AMIDST A CATTLE STAMPEDE
Wilbur would have liked greatly to be able to stay at his little tent home and celebrate the Fourth of July in some quiet fashion, but the fireworks folly of the professor's party had got on his nerve a little, and he was not satisfied until he really got into the saddle and was on his way to a lookout point. Nor was he entirely without reward, for shortly before noon, as he rode along his accustomed trail, a half-Indian miner met him and told him he had been waiting to ask him to dinner. And there, with all the ceremony the little shack could muster, this simple family had prepared a feast to the only representative of the United States that lived near them, and Wilbur, boy-like, had to make a speech, and rode along the trail later in the afternoon, feeling that he had indeed had a glorious Fourth of July dinner in the Indian's cabin.
The week following the Supervisor rode up, much to Wilbur's surprise, who had not expected to see him back in that part of the forest so soon. But Merritt, who indeed was anxious to get away, by his conversation showed that he was awaiting the arrival and conveyance of a trainload of machinery for the establishment of a large pulp-mill on the Kern River. The trail over which this machinery would have to be taken was brushed out and ready, all save about nine miles of it, a section too small to make it worth while to call a Ranger from another part of the forest. So the Supervisor announced his intention of doing the work himself, together with Wilbur. The night preceding, just before they turned in for the night, the boy turned to his chief and said:
"What time in the morning, Mr. Merritt?"
"I'll call you," replied the Supervisor.
He did, too, for at sharp five o'clock the next morning Wilbur was wakened to find the older man up and with breakfast ready.
"I ought to have got breakfast, sir," said the boy; "why didn't you leave it for me?"
"You need more sleep than I do," was the sufficient answer. "Now, tuck in."
The boy waited for no second invitation and devoted his attention to securing as much grub as he could in the shortest possible time. Breakfast was over, the camp straightened up, and they were in the saddle by a quarter to six. It was ten miles from Wilbur's camp to the point where the trail should start. The country was very rough, and it was drawing on for nine o'clock when they reached the point desired.
"Now," said the Supervisor, "take the brush hook and clear the trail as I locate it."
Wilbur, accordingly, following immediately after his chief, worked for all he knew how, cutting down the brushwood and preparing the trail. Every once in a while Merritt, who had blazed the trail some distance ahead, would return, and, bidding the boy pile brush, would attack the underwood as though it were a personal enemy of his and would cover the ground in a way that would make Wilbur's most strenuous moments seem trifling in comparison. Once he returned and saw the lad laboring for dear life, breathing hard, and showing by his very pose that he was tiring rapidly, although it was not yet noon, and he called to him.
"Loyle," he said, "what are you breaking your neck at it that way for?"
"I don't come near doing as much as I ought unless I do hurry," he said. "And then I'm a long way behind."
"You mean as much as me?"
The boy nodded.
"Absurd. No two men's speed is the same. Don't force work. Find out what gait you can keep up all day and do that. Make your own standard, don't take another man's."
"But I go so slowly!"
"Want to know it all and do it all the first summer, don't you? Suppose no one else had to learn? I don't work as hard as you do, though I get more done. You can't buck up against an old axman. I haven't done this for some time, but I guess I haven't forgotten how. Go and sit down and get your breath."
"But I'm not tired—" began Wilbur protestingly.
"Sit down," he was ordered, and the boy, feeling it was better to do what he was told, did so. After he had a rest, which indeed was very welcome, the Supervisor called him.
"Loyle," he said, "you know something about a horse, for I've watched you with them. Handle yourself the same way. You wouldn't force a horse; don't force yourself."
Moreover, the older man showed the boy many ways wherein to save labor, explaining that there was a right way and a wrong way of attacking every different kind of bush. In consequence, when Wilbur started again in the afternoon he found himself able to do almost half as much again with less labor. Working steadily all day until sundown, five miles of the trail had been located, brushed out, and marked.
