When next Bob was able to visit the Upper Camp, he found Thorne fully established. He rode in from the direction of Rock Creek, and so through the pasture and by the back way. In the tiny potato and garden patch behind the house he came upon a woman wielding a hoe.
Her back was toward him, and a pink sunbonnet, freshly starched, concealed all her face. The long, straight lines of her gown fell about a vigorous and supple figure that swayed with every stroke of the hoe. Bob stopped and watched her. There was something refreshing in the eagerness with which she attacked the weeds, as though it were less a drudgery than a live interest which it was well to meet joyously. After a moment she walked a few steps to another row of tiny beans. Her movements had the perfect grace of muscular control; one melted, flowed, into the other. Bob's eye of the athlete noted and appreciated this fact. He wondered to which of the mountain clans this girl belonged. Vigorous and breezy as were the maidens of the hills, able to care for themselves, like the paladins of old, afoot or ahorse, they lacked this grace of movement. He stepped forward.
"I beg pardon," said he.
The girl turned, resting the heel of her hoe on the earth, and both hands on the end of its handle. Bob saw a dark, oval countenance, with very red cheeks, very black eyes and hair, and an engaging flash of teeth. The eyes looked at him as frankly as a boy's, and the flash of teeth made him unaffectedly welcome.
"Is Mr. Thorne here?" asked Bob.
"Why, no," replied the girl; "but I'm Mr. Thorne's sister. Won't I do?"
She was leisurely laying aside her hoe, and drawing the fringed buckskin gauntlets from her hands. Bob stepped gallantly forward to relieve her of the implement.
"Do?" he echoed. "Why, of course you'll do!"
She stopped and looked him full in the face, with an air of great amusement.
"Did you come to see Mr. Thorne on business?" she asked.
"No," replied Bob; "just ran over to see him."
She laughed quietly.
"Then I'm afraid I won't do," she said, "for I must cook dinner. You see," she explained, "I'm Mr. Thorne's clerk, and if it were business, I might attend to it."
Bob flushed to the ears. He was ordinarily a young man of sufficient self-possession, but this young woman's directness was disconcerting. She surveyed his embarrassment with approving eyes.
"You might finish those beans," said she, offering the hoe. "Of course, you must stay to dinner, and I must go light the fire."
Bob finished the beans, leaned the hoe up against the house, and went around to the front. There he stopped in astonishment.
"Well, you have changed things!" he cried.
The stuffy little shed kitchen was no longer occupied. A floor had been laid between the bases of four huge trees, and walls enclosing three sides to the height of about eight feet had been erected. The affair had no roof. Inside these three walls were the stove, the kitchen table, the shelves and utensils of cooking. Miss Thorne, her sunbonnet laid aside from her glossy black braids, moved swiftly and easily here and there in this charming stage-set of a kitchen. About ten feet in front of it, on the pine needles, stood the dining table, set with white.
I beg pardon, said he. The girl turned
The girl nodded brightly to Bob.
"Finished?" she inquired. She pointed to the water pail: "There's a useful task for willing hands."
Bob filled the pail, and set it brimming on the section of cedar log which seemed to be its appointed resting place.
"Thank you," said the girl. Bob leaned against the tree and watched her as she moved here and there about the varied business of cooking. Every few minutes she would stop and look upward through the cool shadows of the trees, like a bird drinking. At times she burst into snatches of song, so brief as to be unrecognizable.
"Do you like sticks in your food?" she asked Bob, as though suddenly remembering his presence, "and pine needles, and the husks of pine nuts, and other débris? because that's what the breezes and trees and naughty little squirrels are always raining down on me."
"Why don't you have the men stretch you a canvas?" asked Bob.
"Well," said the girl, stopping short, "I have considered it. I no more than you like unexpected twigs in my dough. But you see I do like shadows and sunlight and upper air and breezes in my food. And you can't have one without the other. Did you get all the weeds out?"
"Yes," said Bob. "Look here; you ought not to have to do such work as that."
"Do you think it will wear down my fragile strength?" she asked, looking at him good-humouredly. "Is it too much exercise for me?"
