their faces shining, their hair
wetted and sleeked down.
"Plumb too lazy to wash up." George addressed the silent visitors by way
of welcome.
"Drove far?" asked an old ranchman.
"Twin Peaks."
"How's the feed?" came the inevitable cowman's question.
"Pore, pore," replied the mountaineer. "Ain't never seen it so short. My
cattle's pore."
"Well, you're overstocked; that's what's the matter," spoke up some one
boldly.
George Pollock turned his face toward this voice.
"Don't you suppose I know it?" he demanded. "There's a thousand head too
many on my range alone. I've been crowded and pushed all summer, and I
ain't got a beef steer fit to sell, right now. My cattle are so pore
I'll have to winter 'em on foothill winter feed. And in the spring
they'll be porer."
"Well, why don't you all get together and reduce your stock?" persisted
the questioner. "Then there'll be a show for somebody. I got three packs
and two saddlers that ain't fatted up from a two weeks' trip in August.
You got the country skinned; and that ain't no dream."
George Pollock turned so fiercely that his listeners shrank.
"Get together! Reduce our stock!" he snarled, shaken from the customary
impassivity of the mountaineer, "It ain't us! We got the same number of
cattle, all we mountain men, that our fathers had afore us! There ain't
never been no trouble before. Sometimes we crowded a little, but we all
know our people and we could fix things up, and so long as they let us
be, we got along all right. It don't _pay_ us to overstock. What for do
we keep cattle? To sell, don't we? And we can't sell 'em unless they're
fat. Summer feed's all we got to fat 'em on. Winter feed's no good. You
know that. We ain't going to crowd our range. You make me tired!"
"What's the trouble then?"
"Outsiders," snapped Pollock. "Folks that live on the plains and just
push in to summer their cattle anyhow, and then fat 'em for the market
on alfalfa hay. This ain't their country. Why don't they stick to their
own?"
"Can't you handle them? Who are they?"
"It ain't they," replied George Pollock sullenly. "It's him. It's the
richest man in California, with forty ranches and fifty thousand head of
cattle and a railroad or two and God knows what else. But he'll come up
here and take a pore man's living away from him for the sake of a few
hundred dollars saved."
"Old Simeon, hey?" remarked the ranchman thoughtfully.
"Simeon Wright," said Pollock. "The same damn old robber. Forest
Reserves!" he sneered bitterly. "For the use of the public! Hell! Who's
the public? me and you and the other fellow? The public is Simeon
Wright. What do you expect?"
"Didn't Plant say he was going to look into the matter for next year?"
Bob inquired from the other side the fire.
"Plant! He's bought," returned Pollock contemptuously. "He's never seen
the country, anyway; and he never will."
He rose and kicked the fire together.
"Good night!" he said shortly, and, retiring to the shadows, rolled
himself in a blanket and turned his back on the visitors.