HOW THE FOREST WON A GREAT DOCTOR
In the middle of the night the telephone bell rang. Instantly Wilbur heard the doctor's voice responding.
"Yes, where is it?" he queried. "Where? Oh, just beyond Basco Aleck's place. All right, I'll start right away."
There was some rummaging in the other rooms, and in less than five minutes' time the clatter of hoofs outside told the boy that the doctor was off, probably on the huge gray horse Wilbur had seen in the corral as he rode in that day. It was broad daylight when he wakened again, and Mrs. Davis was standing beside him with his breakfast tray. It was so long since Wilbur had not had to prepare breakfast for himself that he felt quite strange, but the night's rest had eased him wonderfully, and aside from a little soreness where he had had his scalp laid open, he was quite himself again.
"Did Doctor Davis have to go away in the night?" he asked. "I thought I heard the telephone."
"Yes," answered the doctor's wife. "But that is nothing new. Almost once a week, at least, he is sent for in the night, or does not reach home till late in the night. I've grown used to it," she added; "doctors' wives must."
"But distances are so great, and there are so few trails," said the boy, "and Doctor Davis is so famous, one would think that he would do better in a city."
"Better for himself?" came the softly uttered query.
The boy colored hotly as he realized the idea of selfishness that there had been in his speech.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "No, I see. But it does seem strange, just the same, that he should be out here."
"He wouldn't be happy anywhere else."
"Excuse me, Mrs. Davis," said the boy, who had caught something of the Supervisor's abruptness, "but what brought him here?"
"Do you not," answered the doctor's wife, giving question for question, "know the old hunter, 'Rifle-Eye Bill'? I don't know his right name. Why, of course, you must; he's the Ranger in your part of the forest."
"Do I know him?" said Wilbur, and without stopping for further question talked for ten minutes on end, telling all that the old hunter had done for him and how greatly he admired him. "Know him," he concluded, "I should just guess I did."
"It was he," said the woman, "who persuaded us to come out here."
"Won't you tell me?" pleaded the boy. "I'd love to hear anything about Rifle-Eye. And the doctor, too," he added as an afterthought.
"It was long ago," she began, "seventeen years ago. Yes," she continued with a smile at the lad's surprise, "I have lived here seventeen years."
"Do you—" began the boy excitedly, "do you ride a white mare?"
This time it was the doctor's wife who colored. She flushed to the roots of her hair.
"Yes," she answered hurriedly, and went on to explain the early conditions of the forest. But Wilbur was not listening, he was remembering the stories that he had heard since his arrival into the forest of the "little white lady," of whom the ranchers and miners always spoke so reverently. But presently Rifle-Eye's name attracted his attention and he listened again.
"We were camping," she said, "in one of the redwood groves not far from San Francisco for the summer, the doctor having been appointed an attending surgeon at one of the larger hospitals, although he was very young. We had been married only a little over a year. One evening just after supper, Rifle-Eye, although we did not know him then, walked into camp.
"'You are a doctor, an operating doctor?' he inquired.
"'Yes,' my husband replied, 'I am a surgeon.'
"Then the old hunter came to where I was standing.
"'You are a doctor's wife?' he queried. You know that direct way of his?"
"Indeed I do," Wilbur replied. "It's one you've got to answer."
"So I said, 'Yes, I am a doctor's wife,' just as if I was a little girl answering a catechism.
"'The case is seventy miles away,' he said, 'and there's a horse saddled.' He turned to me. 'A woman I know is coming over in a little while to stay the night with you, so that you will not be lonely. Come, doctor.' There was a hurried farewell, and they were gone. I can laugh now, as I think of it, but it was dreadful then.
"Presently, however, the woman that he had spoken of came over to our camp. She was a mountaineer's wife, and very willing and helpful. But I was a little frightened, as I had never seen any one quite like her before."
"You couldn't have had much in common," said Wilbur, who was observant enough to note the artistic nature of the room wherein he lay, the exquisite cleanliness and freshness of all his surroundings, and the faultless English of the doctor's wife. Besides, she was pretty and sweet-looking, and boys are quick to note it.
"We didn't," she answered, "but when I happened to mention the old hunter, why the woman was transformed. She brightened up, and told me tales far into the night of what the old hunter had done until," she smiled, "I almost thought he must be as nice as Doctor Davis."