"No—" hesitated Bob, "but—"
"Why, bless you, I like to help the babies to grow big and green," said she. "One can't have the theatre or bridge up here; do leave us some of the simple pleasures."
"Why did you want me to finish for you then?" demanded Bob shrewdly.
She laughed.
"Young man," said she, "I could give you at least ten reasons," with which enigmatic remark she whipped her apron around her hand and whisked open the oven door, where were displayed rows of beautifully browned biscuits.
"Nevertheless----" began Bob.
"Nevertheless," she took him up, raising her face, slightly flushed by the heat, "all the men-folks are busy, and this one woman-folk is not harmed a bit by playing at being a farmer lassie."
"One of the rangers could do it all in a couple of hours."
"The rangers are in the employ of the United States Government, and this garden is mine," she stated evenly. "How could I take a Government employee to work on my property?"
"But surely Mr. Thorne—"
"Ashley, bless his dear old heart, takes beans for granted, as something that happens on well-regulated tables."
She walked to the edge of the kitchen floor and looked up through the trees. "He ought to be along soon now. I hope so; my biscuits are just on the brown." She turned to Bob, her eyes dancing: "Now comes the exciting moment of the day, the great gamble! Will he come alone, or will he bring a half-dozen with him? I am always ready for the half-dozen, and as a consequence we live in a grand, ingenious debauch of warmed-ups and next-days. You don't know what good practice it is; nor what fun! I've often thought I could teach those cooks of Marc Antony's something—you remember, don't you, they used to keep six dinners going all at different stages of preparation because they never knew at what hour His High-and-mightiness might choose to dine. Or perhaps you don't know? Football men don't have to study, do they?"
"What makes you think I'm a football man?" grinned Bob; "generally bovine expression?"
"Not know the great Bob Orde!" cried the girl. "Why, not one of us but had your picture, generally in a nice gilt shrine, butalwayswith violets before it."
But on this ground Bob was sure.
"You have been reading a ten-cent magazine," he admonished her gravely. "It is unwise to take your knowledge of the customs in girls' colleges from such sources."
From the depths of the forest eddied a cloud of dust. Miss Thorne appraised it carefully.
"Warmed-overs to-night," she pronounced. "There's no more than two of them."
The accuracy of her guess was almost immediately verified by the appearance of two riders. A moment later Thorne and California John dismounted at the hitching rail, some distance removed among the azaleas, and came up afoot. The younger man had dropped all his dry, official precision, his incisive abruptness, his reticence. Clad in the high, laced cruisers, the khaki and gray flannel, the broad, felt hat and gay neckerchief of what might be called the professional class of out-of-door man, his face glowing with health and enthusiasm, he seemed a different individual.
"Hullo! Hullo!" he cried out a joyous greeting as he drew nearer; "I couldn't bring you much company to-day, Amy. But I see you've found some. How are you, Orde? I'm glad to see you."
He and California John disappeared behind the shed, where the wash basin was; while Amy, with deftness, rearranged the table to accord with the numbers who would sit down to it.
The meal in the open was most delightful; especially to Bob, after his long course of lumber-camp provender. The deep shadows shifted slowly across the forest floor. Sparkles of sunlight from unexpected quarters touched gently in turn each of the diners, or glittered back from glass or linen. Occasionally a wandering breeze lifted a corner of the tablecloth and let it fall, or scurried erratically across the table itself. Occasionally, too, a pine needle, a twig, a leaf would zigzag down through the air to fall in some one's coffee or glass or plate. Birds flashed across the open vault of this forest room—brilliant birds, like the Louisiana Tanager; sober little birds like the creepers and nuthatches. Circumspect and reserved whitecrowns and brush tohees scratched and hopped silently over the forest litter. Once a swift falcon, glancing like a shadowy death, slanted across the upper spaces. The food was excellent, and daintily served.
"I am proud of my blue and white enamel-ware," Miss Thorne told Bob; "it's so much better than tin or this ugly gray. And that glass pitcher I got with coupons from the coffee packages."
"You didn't get these with coupons?" said Bob, lifting one of the massive silver forks.
"No," she admitted. "That is my one foolishness. All the rest does not matter, but I can't get along without my silver."
