The trail down the hog's back sloped gradually and cut fifteen miles off the distance to Smelter City by the Valley Road. It was "the show" trail of all the National Forests. When supervisors came to inspect, or visitors from the East who wanted to give accounts of having roughed it without losing an hour of sleep or carrying any scars of stump beds, or when Congressional committees came from Washington for a champagne junket to report on all they hadn't seen—Wayland always conducted them down the hog's back trail that ran along the backbone of the Holy Cross lower slope. He had built the trail, himself; much of it, with his own hands; cut in the side of the forest mould and rock with an outer log as guard rail; wide enough for two horses abreast and zig-zagging enough to break the descent into a gradual drop and afford new vistas at each turn, of the Valley below, of the Mesas above the Rim Rocks across, and of the River looping and sweeping down to Smelter City.
He used to dream, as he rode down the bridle path, of the day coming when all the vast domain of National Forests would be like that trail; not a stick of underbrush or slash as big as your finger; not a stump above eighteen inches high; all the scaled logs piled neat as card board boxes; open park below the resinous cinnamon-smelling lodge-pole line and englemann spruce, hardly a branch lower on the trees than the height of a man; and such a rain of tempered light from the clicking pine needles and whorled spruces as might have come through the rose window of a cathedral. A "show" picture of a properly conducted National Forest has gone through all the magazines and newspapers—It represents the piles of cordwood clean as piles of pencils, the trees standing park-like with vistas and glades and opens beneath the tall pinery. Wayland knew in his own heart that his Forest was better than that "show" picture. No pictures could tell of the pine seedlings stolen from a squirrel cache scattered on the snows; the delicate young pinery coming up among a protecting nursery of birch and poplar and cottonwood. No picture could show "the dead tops" cut out; the "cheesy" rotten heartwood burning on an altar of sacrifice to the deity of the forest; the markings on "the dead tops" and ripe trees and trees with broken top "leaders" for the lumberman to come and harvest. No picture could give the jolly song of the cross-cut saw, the musical ripping of the oiled blade through the huge logs, the odor of the imprisoned sunbeams and flowers from the rain of the yellow saw-dust. No picture could possibly tell you the life story of yon big tree, the warrior of the woods who had beaten down all competitors and enemies and wore his purple cones like the tasseled honor badges of a soldier, with pendulous moving, plumy arms: yet to the eye of the Forester, the life history was there, in the fluted grooved columnar bark, in the knot scars where branches had been discarded to send the main trunk towering above its fellows for light and air, in the wood rings, where a branch had broken and fallen away in the struggle. Why, this noble fellow had been a straggling sapling a thousand years before the birth of Christ! Before Darius led his conquering hosts from realm to realm, or ever Caesar knew life, or Christopher Columbus framed mast and spar to discover America, this sun-crowned monarch had over-topped his fellows, and met the challenge of the blasts of heaven, and drunk of the wines of the dews of an immortal youth, and dieted on the ambrosial ether of gods, and sent his seedling offspring sailing ten thousand airy seas with the wind for master pilot and never a craft but the gypsy parachute of a seed with wings shaken out from the cones purpling to the autumn heat!
Air ships? Had the modern world gone mad over air ships? This fellow had been sending out whole navies of air ships for thousands of years; seeding the mighty mountains; fighting all rivals; travelling on the wings of the wind, and if consumed by fire, then, like the phoenix springing to new life from the ashes, sending forth fresh armadas from the pendant purplish cinnamon-scented cones split open by the heat and so releasing fresh winged seeds!
Wayland used to dream, as he rode down the hog's back trail, of the day coming when all the National Forests would be a great park, the people's playground, yielding bigger annual harvest in ripe lumber than the wheat fields or the corn; yielding income for the State and health for the Nation. Germany did it. Why couldn't America? Why not, indeed; except that she had not exterminated her pirates of the public weal, her freebooters of the wilderness, her slippery fingered pick-pockets, who shouted "I am Uncle Sam," while they picked Uncle Sam's pockets?