"Doctor Davis does look awfully fine," agreed Wilbur.
"I always think so," said his wife demurely. "Two days passed before the men returned, and when I got a chance alone with my husband, he was twice as bad as the mountaineer's wife. He would talk of nothing but Rifle-Eye and the need of surgical work in the mountains.
"'And you, Violet,' he said, 'you're going to ride there with me to-day and help look after this man.' It did rather surprise me, because I knew that he hated to have me troubled with any details of his work, for he used to like to leave his profession behind when he came home. So I knew that he thought it important, and I went. But I rode the greater part of the day with the old hunter, and long before he reached the place where the man was who needed me, all my objections had vanished and I was eager to begin."
"That's just the way that Rifle-Eye does," said the boy, "he makes it seem that what he wants you to do is just what you want to do yourself."
"When I got to the place," she went on, "I found that it was a Basque shepherd, who had been hurt by some of the cattlemen. That made it much more interesting for me, for you know, my people were Basques, that strange old race, who, tradition tells, are all that are left of the shepherds on the mountains of the lost Atlantis. So I nursed him as best I could, and presently, from far and wide over the Rockies I would get messages from the Basque shepherds."
"Didn't you put a stop to the feuds at one time?" asked Wilbur. "The old hunter told me something about 'the little white lady' and the sheep war."
"I helped in many of them," she said simply, "and when they came to me for advice I tried to give it. Doctor Davis was always there to suggest the more advisable course, and I put it to these Bascos, as they called them, so that they would understand."
"How about Burleigh?" asked Wilbur.
But the doctor's wife disclaimed all knowledge of a sheep-owner called Burleigh.
"All right," said Wilbur, "then I'll give my share of the story, as the old hunter told it to me. That is, if you don't mind."
"Tell it," she smiled, "if you like."
"Well," said Wilbur, "one Sunday afternoon a Ranger, whose cabin was near a lookout point, said to his wife, 'I'll ride up to the peak, and be back in time for supper.' He went off in his shirt-sleeves, bare-headed, for an hour's ride, and was gone a week. Up in the brush he found the trail of a band of sheep, and although he was cold and hungry and his horse was playing out, he stuck right on the job until it got too dark to see. The second day he smashed in the door of a miner's cabin, got some grub, and nailed a note on the door saying who'd taken it, and kept on. He tired his horse out, and left him in another fellow's corral, but kept on going on foot. The sheepman was known as dangerous, but this little Ranger—did I tell you he was Irish—stuck to it, trusting to find some way out even if the grazer did get ugly.
"At last he came on the sheep in a mountain meadow, and Burleigh on his horse by them, a rifle across his saddle bow. The Ranger said little at the time, and the two men went home to supper. After eating, as they sat there, the Ranger said his say. He told the grazer what were the orders he had, and that he would have to live up to them. But the grazer had a copy of 'orders,' too, and he had hired a lawyer to find out how he could get out of them. So he lit into the Ranger.
"'You see, Mac,' he said, 'those orders don't mean anything. They may be all right in Washington, but they don't go here. You can't stop me, nor arrest me, nor hurt my sheep. Your bosses won't stand by you if you get into any mix-up. The best thing you can do is to stay here to-night, and then go home. Make a report on it, if you like, I don't care."
"And then the Ranger began," the boy went on. "The old hunter told me that this little bit of an Irishman told the grazer about his work as a Ranger. He told him how he had seen the good that was going to be done, and that having put his hand to the plow, he couldn't let it go again. He didn't know much about it, and he'd never tried to talk about it before, but the natural knack of talking which his race always has came to help him out. Then he began to talk of the sheep and cattle war, and the shame that it was to have them killing each other's flocks and shooting each other because they could not agree about the right to grass.
"'An' there's one more thing,' he said, ''tis only the other day that I was talkin' to the "little white lady," and she said she knew that you wouldn't be the one to start up trouble again.' And he wound up with an appeal to his better judgment, which, so the old hunter told me the grazer said afterward, would have got a paralyzed mule on the move.
"When he got through, Burleigh merely answered:
"'Mac, take that blanket and go to bed. I'll talk to you in the morning.'
"When the Ranger woke, a little after daylight, the grazer sat beside his blanket, smoking. He began without wasting any time.