There was a small lake near by, and thinking that it would be less fatiguing for the boy to catch fish than to look after the camp, the Supervisor sent him off to try his luck. Wilbur, delighted to have been lucky, returned in less than fifteen minutes with four middling-sized trout, and he found himself hungry enough to eat his two, almost bones and all. That night they slept under a small Baker tent that Merritt had brought along on his pack horse, the riding and pack saddles being piled beside the tent and covered with a slicker.
The following day, by starting work a little after daybreak, the remaining four miles of the trail were finished before the noonday halt, which was made late in order to allow the completion of the work. Wilbur, when he reviewed the fact that they had gone foot by foot over nine miles of trail, clearing out the brush and piling it, so that it could be burned and rendered harmless as soon as it was dry, thought it represented as big a two days' work as he had ever covered.
"Will the pulp-mill be above or below the new Edison plant?" queried Wilbur on their way home.
"Above," said his companion. "I'll show you just where. You're going to ride down with me to the site of the mill to-morrow. There's a lot of spruce here, and it ought to pay."
"But I thought," said Wilbur, "that paper-pulp was such a destructive way of using timber?"
"It is," answered Merritt, "but paper is a necessity. A book is more important than a board."
"But doesn't it take a lot of wood to make a little paper?" asked the boy. "There's been such a howl about paper-pulp that I thought it must be fearfully wasteful."
"It isn't wasteful at all," was the reply. "A cord and a half of spruce will make a ton of pulp. Where the outcry comes in is the quantity used. One newspaper uses a hundred and fifty tons of paper a day. That means two hundred and twenty-five cords of wood. The stand of spruce here is about ten cords to the acre. So one newspaper would clean off ten acres a day or three thousand acres a year."
"But wouldn't it ruin the forest to take it off at that rate?"
"Certainly," the Supervisor answered, "but the sale will be so arranged that not more will be sold each year than will be good for the forest."
"Is all paper made of spruce?" asked Wilbur.
"No. Many kinds of wood will make paper. Carolina poplar and tulip wood are both satisfactory."
"Except for the branches and knot-wood," said Wilbur, "almost every part of every kind of tree is good for something."
"And you can use those, too," came the instant reply. "That's what dry distillation is for. All that you've got to do is fill a retort with wood and put a furnace under it, and all pine tree leavings can be transformed into tar and acetic acid, from which they can make vinegar, as well as wood alcohol and charcoal."
Finding that the boy was thoroughly interested in the possibilities of lumber, the Supervisor, usually so silent and brief in manner, opened out a little and talked for two straight hours to Wilbur on the possibilities of forestry. He showed the value of turpentine and resin in the pine trees and advocated the planting of hemlock trees and oak trees for their bark, as used in the tanning industry.
As the Forester warmed up to his subject, Wilbur thought he was listening to an "Arabian Nights" fairy tale. Despite his customary silence Merritt was an enthusiast, and believed that forestry was the "chief end of man." He assured the boy that twenty different species of tree of immense value could be acclimatized in North America which are of great commercial value now in South America; he compared the climate in the valleys of the lower Mississippi with those of the Ganges, and named tree after tree, most of them entirely unknown to Wilbur, which would be of high value in the warm, swampy bottoms. And when Wilbur ventured to express doubt, he was confronted with the example of the eucalyptus, commonly called gum tree, once a native of Australia, now becoming an important American tree.
All the way home and all through supper the Supervisor talked, until when it finally became time to turn in, the boy dreamed of an ideal time when every acre of land in the United States should be rightly occupied; the arid land irrigated from streams fed by reservoirs in the forested mountains; the rivers full of navigation and never suffering floods; the farms possessing their wood-lots all duly tended; and every inch of the hills and mountains clothed with forests—pure stands, or mixed stands, as might best suit the conditions—each forest being the best possible for its climate and its altitude.
But he had to get up at five o'clock next morning, just the same, and dreams became grim realities when he found himself in the saddle again and off for a day's work before six. A heavy thunderstorm in the night had made everything fresh and shining, but at the same time the water on the underbrush soaked Wilbur through and through when he went out to wrangle the horses. Merritt's riding horse, a fine bay with a blazed face, had a bad reputation in the country, which Wilbur had heard, and he was in an ugly frame of mind when the boy found him. But Wilbur was not afraid of horses, and he soon got him saddled.
