The Rules of the Game Part 57

"I suppose so," snapped California John. "To h.e.l.l with such a game. I think I'll go over Goldfield way."

"No, you won't," said Thorne gently. "You'll stay here, in the Service."

"What!" cried the old man rising to his feet; "stay here in the Service!

And every mountain man to point me out as that old fool Davidson who got fired after workin' nine years like a d.a.m.n ijit. You talk foolish!"

Thorne arose too, and put one hand on the old man's shoulder.

"And what about those nine years?" he asked gently. "Things looked pretty dark, didn't they? You didn't have enough to live on; and you got your salary docked without any reason or justice; and you had to stand one side while the other fellows did things dishonest and wrong; and it didn't look as though it was ever going to get better. Nine years is a long time. Why did you do it?"

"I don't know," muttered California John.

"It was just waiting for this time that is coming. In five years we'll have the people with us; we'll have Congress, and the money to do things; we'll have sawmills and water-power, and regulated grazing, and telephone lines, and comfortable quarters. We'll have a Service safeguarded by Civil Service, and a body of disciplined men, and officers as the Army and Navy have. It's coming; and it's coming soon.

You've been nine years at the other thing--"

"It's humiliating," insisted California John, "to do a job well and get fired."

"You'll still have just the job you have now--only you'll be called a head-ranger."

"My people won't see it that way."

Ashley Thorne hesitated.

"No, they won't," said he frankly at last. "I could argue on the other side; but they won't. They'll think you've dropped back a peg; and they'll say to each other--at least some of them will: 'Old Davidson bit off more than he could chew; and it serves him right for being a d.a.m.n fool, anyway.' You've been content to play along misunderstood for nine years because you had faith. Has that faith deserted you?"

California John looked down, and his erect shoulders shrunk forward a little.

"Old friend," said Thorne, "it's a sacrifice. Are you going to stay and help me?"

California John for a long time studied a crack in the floor. When he looked up his face was illuminated with his customary quizzical grin.

"I've sure got it on Ross Fletcher," he drawled. "I done _told_ him I wasn't no supervisor, and he swore I was."

PART FOUR

I

When next Bob was able to visit the Upper Camp, he found Thorne fully established. He rode in from the direction of Rock Creek, and so through the pasture and by the back way. In the tiny potato and garden patch behind the house he came upon a woman wielding a hoe.

Her back was toward him, and a pink sunbonnet, freshly starched, concealed all her face. The long, straight lines of her gown fell about a vigorous and supple figure that swayed with every stroke of the hoe.

Bob stopped and watched her. There was something refreshing in the eagerness with which she attacked the weeds, as though it were less a drudgery than a live interest which it was well to meet joyously. After a moment she walked a few steps to another row of tiny beans. Her movements had the perfect grace of muscular control; one melted, flowed, into the other. Bob's eye of the athlete noted and appreciated this fact. He wondered to which of the mountain clans this girl belonged.

Vigorous and breezy as were the maidens of the hills, able to care for themselves, like the paladins of old, afoot or ahorse, they lacked this grace of movement. He stepped forward.

"I beg pardon," said he.

The girl turned, resting the heel of her hoe on the earth, and both hands on the end of its handle. Bob saw a dark, oval countenance, with very red cheeks, very black eyes and hair, and an engaging flash of teeth. The eyes looked at him as frankly as a boy's, and the flash of teeth made him unaffectedly welcome.

"Is Mr. Thorne here?" asked Bob.

"Why, no," replied the girl; "but I'm Mr. Thorne's sister. Won't I do?"

She was leisurely laying aside her hoe, and drawing the fringed buckskin gauntlets from her hands. Bob stepped gallantly forward to relieve her of the implement.

"Do?" he echoed. "Why, of course you'll do!"

She stopped and looked him full in the face, with an air of great amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Did you come to see Mr. Thorne on business?" she asked.

"No," replied Bob; "just ran over to see him."

She laughed quietly.

"Then I'm afraid I won't do," she said, "for I must cook dinner. You see," she explained, "I'm Mr. Thorne's clerk, and if it were business, I might attend to it."

Bob flushed to the ears. He was ordinarily a young man of sufficient self-possession, but this young woman's directness was disconcerting.

She surveyed his embarra.s.sment with approving eyes.

"You might finish those beans," said she, offering the hoe. "Of course, you must stay to dinner, and I must go light the fire."

Bob finished the beans, leaned the hoe up against the house, and went around to the front. There he stopped in astonishment.

"Well, you have changed things!" he cried.

The stuffy little shed kitchen was no longer occupied. A floor had been laid between the bases of four huge trees, and walls enclosing three sides to the height of about eight feet had been erected. The affair had no roof. Inside these three walls were the stove, the kitchen table, the shelves and utensils of cooking. Miss Thorne, her sunbonnet laid aside from her glossy black braids, moved swiftly and easily here and there in this charming stage-set of a kitchen. About ten feet in front of it, on the pine needles, stood the dining table, set with white.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I beg pardon," said he. The girl turned]

The girl nodded brightly to Bob.

"Finished?" she inquired. She pointed to the water pail: "There's a useful task for willing hands."

Bob filled the pail, and set it br.i.m.m.i.n.g on the section of cedar log which seemed to be its appointed resting place.

"Thank you," said the girl. Bob leaned against the tree and watched her as she moved here and there about the varied business of cooking. Every few minutes she would stop and look upward through the cool shadows of the trees, like a bird drinking. At times she burst into s.n.a.t.c.hes of song, so brief as to be unrecognizable.

"Do you like sticks in your food?" she asked Bob, as though suddenly remembering his presence, "and pine needles, and the husks of pine nuts, and other debris? because that's what the breezes and trees and naughty little squirrels are always raining down on me."

"Why don't you have the men stretch you a canvas?" asked Bob.

"Well," said the girl, stopping short, "I have considered it. I no more than you like unexpected twigs in my dough. But you see I do like shadows and sunlight and upper air and breezes in my food. And you can't have one without the other. Did you get all the weeds out?"