Amy Thorne arose, gathered a handful of kindling, and began to rattle the stove.
"I am contemplating a real pudding," she said over her shoulder.
Bob arose reluctantly.
"I must be getting on," said he.
They said farewell. At the hitching rail Thorne joined him.
"I"m afraid I"m not very hospitable," said the Supervisor, "but that mustn"t discourage you from coming often. We"ll be better organized in time."
"It"s mighty pleasant over here; I"ve enjoyed myself," said Bob, mounting.
Thorne laid his hand on the young man"s knee.
"I wish we could induce you old-timers to come to our way of thinking,"
said he pleasantly.
"How"s that?" asked Bob.
"Your slash is in horrible shape."
"Our slash!" repeated Bob in a surprised tone. "How?"
"It"s a regular fire-trap, the way you leave it tangled up. It wouldn"t cost you much to pile the tops and leave the ground in good shape."
"Why, it"s just like any other slash!" protested Bob. "We"re logging just as everybody always logs!"
"That"s just what I object to. And when you fell a tree or pull a log to the skids, I do wish we could induce you to pay a little attention to the young growth. It"s a little more trouble, sometimes, to go around instead of through, but it"s worth it to the forest."
Bob"s brows were bent on the Supervisor in puzzled surprise. Thorne laughed, and slapped the young man"s horse on the flanks to start him.
"You think it over!" he called.
A half-hour"s ride took Bob to the clearing where the logging crews had worked the year before. Here, although the hour was now late, he reined in his horse and looked. It was the first time he had ever really done so. Heretofore a slashing had been as much a part of the ordinary woodland landscape as the forest itself.
He saw then the abattis of splintered old trunks, of lopped limbs, and entangled branches, piled up like jackstraws to the height of even six or eight feet from the ground; the unsightly mat of sodden old ma.s.ses of pine needles and cedar fans; the hundreds of young saplings bent double by the weight of debris, broken square off, or twisted out of all chance of becoming straight trees in their age; the long, deep, ruthless furrows where the logs had been dragged through everything that could stand in their way; the few trees left standing, weak specimens, undesirable species, the culls of the forest, further scarred where the cruel steel cables had rasped or bitten them. He knew by experience the difficulty of making a way, even afoot, through this tangle. Now, under the influence of Thorne"s suggestion, he saw them as great piles of so much fuel, laid as though by purpose for the time when the evil genius of the forest should desire to warm himself.
II
Bob was finally late for supper, which he ate hastily and without much appet.i.te. After finishing the meal, he hunted up Welton. He found the lumberman tilted back in a wooden armchair, his feet comfortably elevated to the low rail about the stove, his pipe in mouth, his coat off, and his waistcoat unb.u.t.toned. At the sight of his homely, jolly countenance, Bob experienced a pleasant sensation of slipping back from an environment slightly off-focus to the normal, accustomed and real.
Nevertheless, at the first opportunity, he tested his new doubts by Welton"s common sense.
"I rode through our slash on 18," he remarked. "That"s an awful mess."
"Slashes are," replied Welton succinctly.
"If the thing gets afire it will make a hot blaze."
"Sure thing," agreed Welton. "But we"ve never had one go yet--at least, while we were working. There"s men enough to corral anything like that."
"But we"ve always worked in a wet country," Bob pointed out. "Here it"s dry from April till October."
"Have to take chances, then; and jump on a fire quick if it starts,"
said Welton philosophically.
"These forest men advise certain methods of obviating the danger," Bob suggested.
"Pure theory," returned Welton. "The theory"s a good one, too," he added. "That"s where these college men are strong--only it isn"t practical. They mean well enough, but they haven"t the knowledge. When you look at anything broad enough, it looks easy. That"s what busts so many people in the lumber business." He rolled out one of his jolly chuckles. "Lumber barons!" he chortled. "Oh, it"s easy enough! Any mossback can make money lumbering! Here"s your stumpage at a dollar a thousand, and there"s your lumber at twenty! Simplest thing in the world. Just the same there are more failures in the lumber business than in any other I know anything about. Why is it?"
"Economic waste," put in Merker, who was leaning across the counter.
"Lack of experience," said Bob.
"A little of both," admitted Welton; "but it"s more because the business is made up of ten thousand little businesses. You have to conduct a cruising business, and a full-fledged real estate and mortgage business; you have to build houses and factories, make roads, build railroads; you have to do a livery trade, and be on the market for a thousand little things. Between the one dollar you pay for stumpage and the twenty dollars you get for lumber lies all these things. Along comes your hardware man and says, Here, why don"t you put in my new kind of spark arrestor; think how little it costs; what"s fifty dollars to a half-million-dollar business? The spark arrester"s a good thing all right, so you put it in. And then there"s maybe a chance to use a little paint and make the shanties look like something besides shanties; that don"t cost much, either, to a half-million-dollar business. And so on through a thousand things. And by and by it"s costing twenty dollars and one cent to get your lumber to market; and it"s B-U-S-T, bust!"
"That"s economic waste," put in Merker.
"Or lack of experience," added Bob.
"No," said Welton, emphasizing his point with his pipe; _"it"s not sticking to business!_ It"s not stripping her down to the bare necessities! It"s going in for frills! When you get to be as old as I am, you learn not to monkey with the band wagon."
His round, red face relaxed into one of his good-humoured grins, and he relit his pipe.
"That"s the trouble with this forestry monkey business. It"s all right to fool with, if you want fooling. So"s fancy farming. But it don"t pay.
If you are playing, why, it"s all right to experiment. If you ain"t, why, it"s a good plan to stick to the methods of lumbering. The present system of doing things has been worked out pretty thorough by a lot of pretty shrewd business men. And it _works!"_
Bob laughed.
"Didn"t know you could orate to that extent," he gibed. "Sic"em!"
Welton grinned a trifle abashed. "You don"t want to get me started, then," said he.
"Oh, but I do!" Bob objected, for the second time that day.
"Now this slashing business," went on the old lumberman in a more moderate tone. "When the millennium comes, it would be a fine thing to clear up the old slashings." He turned suddenly to Bob. "How long do you think it would take you with a crew of a dozen men to cut and pile the waste stuff in 18?" he inquired.
Bob cast back the eye of his recollection to the hopeless tangle that c.u.mbered the ground.
"Oh, Lord!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; "don"t ask me!"
"If you were running a business would you feel like stopping work and sending your men--whom you are feeding and paying--back there to pile up that old truck?"
Bob"s mind, trained to the eager hurry of the logging season, recoiled from this idea in dismay.