On a still, sunny day in July, Patrick O’Neill rode whistling down the
steep trail that led into Lodgepole Basin. From little openings in the
pines he could look down over a vast stretch of hills and valleys
which formed a part of his district—a peaceful scene which held him
silent for a space. The ranger station which would be his home lay
farther down in the basin, a tip of its flagpole showing white above a
grove of young pines.
“Looks like heaven, after the jack pines and mesquite of Black Mesa,”
he observed to his horse that stood switching flies with philosophic
calm. “I’ll stand a lot of grief before I’ll quit. We’ll sure make a
home of this place, no foolin’. Cushman wasn’t Irish. Takes the Irish
to get a real human slant on folks. He’s a sour cuss—probably tried to
lord it over the natives, and they wouldn’t stand for it.
“Don’t blame ’em. I wouldn’t let any iron-visaged ranger dictate much
to me, if I were a rancher. The human note—no up-stage attitude—just
be one of them, friendlylike and peaceful. That’s the ticket. Like
gentling a bronc, this thing is going to be. Treat ’em right and
they’ll treat you right.”
Whereupon he resumed his whistling and jogged down to the comfortable
log house in the grove of lodgepole pines, opened all the windows and
went happily to work at what he called policing camp. After that he
got out the files and studied the grazing permits, the brands, owners
thereof and the territory assigned to each. It took the rest of the
day and most of the evening to memorize the stuff he felt he should
have ready behind the tip of his tongue, but he enjoyed it all and
repeated his cheerful prophecies concerning the work of gentling
Stillwater District.
“That Bar B man, Boyce, seems to be the king-pin of this district,” he
mused, as he rode abroad over his domain to familiarize himself with
the topography of the country, just as he had made himself acquainted
with the records. “Next on the program comes the human contact. Think
I’ll just ride down and make friends with our Bostonian neighbor at
the Bar B. Must be educated and intelligent—we ought to have a good
deal in common. I’m educated, far above the average in
intelligence—oh, you Pat O’Neill! When you tell him that, he’ll love
you for your modesty if for nothing else!”
So he turned his horse’s head toward the Bar B Ranch.
The Honorable Standish Boyce of Boston was leaning over the front gate
as O’Neill rode up, whistling under his breath, as was the carefree
habit he had. A pair of field glasses dangled from the old man’s right
hand, as if he had been making certain of the horseman’s identity, had
recognized him as the new forest ranger and was now waiting to welcome
him according to precedent and his general opinion of all
forest-service men.
Patrick O’Neill flung a limber leg over the cantle of his stock saddle
and stepped down with agile grace, smiling his Irish smile as he
strode forward with outstretched hand.
“Mr. Boyce? I’m the new ranger in this district. O’Neill is my
name—Pat O’Neill.”
“Well, what of it?” Boyce still stood with his arms folded upon the
gate, the field glasses swinging gently from their narrow strap. Cold
gray eyes had the Honorable Standish Boyce, set deep and close to a
high, thin nose. Beneath the nose, a thin, straight mouth, half hidden
beneath a growth of thin, white beard, pointed to match his nose. His
eyes had the impersonal glare of the bird he so closely resembled—an
Uncle Sam on the warpath, O’Neill thought swiftly.
“Oh, nothing much, Mr. Boyce!” he grinned, firm in his purpose.
“Nothing, except that I understand you are one of the leading citizens
of our little community, as well as the largest user of the National
Forest, and I wanted to meet you.”
“Well, you’ve met me. If you’re satisfied, I am. Now get off my ranch
and stay off.”
The spirit of a thousand generations of fighting O’Neills rose and
looked out through the eyes of young Pat, but he hushed their battle
cry and somehow managed to keep his Irish grin.
“You’re a bit hasty, Mr. Boyce. You and I will have a good deal of
business to transact together as time goes on. It will be much
pleasanter if we are friends, you know.”
“Young man, I transact my business directly with Washington. I have
relatives who stand high in official circles, and by virtue of their
influence I enjoy privileges quite beyond your petty power to accord
me. Now will you do me the favor to leave this place?”
“When the favor becomes mutual, yes. First, I want to tell you that
it’s my business to administer the affairs of this district on behalf
of the government. Whether you approve or disapprove of that fact is
of no concern to the government or to me. You may be twin brother to
the President of these United States for all I care, Mr. Boyce, but
the fact remains the same. Any business you have to transact with the
forest service, you will transact with me, its accredited
representative.”
* * * * *
Then the fighting O’Neills in him took a hand. They propelled him
forward so that his blazing Irish eyes were within a foot of the cold
gray ones.
“Get this straight, old-timer! I’m running this neck of the woods—not
your relatives in Washington—and you may as well learn the fact right
here as farther down the creek! Your special privileges end right
here, you bean-brained old pie eater! From this minute on, you haven’t
got one damn privilege beyond what your neighbors enjoy, and if I
catch you trying to assume that you have, I’ll arrest you same as I
would any one else! Let that sink away down deep in your cosmic
consciousness, Mr. Boyce. The sooner you realize that this forest
service is not run for the special benefit of any individual, the less
grief you are going to have!”