"I think Baldy's a little restless this morning, sir," ventured Wilbur, as they went to the corral to get their horses. But he received no answer. The Supervisor's fluent streak had worn itself out the day before and he was more silent than ever this morning.
Merritt swung himself into his saddle, and, as Wilbur expected, the bay began to buck. It was then, more than ever, that the boy realized the difference between the riding he had seen on the plains and ordinary riding. Merritt was a good rider, and he stuck to his saddle well. But Wilbur could see that it was with difficulty, and that the task was a hard one. There was none of the easy grace with which Bob-Cat Bob had ridden, and when Baldy did settle down Wilbur felt that his rider had considered his keeping his seat quite a feat, not regarding it as a trifling and unimportant incident in the day.
Merritt and the boy rode on entirely off the part of the forest on which Wilbur had his patrol, to a section he did not know. They stopped once to look over a young pine plantation. Just over a high ridge there was a wider valley traversed by an old road which crossed the main range about five miles west and went down into a valley where there were numerous ranches. The principal occupation of these ranchmen was stock-raising, on account of their long distance from a railroad which prevented them marketing any produce. Just about July of each year these ranchmen rounded up their stock, cut out the beef steers, and shipped them to the markets. It was then the last week in July, and the Supervisor expected to meet some of the herds upon the old road which crossed the mountains further on. Just as they reached the bottom of the hill they saw the leaders of a big herd coming down the road from the pass. In the distance a couple of cowpunchers could be seen in front holding up the lead of the bunch.
"I'll wait and talk," said Merritt, reining in. As perhaps he had exchanged four whole sentences in two hours' ride, Wilbur thought to himself that the conversation would have to be rather one-sided, but he knew the other believed in seizing every opportunity to promote friendliness with the people in his forest and waited their upcoming with interest. The Supervisor had his pack-horse with him, and as the herd drew nearer he told Wilbur to take him out of sight into the brush, so as not to scare the steers, and tie him up safely. That done, Wilbur rode back to the road.
By the time he had returned the two punchers had ridden up. One proved to be the foreman of the outfit, by name Billy Grier, and the other a Texan, whom Merritt called Tubby Rodgers, apparently because he was as thin as a lath.
"I was a-hopin'," said Grier as he rode up, "that you-all was headin' down the road a bit."
"I wasn't planning to," said the Forester. "Why?"
"We had a heavy storm down in the valley last night, which sort of broke things up badly, an' I had to leave a couple of men behind."
"Don't want to hire us to drive, do you?" asked Merritt.
"Allers willin' to pay a good man," said the foreman with a grin. "Give ye forty and chuck."
The Supervisor smiled.
"I'm supposed to be holding down a soft job," he said; "government service."
"Soft job," snorted Grier, "they'd have to give me the bloomin' forest afore I'd go at it the way you do. But, Merritt," he added, "this is how. A piece down the road, say a mile an' a half, I'm told there's a rotten bit o' road, an' I'm a little leery of trouble there. I'd have strung out the cattle three times as far if I'd known of it. But I had no chance; I've only just heard that some old county board is tryin' to fix a bridge, an' they're movin' about as rapid as a spavined mule with three broken legs."
"Well?" queried Merritt; "I suppose you want us to help you over that spot."
"That's it, pard," said the foreman; "an' I'll do as much for you some time."
"I wish you could, but I'll never have a string of cattle like those to turn into good hard coin."
"Well," said the cowpuncher, "why not?"
"Nothing doing," replied Merritt; "the Forest Service is an incurable disease that nobody ever wants to be cured of."
By this time the head of the bunch of steers was drawing close and the foreman repeated his request.
"All right," answered the Forester, who thought it good policy to have the ranchman feel that he was under obligations to the Service, "we'll give you a hand all right."
