XIII
The season passed without further incidents of general interest. It wasa busy season, as mountain seasons always are. Bob had opportunity to gonowhere; but in good truth he had no desire to do so. The surroundingsimmediate to the work were rich enough in interest. After the flurrycaused by the delay in opening communication, affairs fell into theirgrooves. The days passed on wings. Almost before he knew it, the dogwoodleaves had turned rose, the aspens yellow, and the pines, thinning inanticipation of the heavy snows, were dropping their russet needleseverywhere. A light snow in September reminded the workers of thealtitude. By the first of November the works were closed down. Thedonkey engines had been roughly housed in; the machinery protected; allthings prepared against the heavy Sierra snows. Only the threecaretakers were left to inhabit a warm corner. Throughout the winterthese men would shovel away threatening weights of snow and see to thedamage done by storms. In order to keep busy they might make shakes, orperhaps 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 AuntieBelle'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 knowmore 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 werethe ranch houses and spacious corrals of the mountain people. Far andwide through the wooded and brushy foothills roamed the cattle, seekingthe forage of the winter range that a summer's absence in the highmountains had saved for them. Bob used often to "tie his horse to theground" and enter for a chat with these people. Harbouring some vaguenotions 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 wereusually attractive and blooming. They insisted on hospitality; and Bobhad the greatest difficulty in persuading them that he stood in noimmediate need of nourishment. The men repaid cultivation. Their ideaswere often faulty because of insufficient basis of knowledge: but, whenuntinged by prejudice, apt to be logical. Opinions were always positive,and always existent. No phenomenon, social or physical, could come intotheir ken without being mulled over and decided upon. In the field oftheir observations were no dead facts. Not much given to reception ofcontrary argument or idea they were always eager for new facts. Bobfound himself often held in good-humoured tolerance as a youngster whenhe advanced his opinion; but listened to thirstily when he could detailactual experience or knowledge. The head of the house held patriarchalsway until the grown-up children were actually ready to leave thepaternal 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. Amongothers he came to know the two Pollock families well. Jim Pollock, withhis large brood, had arrived at a certain philosophical, thoughwatchful, acceptance of life; but George, younger, recently married,and eagerly ambitious, chafed sorely. The Pollocks had been in thecountry for three generations. They inhabited two places on oppositesides of a canon. These houses possessed the distinction of having theonly 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, "andgot along all right. But these last three years it's been bad. Unless wecan fat our cattle on the summer ranges in the high mountains, we can'tdo business. The grazing on these lower hills you just _got_ to save forwinter. You can't raise no hay here. Since they begun to crowd us withold Wright's stock it's tur'ble. I ain't had a head of beef cattlefittin' 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 thisyear 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 hardtimes--and got over it."
"Mebbe not," agreed George, glancing with furrowed brow at a tinygarment 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 playedand tumbled on the floor; buxom Mrs. Pollock bustled here and there onhousehold business; the older children sprawled over the table under thelamp reading; the oldest boy, with wrinkled brow, toiled through theinstructions of a correspondence school course.
"George always takes it hard," said Jim. "I've got six kids, and he'llhave one--or at most two--mebbe. It's hard times all right, and a hardyear. I had to mortgage, too. Lord love you, a mortgage ain't so bad asa porous plaster. It'll come off. One good year for beef will fix us. Weain't lost nothing but this year's sales. Our cattle are too pore forbeef, but they're all in good enough shape. We ain't lost none. Nextyear'll be better."
"What makes you think so?" asked Bob.
"Well, Smith, he's superintendent at White Oaks, you know, he'sfavourable to us. I seed him myself. And even Plant, he's sent oldCalifornia John back to look over what shape the ranges are in. Thereain't no doubt as to which way he'll report. Old John is a cattleman,and he's square."
One day Bob found himself belated after a fishing excursion to the upperend of the valley. As a matter of course he stopped over night with thefirst people whose ranch he came to. It was not much of a ranch and it'stwo-room house was of logs and shakes, but the owners were hospitable.Bob put his horse into a ramshackle shed, banked with earth against thewinter cold. He had a good time all the evening.
