The Rules of the Game Part 66

"Say, wasn't it!" cried Porter. "I got that out of a shoutin'

evangelist. The minute I heard it I saw where it was hot stuff for my spiel. I'm that way: I got that kind of good eye. I'll be going along the street and some little thing'll happen that won't amount to nothin'

at all really. Another man wouldn't think twice about it. But like a flash it comes to me how it would fit in to a spiel. It's like an artist that way finding things to put in a picture. You'd never spot a dago apple peddler as good for nothing but to work a little graft on mebbe; but an artist comes along and slaps him in a picture and he's the fanciest-looking dope in the art collection. That's me. I got some of my best spiels from the funniest places! That one this morning is a wonder, because it don't _listen_ like a spiel. I followed that evangelist yap around for a week getting his dope down fine. You got to get the language just right on these things, or they don't carry over."

"Which one is it, Painful?" asked Baker.

"You know; the make-your-work-a-good-to-humanity bluff."

"And all about papa in the 'sixties?"

"That's it."

"'And just don't you _dare_ tell the neighbours?'"

"Correct."

"The whole mountains will know all about it by to-morrow," Baker told Bob, "and they'll flock up here in droves. It's easy money."

"Half these country yaps have b.u.m teeth, anyway," said Porter.

"And the rest of them think they're sick," stated Wizard Waller.

"It beats a free show for results and expense," said Painless Porter.

"All you got to have is the tents and the j.a.ps and the Willie-off-the-yacht togs." He sighed. "There ought to be _some_ advantages," he concluded, "to drag a man so far from the street lights."

"Then this isn't much of a pleasure trip?" asked Bob with some amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Pleasure, h.e.l.l!" snorted Painless, helping himself to a drink. "Say, honest, how do you fellows that have business up here stick it out? It gives me the w.i.l.l.i.e.s!"

One of the j.a.panese peered into the tent and made a sign.

Painless Porter dropped his voice.

"A dope already," said he. He put on his air, and went out. As Bob and Baker crossed the enclosed s.p.a.ce, they saw him in conversation with a gawky farm lad from the plains.

"I sh.o.r.e do hate to trouble you, doctor," the boy was saying, "and hit Sunday, too. But I got a tooth back here--"

Painless Porter was listening with an air of the deepest and gravest attention.

VII

The charlatan had babbled; but without knowing it he had given Bob what he sought. He saw all the reasons for what had heretofore been obscure.

Why had he been dissatisfied with business opportunities and successes beyond the hopes of most young men?

How could he dare criticize the ultimate value of such successes without criticizing the life work of such men as Welton, as his own father?

What right had he to condemn as insufficient nine-tenths of those in the industrial world; and yet what else but condemnation did his att.i.tude of mind imply?

All these doubts and questionings were dissipated like fog. Quite simply it all resolved itself. He was dissatisfied because this was not his work. The other honest and sincere men--such as his father and Welton--had been satisfied because this was their work. The old generation, the one that was pa.s.sing, needed just that kind of service but the need too was pa.s.sing. Bob belonged to the new generation. He saw that new things were to be demanded. The old order was changing. The modern young men of energy and force and strong ability had a different task from that which their fathers had accomplished. The wilderness was subdued; the pioneer work of industry was finished; the hard brute struggle to shape things to efficiency was over. It had been necessary to get things done. Now it was becoming necessary to perfect the means and methods of doing. Lumber must still be cut, streams must still be dammed, railroads must still be built; but now that the pioneers, the men of fire, had blazed the way others could follow. Methods were established. It was all a business, like the selling of groceries. The industrial rank and file could attend to details. The men who thought and struggled and carried the torch--they must go beyond what their fathers had accomplished.

Now Bob understood Amy Thorne's pride in the Service. He saw the true basis of his feeling toward the Supervisor as opposed to his feeling toward Baker. Thorne was in the current. With his pitiful eighteen hundred a year he was nevertheless swimming strongly in new waters. His business went that little necessary step beyond. It not only earned him his living in the world, but it helped the race movement of his people.

At present the living was small, just as at first the pioneer opening the country had wrested but a scanty livelihood from the stubborn wilderness; nevertheless, he could feel--whether he stopped to think it out or not--that his efforts had that coordination with the trend of humanity which makes subtly for satisfaction and happiness. Bob looked about the mill yard with an understanding eye. This work was necessary; but it was not his work.

Something of this he tried to explain to his new friends at headquarters when next he found an opportunity to ride over. His explanations were not very lucid, for Bob was no great hand at a.n.a.lysis. To any other audience they might have been absolutely incoherent. But Thorne had long since reasoned all this out for himself; so he understood; while to California John the matter had always been one to take for granted. Bob leaned forward, his earnest, sun-browned young face flushed with the sincerity--and the embarra.s.sment--of his exposition. Amy nodded from time to time, her eyes shining, her glance every few moments seeking in triumph that of her brother. California John smoked.

Finally Bob put it squarely to Thorne.

"So you'd like to join the Service," said Thorne slowly. "I suppose you've thought of the chance you're giving up? Welton will take you into partnership in time, of course."

"I know. It seems foolish. Can't make it seem anything else," Bob admitted.

"You'd have to take your chances," Thorne persisted. "I couldn't help you. A ranger's salary is ninety a month now, and find yourself and horses. Have you any private means?"

"Not enough to say so."

"There's another thing," Thorne went on. "This forestry of our government is destined to be a tremendous affair; but what we need more just now is better logging methods among the private loggers. It would count more than anything else if you'd stay just where you are and give us model operations in your own work."

Bob shook his head.

"Perhaps you don't know men like Mr. Welton as well as I do," said he; "I couldn't change his methods. That's absolutely out of the question.

And," he went on with a sudden flash of loyalty to what the old-timers had meant, "I don't believe I'd want to."

"Not want to!" cried Amy.

"No," pursued Bob doggedly, "not unless he could see the point himself and of his own accord. He's done a great work in his time, and he's grown old at it. I wouldn't for anything in the world do anything to shake his faith in what he's done, even if he's doing it wrong now."

"He and his kind have always slaughtered the forests shamefully!" broke in Amy with some heat.

"They opened a new country for a new people," said Bob gently. "Perhaps they did it wastefully; perhaps not. I notice you've got to use lots of lubricating oil on a new machine. But there was n.o.body else to do it any different."

"Then you'd let them go on wasting and destroying?" demanded Amy scornfully.

"I don't know," hesitated Bob; "I haven't thought all this out. Perhaps I'm not very much on the think. It seems to me rather this way: We've got to have lumber, haven't we? And somebody has to cut it and supply it. Men like Mr. Welton are doing it, by the methods they've found effective. They are working for the Present; we of the new generation want to work for the Future. It's a fair division. Somebody's got to attend to them both."

"Well, that's what I say!" cried Amy. "If they wouldn't waste and slash and leave good material in the woods--"

Bob smiled whimsically.

"A lumberman doesn't like to leave things in the woods," said he. "If somebody will pay for the tops and the needles, he'll sell them; if there's a market for cull lumber, he'll supply it; and if somebody will create a demand for knotholes, _he'll invent some way of getting them out_! You see I'm a lumberman myself."

"Why don't you log with some reference to the future, then?" demanded Amy.

"Because it doesn't pay," stated Bob deliberately.

"Pay!" cried Amy.