Boyce’s white-bearded jaw sagged in amazement. He swallowed twice,
shook a tremulous fist at the man who had the temerity to defy him,
and spluttered an epithet.
“Calm yourself, Mr. Boyce,” O’Neill admonished, as he picked up the
reins to remount. “I expect that’s pretty hard to swallow, but you
needn’t choke over it.”
“I— You— I’ll have you dismissed—kicked out in disgrace, you—you——”
“Oh, go off and lie down! You make me tired,” O’Neill snarled
disgustedly from the saddle and loped back up the trail, thinking not
of Boyce, but of the girl he had seen walk her horse to the side porch
of the house and sit watching them, evidently listening.
How much she had heard, he did not know—nor did he care at the moment.
But now he wished that he had thought of something wittily biting to
say at the last, instead of that hackneyed retort which any roughneck
puncher on the range might have made.
The rasping voice of the Bar B Bostonian followed him, shouting
threats and imprecations which the increasing distance blurred to a
vague mouthing of rage. Bluster, O’Neill reminded himself, was always
a mark of weakness, or so folks said. If the rule held, then the
Honorable Standish Boyce was all bark and no bite, and could safely be
ignored.
* * * * *
He had ridden a mile along the side of a ridge, taking it easy on the
way home, when a horse lunged out through a clump of bushes into the
trail ahead of him and wheeled so that the rider faced him. It was the
girl he had seen at Boyce’s house, and she had evidently cut across
country with the deliberate intention of intercepting him. At any
rate, she was waiting for him to ride up. Which Patrick O’Neill did
right willingly.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Ranger,” she greeted him coolly, when he drew
near. “I’m Isabelle Boyce, and I’m supposed to be a chip off the old
block. At least, the neighbors say I am.”
O’Neill laughed as he took off his hat and ran his fingers through his
thick, brown hair. “I’d have to prove that for myself, Miss Boyce. Is
this a continuation——”
“Oh, no, indeed! It’s an explanation. I heard how father talked to
you, and I heard how you talked back to father. So I just thought——”
“If you heard your father, you must admit I had the patience of Job
and used it.”
“And left father boiling!” she laughed, flicking the bushes with her
quirt. “I was really in hopes, Mr. er—er——”
“Patrick O’Neill, at your service.” Pat reined in alongside her and
the horses started on up the trail at a walk.
“Oh, you’re Irish! I was in hopes the new ranger would understand and
sympathize with the people of the Stillwater District, but if you’re
Irish, I suppose you’ll want to fight over nothing, like all the
rest.”
“Not necessarily, Miss Boyce. Your father ordered me off the ranch,
when all I wanted to do was give him a cordial shake of the hand and
say I hoped we might be friends. I merely expostulated a bit against
the discourtesy. I could not fail to understand him, but as for
sympathizing—— Well, I’d first like to know what’s wrong with him.”
“The same thing that’s wrong with all the rest of the Stillwater
people, Mr. O’Neill. All you rangers seem to have overlooked the fact
that this is an isolated country, where it’s very difficult to keep a
fine sense of values. This world in here is bounded by cows, horses,
crops and kids. The men are only servants to their live stock, and the
women are slaves to the men. No one seems able to take a day off, to
get out of the rut. They live in shacks, for the most part, and life
is a monotonous grind of the very things that have made them so narrow
and sordid.
“Even my father,” she continued, “though he is intelligent and
educated and can look back upon worth-while things, has grown as
narrow as the rest. They are bored to death, and don’t even know it,
so they hate themselves and each other, and squabble over trifles
that——”
“Well, they needn’t take out their spite on the forest service,” Pat
grumbled, just to keep her going.
“Oh, but they do!” she came back at him eagerly, her eyes alight with
interest in her subject. “You’re—meaning the forest service—the only
thing they can all band together to fight, don’t you see? Once you
take that community spirit away from them, I don’t know what would
happen. It’s the primitive impulse of self-preservation, working out
in a normal, primitive way. It requires a common enemy—hunger, the
menace of some terrible creature of the wild, protection against some
element that would destroy, and which no one man is strong enough to
conquer alone; just as the cave men gathered on the cliffs and rolled
rocks down upon the saber-toothed tiger. We call it community spirit,
in our psychology classes—that’s where I learned it.
“Here, they have plenty to sustain life according to their standards,
and there aren’t any saber-toothed tigers, so—they pretend to
themselves that the forest service is a menace, and they band together
for the fight. He’s an outlet for their emotions, Mr. O’Neill. A
psychological safety valve. Also,” she added, forestalling an Irish
rebellion which she may have seen rising in his eyes, “it’s
misdirected energy, of course. But it explains my father’s awful
conduct, doesn’t it?”
