The Rules of the Game Read online

  "Had some 'fallers' in here last year," explained Welton briefly. "Thought we'd have some logs on hand when it came time to start up."

  "Wait a minute," requested Bob. He sprang lightly from the vehicle, and scrambled over to stand alongside the nearest of the fallen monsters. He could just see over it comfortably. "My good heavens!" said he soberly, resuming his seat. "How in blazes do you handle them?"

  Welton drove on a few paces, then pointed with his whip. A narrow trough made of small peeled logs laid parallel and pegged and mortised together at the ends, ran straight over the next hill.

  "That's a chute," he explained briefly. "We hitch a wire cable to the log and just naturally yank it over to the chute."

  "How yank it?" demanded Bob.

  "By a good, husky donkey engine. Then the chute poles are slushed, we hitch cables on four or five logs, and just tow them over the hill to the mill."

  Bob's enthusiasm, as always, was growing with the presentation of this new and mighty problem of engineering so succinctly presented. It sounded simple; but from his two years' experience he knew better. He was becoming accustomed to filling in the outlines of pure theory. At a glance he realized the importance of such things as adequate anchors for the donkey engines; of figuring on straight pulls, horse power and the breaking strain of steel cables; of arranging curves in such manner as to obviate ditching the logs, of selecting grades and routes in such wise as to avoid the lift of the stretched cable; and more dimly he guessed at other accidents, problems and necessities which only the emergency could fully disclose. All he said was:

  "So that's why you bark them all—so they'll slide. I wondered."

  But now the ponies, who had often made this same trip, pricked up their ears and accelerated their pace. In a moment they had rounded a hill and brought their masters into full view of the mill itself.

  The site was in a wide, natural clearing occupied originally by a green meadow perhaps a dozen acres in extent. From the borders of this park the forest had drawn back to a dark fringe. Now among the trees at the upper end gleamed the yellow of new, unpainted shanties. Square against the prospect was the mill, a huge structure, built of axe-hewn timbers, rough boards, and the hand-rived shingles known as shakes. Piece by piece the machinery had been hauled up the mountain road until enough had been assembled on the space provided for it by the axe men to begin sawing. Then, like some strange monster, it had eaten out for itself at once a space in the forest and the materials for its shell and for the construction of its lesser dependents, the shanties, the cook-houses, the offices and the shops. Welton pointed out with pride the various arrangements; here the flats and the trestles for the yards where the new-sawn lumber was to be stacked; there the dump for the sawdust and slabs; yonder the banking ground constructed of great logs laid close together, wherein the timber-logs would be deposited to await the saw.

  From the lower end of the yard a trestle supporting a V-shaped trough disappeared over the edge of a hill. Near its head a clear stream cascaded down the slope.

  "That's the flume," explained the lumberman. "Brought the stream around from the head of the meadow in a ditch. We'll flume the sawn lumber down the mountain. For the present we'll have to team it out to the railroad. Your friend Baker's figuring on an electric road to meet us, though, and I guess we'll fix it up with him inside a few years, anyway."

  "Where's Stone Creek from here?" asked Bob.

  "Over the farther ridge. The mountain drops off again there to Stone Creek three or four thousand feet."

  "We ought to hear from the fire, soon."

  "If we don't, we'll ride over that way and take a look down," replied Welton.

  They drove down the empty yards to a stable where already was established their old barn-boss of the Michigan woods. Four or five big freight wagons stood outside, and a score of powerful mules rolled and sunned themselves in the largest corral. Welton nodded toward several horses in another enclosure.

  "Pick your saddle horse, Bob," said he. "Straw boss has to ride in this country."

  "Make it the oldest, then," said Bob.

  At the cookhouse they were just in time for the noon meal. The long, narrow room, fresh with new wood, new tables and new benches in preparation for the crew to come, looked bare and empty with its handful of guests huddled at one end. These were the teamsters, the stablemen, the caretakers and a few early arrivals. The remainder of the crew was expected two days later.

  After lunch Bob wandered out into the dazzling sunlight. The sky was wonderfully blue, the trees softly green, the new boards and the tiny pile of sawdust vividly yellow. These primary colours made all the world. The air breathed crisp and bracing, with just a dash of cold in the nostrils that contrasted paradoxically with the warm balminess of the sunlight. It was as though these two opposed qualities, warmth and cold, were here held suspended in the same medium and at the same time. Birds flashed like spangles against the blue. Others sang and darted and scratched and chirped everywhere. 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.

  "About six thousand. Why? Getting short-winded?"

  "I could run ten miles," replied Bob. "Come on. I'm going to look at the stream."

  "Not at a run," protested Welton. "No, sir! At a nice, middle-aged, dignified, fat walk!"

  They sauntered down the length of the trestle, with its miniature steel tracks, to where the flume began. It proved to be a very solidly built V-trough, alongside which ran a footboard. Welton pointed to the telephone wire that paralleled it.

  "When we get going," said he, "we just turn the stream in here, clamp our sawn lumber into bundles of the right size, and 'let her went!' There'll be three stations along the line, connected by 'phone, to see that things go all right. That flume's six mile long."

