The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 36

"Pooh, no! Matthews told me to come on here and find you! He's just back there a little way."

"Did he plan this?"

"Course! How do you suppose I knew where to find you? You see now why I must not see you, if we are to keep our resolutions?"

"Yes, I see! Let us go back."

It was on the lake side of the logs that Wayland paused.

"I don't _think_ they could see through those logs?" he said.

Eleanor burst into a peal of laughter and ascended the fallen trunks as if they had been stairs.

They came on the other two sitting squat in the middle of the trail; and if the windfall had been opaque, one of the two wore an expression on his face as if he had guessed. He was tossing a handful of little pebbles up from his palm and catching them on the backs of his knuckles.

"We didn't make much o' the woods an' birds," he remarked with a twisted smile, "but man alive, we can play jacks!"

Don't smile, self superior reader! It takes some little time to manufacture a snow slide out of snow flakes; and it may be the law that it also takes some little time to manufacture a soul out of slime.

Pa.s.sing the Cabin, they again encountered a downy-lipped youth in gray flannels accompanied by a fat gentleman with tortoise-sh.e.l.l eyes and a tallow smile; but the jaunty dimples of the fat man, the supercilious lift of the gray flannel's eyebrow--froze mid-way at sight of Meestress Leezie O'Finnigan, who bowed to Bat with the gravity of a mother superior.

"It ain't the truth I'm tellin' y'": Lizzie was loquaciously going over the story for the twentieth time, "It ain't the truth I'm tellin' y', y' onderstand; it's ownly what I've heerd."

The Ranger dropped out of the group at the Cabin.

Bat stood bellicosely scowling at the three figures receding down the Ridge Trail.

"What in h.e.l.l is that old parson doing with that Shanty Town kid? He'd better keep his oar out of this."

"It's a free country," said Wayland dryly. "Can I do anything for you?"

"We came up to notify you that the mine will be examined to-morrow,"

announced the downy lips.

CHAPTER XXIV

I AM UNCLE SAM

"So they would examine the mine to-morrow? So they had sprung the examination of the coal veins before he could obtain a Government Geologist, and the coal would be p.r.o.nounced worthless, as the coal involved in the Alaska cases was p.r.o.nounced worthless by another kindergartner when that contest was impending. Then, they would argue and consider and send up briefs and send down decisions on the value of the coal till the statutory time had expired and the law of limitations would bar suit for rest.i.tution. Meanwhile, Smelter City c.o.king Company were using half-a-million tons a year, and sending away as much again; but on the word of an ignorant bureaucratic cub, the coal was to be worthless and the brazen steal of public property to be sanctioned by law. How much mineral land had been stolen in the very same way in the last ten years, first homesteaded by 'the dummy' foreigner, then for five, ten, one-hundred, two-hundred at most three-hundred dollars a quarter section on false affidavit as to entry, length of residence, age of homesteader, turned over to the Ring, whose sworn valuation of the coal ran from $20,000 to $40,000 an acre?" Personally, Wayland, as he thought it over, knew of fifty-thousand acres of coal so stolen in Colorado and as much again in Wyoming; not to mention three-hundred-thousand acres of gold and silver lands looted in the South-West.

_And the looters were the party shouting at the top of their voices about "vested rights" and "attacks on property" and "demagoguery producing national hysteria." Where was the respect due "the vested rights" belonging to Uncle Sam? What about the piracy and plunder of the property belonging to Uncle Sam? Why was it valor to throw a burglar looting your house out by the neck, and "hysteria" to go after a burglar looting Uncle Sam?_

Wayland had once asked Bat Brydges these questions. Bat had looked pained at the Ranger's obtuseness.

"Wayland," he had exclaimed, "who is Uncle Sam? I am Uncle Sam! You are Uncle Sam! We are all Uncle Sam! That's the beauty of democracy!

This property you are howling about is yours and mine; and when we go in and develop it, we are only taking what is our own."

"What about the fellow who isn't in on a share?"

"Share? Quit talking Socialism," Bat had commanded with a grand gesture, leaving Wayland wondering _who_ were the real Socialists in the Nation.

