Ide, Wade, and old Christopher cruised, pacing parallels and counting trees. And when they sat down on an outcropping of ledge the young man made so many sagacious observations that Ide’s eyes opened in amazement.
“Where did you learn lumberin’?” he demanded.
“I wasn’t aware that I knew it—not as it is viewed from a practical stand-point,” replied Wade, humbly. “I was going to ask you in a moment if you wouldn’t like to have me keep still so that you and Christopher could talk sense.”
“I never heard better opinions on a stand of timber and a lay of land,” affirmed his partner. “It looks as though you’d been holdin’ out on me,” he added, with a grim smile.
The young man smiled back. There was a certain grateful pride in his expression.
“I know how old woodsmen look at book-learned chaps, Mr. Ide. Pulaski Britt told me once. I was simply trying on you a bit of an experiment with my little knowledge of books. I was waiting to have you and Christopher pull me up short. I’m rather surprised to find that you think what I said was good sense. But after a book-fellow has bumped against practical men like—like Mr. Britt for a time, he begins to distrust his books. It’s simply this way, Mr. Ide: I had a few young men in my high-school who were interested in forestry of the modern sort, and I worked with them to encourage them as much as I could. It is almost impossible for a reading-man in these days not to take an interest in the protection of our forests, for the folks at Washington are making it the great topic of the times.”
“Well,” remarked Ide, with a sigh of appreciation, “I never read a book on forestry in my life, and I never heard of a lumberman in these parts who ever had. But if you can get facts like those you’ve stated out of books, I reckon some of us better spend our winter evenin’s readin’ instead of playin’ pitch pede.” He got up and gave the young man a complimenting palm. “Wade,” he said, earnestly, “I’ll own up that I’ve been a little prejudiced against book-fellows myself. Instead of givin’ an ignorant man the contents of the book—the juice of it, as you might say—-in a way that won’t hurt, they are so anxious to have him know that it’s book-learnin’ they’ve got, they’ll bang him across the face with it, book-covers and all. I like your knowledge, because it’s goin’ to help us in handlin’ this thing we’ve bit off up here. But I’ll be blamed if I don’t like your modesty best of all.”
He picked up his calipers, stuck them under his arm, and started for camp with a haste that showed full confidence in his partner’s ability.
And the next morning he buttoned the camp letters in his coat, and started south for Castonia with the outgoing tote team.