  Bob strode to the gate, and after some heaving and hauling succeeded in throwing water into the flume.

  "I wanted to see her go," he explained.

  "Now if you want some real fun," said Welton, gazing after the foaming advance wave as it ripped its way down the chute. "You make you a sort of three-cornered boat just to fit the angle of the flume; and then you lie down in it and go to Sycamore Flats, in about six minutes more or less."

  "You mean to say that's done?" cried Bob.

  "Often. It only means knocking together a plank or so."

  "Doesn't the lumber ever jump the flume?"

  "Once in a great while."

  "Suppose the boat should do it?"

  "Then," said Welton drily, "it's probable you'd have to begin learning to tune a harp."

  "Not for mine," said Bob with fervour. "Any time I yearn for Sycamore Flats real hard, I'll go by hand."

  He shut off the water, and the two walked a little farther to a bold point that pressed itself beyond the trees.

  Below them the cliff dropped away so steeply that they looked out above the treetops as from the summit of a true precipice. Almost directly below them lay the wooded valley of Sycamore Flats, maplike, tiny. It was just possible to make out the roofs of houses, like gray dots. Roads showed as white filaments threading the irregular patches of green and brown. From beneath flowed the wide oak and brush-clad foothills, rising always with the apparent cup of the earth until almost at the height of the eye the shimmering, dim plains substituted their brown for the dark green of the hills. The country that yesterday had seemed mountainous, full of cañons, ridges and ranges, now showed gently undulating, flattened, like a carpet spread before the feet of the Sierras. To the north were tumbled
, blue, pine-clad mountains as far as the eye could see, receding into the dimness of great distance. At one point, but so far away as to be distinguishable only by a slight effort of the imagination, hovered like soap-bubbles against an ethereal sky the forms of snow mountains. Welton pointed out the approximate position of Yosemite.

  They returned to camp where Welton showed the clean and painted little house built for Bob and himself. It was quite simply a row of rooms with a verandah in front of them all. But the interiors were furnished with matting for the floors, curtains to the windows, white iron bedsteads, running water and open fireplaces.

  "I'm sick of camping," said Welton. "This is our summer quarters for some time. I'm going to be comfortable."

  Bob sighed.

  "This is the bulliest place I ever saw!" he cried boyishly.

  "Well, you're going to have time enough to get used to it," said Welton drily.

  * * *

  IV

  The Stone Creek fire indeed proved not to amount to much, whereby sheer chance upheld Henry Plant. The following morning the fire fighters returned; leaving, however, two of their number to "guard the line" until the danger should be over. Welton explained to Bob that only the fact that Stone Creek bottom was at a low elevation, filled with brush and tarweed, and grown thick with young trees rendered the forest even inflammable at this time of year.

  "Anywhere else in this country at this time of year it wouldn't do any harm," he told Bob, "and Plant knew it couldn't get out of the basin. He didn't give a cuss how much it did there. But we've got some young stuff that would easy carry a top fire. Later in the season you may see some tall rustling on the fire lines."

  But before noon of that day a new complication arose. Up the road came a short, hairy man on a mule. His beard grew to his high cheek bones, his eyebrows bristled and jutted out over his black eyes, and a thick shock of hair pushed beneath the rim of his hat to meet the eyebrows. The hat was an old black slouch, misshapen, stained and dusty. His faded shirt opened to display a hairy throat and chest. As for the rest he was short-limbed, thick and powerful.

  This nondescript individual rode up to the verandah on which sat Welton and Bob, awaiting the lunch bell. He bowed gravely, and dismounted.

  "Dis ees Meestair Welton?" he inquired with a courtesy at strange variance with his uncouth appearance.

  Welton nodded.

  "I am Peter Lejeune," said the newcomer, announcing one of those hybrid names so common among the transplanted French and Basques of California. "I have de ship."

  "Oh, yes," said Welton rising and going forward to offer his hand. "Come up and sit down, Mr. Leejune."

  The hairy man "tied his mule to the ground" by dropping the end of the reins, and mounted the two steps to the verandah.

  "This is my assistant, Mr. Orde," said Welton. "How are the sheep coming on? Mr. Leejune," he told Bob, "rents the grazing in our timber."

  "Et is not coming," stated Lejeune with a studied calm. "Plant he riffuse permit to cross."

  "Permit to what?" asked Welton.

  "To cross hees fores', gov'ment fores'. I can' get in here widout cross gov'ment land. I got to get permit from Plant. Plant he riffuse."

  Welton rose, staring at his visitor.

  "Do you mean to tell me," he cried at last, "that a man hasn't got a right to get into his own land? That they can keep a man out of his own land?"

  "Da's right," nodded the Frenchman.

  "But you've been in here for ten years or so to my knowledge."

  Abruptly the sheepman's calm fell from him. He became wildly excited. His black eyes snapped, his hair bristled, he arose from his chair and gesticulated.

  "Every year I geev heem three ship! Three ship!" he repeated, thrusting three stubby fingers at Welton's face. "Three little ship! I stay all summer! He never say permit. Thees year he kip me out."

  "Give any reason?" asked Welton.

  "He say my ship feed over the line in gov'ment land."