It came to him as he watched the panama hat and the white sailor going down the Ridge Trail that you can't argufy national problems; nor compromise on them; nor enter on any treaty of peace but the peace that is a victory. Brydges was Uncle Sam; and he thought one way. The Ranger was Uncle Sam; and he thought another way. One was fighting for the vested rights of the few. The other was fighting for the vested rights of the many. It would have to be fought out, the fight would have to come; and this coal case, like the Range War, was one of the preliminary skirmishes to the Great National Contest. Would the people, who were paying fifty cents, a dollar, a dollar-and-a-half extra for every ton of coal bought, because the coal areas were being brought under the domination of one Ring, understand and waken up and rally to the fight? Or was it as Moyese had declared with the most open and genial cynicism that "the public did not give one d.a.m.n"?

The Ranger crossed over to the telephone and called up the MacDonald Ranch.

"That you, Mr. MacDonald? Matthews back yet? Oh, gone across to the Mission School? No, nothing wrong: better not pay any attention to the little Irish kid's babble of trouble at the mine! They'd hardly dare that! Yes, I know they did on the Rim Rocks; but that was daring only you and Williams: this would be daring the great Government of the greatest Nation in the world! Oh, that doesn't bother me! The point is--they haven't given me time to get a Government expert up here; and this fellow is evidently a toady for Moyese. I want an extra witness on the quality of that coal: want a witness to prove it's being used and s.h.i.+pped and sold. Oh, no, not both of you, one will do, either you or Matthews! All right; will you go down by the early stage? Better not go down with me! I'm going to set out now; ride down the Forest Service trail, camp in the woods and expect to reach Smelter City about ten in the morning. If you leave by the six o'clock morning stage, that will be plenty of time. All right, either one of you! Much obliged! Good-by!"

An hour from the time Eleanor had left him, the Ranger was on his horse. He did not go down the Ridge Trail. He followed the National Forest Trail along the edge of the Ridge away from the Holy Cross Peak, down the forested back of a long foot-hill sloping and flanking the Valley almost to Smelter City. Locally, the sloping hill was known as "a hog's back"; and it was where the hog's back poked its nose into the Valley far below, that the tangle had occurred between the Forest Service and the Smelter Ring. Mining was permitted in the National Forests, of course; but the mining areas must be obtained according to law, and paid for, and operated individually, not homesteaded by the "dummies," then turned into a consolidated ring of coal owners. What made this violation of law more flagrant than usual was the fact that these homesteaded coal lands lay at an angle of almost ninety degrees in a sheer wall; and it was an impossibility for any homesteader ever to have put in residence on them. Homestead entry, term of residence, proof and t.i.tle, all exhibited fraud on the face of the records; and there wasn't a man in the Government Service who did not know that.

What unseen hand had juggled entries, t.i.tle and proof through? The homesteaders had sold out long ago for a song, some for as little as ten dollars a hundred and sixty acres. The Ring had possession; and as every man in the Land Service knew, the Government had pigeon-holed all recommendations for legal action to compel rest.i.tution. Would the wheels of justice rest inert? Would the presiding deity of justice be so blind, if some poor man, a poor man, who was also Uncle Sam, stole a ton of coal from the Ring operating these mines? Why was it possible to steal ninety-million dollars' worth of coal from the people, and not permissible for one of the people to steal one ton of coal from the Ring? These were the questions Wayland asked himself as he rode down the hog's back for Smelter City.

The trail down the hog's back sloped gradually and cut fifteen miles off the distance to Smelter City by the Valley Road. It was "the show"

trail of all the National Forests. When supervisors came to inspect, or visitors from the East who wanted to give accounts of having roughed it without losing an hour of sleep or carrying any scars of stump beds, or when Congressional committees came from Was.h.i.+ngton for a champagne junket to report on all they hadn't seen--Wayland always conducted them down the hog's back trail that ran along the backbone of the Holy Cross lower slope. He had built the trail, himself; much of it, with his own hands; cut in the side of the forest mould and rock with an outer log as guard rail; wide enough for two horses abreast and zig-zagging enough to break the descent into a gradual drop and afford new vistas at each turn, of the Valley below, of the Mesas above the Rim Rocks across, and of the River looping and sweeping down to Smelter City.

