CHAPTER III. A BATTLE OF WORDS.
On a still, sunny day in July, Patrick O’Neill rode whistling down the steep trail that led into Lodgepole Basin. From little openings in the pines he could look down over a vast stretch of hills and valleys which formed a part of his district—a peaceful scene which held him silent for a space. The ranger station which would be his home lay farther down in the basin, a tip of its flagpole showing white above a grove of young pines.
“Looks like heaven, after the jack pines and mesquite of Black Mesa,” he observed to his horse that stood switching flies with philosophic calm. “I’ll stand a lot of grief before I’ll quit. We’ll sure make a home of this place, no foolin’. Cushman wasn’t Irish. Takes the Irish to get a real human slant on folks. He’s a sour cuss—probably tried to lord it over the natives, and they wouldn’t stand for it.
“Don’t blame ’em. I wouldn’t let any iron-visaged ranger dictate much to me, if I were a rancher. The human note—no up-stage attitude—just be one of them, friendlylike and peaceful. That’s the ticket. Like gentling a bronc, this thing is going to be. Treat ’em right and they’ll treat you right.”
Whereupon he resumed his whistling and jogged down to the comfortable log house in the grove of lodgepole pines, opened all the windows and went happily to work at what he called policing camp. After that he got out the files and studied the grazing permits, the brands, owners thereof and the territory assigned to each. It took the rest of the day and most of the evening to memorize the stuff he felt he should have ready behind the tip of his tongue, but he enjoyed it all and repeated his cheerful prophecies concerning the work of gentling Stillwater District.
“That Bar B man, Boyce, seems to be the king-pin of this district,” he mused, as he rode abroad over his domain to familiarize himself with the topography of the country, just as he had made himself acquainted with the records. “Next on the program comes the human contact. Think I’ll just ride down and make friends with our Bostonian neighbor at the Bar B. Must be educated and intelligent—we ought to have a good deal in common. I’m educated, far above the average in intelligence—oh, you Pat O’Neill! When you tell him that, he’ll love you for your modesty if for nothing else!”
So he turned his horse’s head toward the Bar B Ranch.
The Honorable Standish Boyce of Boston was leaning over the front gate as O’Neill rode up, whistling under his breath, as was the carefree habit he had. A pair of field glasses dangled from the old man’s right hand, as if he had been making certain of the horseman’s identity, had recognized him as the new forest ranger and was now waiting to welcome him according to precedent and his general opinion of all forest-service men.
Patrick O’Neill flung a limber leg over the cantle of his stock saddle and stepped down with agile grace, smiling his Irish smile as he strode forward with outstretched hand.
“Mr. Boyce? I’m the new ranger in this district. O’Neill is my name—Pat O’Neill.”
“Well, what of it?” Boyce still stood with his arms folded upon the gate, the field glasses swinging gently from their narrow strap. Cold gray eyes had the Honorable Standish Boyce, set deep and close to a high, thin nose. Beneath the nose, a thin, straight mouth, half hidden beneath a growth of thin, white beard, pointed to match his nose. His eyes had the impersonal glare of the bird he so closely resembled—an Uncle Sam on the warpath, O’Neill thought swiftly.
“Oh, nothing much, Mr. Boyce!” he grinned, firm in his purpose. “Nothing, except that I understand you are one of the leading citizens of our little community, as well as the largest user of the National Forest, and I wanted to meet you.”
“Well, you’ve met me. If you’re satisfied, I am. Now get off my ranch and stay off.”
The spirit of a thousand generations of fighting O’Neills rose and looked out through the eyes of young Pat, but he hushed their battle cry and somehow managed to keep his Irish grin.
“You’re a bit hasty, Mr. Boyce. You and I will have a good deal of business to transact together as time goes on. It will be much pleasanter if we are friends, you know.”
“Young man, I transact my business directly with Washington. I have relatives who stand high in official circles, and by virtue of their influence I enjoy privileges quite beyond your petty power to accord me. Now will you do me the favor to leave this place?”
“When the favor becomes mutual, yes. First, I want to tell you that it’s my business to administer the affairs of this district on behalf of the government. Whether you approve or disapprove of that fact is of no concern to the government or to me. You may be twin brother to the President of these United States for all I care, Mr. Boyce, but the fact remains the same. Any business you have to transact with the forest service, you will transact with me, its accredited representative.”
Then the fighting O’Neills in him took a hand. They propelled him forward so that his blazing Irish eyes were within a foot of the cold gray ones.
“Get this straight, old-timer! I’m running this neck of the woods—not your relatives in Washington—and you may as well learn the fact right here as farther down the creek! Your special privileges end right here, you bean-brained old pie eater! From this minute on, you haven’t got one damn privilege beyond what your neighbors enjoy, and if I catch you trying to assume that you have, I’ll arrest you same as I would any one else! Let that sink away down deep in your cosmic consciousness, Mr. Boyce. The sooner you realize that this forest service is not run for the special benefit of any individual, the less grief you are going to have!”