"And a great nuisance it is to those who have to move as we move," put in Ashley Thorne.
The forest officers took up their broken conversation. Bob found himself a silent but willing listener. He heard discussion of policies, business dealings, plans that widened the horizon of what the Forest had meant to him. In these discussions the girl took an active and intelligent part. Her opinion seemed to be accepted seriously by both the men, as one who had knowledge, and indeed, her grasp of details seemed as comprehensive as that of the men themselves.
Finally Thorne pushed his chair back and began to fill his pipe.
"Anybody here to-day?" he asked.
The girl ran over rapidly a half-dozen names, sketching briefly the business they had brought. Then, one after the other, she told the answers she had made to them. This one had been given blanks, forms and instructions. That one had been told clearly that he was in the wrong, and must amend his ways. The other had been advised but tentatively, and informed that he must see the Supervisor personally. To each of these Thorne responded by a brief nod, puffing, meanwhile, on his pipe.
"All right?" she asked, when she had finished.
"All right but one," said he, removing his pipe at last. "I don't think it will be advisable to let Francotti have what he wants."
"Pull the string, then!" cried the girl gaily.
Thorne turned to California John in discussion of the Francotti affair.
"What do you mean by 'pull the string'?" Bob took the occasion to inquire.
"I settle a lot of these little matters that aren't worth bothering Ashley with," she explained, "but I tie a string to each of my decisions. I always make them 'subject to the Supervisor's approval.' Then if I do wrong, all I have to do is to write the man and tell him the Supervisor does not approve."
"I shouldn't think you'd like that," said Bob.
"Like what?"
"Why, it sort of puts you in a hole, doesn't it? Lays all the blame on you."
She laughed in frank amusement.
"What of it?" she challenged.
"Any letters?" Thorne asked abruptly. "Morton brought mail this morning, didn't he?"
"Nothing wildly important—except that they're thinking of adopting a ranger uniform."
"A uniform!" snorted California John, rearing his old head.
"Oh, yes, I've heard of that," put in Thorne instantly. "It's to be a white pith helmet with a green silk scarf on it; red coat with gold lace, and white, English riding breeches with leather leggins. Don't you think old John would look sweet in that?" he asked Bob.
But the old man refused to be drawn out.
"Supervisors same; but with a gold pompon on top the helmet," he observed. "Whatisthe dang thing, anyway, Amy?" he asked.
"Dark green whipcord, green buttons, gray hat, military cut."
"Not bad," said Thorne.
"About one fifty-mile ride and one fire would make that outfit look like a bunch of mildewed alfalfa. Blue jeans is about my sort of uniform," observed John.
"I don't believe we'd be supposed to wear it on range," suggested Thorne. "Only in town and official business." He turned to the girl again: "May have to go over Baldy to-morrow," said he, "so we'll run off those letters."
She arose and saluted, military fashion. The two disappeared in the tiny box-office, whence presently came the sound of Thorne's voice in dictation.
California John knocked the ashes from his pipe.
"Get your apron on, sonny," said he.
He tested the water on the stove and slammed out a commodious dish-pan.
"Glasses first; then silver; and if you break anything, I'll bash in your fool head. There's going to be some style to this dishwashing. I used to slide 'em all in together and let her go. But that ain't the way here. She knows four aces and the jolly joker better than that. Glasses first."
They washed and wiped the dishes, and laid them carefully away.
"She's a little wonder," said California John, nodding at the office, "and there ain't none of the boys but helps all they can."
Thorne called the old man by name, and he disappeared into the office. A moment later the girl emerged, smoothing back her hair with both hands. She stepped immediately to the little kitchen.
"Thank you," said she. "That helps."
"It was old John," disclaimed Bob. "I'm ashamed to say I should never have thought of it."
The girl nodded carelessly.
"Where did you learn stenography?" asked Bob.
"Oh, I got that out of a ten-cent magazine too." She sat on a bench, looked up at the sky through the trees, and drew a deep breath.
"You're tired," said Bob.
"Not a bit," she denied. "But I don't often get a chance to just look up."
"You seem to do the gardening, the cooking, the housework, the clerical work—you don't do the laundry, too, do you?" demanded Bob ironically.
