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."