“Tell me first why you quit West Point,” Murray was saying. “I’d have given my left arm for such a chance when I was a young man.”
“Technically speaking, I quit, Mr. Murray, but it was merely a strategic move on my part. I’d rather walk out than be kicked out.”
“Huh?”
“Insubordination, sir. We had a major—an old woman he was, Mr. Murray. Always putting us through our paces in civil engineering. One day he called on me in class to explain just how I would go about raising a hundred-and-fifty-foot flagpole. I said, ‘I would call a sergeant, sir, and I would say to the sergeant, “Sergeant, take a detail of men and raise that hundred-and-fifty-foot flagpole which you see lying there.”’
“The major lost his temper, sir. He accused me of being facetious. I replied that no one ever heard of an officer of the United States army so violating the traditions of his rank as to perform the menial task of raising flagpoles, and that I had clearly stated the method by which I would go about it, just as he had requested me to do. The major further forgot himself, sir. He called me an impudent young puppy. I thereupon saluted and walked out of the classroom. My sojourn at West Point ended shortly thereafter, sir.” Grin and twinkle combined to give Patrick O’Neill a look of personified good humor.
Murray roared with laughter; a circumstance unusual in that office where worry perched like a raven on his file case.
“How about making forest-service maps? Would you call upon the office force and tell them to fill in the blank township maps with the proper data—using a typewriter?”
Patrick O’Neill laughed. “No, I think I’d prefer to make the maps myself. It would be child’s play after the map making at West Point, and help me to familiarize myself with forest boundaries before you assign me to a district. If I can get hold of a couple of surfaced boards and a two-by-four, Mr. Murray, I’ll just knock together a table and set it beside that north window and go to work, sir.”
“Huh! Christine, phone the lumber yard and tell them to let Pat O’Neill have whatever material he wants to pick out, and send it up here immediately. Say it’s for the forest service.”
So this is how Patrick O’Neill, some time of West Point and lately of Black Mesa, Arizona, came into the service of the Yellowstone National Forest.