"You noticed those miserable khakis!" cried Amy with a gesture of dismay. "Ashley," she called, "change those khakis before you go out."
"Yes, mama," came back a mock childish voice.
"What's your salary?" demanded Bob bluntly, nodding toward the office.
"What?" she asked, as though puzzled.
"Didn't you say you were the clerk?"
"Oh, I see. I just help Ashley out. He couldneverget through the field work and the office work both."
"Doesn't the Service allow him a clerk?"
"Not yet; but it will in time."
"What is Mr. Thorne's salary?"
"Well, really----"
"Oh, I beg pardon," cried Bob flushing; "I just meant supervisors' salaries, of course. I wasn't prying, really. It's all a matter of public record, isn't it?"
"Of course." The girl checked herself. "Well, it's eighteen hundred—and something for expenses."
"Eighteen hundred!" cried Bob. "Do you mean to say that thetwoof you give all your time for that! Why, we pay a good woods foreman pretty near that!"
"And that's all you do pay him," said the girl quietly. "Money wage isn't the whole pay for any job that is worth doing."
"Don't understand," said Bob briefly.
"We belong to the Service," she stated with a little movement of pride. "Those tasks in life which give a high moneyed wage, generally give only that. Part of our compensation is that we belong to the Service; we are doing something for the whole people, not just for ourselves." She caught Bob's half-smile, more at her earnestness than at her sentiment, and took fire. "You needn't laugh!" she cried. "It's small now, but that's because it's the beginning, because we have the privilege of being the forerunners, the pioneers! The time will come when in this country there will be three great Services—the Army, the Navy, the Forest; and an officer in the one will be as much respected and looked up to as the others! Perhaps more! In the long times of peace, while they are occupied with their eternal Preparation, we shall be labouring at Accomplishment."
She broke off abruptly.
"If you don't want to get me started, don't be superior," she ended, half apologetic, half resentful.
"But I do want to get you started," said Bob.
"It's amusing, I don't doubt."
"Not quite that: it's interesting, and I am no longer bewildered at the eighteen hundred a year—that is," he quoted a popular song, "'if there are any more at home like you.'"
She looked at him humorously despairing.
"That's just like an outsider. There are plenty who feel as I do, but they don't say so. Look at old California John, at Ross Fletcher, at a half-dozen others under your very nose. Have you ever stopped to think why they have so long been loyal? I don't suppose you have, for I doubt if they have. But you mark my words!"
"All right, Field Marshal—or is it 'General'?" said Bob.
She laughed.
"Just camp cook," she replied good-humouredly.
The sun was slanting low through the tall, straight trunks of the trees. Amy Thorne arose, gathered a handful of kindling, and began to rattle the stove.
"I am contemplating a real pudding," she said over her shoulder.
Bob arose reluctantly.
"I must be getting on," said he.
They said farewell. At the hitching rail Thorne joined him.
"I'm afraid I'm not very hospitable," said the Supervisor, "but that mustn't discourage you from coming often. We'll be better organized in time."
"It's mighty pleasant over here; I've enjoyed myself," said Bob, mounting.
Thorne laid his hand on the young man's knee.
"I wish we could induce you old-timers to come to our way of thinking," said he pleasantly.
"How's that?" asked Bob.
"Your slash is in horrible shape."
"Our slash!" repeated Bob in a surprised tone. "How?"
"It's a regular fire-trap, the way you leave it tangled up. It wouldn't cost you much to pile the tops and leave the ground in good shape."
"Why, it's just like any other slash!" protested Bob. "We're logging just as everybody always logs!"
"That's just what I object to. And when you fell a tree or pull a log to the skids, I do wish we could induce you to pay a little attention to the young growth. It's a little more trouble, sometimes, to go around instead of through, but it's worth it to the forest."
Bob's brows were bent on the Supervisor in puzzled surprise. Thorne laughed, and slapped the young man's horse on the flanks to start him.
"You think it over!" he called.
A half-hour's ride took Bob to the clearing where the logging crews had worked the year before. Here, although the hour was now late, he reined in his horse and looked. It was the first time he had ever really done so. Heretofore a slashing had been as much a part of the ordinary woodland landscape as the forest itself.
