The Rules of the Game

by White, Stewart Edward

  So as he rode he peered into the scheme of things for the final satisfaction. In what did it lie? Not for him in mere activity, nor in the accomplishment of the world's work, no matter how variedly picturesque his particular share of it might be. He felt his interest ebbing, his spirit restless at its moorings. The days passed. He arose in the morning: and it was night! Four years ago he had come to California. It seemed but yesterday. The days were past, gone, used. Of it all what had he retained? The years had run like sea sands between his fingers, and not a grain of them remained in his grasp. A little money was there, a little knowledge, a little experience—but what toward the final satisfaction, the justification of a man's life? Bob was still too young, too individualistic to consider the doctrine of the day's work well done as the explanation and justification of all. The coming years would pass as quickly, leaving as little behind. Never so poignantly had he felt the insistence of the carpe diem. It was necessary that he find a reality, something he could winnow from the years as fine gold from sand, so that he could lay his hand on the treasure and say to his soul: "This much have I accomplished." Bob had learned well the American lesson: that the idler is to be scorned; that a true man must use his powers, must work; that he must succeed. Now he was taking the next step spiritually. How does a man really use his powers? What is success?

  Troubled by this spiritual unrest, the analysis of which, even the nature of which was still beyond him, he arrived at camp. The familiar objects fretted on his mood. For the moment all the grateful feeling of power over understanding and manipulating this complicated machinery of industry had left him. He saw only the wheel in which these activities turned, and himself bound to it. In this truly Buddhistic frame of mind he returned to his quarters.

  There, to his vague annoyance, he found Baker. Usually the liveliness of that able young citizen was welcome, but to-night it grated.

  "Well, Gentle Stranger," sang out the power man, "what jungle have you been lurking in? I laboured in about three and went all over the works looking for you."

  "I've been over watching the ranger examinations at their headquarters," said Bob. "It's pretty good fun."

  Baker leaned forward.

  "Have you heard the latest dope?" he demanded.

  "What sort?"

  "They're trying to soak us, now. Want to charge us so much per horse power! Now what do you think of that!"

  "Can't you pay it?" asked Bob.

  "Great guns! Why should we pay it?" demanded Baker. "It's the public domain, isn't it? First they take away the settler's right to take up public land in his own state, and now they want to charge, actually charge the public for what's its own."

  But Bob, a new light shining in his eyes, refused to become heated.

  "Well," he asked deliberately, "who is the public, anyhow?"

  Baker stared at him, one chubby hand on each fat knee.

  "Why, everybody," said he; "the people who can make use of it. You and I and the other fellow."

  "Especially the other fellow," put in Bob drily.

  Baker chuckled.

  "It's like any business," said he. "First-come collect at the ticket office for his business foresight. But we'll try out this hold-up before we lie down and roll over."

  "Why shouldn't you pay?" demanded Bob again. "You get your value, don't you? The Forest Service protects your watershed, and that's where you get your water. Why shouldn't you pay for that service, just the same as you pay for a night watchman at your works?"[4]

  "Watershed!" snorted Baker. "Rot! If every stick of timber was cleaned off these mountains, I'd get the water just the same."

  "Baker," said Bob to this. "You go and take a long, long look at your bathroom sponge in action, and then come back and I'll talk to you."

  Baker contemplated his friend for a full ten seconds. Then his fat, pugnacious face wrinkled into a grin.

  "Stung on the ear by a wasp!" he cried, with a great shout of appreciation. "You merry, merry little josher! You had me going for about five minutes."

  Bob let it go at that.

  "I suppose you won't be able to pay over twenty per cent. this next year, then?" he inquired, with an amused expression.

  "Twenty per cent.!" cried Baker rolling his eyes up. "It's as much as I can do to dig up for improvements and bond interest and the preferred."

  "Not to mention the president's salary," amended Bob.

  "But I've got 'em where they live," went on Baker, complacently, without attention to this. "You don't catch Little Willie scattering shekels when he can just as well keep kopecks. They've left a little joker in the pack." He produced a paper-covered copy of the new regulations, later called the Use Book. "They've swiped about everything in sight for these pestiferous reserves, but they encourage the honest prospector. 'Let us develop the mineral wealth,' says they. So these forests are still open for taking up under the mineral act. All you have to do is to make a 'discovery,' and stake out your claim; and there you are!"

  "All the mineral's been taken up long ago," Bob pointed out.

  "All the valuable mineral," corrected Baker. "But it's sufficient, so Erbe tells me, to discover a ledge. Ledges? Hell! They're easier to find than an old maid at a sewing circle! That's what the country is made of—ledges! You can dig one out every ten feet. Well, I've got people out finding ledges, and filing on them."

  "Can you do that?" asked Bob.

  "I am doing it."

  "I mean legally."

  "Oh, this bunch of prospectors files on the claims, and gets them patented. Then it's nobody's business what they do with their own property. So they just sell it to me."

  "That's colonizing," objected Bob. "You'll get nailed."

