The Rules of the Game Part 39

Baker must have won his bet, for Welton never again saw his check for one thousand dollars, until it was returned to him cancelled. Nor did Baker himself return. He sent instead a note advising some one to go over to Plant's headquarters. Accordingly Bob saddled his horse, and followed the messenger back to the Supervisor's summer quarters.

After an hour and a half of pleasant riding through the great forest, the trail dropped into a wagon road which soon led them to a fine, open meadow.

"Where does the road go to in the other direction?" Bob asked his guide.

"She 'jines onto your road up the mountain just by the top of the rise,"

replied the ranger.

"How did you get up here before we built that road?" inquired Bob.

"Rode," answered the man briefly.

"Pretty tough on Mr. Plant," Bob ventured.

The man made no reply, but spat carefully into the tarweed. Bob chuckled to himself as the obvious humour of the situation came to him.

Plant was evidently finding the disputed right of way a great convenience.

The meadow stretched broad and fair to a distant fringe of aspens. On either side lay the open forest of spruce and pines, s.p.a.cious, without undergrowth. Among the trees gleamed several new buildings and one or two old and weather-beaten structures. The sounds of busy saws and hammers rang down the forest aisles.

Bob found the Supervisor sprawled comfortably in a rude, homemade chair watching the activities about him. To his surprise, he found there also Oldham, the real-estate promoter from Los Angeles. Two men were nailing shakes on a new shed. Two more were busily engaged in hewing and sawing, from a cross-section of a huge sugar pine, a set of three steps. Plant seemed to be greatly interested in this, as were still two other men squatting on their heels close by. All wore the badges of the Forest Reserves. Near at hand stood two more men holding their horses by the bridle. As Bob ceased his interchange with Oldham, he overhead one of these inquire:

"All right. Now what do you want us to do?"

"Get your names on the pay-roll and don't bother me," replied Plant.

Plant caught sight of Bob, and, to that young man's surprise, waved him a jovial hand.

"'Bout time you called on the old man!" he roared. "Tie your horse to the ground and come look at these steps. I bet there ain't another pair like 'em in the mountains!"

Somewhat amused at this cordiality, Bob dismounted.

Plant mentioned names by way of introduction.

"Baker told me that you were with him, but not that you were on the mountain," said Bob. "Better come over and see us."

"I'll try, but I'm rushed to get back," replied Oldham formally.

"How's the work coming on?" asked Plant. "When you going to start fluming 'em down?"

"As soon as we can get our permit," replied Bob.

Plant chuckled.

"Well, you did get in a hole there, didn't you? I guess you better go ahead. It'll take all summer to get the permit, and you don't want to lose a season, do you?"

Astonished at the effrontery of the man, Bob could with difficulty control his expression.

"We expect to start to-morrow or next day," he replied. "Just as soon as we can get our teams organized. Just scribble me a temporary permit, will you?" He offered a fountain pen and a blank leaf of his notebook.

Plant hesitated, but finally wrote a few words.

"You won't need it," he a.s.sured Bob. "I'll pa.s.s the word. But there you are."

"Thanks," said Bob, folding away the paper. "You seem to be comfortably fixed here."

Plant heaved his mighty body to its legs. His fat face beamed with pride.

"My boy," he confided to Bob, laying a pudgy hand on the young man's shoulder, "this is the best camp in the mountains--without any exception."

He insisted on showing Bob around. Of course, the young fellow, unaccustomed as yet to the difficulties of mountain transportation, could not quite appreciate to the full extent the value in forethought and labour of such things as gla.s.s windows, hanging lamps, enamelled table service, open fireplaces, and all the thousand and one conveniences--either improvised or transported mule-back--that Plant displayed. Nevertheless he found the place most comfortable and attractive.

They caught a glimpse of skirts disappearing, but in spite of Plant's roar of "Minnie!" the woman failed to appear.

"My niece," he explained.

In spite of himself, Bob found that he was beginning to like the fat man. There could be no doubt that the Supervisor was a great rascal; neither could there be any doubt but that his personality was most attractive. He had a bull-like way of roaring out his jokes, his orders, or his expostulations; a smas.h.i.+ng, dry humour; and, above all, an invariably confident and optimistic belief that everything was going well and according to everyone's desires. His manner, too, was hearty, his handclasp warm. He fairly radiated good-fellows.h.i.+p and good humour as he rolled about. Bob's animosity thawed in spite of his half-amused realization of what he ought to feel.

When the tour of inspection had brought them again to the grove where the men were at work, they found two new arrivals.

These were evidently brothers, as their square-cut features proclaimed.

They squatted side by side on their heels. Two good horses with the heavy saddles and coiled ropes of the stockmen looked patiently over their shoulders. A mule, carrying a light pack, wandered at will in the background. The men wore straight-brimmed, wide felt hats, short jumpers, and overalls of blue denim, and cowboy boots armed with the long, blunt spurs of the craft. Their faces were stubby with a week's growth, but their blue eyes were wide apart and clear.

"Hullo, Pollock," greeted Plant, as he dropped, blowing, into his chair.

The men nodded briefly, never taking their steady gaze from Plant's face. After a due and deliberate pause, the elder spoke.

"They's a thousand head of Wright's cattle been drove in on our ranges this year," said he.

"I issued Wright permits for that number, Jim," replied Plant blandly.

"But that's plumb crowdin' of our cattle off'n the range," protested the mountaineer.

"No, it ain't," denied Plant. "That range will keep a thousand cattle more. I've had complete reports on it. I know what I'm doing."

"It'll _keep_ them, all right," spoke up the younger, "which is saying they won't die. But they'll come out in the fall awful pore."

"I'm using my judgment as to that," said Plant.

"Yore judgment is pore," said the younger Pollock, bluntly. "You got to be a cattleman to know about them things."

"Well, I know Simeon Wright don't put in cattle where he's going to lose on them," replied Plant. "If he's willing to risk it, I'll back his judgment."

"Wright's a crowder," the older Pollock took up the argument quietly.

"He owns fifty thousand head. Me and George, here, we have five hunderd.

He just aims to summer his cattle, anyhow. When they come out in the fall, he will fat them up on alfalfa hay. Where is George and me and the Mortons and the Carrolls, and all the rest of the mountain folks going to get alfalfa hay? If our cattle come out pore in the fall, they ain't no good to us. The range is overstocked with a thousand more cattle on it. We're pore men, and Wright he owns half of Californy. He's got a million acres of his own without crowdin' in on us."

"This is the public domain, for all the public----" began Plant, pompously, but George Pollock, the younger, cut in.