He saw then the abattis of splintered old trunks, of lopped limbs, and entangled branches, piled up like jackstraws to the height of even six or eight feet from the ground; the unsightly mat of sodden old masses of pine needles and cedar fans; the hundreds of young saplings bent double by the weight of débris, broken square off, or twisted out of all chance of becoming straight trees in their age; the long, deep, ruthless furrows where the logs had been dragged through everything that could stand in their way; the few trees left standing, weak specimens, undesirable species, the culls of the forest, further scarred where the cruel steel cables had rasped or bitten them. He knew by experience the difficulty of making a way, even afoot, through this tangle. Now, under the influence of Thorne's suggestion, he saw them as great piles of so much fuel, laid as though by purpose for the time when the evil genius of the forest should desire to warm himself.
Bob was finally late for supper, which he ate hastily and without much appetite. After finishing the meal, he hunted up Welton. He found the lumberman tilted back in a wooden armchair, his feet comfortably elevated to the low rail about the stove, his pipe in mouth, his coat off, and his waistcoat unbuttoned. At the sight of his homely, jolly countenance, Bob experienced a pleasant sensation of slipping back from an environment slightly off-focus to the normal, accustomed and real. Nevertheless, at the first opportunity, he tested his new doubts by Welton's common sense.
"I rode through our slash on 18," he remarked. "That's an awful mess."
"Slashes are," replied Welton succinctly.
"If the thing gets afire it will make a hot blaze."
"Sure thing," agreed Welton. "But we've never had one go yet—at least, while we were working. There's men enough to corral anything like that."
"But we've always worked in a wet country," Bob pointed out. "Here it's dry from April till October."
"Have to take chances, then; and jump on a fire quick if it starts," said Welton philosophically.
"These forest men advise certain methods of obviating the danger," Bob suggested.
"Pure theory," returned Welton. "The theory's a good one, too," he added. "That's where these college men are strong—only it isn't practical. They mean well enough, but they haven't the knowledge. When you look at anything broad enough, it looks easy. That's what busts so many people in the lumber business." He rolled out one of his jolly chuckles. "Lumber barons!" he chortled. "Oh, it's easy enough! Any mossback can make money lumbering! Here's your stumpage at a dollar a thousand, and there's your lumber at twenty! Simplest thing in the world. Just the same there are more failures in the lumber business than in any other I know anything about. Why is it?"
"Economic waste," put in Merker, who was leaning across the counter.
"Lack of experience," said Bob.
"A little of both," admitted Welton; "but it's more because the business is made up of ten thousand little businesses. You have to conduct a cruising business, and a full-fledged real estate and mortgage business; you have to build houses and factories, make roads, build railroads; you have to do a livery trade, and be on the market for a thousand little things. Between the one dollar you pay for stumpage and the twenty dollars you get for lumber lies all these things. Along comes your hardware man and says, Here, why don't you put in my new kind of spark arrestor; think how little it costs; what's fifty dollars to a half-million-dollar business? The spark arrester's a good thing all right, so you put it in. And then there's maybe a chance to use a little paint and make the shanties look like something besides shanties; that don't cost much, either, to a half-million-dollar business. And so on through a thousand things. And by and by it's costing twenty dollars and one cent to get your lumber to market; and it's B-U-S-T, bust!"
"That's economic waste," put in Merker.
"Or lack of experience," added Bob.
"No," said Welton, emphasizing his point with his pipe;"it's not sticking to business!It's not stripping her down to the bare necessities! It's going in for frills! When you get to be as old as I am, you learn not to monkey with the band wagon."
His round, red face relaxed into one of his good-humoured grins, and he relit his pipe.
"That's the trouble with this forestry monkey business. It's all right to fool with, if you want fooling. So's fancy farming. But it don't pay. If you are playing, why, it's all right to experiment. If you ain't, why, it's a good plan to stick to the methods of lumbering. The present system of doing things has been worked out pretty thorough by a lot of pretty shrewd business men. And itworks!"
Bob laughed.
"Didn't know you could orate to that extent," he gibed. "Sic'em!"
