The Rules of the Game

by White, Stewart Edward

  And then, as summer lays its heats—blessed by the fruit man, the irrigator, the farmer alike—over the great interior valleys, the people divide into two classes. One class, by far the larger, migrates to the Coast. There the trade winds blowing softly from the Pacific temper the semi-tropic sun; the Coast Ranges bar back the furnace-like heat of the interior; and the result is a summer climate even nearer perfection—though not so much advertised—than is that of winter. Here the populace stays in the big winter hotels at reduced rates, or rents itself cottages, or lives in one or the other of the unique tent cities. It is gregarious and noisy, and healthy and hearty, and full of phonographs and a desire to live in bathing suits. Another, and smaller contingent, turns to the Sierras.

  We have here nothing to do with those who attend the resorts such as Tahoe or Klamath; nor yet with that much smaller contingent of hardy and adventurous spirits who, with pack-mule and saddle, lose themselves in the wonderful labyrinth of granite and snow, of cañon and peak, of forest and stream that makes up the High Sierras. But rather let us confine ourselves to the great middle class, the class that has not the wealth nor the desire for resort hotels, nor the skill nor the equipment to explore a wilderness. These people hitch up the farm team, or the grocer's cart, or the family horse, pile in their bedding and their simple cooking utensils, whistle to the dog, and climb up out of the scorching inferno to the coolness of the pines.

  They have few but definite needs. They must have company, water, and the proximity of a store where they can buy things to eat. If there is fishing, so much the better. At any rate there is plenty of material for bonfires. And since other stores are practically unknown above the six-thousand-foot winter limit of habitability, it follows that each lumber-mill is a magnet that attracts its own community of these visitors to the out of doors.

  As early as the beginning of July the first outfit drifted in. Below the mill a half-mile there happened to be a small, round lake with meadows at the upper and lower ends. By the middle of the month two hundred people were camped there. Each constructed his abiding place according to his needs and ideas, and promptly erected a sign naming it. The names were facetiously intended. The community was out for a good time, and it had it. Phonographs, concertinas, and even a tiny transportable organ appeared. The men dressed in loose rough clothes; the women wore sun-bonnets; the girls inclined to bandana handkerchiefs, rough-rider skirts and leggings, cowboy hats caught up at the sides, fringed gauntlet gloves. They were a good-natured, kindly lot, and Bob liked nothing better than to stroll down to the Lake in the twilight. There he found the arrangements differing widely. The smaller ranchmen lived roughly, sleeping under the stars, perhaps, cooking over an open fire, eating from tinware. The larger ranchmen did things in better style. They brought rocking chairs, big tents, chinaware, camp stoves and Japanese servants to manipulate them. The women had flags and Chinese lanterns with which to decorate, hammocks in which to lounge, books to read, tables at which to sit, cots and mattresses on which to sleep. No difference in social status was made, however. The young people undertook their expeditions together: the older folks swapped yarns in the peaceful enjoyment of the forest. Bob found interest in all, for as yet the California ranchman has not lost in humdrum occupations the initiative that brought him to a new country nor the influences of the experience he has gained there. To his surprise several of the parties were composed entirely of girls. One, of four members, was made up of students from Berkeley, out for their summer vacation. Late in the summer these four damsels constructed a pack of their belongings, lashed it on a borrowed mule, and departed. They were gone for a week in the back country, and returned full of adventures over the detailing of which they laughed until they gasped.

  To Bob's astonishment none of the men seemed particularly wrought up over this escapade.

  "They're used to the mountains," he was assured, "and they'll get along all right with that old mule."

  "Does anybody live over there?" asked Bob.

  "No, it's just a wild country, but the trails is good."

  "Suppose they get into trouble?"

  "What trouble? And 'tain't likely they'd all get into trouble to once."

  "I should think they'd be scared."

  "Nothin' to be scared of," replied the man comfortably.

  Bob thought of the great, uninhabited mountains, the dark forests, the immense loneliness and isolation, the thousand subtle and psychic influences which the wilderness exerts over the untried soul. There might be nothing to be scared of, as the man said. Wild animals are harmless, the trails are good. But he could not imagine any of the girls with whom he had acquaintance pushing off thus joyous and unafraid into a wilderness three days beyond the farthest outpost. He had yet to understand the spirit, almost universal among the native-born Californians, that has been brought up so intimately with the large things of nature that the sublime is no longer the terrible. Perhaps this states it a little too pompously. They have learned that the mere absence of mankind is 'nothing to be scared of'; they have learned how to be independent and to take care of themselves. Consequently, as a matter of course, as one would ride in the park, they undertake expeditions into the Big Country.

  Many of these travellers, especially toward the close of the summer, complained bitterly of the scarcity of horse-feed. In the back country where the mountains were high and the wilderness unbroken, they depended for forage on the grasses of the mountain meadows. This year they reported that the cattle had eaten the forage down to the roots. Where usually had been abundance and pleasant camping, now were hard, close lawns, and cattle overrunning and defiling everything. Under the heavy labour of mountain travel the horses fell off rapidly in flesh and strength.