  "Not on your tintype, it isn't. I don't furnish a cent. They do it all on their own money. Oldham's got the whole matter in hand. When we get the deal through, we'll have about two hundred thousand acres all around the head-waters; and then these blood-sucking, red-tape, autocratic slobs can go to thunder."

  Baker leaned forward impressively.

  "Got to spring it all at once," said he, "otherwise there'll be outsiders in, thinking there's a strike been made—also they'll get inquisitive. It's a great chance. And, Orde, my son, there's a few claims up there that will assay about sixty thousand board feet to the acre. What do you think of it for a young and active lumberman? I'm going to talk it over with Welton. It's a grand little scheme. Wonder how that will hit our old friend, Thorne?"

  Bob rose yawning.

  "I'm tired. Going to turn in," said he. "Thorne isn't a bad sort."

  "He's one of these damn theorists, that's what he is," said Baker; "and he's got a little authority, and he's doing just as much as he can to unsettle business and hinder the legitimate development of the country." He relaxed his earnestness with another grin. "Stung again. That's two rises you got out of me," he remarked. "Say, Orde, don't get persuaded to turn ranger. I hear they've boosted their salaries to ninety a month. Must be a temptation!"

  * * *

  VI

  Bob arose rather early the following Sunday, snatched a hasty breakfast and departed. Baker had been in camp three days. All at once Bob had taken the young man in strong distaste. Baker amused him, commanded his admiration for undoubted executive ability and a force of character so dynamic as to be almost brutal. In a more social environment Bob would still have found him a mighty pleasant fellow, generous, open-hearted, and loyal to his personal friends. But just now his methods chafed on the sensitiveness of Bob's new unrest. Baker was worth probably a couple of million dollars, and controlled ten times that. He had now a fine house in Fremont, where he had chosen to live, a pretty wife, two attractive children and a wide circle of friends. Life was very good to him.

  And yet, in the perversity and the clairvoyance of his mood, Bob thought to see in Baker's life something of that same emptiness of final achievement he faced in his own. This was absurd, but the feeling of it persisted. Thorne, with his miserable eighteen hundred a year, an
d his glowing enthusiasm and quick interest seemed to him more worth while. Why? It was absurd; but this feeling, too, persisted.

  Bob was a healthy young fellow, a man of action rather than of introspection, but now the hereditary twist of his character drove him to attempt analysis. He arrived at nothing. Both Baker and Thorne seemed to stand on one ground—each was satisfied, neither felt that lack of the fulfilling content Bob was so keenly experiencing. But the streak of feminine divination Bob had inherited from his mother made him understand—or made him think to understand—that Baker's satisfaction was taken because he did not see, while Thorne was working with his eyes open and a full sense of values. This vague glimpse Bob gained only partially and at length. It rather opened to him new vistas of spiritual perplexity than offered to him any solution.

  He paced rapidly down the length of the lake—whereon the battered but efficient towing launch lay idle for Sunday—to the Lake Meadow. This was, as usual, surrounded by hundreds of campers of all classes. Bob was known to all of them, of course; and he, in turn, had at least such a nodding acquaintance with them that he could recognize any accretions to their members. Near the lower end of the meadow, beneath a group of a dozen noble firs, he caught sight of newcomers, and so strolled down that way to see what they could be like.

  He found pomp and circumstance. An enclosure had been roped off to exclude the stock grazing at large in the meadow. Three tents had been erected. They were made of a very light, shiny, expensive-looking material with fringes along the walls, flies overhead and stretched in front, sod cloths before the entrances. Three gaily painted wooden rocking chairs, an equally gaudy hammock, a table flanked with benches, a big cooking stove in the rear, canvas pockets hung from the trees—a dozen and one other conveniences and luxuries bespoke the occupants as well-to-do and determined to be comfortable. Two Japanese servants dressed all in white moved silently and mysteriously in the background, a final touch of incongruity in a rough country.

  Before Bob had moved on, two men stepped into view from the interior of one of the tents. They paced slowly to the gaudy rocking chairs and sat down. In their progress they exhibited that peculiar, careless but conscious deliberation of gait affected everywhere by those accustomed to appearing in public. In their seating of themselves, their producing of cigars, their puffings thereon, was the same studied ignoring of observation; a manner which, it must be acknowledged, becomes second nature to those forced to its adoption. It was a certain blown impressiveness, a significance in the smallest movements, a self-importance, in short, too large for the affairs of any private citizen. It is to be seen in those who sit in high places, in clergy, actors off the boards, magistrates, and people behind shop windows demonstrating things to street crowds. Bob's first thought was of amusement that this elaborate unconsciousness of his lone presence should be worth while; his second a realization that his presence or the presence of any one else had nothing to do with it. He wondered, as we all wonder at times, whether these men acted any differently when alone and in utter privacy, whether they brushed their teeth and bathed with all the dignity of the public man.