Boyce’s white-bearded jaw sagged in amazement. He swallowed twice, shook a tremulous fist at the man who had the temerity to defy him, and spluttered an epithet.
“Calm yourself, Mr. Boyce,” O’Neill admonished, as he picked up the reins to remount. “I expect that’s pretty hard to swallow, but you needn’t choke over it.”
“I— You— I’ll have you dismissed—kicked out in disgrace, you—you——”
“Oh, go off and lie down! You make me tired,” O’Neill snarled disgustedly from the saddle and loped back up the trail, thinking not of Boyce, but of the girl he had seen walk her horse to the side porch of the house and sit watching them, evidently listening.
How much she had heard, he did not know—nor did he care at the moment. But now he wished that he had thought of something wittily biting to say at the last, instead of that hackneyed retort which any roughneck puncher on the range might have made.
The rasping voice of the Bar B Bostonian followed him, shouting threats and imprecations which the increasing distance blurred to a vague mouthing of rage. Bluster, O’Neill reminded himself, was always a mark of weakness, or so folks said. If the rule held, then the Honorable Standish Boyce was all bark and no bite, and could safely be ignored.
He had ridden a mile along the side of a ridge, taking it easy on the way home, when a horse lunged out through a clump of bushes into the trail ahead of him and wheeled so that the rider faced him. It was the girl he had seen at Boyce’s house, and she had evidently cut across country with the deliberate intention of intercepting him. At any rate, she was waiting for him to ride up. Which Patrick O’Neill did right willingly.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Ranger,” she greeted him coolly, when he drew near. “I’m Isabelle Boyce, and I’m supposed to be a chip off the old block. At least, the neighbors say I am.”
O’Neill laughed as he took off his hat and ran his fingers through his thick, brown hair. “I’d have to prove that for myself, Miss Boyce. Is this a continuation——”
“Oh, no, indeed! It’s an explanation. I heard how father talked to you, and I heard how you talked back to father. So I just thought——”
“If you heard your father, you must admit I had the patience of Job and used it.”
“And left father boiling!” she laughed, flicking the bushes with her quirt. “I was really in hopes, Mr. er—er——”
“Patrick O’Neill, at your service.” Pat reined in alongside her and the horses started on up the trail at a walk.
“Oh, you’re Irish! I was in hopes the new ranger would understand and sympathize with the people of the Stillwater District, but if you’re Irish, I suppose you’ll want to fight over nothing, like all the rest.”
“Not necessarily, Miss Boyce. Your father ordered me off the ranch, when all I wanted to do was give him a cordial shake of the hand and say I hoped we might be friends. I merely expostulated a bit against the discourtesy. I could not fail to understand him, but as for sympathizing—— Well, I’d first like to know what’s wrong with him.”
“The same thing that’s wrong with all the rest of the Stillwater people, Mr. O’Neill. All you rangers seem to have overlooked the fact that this is an isolated country, where it’s very difficult to keep a fine sense of values. This world in here is bounded by cows, horses, crops and kids. The men are only servants to their live stock, and the women are slaves to the men. No one seems able to take a day off, to get out of the rut. They live in shacks, for the most part, and life is a monotonous grind of the very things that have made them so narrow and sordid.
“Even my father,” she continued, “though he is intelligent and educated and can look back upon worth-while things, has grown as narrow as the rest. They are bored to death, and don’t even know it, so they hate themselves and each other, and squabble over trifles that——”
“Well, they needn’t take out their spite on the forest service,” Pat grumbled, just to keep her going.
“Oh, but they do!” she came back at him eagerly, her eyes alight with interest in her subject. “You’re—meaning the forest service—the only thing they can all band together to fight, don’t you see? Once you take that community spirit away from them, I don’t know what would happen. It’s the primitive impulse of self-preservation, working out in a normal, primitive way. It requires a common enemy—hunger, the menace of some terrible creature of the wild, protection against some element that would destroy, and which no one man is strong enough to conquer alone; just as the cave men gathered on the cliffs and rolled rocks down upon the saber-toothed tiger. We call it community spirit, in our psychology classes—that’s where I learned it.
“Here, they have plenty to sustain life according to their standards, and there aren’t any saber-toothed tigers, so—they pretend to themselves that the forest service is a menace, and they band together for the fight. He’s an outlet for their emotions, Mr. O’Neill. A psychological safety valve. Also,” she added, forestalling an Irish rebellion which she may have seen rising in his eyes, “it’s misdirected energy, of course. But it explains my father’s awful conduct, doesn’t it?”
