From that moment all Welton"s anxiety seemed to vanish. It became unbearably evident that he looked on all this as the romance of youth.
Bob felt himself suddenly reduced, in the lumberman"s eyes, to the status of the small boy who wants to be a cowboy, or a sailor, or an Indian fighter. Welton looked on him with an indulgent eye as on one who would soon get enough of it. The glamour--whatever it was--would soon wear off; and then Bob, his fling over, would return to sober, real business once more. All Welton"s joviality returned. From time to time he would throw a facetious remark in Bob"s direction, when, in the course of the day"s work, he happened to pa.s.s.
"It"s sure going to be fine to wear a real tin star and be an officer!"
Or:
"Bob, it sure will seem scrumptious to ride out and boss the whole country--on ninety a month. Guess I"ll join you."
Or:
"You going to make me sweep up my slashings, or will a rake do, Mr.
Ranger?"
To these feeble jests Bob always replied good-naturedly. He did not attempt to improve Welton"s conception of his purposes. That must come with time. To his father, however, he wrote at great length; trying his best to explain the situation. Mr. Orde replied that a government position was always honourable; but confessed himself disappointed that his son had not more steadfastness of purpose. Welton received a reply to his own letter by the same mail.
"I shouldn"t tell him anything," it read. "Let him go be a ranger, or a cowboy, or anything else he wants. He"s still young. I didn"t get my start until I was thirty; and the business is big enough to wait for him. You keep pegging along, and when he gets enough, he"ll come back.
He"s apparently got some notions of serving the public, and doing good in the world, and all that. We all get it at his age. By and by he"ll find out that tending to his business honestly is about one man"s job."
So, without active opposition, and with only tacit disapproval, Bob made his change. Nor was he received at headquarters with any blare of trumpets.
"I"ll put you on as "temporary" until the fall examinations," said Thorne, "and you can try it out. Rangering is hard work--all kinds of hard work. It isn"t just riding around, you know. You"ll have to make good. You can bunk up with Pollock at the upper cabin. Report to-morrow morning with him."
Amy smiled at him brightly.
"Don"t let him scare you," said she. "He thinks it looks official to be an awful bear!"
California John met him as he rode out the gate. He reached out his gnarled old hand.
"Son, we"ll get him to send us sometime to Jack Main"s Canon," said he.
Bob, who had been feeling the least shade depressed, rode on, his head high. Before him lay the great mysterious country where had penetrated only the Pioneers! Another century would build therein the structures of its inst.i.tutions. Now, like Jack Main"s Canon, the far country of new things was to be the field of his enterprise. In the future, when the new generations had come, these things would all be ordered and secure, would be systematized, their value conceded, their acceptance a matter of course. All problems would be regulated; all difficulties smoothed away; all opposition overcome. Then the officers and rangers of that peaceful and organized service, then the public--accepting such things as they accept all self-evident truths--would look back on these beginnings as men look back on romance. They would recall the time when, like knights errant, armed men rode abroad on horses through a wilderness, lying down under the stars, living hard, dwelling lowly in poverty, accomplishing with small means, striving mightily, combating the great elemental nature and the powers of darkness in men, enduring patiently, suffering contempt and misunderstanding and enmity in order that the inheritance of the people yet to come might be a.s.sured. He was one of them; he had the privilege. Suddenly his spirit felt freed. His old life receded swiftly. A new glory and uplift of soul swept him from his old moorings.
PART FIVE
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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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?"
"Sh.o.r.e," 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 a.s.sistance 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.