  The smaller, but evidently more important of these men, wore a complete camping costume. His hat was very wide and stiff of brim and had a woven band of horsehair; his neckerchief was very red and worn bib fashion in the way Bob had come to believe that no one ever wore a neckerchief save in Western plays and the illustrations of Western stories; his shirt was of thick blue flannel, thrown wide open at the throat; his belt was very wide and of carved leather; his breeches were of khaki, but bagged above and fitted close below the knee into the most marvellous laced boots, with leather flaps, belt lacings, and rows of hobnails with which to make tracks. Bob estimated these must weigh at least three pounds apiece. The man wore a little pointed beard and eyeglasses. About him Bob recognized a puzzling familiarity. He could not place it, however, but finally decided he must have carried over a recollection from a tailor's fashion plate of the Correct Thing for Camping.

  The other man was taller, heavier, but not near so impressive. His form was awkward, his face homely, his ears stuck out like wings, and his expression was that of the always-appreciated buffoon.

  Bob was about to pass on, when he noticed that he was not the only spectator of all this ease of manner. A dozen of the campers had gathered, and were staring across the ropes with quite frank and unabashed curiosity. More were coming from all directions. In a short time a crowd of several hundred had collected, and stood, evidently in expectation. Then, and only then, did the small man with the pointed beard seem to become aware of the presence of any one besides his companion. He leaned across to exchange a few words with the latter, after which he laid aside his hat, arose and advanced to the rope barrier on which he rested the tips of his fingers.

  "My friends," he began in a nasal but penetrating voice, that carried without effort to every hearer. "I am not a regularly ordained minister of the gospel. I find, however, that there is none such among us, so I have gathered you here together this morning to hear a few words appropriate to the day. It has pleased Providence to call me to a public position wherein my person has become well known to you all; but that is an accident of the great profession to which I have been called, and I bow my heart in humility with the least and most lowly. I am going to tell you about myself this morning, not because I consider myself of importance, but because it seems to me from my case a great lesson may be drawn."

  He paused to let his eye run over the concourse. Bob felt the gaze, impersonal, impassive, scrutinizing, cold, rest on him the barest appreciable flicker of a moment, and then pass on. He experienced a faint shock, as though his defences had been tapped against.

  "My father," went on the nasal voice, "came to this country in the 'sixties. It was a new country in the hands of a lazy people. It needed development, so my father was happy felling the trees, damming the streams, building the roads, getting possession of the land. That was his job in life, and he did it well, because the country needed it. He didn't bother his head with why he was doing it; he just thought he was making money. As a matter of fact, he didn't make money; he died nearly bankrupt."

  The orator bowed his head for a moment.

  "I might have done the same thing. It's all legitimate business. But I couldn't. The country is being developed by its inhabitants: work of that kind couldn't satisfy me. Why, friends? Because now it would be selfish work. My father didn't know it, but the reason he was happy was because the work he was doing for himself was also work for other people. You can see that. He didn't know it, but he was helping develop the country. But it wouldn't have been quite so with me. The country is developed in that way. If I did that kind of work, I'd be working for myself and nobody else at all. That turns out all right for most people, because they don't see it: they do their duty as citizens and good business men and fathers and husbands, and that ends it. But I saw it. I felt I had to do a work that would support me in the world—but it must be a work that helped humanity too. That is why, friends, I am what I am. That a certain prominence is inevitable to my position is incidental rather than gratifying.

  "So, I think, the lesson to be drawn is that each of us should make his life help humanity, should conduct his business in such a way as to help humanity. Then he'll be happy."

  He stood for a moment, then turned away. The tall, ungainly man with the outstanding ears and the buffoon's face stepped forward and whispered eagerly in his ear. He listened gravely, but shook his head. The tall man whispered yet more vehemently, at great length. Finally the orator stepped back to his place.

  "We are here for a complete rest after exhausting labours," he stated. "We have looked forward for months to undisturbed repose amongst these giant pines. No thought of care was to intrude. But my colleague's great and tender heart has smitten him, and, I am ashamed to say against my first inclination, he urges me to a course which I'd have liked to avoid; but which, when he shows me the way, I realize is the only dece
nt thing. We find ourselves in the midst of a community of some hundreds of people. It may be some of these people are suffering, far from medical or surgical help. If there are any such, and the case is really pressing, you understand, we will be willing, just for common humanity, to do our best to relieve them. And friends," the speaker stepped forward until his body touched the rope, and he was leaning confidentially forth, "it would be poor humanity that would cause you pain or give you inferior treatments. I am happy to say we came to this great virgin wilderness direct with our baggage from White Oaks where we had been giving a two weeks' course of treatments—mainly charitable. We have our instruments and our medicines with us in their packin' cases. If need arises—which I trust it will not—we will not hesitate to go to any trouble for you. It is against our principles to give anything but our best. You will suffer no pain. But it must be understood," he warned impressively. "This is just for you, our neighbours! We don't want this news spread to the lumber camps and over the countryside. We are here for a rest. But we cannot be true to our high calling and neglect the relieving of pain."

  The man bowed slightly, and rejoined his companion to whom he conversed low-voiced with absolute unconsciousness of the audience he had just been addressing so intimately. The latter hesitated, then slowly dispersed. Bob stood, his brows knit, trying to recall. There was something hauntingly familiar about the whole performance. Especially a strange nasal emphasis on the word "pain" struck sharply a chord in his recollection. He looked up in sudden enlightenment.