  "We're the public just as much as them cattlemen," declaimed one grizzled veteran waving his pipe. "I come to these mountains first in sixty-six, and the sheep was bad enough then, but you always had some horse meadows. Now they're just plumb overrunning the country. There's thousands and thousands of folks that come in camping, and about a dozen of these yere cattlemen. They got no right to hog the public land."

  With so much approval did this view meet that a delegation went to Plant's summer quarters to talk it over. The delegation returned somewhat red about the ears. Plant had politely but robustly told it that a supervisor was the best judge of how to run his own forest. This led to declamatory denunciation, after the American fashion, but without resulting in further activity. Resentment seemed to be about equally divided between Plant and the cattlemen as a class.

  This resentment as to the latter, however, soon changed to sympathy. In September the Pollock boys stopped overnight at the Lake Meadow on their way out. Their cattle, in charge of the dogs, they threw for the night into a rude corral of logs, built many years before for just that purpose. Their horses they fed with barley hay bought from Merker. Their camp they spread away from the others, near the spring. It was dark before they lit their fire. Visitors sauntering over found George and Jim Pollock on either side the haphazard blaze stolidly warming through flapjacks, and occasionally settling into a firmer position the huge coffee pot. The dust and sweat of driving cattle still lay thick on their faces. A boy of eighteen, plainly the son of one of the other two, was hanging up the saddles. The whole group appeared low-spirited and tired. The men responded to the visitors by a brief nod only. The latter there-upon sat down just inside the circle of lamplight and smoked in silence. Presently Jim arose stiffly, frying pan in hand.

  "It's done," he announced.

  They ate in silence, consuming great quantities of half-cooked flapjacks, chunks of overdone beef, and tin-cupfuls of scalding coffee. When they had finished they thrust aside the battered tin dishes with the air of men too weary to bother further with them. They rolled brown paper cigarettes and smoked listlessly. After a time George Pollock remarked:

  "We ain't washed up."

  The statement resulted in no immediate action. After a few moments more, however, the boy aro
se slowly, gathered the dishes clattering into a kettle, filled the latter with water, and set it in the fire. Jim and his brother, too, bestirred themselves, disappearing in the direction of the spring with a bar of mottled soap, an old towel, and a battered pan. They returned after a few moments, their faces shining, their hair wetted and sleeked down.

  "Plumb too lazy to wash up." George addressed the silent visitors by way of welcome.

  "Drove far?" asked an old ranchman.

  "Twin Peaks."

  "How's the feed?" came the inevitable cowman's question.

  "Pore, pore," replied the mountaineer. "Ain't never seen it so short. My cattle's pore."

  "Well, you're overstocked; that's what's the matter," spoke up some one boldly.

  George Pollock turned his face toward this voice.

  "Don't you suppose I know it?" he demanded. "There's a thousand head too many on my range alone. I've been crowded and pushed all summer, and I ain't got a beef steer fit to sell, right now. My cattle are so pore I'll have to winter 'em on foothill winter feed. And in the spring they'll be porer."

  "Well, why don't you all get together and reduce your stock?" persisted the questioner. "Then there'll be a show for somebody. I got three packs and two saddlers that ain't fatted up from a two weeks' trip in August. You got the country skinned; and that ain't no dream."

  George Pollock turned so fiercely that his listeners shrank.

  "Get together! Reduce our stock!" he snarled, shaken from the customary impassivity of the mountaineer, "It ain't us! We got the same number of cattle, all we mountain men, that our fathers had afore us! There ain't never been no trouble before. Sometimes we crowded a little, but we all know our people and we could fix things up, and so long as they let us be, we got along all right. It don't pay us to overstock. What for do we keep cattle? To sell, don't we? And we can't sell 'em unless they're fat. Summer feed's all we got to fat 'em on. Winter feed's no good. You know that. We ain't going to crowd our range. You make me tired!"

  "What's the trouble then?"

  "Outsiders," snapped Pollock. "Folks that live on the plains and just push in to summer their cattle anyhow, and then fat 'em for the market on alfalfa hay. This ain't their country. Why don't they stick to their own?"

  "Can't you handle them? Who are they?"

  "It ain't they," replied George Pollock sullenly. "It's him. It's the richest man in California, with forty ranches and fifty thousand head of cattle and a railroad or two and God knows what else. But he'll come up here and take a pore man's living away from him for the sake of a few hundred dollars saved."

  "Old Simeon, hey?" remarked the ranchman thoughtfully.

  "Simeon Wright," said Pollock. "The same damn old robber. Forest Reserves!" he sneered bitterly. "For the use of the public! Hell! Who's the public? me and you and the other fellow? The public is Simeon Wright. What do you expect?"

  "Didn't Plant say he was going to look into the matter for next year?" Bob inquired from the other side the fire.

  "Plant! He's bought," returned Pollock contemptuously. "He's never seen the country, anyway; and he never will."

  He rose and kicked the fire together.

