Stewart Edward White

“ Bob was awakened before daylight by the unholy shriek of a great whistle. He then realized that for some time he had been vaguely aware of kindling and stove sounds. The bare little room had become bitterly cold. A gray-blackness represented the world outside. He lighted his glass lamp and took a hasty, shivering sponge bath in the crockery basin. Then he felt better in the answering glow of his healthy, straight young body; and a few moments later was prepared to enjoy a fragrant, new-lit, somewhat smoky fire in the big stove outside his door. ”

“ 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 cañon and peak, of forest and stream that makes up the High Sierras. But rather let us confine ourselves to the great middle class, the class that has not the wealth nor the desire for resort hotels, nor the skill nor the equipment to explore a wilderness. ”

“ Great trees fall, new trees grow up, brush clothes an erstwhile bare hillside, fire denudes a slope, even the rocks and boulders shift their places under the coercion of frost or avalanche. The young men separated, shoulder deep in the high brakes and alders of a creek bottom, climbing tiny among great trees on the open slope of a distant hill, clambering busily among austere domes and pinnacles, fading in the cool green depths of the forest. Finally one would shout loudly. The other scrambled across.
"Here we are," Bob said, pointing to the trunk of a huge yellow pine. ”

“ The four men fell back. Their eyebrows and hair were singed; their skin blackened. Bob's face felt sore, and as though it had been stretched. He took a long pull at his canteen. For the moment he felt as though his energy had all been drained away.
"Well, that was a good little scrap," observed Charley Morton cheerfully. "I certainly do wish it was always night when a man had to fight fire. In a hot sun it gets to be hard work."
Elliott rolled his eyes, curiously white like a minstrel's in his blackened face, at Bob, but said nothing. ”

“ As the valley dropped beneath, they came upon an occasional budding dogwood. Over the slopes of some of the hills spread a mantle of velvety vivid green, fair as the grass of a lawn, but indescribably soft and mobile. It lent those declivities on which it grew a spacious, well-kept, park appearance, on which Bob exclaimed with delight.
But Welton would have none of it.
"Bear clover," said he, "full of pitch as an old jack-pine. Burns like coal oil, and you can't hardly cut it with a hoe. Worst stuff to carry fire and to fight fire in you ever saw. Pick a piece and smell it." ”

“ The dining room was precisely like those Bob remembered from recollections of the river camps of his childhood. There were the same long tables covered with red oilcloth, the same pine benches worn smooth and shiny, the same thick crockery, and the same huge receptacles steaming with hearty—and well-cooked—food. Nowhere does the man who labours with his hands fare better than in the average lumber camp. Forest operations have a largeness in conception and execution that leads away from the habit of the mean, small and foolish economics. ”

“ He could, as California John expressed it, run a fire out on a rocky point and lose it there better than any other man on the force. Ross Fletcher was the best policeman. He knew the mountains, their infinite labyrinths, better than any other; and he could guess the location of sheep where another might have searched all summer.
Though each and every man was kept busy enough, and to spare, on all the varied business inseparable from the activities of a National Forest, nevertheless Thorne knew enough to avail himself of these especial gifts and likings. ”

“ Only I hate to do a man an injustice without being sure. You needn't answer. Your last remark means that you are. I have too much sense to do the little Eva to you, Orde. You've got the gray stuff in your head, even if it is a trifle wormy. Of course, it's no good telling you that you're going back on a friend, that you'll be dragging Welton into the game when he hasn't got a chip to enter with, that you're betraying private confidence—well, I guess the rest is all 'thinks.'"
"I'm sorry, Baker," said Bob, "and I suppose I must appear to be a spy in the matter. But it can't be helped." ”

“ Over in the corner under the lamp the sealer and bookkeeper was epitomizing the results of his day. Welton and Bob sat close to the round stove in the middle, smoking their pipes. The three or four bunks belonging to Bob, the scaler, and the camp boss were dim in another corner; the shelves of goods for trade with the men occupied a third. A rude door and a pair of tiny windows communicated with the world outside. Flickers of light from the cracks in the stove played over the massive logs of the little building, over the rough floor and the weapons and snowshoes on the wall. ”

“ Tiny chipmunks no bigger than half-grown rats scampered fearlessly about. What Bob took for larger chipmunks—the Douglas Squirrels—perched on the new fence posts. The world seemed alive—alive through its creatures, through the solemn, uplifting vitality of its forests, through the sprouting, budding spring growths just bursting into green, through the wine-draught of its very air, through the hurrying, busy preoccupied murmur of its streams. Bob breathed his lungs full again and again, and tingled from head to foot.
"How high are we here?" he called to Welton. ”

“ In the meantime the opposing army had gathered about the disputed clump of piles, to the full strength of its three shotguns and the single rifle. Bob paid absolutely no attention to them. When within a short distance he stopped and, quite oblivious to warnings and threats from the army, set himself to watching painstakingly the sputtering progress of the fire up the fuse, exactly as a small boy watches his giant cracker which he hopes to explode in mid-air. At what he considered the proper moment he straightened his powerful young body, and cast the sapling from him, javelin-wise. ”

“ The noises of industry were in his ears; the blur of industry before his eyes; the clean, sweet smell of pine in his nostrils. He saw clearly the row of ships and the many-jointed serpent of boards making its way to the hold, the sailors swinging aloft; the miles of ruminating brown logs, and the alert little man zigzagging across them; the shadow of the mill darkening the water, and the brown leviathan timbers rising dripping in regular succession from them; the whirr of the deadly circular saws, and the calm, erect men dominating the cars that darted back and forth ”