Welton grinned a trifle abashed. "You don't want to get me started, then," said he.
"Oh, but I do!" Bob objected, for the second time that day.
"Now this slashing business," went on the old lumberman in a more moderate tone. "When the millennium comes, it would be a fine thing to clear up the old slashings." He turned suddenly to Bob. "How long do you think it would take you with a crew of a dozen men to cut and pile the waste stuff in 18?" he inquired.
Bob cast back the eye of his recollection to the hopeless tangle that cumbered the ground.
"Oh, Lord!" he ejaculated; "don't ask me!"
"If you were running a business would you feel like stopping work and sending your men—whom you are feeding and paying—back there to pile up that old truck?"
Bob's mind, trained to the eager hurry of the logging season, recoiled from this idea in dismay.
"I should say not!" he cried. Then as a second thought he added: "But what they want is to pile the tops while the work is going on."
"It takes just so much time to do so much work," stated Welton succinctly, "and it don't matter whether you do it all at once, or try to fool yourself by spraddling it out."
He pulled strongly at his pipe.
"Forest Reserves are all right enough," he acknowledged, "and maybe some day their theories will work out. But not now; not while taxes go on!"
One day, not over a week later, Bob working in the woods, noticed California John picking his way through the new slashing. This was a difficult matter, for the fresh-peeled logs and the debris of the tops afforded few openings for the passage of a horse. The old man made it, however, and finally emerged on solid ground, much in the fashion of one climbing a bank after an uncertain ford. He caught sight of Bob.
"You fellows can change the face of the country beyant all belief," announced the old man, pushing back his hat. "You're worse than snow that way. I ought to know this country pretty well, but when I get down into one of your pesky slashings, I'm lost for a way out!"
Bob laughed, and exchanged a few commonplace remarks.
"If you can get off, you better come over our way," said California John, as he gathered up his reins. "We're holding ranger examinations—something new. You got to tell what you know these days before you can work for Uncle Sam."
"What do you have to know?" asked Bob.
"Come over and find out."
Bob reflected.
"I believe I will," he decided. "There's nothing to keep me here."
Accordingly, early next morning he rode over to the Upper Camp. Outside, near the creek, he came upon the deserted evidences of a gathering of men. Bed rolls lay scattered under the trees, saddles had been thrown over fallen trunks, bags of provisions hung from saplings, cooking utensils flanked the smouldering remains of a fire which was, however, surrounded by a scraped circle of earth after the careful fashion of the mountains. Bob's eye, by now practised in the refinements of such matters, ran over the various accoutrements thus spread abroad. He estimated the number of their owners at about a score. The bedroll of the cowman, the "turkey" of the lumber jack, the quilts of the mountaineer, were all in evidence; as well as bedding plainly makeshift in character, belonging to those who must have come from a distance. A half-dozen horses dozed in an improvised fence-corner corral. As many more were tied to trees. Saddles, buckboards, two-wheeled carts, and even one top buggy represented the means of transportation.
Bob rode on through the gate to headquarters.. This he found deserted, except for Amy Thorne. She was engaged in wiping the breakfast dishes, and she excitedly waved a towel at the young man as he rode up.
"A godsend!" she cried. "I'm just dancing with impatience! They've been gone five minutes! Come help me finish!"
Bob fastened his horse, rolled back his sleeves, and took hold with a will.
"Where's your examining board, and your candidates?" he inquired. "I thought I was going to see an examination."
"Up the Meadow Trail," panted the girl. "Don't stop to talk. Hurry!"
They hurried, to such good purpose, that shortly they were clambering, rather breathless, up the steeps of the Meadow Trail. This led to a flat, upper shelf or bench in which, as the name implied, was situated a small meadow. At the upper end were grouped twenty-five men, closely gathered about some object.
Amy and Bob plunged into the dew-heavy grasses. The men proved to be watching Thorne, who was engaged in tacking a small target on the stub of a dead sugar pine. This accomplished, he led the way back some seventy-five or eighty paces.
"Three shots each," said he, consulting his note-book. "Off-hand. Hicks!"
The man so named stepped forward to the designated mark, sighted his piece carefully, and fired.