"I'm going to hike out before breakfast," said he before turning in, "soif you'll just show me where the lantern is, I won't bother you in themorning."
"Lantern!" snorted the mountaineer. "You turn on the switch. It's justto the right of the door as you go in."
So Bob encountered another of the curious anomalies not infrequent tothe West. He entered a log stable in the remote backwoods and turned ona sixteen-candle-power electric globe! As he extended his rides amongthe low mountains of the First Rampart, he ran across many more placeswhere electric light and even electric power were used in the rudesthabitations.
The explanation was very simple; these men had possessed small waterrights which Baker had needed. As part of their compensation theyreceived from Power House Number One what current they required fortheir own use.
Thus reminded, Bob one Sunday visited Power House Number One. It provedto be a corrugated iron structure through which poured a great streamand from which went high-tension wires strung to mushroom-shapedinsulators. It was filled with the clean and shining machinery ofelectricity. Bob rode up the flume to the reservoir, a great lake pennedin canon walls by a dam sixty feet high. The flume itself was ofconcrete, large enough to carry a rushing stream. He made theacquaintance of some of the men along the works. They tramped and rodeback and forth along the right of way, occupied with their insulations,the height of their water, their watts and volts and amperes.Surroundings were a matter of indifference to them. Activity was of thesame sort, whether in the city or in the wilderness. As influences--cityor wilderness--it was all the same to them. They made their owninfluences--which in turn developed a special type of people--among thedelicate and powerful mysteries of their craft. Down through the landthey had laid the narrow, uniform strip of their peculiar activities;and on that strip they dwelt satisfied with a world of their own. Bobsat in a swinging chair talking in snatches to Hicks, between calls onthe telephone. He listened to quick, sharp orders as to men andinstruments, as to the management of water, the undertaking of repairs.These were couched in technical phrases and slang, for the most part. Bymeans of the telephone Hicks seemed to keep in touch not only wi
th theplants in his own district, but also with the activities in Power HousesTwo, Three and Four, many miles away. Hicks had never once, in fouryears, been to the top of the first range. He had had no interest indoing so. Neither had he an interest in the foothill country to thewest.
"I'd kind of like to get back and kill a buck or so," he confessed; "butI haven't got the time."
"It's a different country up where we are," urged Bob. "You wouldn'tknow it for the same state as this dry and brushy country. It has finetimber and green grass."
"I suppose so," said Hicks indifferently. "But I haven't got the time."
Bob rode away a trifle inclined to that peculiar form of smug pity ahotel visitor who has been in a place a week feels for yesterday'sarrival. He knew the coolness of the great mountain.
At this point an opening in the second growth of yellow pines permittedhim a vista. He looked back. He had never been in this part of thecountry before. A little portion of Baldy, framed in a pine-clad cleftthrough the First Range, towered chill, rugged and marvellous in itsgranite and snow. For the first time Bob realized that even soimmediately behind the scene of his summer's work were other higher,more wonderful countries. As he watched, the peak was lost in theblackness of one of those sudden storms that gather out of nothing aboutthe great crests. The cloud spread like magic in all directions. Thefaint roll of thunder came down a wind, damp and cool, sucked from thehigh country.
Bob rounded a bend in the road to overtake old California John, jinglingplacidly along on his beautiful sorrel. Though by no means friendly toany member of this branch of government service, Bob reined his animal.
"Hullo," said he, overborne by an unexpected impulse.
"Good day," responded the old man, with a friendly deepening of thekindly wrinkles about his blue eyes.
"John," asked Bob, "were you ever in those big mountains there?"
"Baldy?" said the Ranger. "Lord love you, yes. I have to cross Baldy'most every time I go to the back country. There's two good passesthrough Baldy."
"Back country!" repeated Bob. "Are there any higher mountains thanthose?"
Old California John chuckled.
