VII
On returning to headquarters, as Bob was naturally somewhatincapacitated for manual work, he was given the fire patrol. This meantthat every day he was required to ride to four several "lookouts" on themain ridge, from which points he could spy abroad carefully over vaststretches of mountainous country. One of these was near the meadow ofthe cold spring whence the three of them had first caught sight of theGranite Creek fire. Thence he turned sharp to the north along the ridgetop. The trail led among great trees that dropped away to right and lefton the slopes of the mountain. Through them he caught glimpses of theblue distance, or far-off glittering snow, or unexpected canon depths.The riding was smooth, over undulating knolls. Every once in a whilepassing through a "_puerto suelo_," he looked on either side to tinygreen meadows, from which streams were born. Occasionally he saw a deer,or more likely small bands of the wild mountain cattle that swung alongbefore him, heads held high, eyes staring, nostrils expanded. Then Bobfelt his pony's muscles stiffen beneath his thighs, and saw the animal'slittle ears prick first forward at the cattle, then back for hismaster's commands.
After three miles of this he came out on a broad plateau formed by thejoining of his ridge with that of the Baldy range. Here Granite Creekitself rose, and the stream that flowed by the mill. It was a country ofwild, park-like vistas between small pines, with a floor of granite andshale. Over it frowned the steeps of Baldy, with its massive domes, itssheer precipices, and its scant tree-growth clinging to its sides.Against the sky it looked very rugged, very old, very formidable; andthe sky, behind its yellowed age, was inconceivably blue.
Sometimes Bob rode up into the pass. More often he tied his horse andtook the steep rough trail afoot. The way was guarded by strange,distorted trees, and rocks carved into fantastic shapes. Some of themwere piled high like temples. Others, round and squat, resembled the fatand obscene deities of Eastern religions. There were seals and elephantsand crocodiles and allegorical monsters, some of them as tiny as thegrotesque Japanese carvings, others as stupendous as Egypt. The trailled by them, among them, between them. At their feet clutched snowbush,ground juniper, the gnarled fingers of manzanita, like devotees. Afoaming little stream crept and plunged over bare and splintered rocks.Twisted junipers and the dwarf pines of high elevations crouched likemalignant gnomes amongst the boulders, or tossed their arms like witcheson the crags. This bold and splintered range rose from the softness andmystery of the great pine woods on the lower ridge as a rock rises abovecool water.
The pass itself was not over fifty feet wide. Either side of it likeportals were the high peaks. It lay like the notch of a rifle sightbetween them. Once having gained the tiny platform, Bob would sit downand look abroad over the wonderful Sierra.
Never did he tire of this. At one eye-glance he could comprehend asummer's toilsome travel. To reach yonder snowy peak would consume thegreater part of a week. Unlike the Swiss alps, which he had oncevisited, these mountains were not only high, but wide as well. They hadthe whole of blue space in which to lie. They were like the stars, forwhen Bob had convinced himself that his eye had settled on the farthestpeak, then still farther, taking half-guessed iridescent form out of theblue, another shone.
But his business was not with these distances. Almost below him, soprecipitous is the easterly slope of Baldy, lay canons, pine forests,lesser ridges, streams, the green of meadows. Patiently, piece by piece,he must go over all this, watching for that faint blue haze, thatdeepening of the atmosphere, that almost imagined pearliness against thedistant hills which meant new fire.
"Don't look for _smoke_," California John had told him. "When a firegets big enough for smoke, you can't help but see it. It's the new fireyou want to spot before it gets started. Then it's easy handled. And newfire's almighty easy to overlook. Sometimes it's as hard for a greenhornto see as a deer. Look close!"
So Bob, concentrating his attention, looked close. When he had satisfiedhimself, he turned square around.
From this point of view he saw only pine forests. They covered the ridgebelow him like a soft green mantle thrown down in folds. They softenedthe more distant ranges. They billowed and eddied, and dropped intounguessed depths, and came bravely up to eyesight again far away. Atlast they seemed to change colour abruptly, and a brown haze overcastthem through which glimmered a hint of yellow. This Bob knew was theplain, hot and brown under the July sun. It rose dimly through the mistto the height of his eye. Thus, even at eight thousand feet, Bob seemedto stand in the cup of the earth, beneath the cup of the sky.
The other two lookouts were on the edge of the lower ridge. They gave anopportunity of examining various coves and valleys concealed by theshoulder of the ridge from the observer on Baldy. To reach them Bob rodeacross the plateau of the ridge, through the pine forests, past themill.
Here, if the afternoon was not too far advanced, he used to allowhimself the luxury of a moment's chat with some of his old friends.Welton, coat off, his burly face perspiring and red, always greeted himjovially.