“ Through the half-open door Bob could see Mr. Fox, his leg swung over the arm of his revolving chair, chatting in a leisurely fashion with some visitor.
No one had heard him enter. He stood for a moment staring at the three bent backs before him. He remembered the infinite details of the work he had left, the purchasings of innumerable little things, the regulation of outlays, the balancings of expenditures, the constantly shifting property values, the cost of tools, food, implements, wages, machinery, transportation, operation. ”

“ The man nodded to the bookkeeper with whom he had been talking, and turned to go out. As he passed Bob, that young man was conscious of a keen, gimlet scrutiny from the blue eyes, a scrutiny instantaneous, but which seemed to penetrate his very flesh to the soul of him. He experienced a distinct physical shock as at the encountering of an elemental force.
He came to himself to hear Fox saying:
"That's Johnny Mason, our mill foreman. He has charge of all the sawing, and is a mighty good man. You'll see more of him." ”

“ An American must not idle; he must direct his energies toward success; success means making one's way in life; nine times out of ten, for ninety-nine men out of a hundred, that means the business world. To seize the business opportunity; to develop that opportunity through the business virtues of attention to detail, industry, economy, persistence, and enthusiasm—these represented the plain and manifest duty of every citizen who intended to "be somebody."
Now Bob realized perfectly well that here he was more fortunate than most. ”

“ He can occupy beautiful valleys miles long, guarded by cliffs rising thousands of feet, threaded by fish-haunted streams, spangled with fair, flower-grown lawns, cool with groves of trees, neck high in rich feed. Unless by sheer chance, no one will disturb his solitude. Of course he must work for his kingdom. He must press on past the easy travel, past the wide cattle country of the middle elevations, into the splintered, frowning granite and snow, over the shoulders of the mighty peaks of the High Sierras. ”

“ Wherever the timbers caught or hesitated for a moment in their slow crushing forward, there a dozen men leaped savagely, to jerk, heave and pry with their heavy peavies. Continually under them the footing shifted; sullen logs menaced them with crushing or complete engulfment in their grinding mill. Seemingly they paid no attention to this, but gave all their energies to the work. In reality, whether from calculation or merely from the instinct that grows out of long experience, they must have pre-estimated every chance.
"What bully team work!" cried Bob, stirred to enthusiasm. ”

“ The trail led him first across a stretch of stump-dotted wet land with pools and rounded rises, green new grass, and trickling streamlets of recently melted snow. Then came a fringe of scrub growth woven into an almost impenetrable tangle—oaks, poplars, willows, cedar, tamarack—and through it all an abattis of old slashing—with its rotting, fallen stumps, its network of tops, its soggy root-holes, its fallen, uprooted trees. Along one of these strutted a partridge. It clucked at Bob, but refused to move faster, lifting its feet deliberately and spreading its fanlike tail. ”

“ He conceived it the only life for which he was particularly fitted by temperament and inclination. To give it up would be to cut himself off from all that he cared for most in active life; and would be to cast him into the drudgery of new and uncongenial lines. That sacrifice must be made. It's contemplation and complete realization could wait. But a deeper necessity held Bob, the necessity of resolving the question of equities which the accident of his personal knowledge of Welton and Baker had evoked. ”

“ You must devote yourself to one idea—make money, make it pay!"
"This from you," said Bob sadly.
"Oh, I am so glad!" cried Amy. "Your father is a dear! it's the one fear that has haunted me—lest some visionary incompetent should attempt it, and should fail dismally, and all the great world of business should visit our methods with the scorn due only his incompetence. It was our great danger! And now it is no longer a danger! You can do it, Bob; you have the knowledge and the ability and the energy—and you must have the enthusiasm. ”

“ Two weeks later a light buckboard bearing Welton and Bob dashed in the early morning across the plains, wormed its way ingeniously through gaps in the foothills, and slowed to a walk as it felt the grades of the first long low slopes. The air was warm with the sun imprisoned in the pockets of the hills. High chaparral, scrub oaks, and scattered, unkempt digger pines threw their thicket up to the very right of way. ”

“ Almost below him, so precipitous is the easterly slope of Baldy, lay cañons, pine forests, lesser ridges, streams, the green of meadows. Patiently, piece by piece, he must go over all this, watching for that faint blue haze, that deepening of the atmosphere, that almost imagined pearliness against the distant hills which meant new fire.
"Don't look for smoke," California John had told him. "When a fire gets big enough for smoke, you can't help but see it. It's the new fire you want to spot before it gets started. Then it's easy handled. And new fire's almighty easy to overlook. ”

“ Pretty soon Jack Pollock halted for a moment to call back:
"Here's their fire line!"
Bob spurred forward. Just beyond Jack's horse the country lay blackened. The pine needles had burned down to the soil; the seedlings and younger trees had been withered away; the larger trees scorched; the fuel with which every forest is littered consumed in the fierceness of the conflagration. Here and there some stub or trunk still blazed and crackled, outposts of the army whose camp-fires seemed to dot the hills. ”

“ Bob ducked his head to enter a long, low room. Its walls were of the rough logs; its floor of hewn timbers; its ceiling of round beams on which had been thrown untrimmed slabs as a floor to the loft above. A board table stood in the centre of this, flanked by homemade chairs and stools of all varieties of construction. A huge iron cooking stove occupied all of one end—an extraordinary piece of ordnance. The light from a single glass lamp cast its feeble illumination over coarse dishes steaming with food. ”