"Listen, son," said he. "There's the First Range, and then Stone Creek,and then Baldy. And on the other side of Baldy there's the canon of theJoncal which is three thousand foot down. And then there's the BurroMountains, which is half again as high as Baldy, and all the Burrocountry to Little Jackass. That's a plateau covered with lodge-pole pineand meadows and creeks and little lakes. It's a big plateau, and whenyou're a-ridin' it, you shore seem like bein' in a wide, flat country.And then there's the Green Mountain country; and you drop off five orsix thousand foot into the box canon of the north fork; and then youclimb out again to Red Mountain; and after that is the Pinnacles. ThePinnacles is the Fourth Rampart. After them is South Meadow, and theBoneyard. Then you get to the Main Crest. And that's only if you goplumb due east. North and south there's all sorts of big country. Why,Baldy's only a sort of taster."
Bob's satisfaction with himself collapsed. This land so briefly shadowedforth was penetrable only in summer: that he well knew. And all summerBob was held to the great tasks of the forest. He hadn't the time!Wherein did he differ from Hicks? In nothing save that his right of wayhappened to be a trifle wider.
"Have you been to all these places?" asked Bob.
"Many times," replied California John. "From Stanislaus to the SanBernardino desert I've ridden."
"How big a country is that?"
"It's about four hundred mile long, and about eighty mile wide as thecrow flies--a lot bigger as a man must ride."
"All big mountains?"
"Surely."
"You must have been everywhere?"
"No," said California John, "I never been to Jack Main's Canon. It's toofur up, and I never could get time off to go in there."
So this man, too, the ranger whose business it was to travel far andwide in the wild country, sighed for that which lay beyond his right ofway! Suddenly Bob was filled with a desire to transcend all theseactivities, to travel on and over the different rights of way to whichall the rest of the world was confined until he knew them all and whatlay beyond them. The impulse was but momentary, and Bob laughed athimself as it passed.
"Something hid beyond the ranges," he quoted softly to himself.
Suddenly he looked up, and gathered his reins.
"John," he said, "we're going to catch that storm."
"Surely," replied the old man looking at him with surprise; "just foundthat out?"
"Well, we'd better hurry."
"What's the use? It'll catch us, anyhow. We're shore due to get wet."
"Well, let's hunt a good tree."
"No," said California John, "this is a thunder-storm, and trees is tooscurce. You just keep ridin' along the open road. I've noticed thatlightnin' don't hit twice in the same place mainly because the sameplace don't seem to be thar any more after the first time."
The first big drops of the storm delayed fully five minutes. It did seemfoolish to be jogging peacefully along at a foxtrot while the tempestgathered its power, but Bob realized the justice of his companion'sremarks.
When it did begin, however, it made up for lost time. The rain fell asthough it had been turned out of a bucket. In an instant every runnelwas full. The water even flowed in a thin sheet from the hard surface ofthe ground. The men were soaked.
Then came the thunder in a burst of fury and noise. The lightningflashed almost continuously, not only down, but aslant, and even--Bobthought--_up_. The thunder roared and reverberated and reechoed untilthe world was filled with its crashes. Bob's nerves were steady withyouth and natural courage, but the implacable rapidity with whichassault followed assault ended by shaking him into a sort of confusion.His horse snorted, pricking its ears backward and forward, dancing fromside to side. The lightning seemed fairly to spring into being allabout them, from the substance of the murk in which they rode.
"Isn't this likely to hit us?" he yelled at California John.
"Liable to," came back the old man's reply across the roar of thetempest.
Bob looked about him uneasily. The ranger bent his head to the wind.Star, walking more rapidly, outpaced Bob's horse, until they wereproceeding single file some ten feet apart.
Suddenly the earth seemed to explode directly ahead. A blinding flareswept the ground, a hissing crackle was drowned in an overwhelming roarof thunder. Bob dodged, and his horse whirled. When he had mastered bothhis animal and himself he spurred back. California John had reined inhis mount. Not twenty feet ahead of him the bolt had struck. CaliforniaJohn glanced quizzically over his shoulder at the sky.
"Old Man," he remarked, "you'll have to lower your sights a little, ifyou want to git me."