Patrick O’Neill gave her a keen look. “It explains your father,” he admitted, “but sure, and it don’t change the temper of him, divil a bit!” Then he laughed. “So the answer seems to be, Miss Boyce, that since they are bored with the monotony of their existence and must have some excitement, I’m to wallop the livin’ daylights out of the lot of them! And it’s not so sorry a prospect as you might suppose,” he added dryly.
“I don’t mean that at all, and you know it!” she flashed, showing a hint of her father’s temper—though she showed it very prettily, O’Neill thought. “You seem intelligent. Why don’t you use your personality——”
“I will, Miss Boyce, and my fists along with it!”
“Your personality,” she went on, ignoring him, “to give them a pride in the forest service? Make them see that it is really their best friend, that it protects their range and gives each one a fair share of the grazing. If you can win them over to yourself as a man, you can win them over to the forest service as an institution which has their welfare at heart.”
“And force them back to whippin’ pups for excitement, and fightin’ each other. I don’t see——”
“That’s because you won’t see,” she told him impatiently. “I have it all analyzed, but I can’t do anything myself to help Stillwater—they call me ‘Queen Isabelle,’ and say I’m stuck up, and like my father. But you—if you can make them like you, the work is half done. Won’t you try, Mr. O’Neill? I heard how you talked to father, and while I admit he is terribly exasperating, still, that attitude of yours won’t make him love the service any better. If you’d seize every opportunity to make each individual like you personally——”
“I will that!” cried Patrick O’Neill, beaming upon her with the Irish twinkle which she had perhaps noticed. “I grasp the idea, and I find it wonderful! But I shall need encouragement and advice—and might I begin with yourself, Miss Boyce?”
“Get along with you!” cried Queen Isabelle. “I told you the Irish——”
She struck her horse with the quirt and galloped away from him, flushed and biting her lip to keep back the laughter. Then she halted and wheeled, a short distance away. “I’ll advise you about the best way to approach father,” she called to him sweetly. “I can get his real opinion of you as a man——”
“Sure, and I had that same by word of mouth, Miss Boyce!”
“And if you really need help or advice at any time, I’ll be glad to have you call on me.”
“It’s a great deal of trouble you are taking, Miss Boyce, just for a lone ranger, but I’ll be delighted to avail myself of the privilege you so kindly ex——”
Queen Isabelle laughed and rode toward him again. “Remember, Mr. O’Neill, that I have lived in this isolated place for more than a year—ever since I finished school. I’m like the rest of the natives—bored to death. Only, I know it and am seizing a small opportunity to direct my energy in some useful channel. You may laugh, but I really mean it. Just living is not enough. I must be doing something. So if I can help you win the Stillwater over to the forest service and make friends of the two, I shall be much more contented with my lot in life; which is staying at home with father and making him as happy as possible.
“That,” she added with dignity, “is my sole reason for waylaying you in this bold manner. I could see that you were getting an entirely erroneous view of the situation in your district, and that you were in a fair way to widen the breach between the settlers and the government. We’d be having regular feuds over the forest reserve in another year, just as some of the mountaineers of Kentucky fight the revenue officers. Oh, I have given the matter careful thought, I assure you! You are not like the other rangers, and if you really have the interests of the service at heart, you will do all in your power to promote a better feeling here.”
“I will that, Miss Boyce! It’s a sweet little task you’ve set me, but with your constant guidance and encouragement I’ll do it.”
She gave him a quick, suspicious glance, refusing to laugh at his slightly exaggerated Irish optimism. “Just meet the people with kindness and courtesy, Mr. O’Neill. When you match temper with temper, as you did just now with father, you merely drop from a superior mental height to the level of—of Gus Peterson, owner of the Box S, who lives to fight and to boast of his brutal victories. Father knows better, and so do you, but he has permitted himself to drop into the ways of the country. There isn’t even that excuse for you at all, don’t you see?”
“Miss Boyce, you have the pitiless logic of a Portia,” Patrick O’Neill sighed. “For the first time in my life, I humbly apologize for my fightin’ Irish temper, and I promise to be a saint from this moment, so that Stillwater mothers shall beg the little ones at their knees to be sweet, loving little gentlemen and ladies, like the kind, forgiving young man at the ranger station, who would not hurt a fly. And for the encouragement to be that same, I shall choose Thursday as the day which I am allowed by a thoughtful government each week for policing camp, and I shall call if I may, and smile if I am kicked out.”
“I ride nearly every day,” returned Isabelle Boyce, with a smile. “Always on Thursday I ride toward Castle Creek. Good-by, and remember that a soft answer turneth away wrath. I shall expect a good report of the week.”
“A sweet little handicap she’s put upon me!” mused Patrick O’Neill, as he jogged homeward across the hills. “I’m to swallow my temper—that’s turned me out of my home and my school and every job I’ve ever held in my life! Pat, me lad, the girl is more dangerous than the old man, and it’s well for you if you face that fact at once!”