He used to dream, as he rode down the bridle path, of the day coming when all the vast domain of National Forests would be like that trail; not a stick of underbrush or slash as big as your finger; not a stump above eighteen inches high; all the scaled logs piled neat as card board boxes; open park below the resinous cinnamon-smelling lodge-pole line and englemann spruce, hardly a branch lower on the trees than the height of a man; and such a rain of tempered light from the clicking pine needles and whorled spruces as might have come through the rose window of a cathedral. A "show" picture of a properly conducted National Forest has gone through all the magazines and newspapers--It represents the piles of cordwood clean as piles of pencils, the trees standing park-like with vistas and glades and opens beneath the tall pinery. Wayland knew in his own heart that his Forest was better than that "show" picture. No pictures could tell of the pine seedlings stolen from a squirrel _cache_ scattered on the snows; the delicate young pinery coming up among a protecting nursery of birch and poplar and cottonwood. No picture could show "the dead tops" cut out; the "cheesy" rotten heartwood burning on an altar of sacrifice to the deity of the forest; the markings on "the dead tops" and ripe trees and trees with broken top "leaders" for the lumberman to come and harvest. No picture could give the jolly song of the cross-cut saw, the musical ripping of the oiled blade through the huge logs, the odor of the imprisoned sunbeams and flowers from the rain of the yellow saw-dust.

No picture could possibly tell you the life story of yon big tree, the warrior of the woods who had beaten down all compet.i.tors and enemies and wore his purple cones like the ta.s.seled honor badges of a soldier, with pendulous moving, plumy arms: yet to the eye of the Forester, the life history was there, in the fluted grooved columnar bark, in the knot scars where branches had been discarded to send the main trunk towering above its fellows for light and air, in the wood rings, where a branch had broken and fallen away in the struggle. Why, this n.o.ble fellow had been a straggling sapling a thousand years before the birth of Christ! Before Darius led his conquering hosts from realm to realm, or ever Caesar knew life, or Christopher Columbus framed mast and spar to discover America, this sun-crowned monarch had over-topped his fellows, and met the challenge of the blasts of heaven, and drunk of the wines of the dews of an immortal youth, and dieted on the ambrosial ether of G.o.ds, and sent his seedling offspring sailing ten thousand airy seas with the wind for master pilot and never a craft but the gypsy parachute of a seed with wings shaken out from the cones purpling to the autumn heat!

Air s.h.i.+ps? Had the modern world gone mad over air s.h.i.+ps? This fellow had been sending out whole navies of air s.h.i.+ps for thousands of years; seeding the mighty mountains; fighting all rivals; travelling on the wings of the wind, and if consumed by fire, then, like the phoenix springing to new life from the ashes, sending forth fresh armadas from the pendant purplish cinnamon-scented cones split open by the heat and so releasing fresh winged seeds!

Wayland used to dream, as he rode down the hog's back trail, of the day coming when all the National Forests would be a great park, the people's playground, yielding bigger annual harvest in ripe lumber than the wheat fields or the corn; yielding income for the State and health for the Nation. Germany did it. Why couldn't America? Why not, indeed; except that she had not exterminated her pirates of the public weal, her freebooters of the wilderness, her slippery fingered pick-pockets, who shouted "_I am Uncle Sam_," while they picked Uncle Sam's pockets?

Riding down the hog's back, you first left the larches and the junipers below the snow line, the junipers beginning to show their berries, the larches yellowing and shedding their golden shower to the approach of autumn. Then, a turn of the trail; and you were among the hemlocks, funereal and sombre in the distance, wonderfully lightened when you were below them by the sage-green moss and the pale silver blue lining on the under side of the leaves. Another turn or two, there came the feathery sugar pine and the Douglas spruce--the monarchs of the North-Western Forests--plume decked warriors carrying a glint of spears with the scars of a thousand years and a thousand victories in the wrinkled bark, with cones like ta.s.sels, and whorls like banners. You could count these whorls, or the scars of the whorls; and you had their years; and the bluish green shade was restful as the repose of age.

The smell of them, it was like incense; incense to the deity of the woods; and when the wind blew, every old evergreen harped the age-old melodies of Pan. And, oh, yes, there were warriors scarred from the fight, fellows with corky arms and mottled streaks where the lightning had struck and splintered. Only the cheesy-hearted, the warriors with maggots and grubs manufacturing punk out of heart-wood, for all the world like humans infected by evil thoughts, only the hollow hearted came down to earth with a crash in the fray.