"'Mac,' he said, 'I'm going to take my sheep out to-day. Not because of any of your little bits of printed orders—I could drive a whole herd through them; and not because of any of your bosses back in Washington, who wouldn't know a man's country if they ever got into it, and couldn't find their way out; and not entirely because, as you say, "the little white lady" trusts me, though perhaps that's got a good deal to do with it. But when I find a man who is so many different kinds of a fool as you seem to be, it looks some like my moral duty to keep him out of an asylum.' And that's the story I heard about Burleigh.
"But I interrupted you," the boy continued, "you were going to tell me about Doctor Davis. Didn't you ever go back to the city?"
"Oh, yes," she replied. "The doctor had to take his hospital service, and for three years he spent six months in the hospital in the city, and six months out here in the mountains. But there were several good surgeons in the city, and only one on the great wide Sierras, and, as you know, he is strong enough for the hardest work. So,—I remember well the night,—he came to me, and hesitatingly suggested that we should live out here for always, but that he didn't wish to take me away from my city friends. And I—oh, I had been wanting to come all the time. I was just one out of so many in the city, paying little social calls, but here I found so many people to be fond of. I think I know every one on the mountains here, and they are all so kind to me. And," she added proudly, "so appreciative of the doctor."
Wilbur laughed as she gathered up the things on the tray.
"Well," he said, "I don't believe the old hunter ever did a better thing when he got Doctor Davis to come to the forest—unless, it was the day 'the little white lady' came with him. Haven't I had a broken head, and am I not her patient? You bet!"
But Mrs. Davis only smiled as she passed from the room.
Wilbur spent the rest of the morning in the doctor's library, and was more than delighted to learn that these books were there for borrowing, on the sole condition that they should be returned. He learned, later, that under the guise of a library to lend books, all sorts of little plans were done for the cheering of the lives of those who lived in isolated portions of the mountain range. The boy had not been twenty-four hours under the doctor's roof, yet he was quite at home, and sorry to go when the Supervisor rode up. He had been careful to groom Kit very thoroughly, and she was standing saddled at the door, half an hour before the time appointed. He was ready to swing into the saddle as soon as Merritt appeared.
"Not so fast, Loyle," he said, "this is once that promptness is a bad thing. I must have a word or two with Mrs. Davis; he'd be a pretty poor stick who ever missed that chance."
So, while he went inside, Wilbur looked over the pack to see that it was riding easily, and led Baldy to where he could have a few mouthfuls of grass. And when he came out the Forester was even more silent than usual, and rode for two hours without uttering a syllable.
"Did you find everything going on all right for the pulp-mill?" asked Wilbur, finally desiring to give a chance for conversation. But Merritt simply replied, "Fairly so," and relapsed into silence. He wakened into sudden energy, however, when, a half an hour later, in making a shortcut to headquarters he came upon an old abandoned trail. It was somewhat overgrown, but the Supervisor turned into it and followed it for some length, finally arriving at a large spring, one of the best in the forest, which evidently had been known at some time prior to the Forest Service taking control, but now had passed into disuse. But Merritt was even more surprised to find beside the spring a prospector of the old type, with his burro and pack, evidently making camp for the night.
"Evenin'," said Merritt, "where did you get hold of this trail?"
"Allers knew about it," said the prospector. "I s'pose," he added, noting the bronze "U. S." on the khaki shirt, "that you're the Ranger."
"Supervisor," replied Merritt. "Locating a mineral claim, are you?"
"Not yet," the other replied; "I ain't located any mineral to claim yet. I'll come to you for a permit as soon as I do. But I'm lookin' for Burns's lost mine."
"You don't believe in that old yarn, surely?" questioned the other surprisedly.
"Would I be lookin' for it if I hadn't doped it out that it was there?"
"Where?"
"Oh, somewheres around here. I reckon it's further north. But if you don't take any stock in it, there's no use talkin'."
"I'm not denying its existence," said Merritt, "but you know dozens of men have looked for that and no one's found it yet."
"There can't be but one find it," said the prospector. "I aims to be that one. I used to think it was further south. Twenty years ago I spent a lot o' time down at the end of the range. Two seasons ago I got a hunch it was further north. I couldn't get away last year, so here I am. I've been busy on Indian Creek for some years."
"Got a claim there?"
"Got the only jade in the country."