After riding down the road for about a mile it became precipitous, and Wilbur could readily see where there was likely to be trouble. Shortly before they reached the place where the bridge was being repaired the bank on the right-hand side of the road gave place to a sheer drop forty to fifty feet high and deepening with every step forward. As the bunch neared the bridge Merritt and Wilbur, with the cowpunchers, slowed up until the steers were quite close. Then Grier and Rodgers went ahead over the bridge, while Merritt waited until about fifty cattle had passed and then swung in among them, telling Wilbur to do the same when about another fifty head had passed.
At first Wilbur could not see the purpose of this, and he had great difficulty in forcing his horse among the cattle. But they pressed back as he swung into the road, giving him a little space to ride in, and thus dividing the head of the drove into two groups of fifty. Following instructions, Wilbur gradually pressed the pace of the bunch in order to prevent any chance of overcrowding from the rear.
It seemed easy enough. Owing to the narrowness of the road and the precipitous slope it was impossible for the steers to scatter, and as long as the pace was kept up, there was likely to be no difficulty. But Kit—Wilbur was riding Kit—suddenly pricked her ears and began to dance a little in her steps. The steers, although their pace had not changed, were snuffling in an uncertain fashion, and Wilbur vaguely became conscious that fear was abroad. He quieted Kit, but could see from every motion that she was catching the infection of the fear. He tightened his hold on the lines, for he saw that if she tried to bolt both of them would go over the edge. Wilbur looked down.
A hundred yards or so further on the road widened slightly, and Wilbur wondered whether it would be possible for him to work his way to the right of the steers and gallop full speed alongside the herd to get in front of them; but even as he thought of the plan he realized that it would scarcely be possible, and that unless he reached the front of the herd before the road narrowed again he would be forced over the edge. And, as he reached the wider place, he saw Grier and Rodgers standing. They also had sensed the notion of fear and were waiting to see what could be done in the main body of the herd. Merritt had worked his way through the steers, and was riding in the lead. Wilbur wondered how he had ever been able to force Baldy through. This put Wilbur behind a bunch of about one hundred steers and in front of five or six hundred more.
Below him, to the right, was a valley, the drop now being about one hundred and fifty feet, and Wilbur could see at the edge of the creek, pitched among some willows, a little tent, the white contrasting strongly with the green of the willows. The road wound round high above the valley in order to keep the grade. Twice Wilbur halted Kit to try to stop the foremost of the herd behind him from pressing on too close, but the third time Kit would not halt. She was stepping as though on springs, with every muscle and sinew tense, and the distance between the steers before and the steers behind was gradually lessening.
Wilbur realized that as long as the even, slow pace was kept he was in no danger, but if once the steers began to run his peril would be extreme. He could turn neither to the right nor to the left, the little pony was nothing in weight compared to the steers, and even if she were, he stood a chance of having his legs crushed. The only hope was to keep the two herds apart. He wheeled Kit. But as the little mare turned and faced the tossing heads and threatening horns, she knew, as did Wilbur instantaneously, that with the force behind them, no single man could stop the impetus of the herd, although only traveling slowly. Indeed, if he tried, he could see that the rear by pressure onwards would force the outside ranks midway down the herd over the edge of the cliff. Kit spun round again almost on one hoof, all but unseating Wilbur.
But even in that brief moment there had been a change, and the boy felt it. The steers were nervous, and, worst of all, he knew that Kit could realize that he himself was frightened. When a horse feels that the rider is frightened, anything is apt to happen. Wilbur's judgment was not gone, but he was ready to yell. The herd behind grew closer and closer. Presently the walk broke into a short trot, the horns of the following bunch of steers appeared at Kit's flanks, a rumbling as of half-uttered bellows was heard from the rear of the herd, and, on the instant, the steers began to run.
NURSERY FOR YOUNG TREES.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.
PLANTATION OF YOUNG TREES.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.
SOWING PINE SEED.
Brush on ground is to shade tender seedlings from the heat of the sun.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.
PLANTING YOUNG TREES.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.