Another turn, you were among the lodge-pole pines and englemann spruce--pure park, Wayland always thought, the delight of a Forester's heart; warm human open park places where you kept looking for deer though you knew there weren't any. In riding down the backbone of the Ridge, Wayland always planned to camp under the lodge pole pines; it was so cool, so rain-proof and sun-proof, with an almost certainty of a mountain stream somewhere near, and if you had eyes to see, a game trail down to the stream. To-night, he went on down to the _Brule_, a cross section of the mountain swept by fire years before the Forest Service had taken hold in the days when millmen had been permitted to take out windfall and burn free, and all a millman had to do to become a millionaire in free lumber was set the incendiary fire going to create windfall. In his own district, Wayland knew two men who had become rich in that way; but of course, _that_ was long ago. The Forest men had cleared out the windfall and burn; and now, the deity of the woods, Nature, was at work! By the moonlight, the Ranger could see the pale chalky peach-bloom boles of the ghost birches, and the satiny poplars and cottonwoods, turning gold to the approaching autumn but going down gay, twinkling, laughing fellows to the year's death, actually clapping their hands, shaking with glee, sending leaves down in a rain of gold, which, it is to be hoped, the pixies picked up, the pixies sailing the air in feather parachutes of flower and cone seed!

Wayland could see these airy s.h.i.+ps between him and the silver moonlight, dropping seeds--seeds--seeds; seeds of fire flower and golden rod and h.o.a.ry evergreen; shooting them out in tiny catapults; sending them up in dandelion fluff and sky rockets; catching and skimming the wind in airy canoes; tilting the winged sails to a whiff and sailing, sailing, dropping the seeds of life for a thousand years!

And beneath the birches with the hundred eyes looking out from the chalky faced bark, and the poplars laughing and shaking with glee, and the cottonwoods showering down a rain of gold in their death; stood the little pines seeded by the wind, nursed by the shade of the quick growing trees. Who would be living and loving and fighting and hating and winning and losing when these little fellows rose to toss and flaunt their victory in the face of the sky? Was that the meaning of life after all, the strength and thew, the valor and might of the fight up? Then, it was not such a bad way with the Nation. The Nation would be the better for this fight. Certain, it was, the better side would win. Would it be the few like the sugar pine towering over its fellows; or the many like the lodge pole pine and englemann spruce standing in serried ranks of equal valor and power?

And if you think he could take that ride without wis.h.i.+ng to the "nth"

degree that she could be with him to share the joy, then, I a.s.sure you, you don't know to what music those gay, twinkling, trembling gold leaves above the _Brule_ were beating time all night to the whisper of the wind and rustle of the pixy parachutes sailing mid-air.

CHAPTER XXV

THE QUESTION IS--WHICH UNCLE SAM?

Before, it had been a race-reverie; a waiting, puzzled and uncertain for the ways of life. Now, it was the joy of life, the fulfilment for which life had been created and waited expectant; and whether the ways were any plainer in the new light, there was no room for wonder in the fulness of joy. Eleanor was glad the little bundle of tawdry loquacity toddling between them kept up a constant stream of idle boastings on the road to the Mission House, about being "waal-thy" and "Faather shure bein' a gen'leman when they were waal-thy" and "herself as foine as eny loidy in th' land," and more and more of the same, all the way down the Ridge Trail; which was not so fatuous as it sounded, when it voiced the convictions of a great many more people than the little unwashed garlicky Shanty Town dancer. Eleanor wondered if the same arguments applied to the culture of horses and pigs and potatoes--size instead of sort, fulness of stomach not quality of head, area of possession not area of service.

The garrulous babble continued to the very doors of the Mission School, and through the formalities of an absurdly formal introduction to Mrs.

Williams, and during the suppertime meal with the little Indian children in the big dining room. Eleanor noticed how Lizzie's lips pursed with contempt at the other children and the little stomach poked out with arrogance and fulness as the boasting waxed.

"That kind is the most hopeless of all," remarked Mrs. Williams in a low voice, amused at the amazement on the faces of the Indian children.