"Well, from our bitter experiences as to the activities of a Forest Ranger we conclude that you must be very busy people--too busy to waste time on us."

The man's face changed, but he evidently had not quite arrived at the drift of this.

"I think you know what I mean," said Bob.

A slow flush overspread the ranger's face. He looked the young man up and down deliberately. Bob moved the fraction of an inch nearer.

"Meaning I'm not welcome here?" he demanded.

"This place is for the transaction of business only. Can I have Merker get you anything?"

Fletcher shot a glance half of bewilderment, half of anger, in the direction of the store-keeper. Then he nodded, not without a certain dignity, at Bob.

"Thanks, no," he said, and walked out, his spurs jingling.

"I guess he won't bother us again," said Bob, returning to Welton.

The latter laughed, a trifle ashamed of his anger.

"Those fellows give me the creeps," he said, "like cats do some people.

Mossbacks don't know no better, but a Government grafter is a little more useless than a n.i.g.g.e.r on a sawlog."

He went out. Bob turned to Merker.

"Sorry for the row," he said briefly, for he liked the gentle, slow man. "But they're a bad lot. We've got to keep that crew at arm's length for our own protection."

"Ross Fletcher is not that kind," protested Merker. "I've known him for years."

"Well, he's got a nerve to come in here. I've seen him and his kind holding down too good a job next old Austin's bar."

"Not Ross," protested Merker again. "He's a worker. He's just back now from the high mountains. Mr. Orde, if you've got a minute, sit down. I want to tell you about Ross."

Willing to do what he could to soften Merker's natural feeling, Bob swung himself to the counter, and lit his pipe.

"Ross Fletcher is a ranger because he loves it and believes in it," said Merker earnestly. "He knows things are going rotten now, but he hopes that by and by they'll go better. His district is in good shape. Why, let me tell you: last spring Ross was fighting fire all alone, and he went out for help and they docked him a day for being off the reserve!"

"You don't say," commented Bob.

"You don't believe it. Well, it's so. And they sent him in after sheep in the high mountains early, when the feed was froze, and wouldn't allow him pay for three sacks of barley for his animals. And Ross gets sixty dollars a month, and he spends about half of that for trail tools and fire tools that they won't give him. What do you think of that?"

"Merker," said Bob kindly, "I think your man is either a d.a.m.n liar or a d.a.m.n fool. Why does he say he does all this?"

"He likes the mountains. He--well, he just believes in it."

"I see. Are there any more of these altruists? or is he the only bird of the species?"

Merker caught the irony of Bob's tone.

"They don't amount to much, in general," he admitted. "But there's a few--they keep the torch lit."

"I supposed their job was more in the line of putting it out," observed Bob; then, catching Merker's look of slow bewilderment, he added: "So there are several."

"Yes. There's good men among 'em. There's Ross, and Charley Morton, and Tom Carroll, and, of course, old California John."

Bob's amused smile died slowly. Before his mental vision rose the picture of the old mountaineer, with his faded, ragged clothes, his beautiful outfit, his lean, kindly face, his steady blue eyes, guarding an empty trail for the sake of an empty duty. That man was no fool; and Bob knew it. The young fellow slid from the counter to the floor.

"I'm glad you believe in your friend, Merker," said he "and I don't doubt he's a fine fellow; but we can't have rangers, good, bad, or indifferent, hanging around here. I hope you understand that?"

Merker nodded, his wide eyes growing dreamy.

"It's an economic waste," he sighed, "all this cross-purposes. Here's you a good man, and Ross a good man, and you cannot work in harmony because of little things. The Government and the private owner should conduct business together for the best utilization of all raw material--"

"Merker," broke in Bob, with a kindly twinkle, "you're a Utopian."

"Mr. Orde," returned Merker with entire respect, "you're a lumberman."

With this interchange of epithets they parted.

XII

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 cla.s.ses. One cla.s.s, 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 canon and peak, of forest and stream that makes up the High Sierras. But rather let us confine ourselves to the great middle cla.s.s, the cla.s.s 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 j.a.panese 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 a.s.sured, "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."