Patrick O’Neill gave her a keen look. “It explains your father,” he
admitted, “but sure, and it don’t change the temper of him, divil a
bit!” Then he laughed. “So the answer seems to be, Miss Boyce, that
since they are bored with the monotony of their existence and must
have some excitement, I’m to wallop the livin’ daylights out of the
lot of them! And it’s not so sorry a prospect as you might suppose,”
he added dryly.
“I don’t mean that at all, and you know it!” she flashed, showing a
hint of her father’s temper—though she showed it very prettily,
O’Neill thought. “You seem intelligent. Why don’t you use your
personality——”
“I will, Miss Boyce, and my fists along with it!”
“Your personality,” she went on, ignoring him, “to give them a pride
in the forest service? Make them see that it is really their best
friend, that it protects their range and gives each one a fair share
of the grazing. If you can win them over to yourself as a man, you can
win them over to the forest service as an institution which has their
welfare at heart.”
“And force them back to whippin’ pups for excitement, and fightin’
each other. I don’t see——”
“That’s because you won’t see,” she told him impatiently. “I have it
all analyzed, but I can’t do anything myself to help Stillwater—they
call me ‘Queen Isabelle,’ and say I’m stuck up, and like my father.
But you—if you can make them like you, the work is half done. Won’t
you try, Mr. O’Neill? I heard how you talked to father, and while I
admit he is terribly exasperating, still, that attitude of yours won’t
make him love the service any better. If you’d seize every opportunity
to make each individual like you personally——”
“I will that!” cried Patrick O’Neill, beaming upon her with the Irish
twinkle which she had perhaps noticed. “I grasp the idea, and I find
it wonderful! But I shall need encouragement and advice—and might I
begin with yourself, Miss Boyce?”
“Get along with you!” cried Queen Isabelle. “I _told_ you the Irish——”
She struck her horse with the quirt and galloped away from him,
flushed and biting her lip to keep back the laughter. Then she halted
and wheeled, a short distance away. “I’ll advise you about the best
way to approach father,” she called to him sweetly. “I can get his
real opinion of you as a man——”
“Sure, and I had that same by word of mouth, Miss Boyce!”
“And if you really need help or advice at any time, I’ll be glad to
have you call on me.”
“It’s a great deal of trouble you are taking, Miss Boyce, just for a
lone ranger, but I’ll be delighted to avail myself of the privilege
you so kindly ex——”
Queen Isabelle laughed and rode toward him again. “Remember, Mr.
O’Neill, that I have lived in this isolated place for more than a
year—ever since I finished school. I’m like the rest of the
natives—bored to death. Only, I know it and am seizing a small
opportunity to direct my energy in some useful channel. You may laugh,
but I really mean it. Just living is not enough. I must be doing
something. So if I can help you win the Stillwater over to the forest
service and make friends of the two, I shall be much more contented
with my lot in life; which is staying at home with father and making
him as happy as possible.
“That,” she added with dignity, “is my sole reason for waylaying you
in this bold manner. I could see that you were getting an entirely
erroneous view of the situation in your district, and that you were in
a fair way to widen the breach between the settlers and the
government. We’d be having regular feuds over the forest reserve in
another year, just as some of the mountaineers of Kentucky fight the
revenue officers. Oh, I have given the matter careful thought, I
assure you! You are not like the other rangers, and if you really have
the interests of the service at heart, you will do all in your power
to promote a better feeling here.”
“I will that, Miss Boyce! It’s a sweet little task you’ve set me, but
with your constant guidance and encouragement I’ll do it.”
She gave him a quick, suspicious glance, refusing to laugh at his
slightly exaggerated Irish optimism. “Just meet the people with
kindness and courtesy, Mr. O’Neill. When you match temper with temper,
as you did just now with father, you merely drop from a superior
mental height to the level of—of Gus Peterson, owner of the Box S, who
lives to fight and to boast of his brutal victories. Father knows
better, and so do you, but he has permitted himself to drop into the
ways of the country. There isn’t even that excuse for you at all,
don’t you see?”
“Miss Boyce, _you_ have the pitiless logic of a _Portia_,” Patrick
O’Neill sighed. “For the first time in my life, I humbly apologize for
my fightin’ Irish temper, and I promise to be a saint from this
moment, so that Stillwater mothers shall beg the little ones at their
knees to be sweet, loving little gentlemen and ladies, like the kind,
forgiving young man at the ranger station, who would not hurt a fly.
And for the encouragement to be that same, I shall choose Thursday as
the day which I am allowed by a thoughtful government each week for
policing camp, and I shall call if I may, and smile if I am kicked
out.”
“I ride nearly every day,” returned Isabelle Boyce, with a smile.
“Always on Thursday I ride toward Castle Creek. Good-by, and remember
that a soft answer turneth away wrath. I shall expect a good report of
the week.”
“A sweet little handicap she’s put upon me!” mused Patrick O’Neill, as
he jogged homeward across the hills. “I’m to swallow my temper—that’s
turned me out of my home and my school and every job I’ve ever held in
my life! Pat, me lad, the girl is more dangerous than the old man, and
it’s well for you if you face that fact at once!”