  "Did they?"

  "Mebbe so, little bit. Mebbe not. Nobody show me line. Nobody pay no 'tention. I feed thees range ten year."

  "Did you give him three sheep this year?"

  "Sure."

  Welton sighed.

  "I can't go down and tend to this," said he. "My foremen are here to be consulted, and the crews will begin to come in to-morrow. You'll have to go and see what's eating this tender Plant, Bob. Saddle up and ride down with Mr. Leejune."

  Bob took his first lesson in Western riding behind Lejeune and his stolid mule. He had ridden casually in the East, as had most young men of his way of life, but only enough to make a fair showing on a gentle and easy horse. His present mount was gentle and easy enough, but Bob was called upon to admire feats of which a Harlem goat might have been proud. Lejeune soon turned off the wagon road to make his way directly down the side of the mountain. Bob possessed his full share of personal courage, but in this unaccustomed skirting of precipices, hopping down ledges, and sliding down inclines too steep to afford a foothold he found himself leaning inward, sitting very light in the saddle, or holding his breath until a passage perilous was safely passed. In the next few years he had occasion to drop down the mountainside a great many times. After the first few trips he became so thoroughly accustomed that he often wondered how he had ever thought this scary riding. Now, however, he was so busily occupied that he was caught by surprise when Lejeune's mule turned off through a patch of breast-high manzañita and he found himself traversing the gentler slope at the foot of the mountain. Ten minutes later they entered Sycamore Flats.

  Then Bob had leisure to notice an astonishing change of temperature. At the mill the air had been almost cold—entirely so out of the direct rays of the sun. Here it was as hot as though from a furnace. Passing the store, Bob saw that the tall thermometer there stood at 96 degrees. The day was unseasonable, but later, in the August heats, Bob had often, to his sorrow, to test the difference between six thousand and two thousand feet of elevation. From a clear, crisp late-spring climate he would descend in two hours to a temperature of 105 degrees.

  Henry Plant was discovered sprawled out in an armchair beneath a spreading tree in the front yard. His coat was off and his vest unbuttoned to display a vast and billowing expanse of soiled white shirt. In his hand was a palm-leaf fan, at his elbow swung an olla, newspapers littered the ground or lay across his fat knees. When Bob and Lejeune entered, he merely nodded surlily, and went on with his reading.

  "Can I speak to you a moment on business?" asked Bob.

  By way of answer the fat man dropped his paper, and mopped his brow.

  "We've rented our sheep grazing to Mr. Lejeune, here, as I understand we've been doing for some years. He tells me you have refused him permission to cross the Forest Reserve with his flocks."

  "That's right," grunted Plant.

  "What for?"

  "I believe, young man, granting permits is discretionary with the Supervisor," stated that individual.

  "I suppose so," agreed Bob. "But Mr. Lejeune has always had permission before. What reason do you assign for refusing it?"

  "Wilful trespass," wheezed Plant. "That's what, young man. His sheep grazed over our line. He's lucky that I don't have him up before the United States courts for damages as well."

  Lejeune started to speak, but Bob motioned him to silence.

  "I'm sure we could arrange for past damages, and guarantee against any future trespass," said he.

  "Well, I'm sure you can't," stated Plant positively. "Good day."

  But Bob was not willing to give up thus easily. He gave his best efforts either to arguing Plant into a better frame of mind, or to discovering some tangible reason for his sudden change of front in regard to the sheep.

  "It's no use," he told Lejeune, later, as they walked down the street together. "He's undoubtedly the right to refuse permits for cause; and technically he has cause if your sheep got over the line."

  "But what shall I do!" cried Lejeune. "My ship mus'
have feed!"

  "You pasture them or feed them somewhere for a week or so, and I'll let you know," said Bob. "We'll get you on the land or see you through somewhere else."

  He mounted his horse stiffly and rode back up the street. Plant still sat in his armchair like a bloated spider. On catching sight of Bob, however, he heaved himself to his feet and waddled to the gate.

  "Here!" he called. Bob drew rein. "It has been reported to me that your firm has constructed a flume across 36, and a wagon road across 14, 22, 28, and 32. Those are government sections. I suppose, of course, your firm has permits from Washington to build said improvements?"

  "Naturally," said Bob, who, however, knew nothing whatever of those details.

  "Well, I'll send a man up to examine them to-morrow," said Plant, and turned his back.

  * * *

  V

  Bob took supper at Auntie Belle's, and rode up the mountain after dark. He did not attempt short cuts, but allowed his horse to follow the plain grade of the road. After a time the moon crept over the zenith, and at once the forest took on a fairylike strangeness, as though at the touch of night new worlds had taken the place of the vanished old. Somewhere near midnight, his body shivering with the mountain cold, his legs stiff and chafed from the long, unaccustomed riding, but his mind filled with the wonder and beauty of the mountain night, Bob drew rein beside the corrals. After turning in his horse, he walked through the bright moonlight to Welton's door, on which he hammered.

  "Hey!" called the lumberman from within.

  "It's I, Bob."

  Welton scratched a match.

  "Why in blazes didn't you come up in the morning?" he inquired.