  "Good night!" he said shortly, and, retiring to the shadows, rolled himself in a blanket and turned his back on the visitors.

  * * *

  XIII

  The season passed without further incidents of general interest. It was a busy season, as mountain seasons always are. Bob had opportunity to go nowhere; but in good truth he had no desire to do so. The surroundings immediate to the work were rich enough in interest. After the flurry caused by the delay in opening communication, affairs fell into their grooves. The days passed on wings. Almost before he knew it, the dogwood leaves had turned rose, the aspens yellow, and the pines, thinning in anticipation of the heavy snows, were dropping their russet needles everywhere. A light snow in September reminded the workers of the altitude. By the first of November the works were closed down. The donkey engines had been roughly housed in; the machinery protected; all things prepared against the heavy Sierra snows. Only the three caretakers were left to inhabit a warm corner. Throughout the winter these men would shovel away threatening weights of snow and see to the damage done by storms. In order to keep busy they might make shakes, or perhaps set themselves to trapping fur-bearing animals. They would use skis to get about.

  For a month after coming down from the mountain, Bob stayed at Auntie Belle's. There were a number of things to attend to on the lower levels, such as anticipating repairs to flumes, roads and equipment, systematizing the yard arrangements, and the like. Here Bob came to know more of the countryside and its people.

  He found this lower, but still mountainous, country threaded by roads; rough roads, to be sure, but well enough graded. Along these roads were the ranch houses and spacious corrals of the mountain people. Far and wide through the wooded and brushy foothills roamed the cattle, seeking the forage of the winter range that a summer's absence in the high mountains had saved for them. Bob used often to "tie his horse to the ground" and enter for a chat with these people. Harbouring some vague notions of Southern "crackers," he was at first considerably surprised. The houses were in general well built and clean, even though primitive, and Bob had often occasion to notice excellent books and magazines. There were always plenty of children of all sizes. The young women were usually attractive and blooming. They insisted on hospitality; and Bob had the greatest difficulty in persuading them that he stood in no immediate need of nourishment. The men repaid cultivation. Their ideas were often faulty because of insufficient basis of knowledge: but, when untinged by prejudice, apt to be logical. Opinions were always positive, and always existent. No phenomenon, social or physical, could come into their ken without being mulled over and decided upon. In the field of their observations were no dead facts. Not much given to reception of contrary argument or idea they were always eager for new facts. Bob found himself often held in good-humoured tolerance as a youngster when he advanced his opinion; but listened to thirstily when he could detail actual experience or knowledge. The head of the house held patriarchal sway until the grown-up children were actually ready to leave the paternal roof for homes of their own. One and all loved the mountains, though incoherently, and perhaps without full consciousness of the fact. They were extremely tenacious of personal rights.

  Bob, being an engaging and open-hearted youth, soon gained favour. Among others he came to know the two Pollock families well. Jim Pollock, with his large brood, had arrived at a certain philosophical, though watchful, acceptance of life; but George, younger, recently married, and eagerly ambitious, chafed sorely. The Pollocks had been in the country for three generations. They inhabited two places on opposite sides of a cañon. These houses possessed the distinction of having the only two red-brick chimneys in the hills. They were low, comfortable, rambling, vine-clad.

  "We always run cattle in these hills," said George fiercely to Bob, "and got along all right. But these last three years it's been bad. Unless we can fat our cattle on the summer ranges in the high mountains, we can't do business. The grazing on these lower hills you just got to save for winter. You can't raise no hay here. Since they begun to crowd us with old Wright's stock it's tur'ble. I ain't had a head of beef cattle fittin' to sell, bar a few old cows. And if I ain't got cattle to sell, where do I get money to live on? I always been out of debt; but this year I done put a mortgage on the place to get money to go on with."

  "We can always eat beef, George," said his wife with a little laugh, "and miner's lettuce. We ain't the first folks that has had hard times—and got over it."

  "Mebbe not," agreed George, glancing with furrowed brow at a tiny garment on which Mrs. George was sewing.

  Jim Pollock, smoking comfortably in his shirt sleeves before his fire, was not so worried. His youngest slept in his arms; two children played and tumbled on the floor; buxom Mrs. Pollock bustled here and there on household business; the older children sprawled over the
table under the lamp reading; the oldest boy, with wrinkled brow, toiled through the instructions of a correspondence school course.

  "George always takes it hard," said Jim. "I've got six kids, and he'll have one—or at most two—mebbe. It's hard times all right, and a hard year. I had to mortgage, too. Lord love you, a mortgage ain't so bad as a porous plaster. It'll come off. One good year for beef will fix us. We ain't lost nothing but this year's sales. Our cattle are too pore for beef, but they're all in good enough shape. We ain't lost none. Next year'll be better."

  "What makes you think so?" asked Bob.

  "Well, Smith, he's superintendent at White Oaks, you know, he's favourable to us. I seed him myself. And even Plant, he's sent old California John back to look over what shape the ranges are in. There ain't no doubt as to which way he'll report. Old John is a cattleman, and he's square."