Riding down the hog's back, you first left the larches and the junipers below the snow line, the junipers beginning to show their berries, the larches yellowing and shedding their golden shower to the approach of autumn. Then, a turn of the trail; and you were among the hemlocks, funereal and sombre in the distance, wonderfully lightened when you were below them by the sage-green moss and the pale silver blue lining on the under side of the leaves. Another turn or two, there came the feathery sugar pine and the Douglas spruce—the monarchs of the North-Western Forests—plume decked warriors carrying a glint of spears with the scars of a thousand years and a thousand victories in the wrinkled bark, with cones like tassels, and whorls like banners. You could count these whorls, or the scars of the whorls; and you had their years; and the bluish green shade was restful as the repose of age. The smell of them, it was like incense; incense to the deity of the woods; and when the wind blew, every old evergreen harped the age-old melodies of Pan. And, oh, yes, there were warriors scarred from the fight, fellows with corky arms and mottled streaks where the lightning had struck and splintered. Only the cheesy-hearted, the warriors with maggots and grubs manufacturing punk out of heart-wood, for all the world like humans infected by evil thoughts, only the hollow hearted came down to earth with a crash in the fray.
Another turn, you were among the lodge-pole pines and englemann spruce—pure park, Wayland always thought, the delight of a Forester's heart; warm human open park places where you kept looking for deer though you knew there weren't any. In riding down the backbone of the Ridge, Wayland always planned to camp under the lodge pole pines; it was so cool, so rain-proof and sun-proof, with an almost certainty of a mountain stream somewhere near, and if you had eyes to see, a game trail down to the stream. To-night, he went on down to the Brulé, a cross section of the mountain swept by fire years before the Forest Service had taken hold in the days when millmen had been permitted to take out windfall and burn free, and all a millman had to do to become a millionaire in free lumber was set the incendiary fire going to create windfall. In his own district, Wayland knew two men who had become rich in that way; but of course, that was long ago. The Forest men had cleared out the windfall and burn; and now, the deity of the woods, Nature, was at work! By the moonlight, the Ranger could see the pale chalky peach-bloom boles of the ghost birches, and the satiny poplars and cottonwoods, turning gold to the approaching autumn but going down gay, twinkling, laughing fellows to the year's death, actually clapping their hands, shaking with glee, sending leaves down in a rain of gold, which, it is to be hoped, the pixies picked up, the pixies sailing the air in feather parachutes of flower and cone seed! Wayland could see these airy ships between him and the silver moonlight, dropping seeds—seeds—seeds; seeds of fire flower and golden rod and hoary evergreen; shooting them out in tiny catapults; sending them up in dandelion fluff and sky rockets; catching and skimming the wind in airy canoes; tilting the winged sails to a whiff and sailing, sailing, dropping the seeds of life for a thousand years! And beneath the birches with the hundred eyes looking out from the chalky faced bark, and the poplars laughing and shaking with glee, and the cottonwoods showering down a rain of gold in their death; stood the little pines seeded by the wind, nursed by the shade of the quick growing trees. Who would be living and loving and fighting and hating and winning and losing when these little fellows rose to toss and flaunt their victory in the face of the sky? Was that the meaning of life after all, the strength and thew, the valor and might of the fight up? Then, it was not such a bad way with the Nation. The Nation would be the better for this fight. Certain, it was, the better side would win. Would it be the few like the sugar pine towering over its fellows; or the many like the lodge pole pine and englemann spruce standing in serried ranks of equal valor and power?
And if you think he could take that ride without wishing to the "nth" degree that she could be with him to share the joy, then, I assure you, you don't know to what music those gay, twinkling, trembling gold leaves above the Brulé were beating time all night to the whisper of the wind and rustle of the pixy parachutes sailing mid-air.
CHAPTER XXV
THE QUESTION IS—WHICH UNCLE SAM?
Before, it had been a race-reverie; a waiting, puzzled and uncertain for the ways of life. Now, it was the joy of life, the fulfilment for which life had been created and waited expectant; and whether the ways were any plainer in the new light, there was no room for wonder in the fulness of joy. Eleanor was glad the little bundle of tawdry loquacity toddling between them kept up a constant stream of idle boastings on the road to the Mission House, about being "waal-thy" and "Faather shure bein' a gen'leman when they were waal-thy" and "herself as foine as eny loidy in th' land," and more and more of the same, all the way down the Ridge Trail; which was not so fatuous as it sounded, when it voiced the convictions of a great many more people than the little unwashed garlicky Shanty Town dancer. Eleanor wondered if the same arguments applied to the culture of horses and pigs and potatoes—size instead of sort, fulness of stomach not quality of head, area of possession not area of service.