"Spend all your salary this month?" he would ask. "Does the businesskeep you occupied?" And once or twice, seriously, "Bob, haven't you hadenough of this confounded nonsense? You're getting too old to find anygreat fun riding around in this kid fashion pretending to do things.There's big business to be done in this country, and we need you boys tohelp. When I was a youngster I'd have jumped hard at half the chancethat's offered you."
But Bob never would answer seriously. He knew this to be his only chanceof avoiding even a deeper misunderstanding between himself and this manwhom he had learned to admire and love.
Once he met Baker. That young man greeted him as gaily as ever, but intohis manner had crept the shadow of a cold contempt. The stout youth'sstandards were his own, and rigid, as is often the case with people ofhis type. Bob felt himself suddenly and ruthlessly excluded from theranks of those worthy of Baker's respect. A hard quality of character,hitherto unsuspected, stared from the fat young man's impudent blueeyes. Baker was perfectly polite, and suitably jocular; but he had notmuch time for Bob; and soon plunged into a deep discussion with Weltonfrom which Bob was unmistakably excluded.
On one occasion, too, he encountered Oldham riding down the trail fromheadquarters. The older man had nodded to him curtly. His eyes hadgleamed through his glasses with an ill-concealed and frosty amusement,and his thin lips had straightened to a perceptible sneer. All at onceBob divined an enemy. He could not account for this, as he had neverdealt with the man; and the accident of his discovering the gasolinepump on the Lucky Land Company's creeks could hardly be supposed toaccount for quite so malignant a triumph. Next time Bob saw Welton, heasked his old employer about it.
"What have I ever done to Oldham?" he inquired. "Do you know?"
"Oldham?" repeated Welton.
"Baker's land agent."
"Oh, yes. I never happened to run across him. Don't know him at all."
Bob put down Oldham's manifest hatred to pettiness of disposition.
Even from Merker, the philosophic storekeeper, Bob obtained scantcomfort.
"Men like you, with ability, youth, energy," said Merker, "producingnothing, just conserving, saving. Conditions should be such that thepossibility of fire, of trespass, of all you fellows guard against,should be eliminated. Then you could supply steam, energy,accomplishment, instead of being merely the lubrication. It's aneconomic waste."
Bob left the mill-yards half-depressed, half-amused. All his people hadbecome alien. He opposed them in nothing, his work in no way interferedwith their activities; yet, without his volition, and probably withouttheir realization, he was already looked upon as one to be held at arms'length. It saddened Bob, as it does every right-thinking young man whenhe arrives at setting up his own standards of conduct and his own waysof life. He longed with a great longing, which at the same time herealized to be hopeless, to make these people feel as he felt. It gavehim real pain to find that his way of life could never gain anythingbeyond disapproval or incomprehension. It to
ok considerable fortitude toconclude that he now must build his own structure, unsupported. He wasentering the loneliness of soul inseparable from complete manhood.
After such disquieting contacts, the more uncomfortable in that theydefied analysis, Bob rode out to the last lookout and gazed abroad overthe land. The pineclad bluff fell away nearly four thousand feet. Belowhim the country lay spread like a relief map--valley, lesser ranges,foothills, far-off plain, the green of trees, the brown of grass andharvest, the blue of glimpsed water, the haze of heat and greatdistance, the thread-like gossamer of roads, the half-guessed shimmer oftowns and cities in the mirage of summer, all the opulence of earth andthe business of human activity. Millions dwelt in that haze, and beyondthem, across the curve of the earth, hundreds of millions more, eachactuated by its own selfishness or charity, by its own conception of thethings nearest it. Not one in a multitude saw or cared beyond theimmediate, nor bothered his head with what it all meant, or whether itmeant anything. Bob, sitting on his motionless horse high up there inthe world, elevated above it all, in an isolation of pines, close underhis sky, bent his ear to the imagined faint humming of the spheres.Affairs went on. The machine fulfilled its function. All things hadtheir place, the evil as well as the good, the waste as well as thebuilding, balancing like the governor of an engine the opposition offorces. He saw, by the soft flooding of light, rather than by any flashof insight, that were the shortsightedness, the indifference, theignorance, the crass selfishness to be eliminated before yet the world'swork was done, the energies of men, running too easily, would outstripthe development of the Plan, as a machine "races" without its load. Ahumility came to him. His not to judge his fellows by the mere externalsof their deeds. He could only act honestly according to what he saw, ashe hoped others were doing.
"Just so a man isn't _mean_, I don't know as I have any right to despisehim," he summed it all up to his horse. "But," he added cheerfully,"that doesn't prevent my kicking him into the paths of righteousness ifhe tries to steal my watch."
The sun dipped toward the heat haze of the plains. It was from a goldenworld that Bob turned at last to ride through the forest to thecheerfulness of his rude camp.
The Rules of the Game Page 65