"Was it you located that mine in the Klamath Forest?" queried the Supervisor interestedly. "But that's quite a good deposit. I shouldn't think you'd be prospecting now."
"I didn't for two years. But, pard, it was dead slow, an' so I hired a man to run the works while I hit the old trail again. I don't have to get anybody to grubstake me now. I've been able to boost some of the others who used to help me."
"But what started you looking for Burns's mine? I thought that story had been considered a fake years ago."
"What is a lost mine?" asked Wilbur.
Merritt looked at him a moment thoughtfully, then turned to the prospector.
"You tell the yarn," he said. "You probably know it better than I do."
"I'm not much on talkin'," began the prospector. "Away back in the sixties, after the first gold-rush, Jock Burns, one of the old Forty-niners, started prospectin' in the Sierras. There's not much here, but one or two spots pay. By an' by Burns comes into the settlements with a few little bags of gold dust, an' nuggets of husky size. He blows it all in. He spends free, but he's nowise wasteful, so he stays in town maybe a month.
"Then he disappears from view, an' turns up in less than another month in town with another little bundle of gold dust. It don't take much figurin' to see that where there's a pay streak so easy worked as that, there's a lot more of it close handy. An' so they watches Burns close. Burns, he can't divorce himself from his friends any more than an Indian can from his color. This frequent an' endurin' friendliness preys some on Burns's nature, an' bein' of a bashful disposition, he makes several breaks to get away. But while the boys are dead willin' to see him start for the mountains, they reckon an escort would be an amiable form of appreciation. Also, they ain't got no objection to bein' shown the way to the mine.
"Burns gets a little thin an' petered out under the strain, but time an' agin he succeeds in givin' 'em the slip. Sure enough he lines up a month or two later with some more of the real thing. Finally, one of these here friends gets a little peevish over his frequent failures to stack the deck on Burns. He avers that he'll insure that Burns don't spend any more coin until he divvys up, an' accordin'ly he hands him a couple of bullets where he thinks they'll do most good."
"What did he want to kill him for?" asked Wilbur.
"He didn't aim to kill him prompt," was the reply. "His idee was to trot him down the hill by easy stages, an' gradooally indooce the old skinflint to talk. But his shootin' was a trifle too straight, and Burns jest turns in his toes then an' there. This displeases the sentiment of the community. Then some literary shark gits up and spins a yarn about killin' some goose what laid eggs that assayed a hundred per cent., an' they decides that it would be a humane thing to arrange that Burns shan't go out into the dark without some comfortin' friend beside him. So they dispatches the homicide, neat an' pretty, with the aid of a rope, an' remarks after the doin's is over that Burns is probably a heap less lonesome."
"Well, I should think that would have stopped all chance of further search," said Wilbur.
"It did. But a year or two after that, Burns acquires the habit of intrudin' his memory on the minds of some of these here friends. When it gits noised about that a certain kind of nose-paint is some advantageous toward this particular brand of dream, why, there ain't no way of keeping a sufficient supply in camp. I goes up against her myself, an' wild licker she is. But one by one, the boys all gets to dreamin' that Burns has sorter floated afore them, accordin' to ghostly etiquette, an' pointed a ghostly finger at the ground. Which ain't so plumb exact, for no one supposes a mine to be up in the air. But different ones affirms that they can recognize the features of the landscape which the ghost of Burns frequents. As, however, they all strikes out in different directions, I ain't takin' no stock therein.
"But, two years ago, when I was meanderin' around lookin' for signs, I comes across the bones of an old mule with the remains of a saddle on his back, an' I didn't have any trouble in guessin' it to be Burns's. There was no way of tellin', though, whether he was goin' or returnin' when the mule broke down, or if he was far or near the mine, but, anyhow, it gave some idee of direction, an' I reckon I'm goin' to find it."
"All right," said the Supervisor as they shook up their horses ready to go, "I hope you have good luck and find it."
"I'll let you or Rifle-Eye know as soon as I do," called back the prospector, "an' you folks can pan out some samples. If I find it, we'll make the Yukon look sick."
Merritt laughed as they cantered down the trail to headquarters.
SAND BURYING A PEAR ORCHARD.
Almost too late to save a fine plantation which a suitable wind-break of trees would have guarded.
Photo by U. S. Forest Service.