"Do I get each shot called?" he inquired; but Thorne shook his head.
"You ought to know where your guns shoot," said he.
After the third shot, the whole group went forward to examine the target. Thorne marked the results in his note-book, and called upon the next contestant.
While the shooting went on, Bob had leisure to examine the men. They numbered, as he had guessed, about twenty. Three were plainly from the towns, for they wore thin shoes, white shirts, and clothes of a sort ill adapted to out-of-door work in the mountains. Two others, while more appropriately dressed in khakis and high boots, were as evidently foreign to the hills. Bob guessed them recent college graduates, perhaps even of some one of the forestry schools. In this he was correct. The rest were professional out-of-door men. Bob recognized two of his own woods-crew—good men they were, too. He nodded to them. A half-dozen lithe, slender youths, handsome and browned, drew apart by themselves. He remembered having noticed one of them as a particularly daring rider after Pollock's cattle the fall before; and guessed his companions to be of the same breed. Among the remainder, two picturesque, lean, slow and quizzical prospectors attracted his particular attention.
Most of these men were well practised in the use of the rifle, but evidently not to exhibiting their skill in company. What seemed to Bob a ratherexaggeratedearnestness oppressed them. The shooting, with two exceptions, was not good. Several, whom Bob strongly suspected had many a time brought down their deer on the run, even missed the target entirely! It was to be remarked that each contestant, though he might turn red beneath his tan, took the announcement of the result in silence.
The two notable exceptions referred to were strangely contrasted. The elder was one of the prospectors. He was armed with an ancient 45-70 Winchester, worn smooth and shiny by long carrying in a saddle holster. This arm was fitted with buckhorn sights of the old mountain type. When it exploded, its black powder blew forth a stunning detonation and volume of smoke. Nevertheless, of the three bullets, two were within the tiny black Thorne had seen fit to mark as bullseye, and the other clipped close to its edge. A murmur of admiration went up from the bystanders. Even eliminating the unaccountable nervousness that had thrown so many shots wild, it seemed improbable that any of the other contestants felt themselves qualified to equal this score.
"Good shooting," whispered Bob to Amy. "I doubt if I could make out that bullseye through sights."
The other exception, whose turn came somewhat later, was one of the Easterners mentioned as a graduate of the forestry school. This young man, not over twenty-two years of age, was an attractive youngster, with refined features, and engaging dark-blue eyes. His arm was the then latest model, a 33-calibre high power, fitted with aperture sights. This he manipulated with great care, adjusting it again and again; and fired with such deliberation that some of the spectators moved impatiently. Nevertheless, the target, on examination, showed that he had duplicated the prospector's score. To be sure, the worst shot had not cut quite as close to the bull as had that of the older man, but on the other hand, those in the black were slightly nearer the centre. It was generally adjudged a good tie.
"Well, youngster!" cried the prospector, heartily, "we're the cocks of the walk! If you can handle the other weep'n as well, I'll give you my hand for a good shot."
The young man smiled shyly, but said nothing.
The distance was now shortened to something under twenty paces, and a new target substituted for the old. The black in this was fully six inches in diameter.
"Five shots with six-shooter," announced Thorne briefly.
"A man should hit a dollar twice in five at that distance," muttered the prospector. Thorne caught the remark.
"You hit that five out of five, and I'll forgive you," said he curtly. "Hicks, you begin."
The contest went forward with varying success. Not over half of the men were practised with the smaller arm. Some very wild work was done. On the other hand, eight or ten performed very creditably, placing their bullets in or near the black. Indeed, two succeeded in hitting the bullseye four times out of five. Every man took the utmost pains with every shot.
"Now, Ware," said Thorne, at last, "step up. You've got to make good that five out of five to win."
The prospector stood forward, at the same time producing from an open holster blackened by time one of the long-barrelled single-action Colt's 45's, so universally in use on the frontier. He glanced carelessly toward the mark, grinned back at the crowd, turned, and instantly began firing. He shot the five shots without appreciable sighting before each, as fast as his thumb could pull back the long-shanked hammer. The muzzle of the weapon rose and fell with a regularity positively mechanical, and the five shots had been delivered in half that number of seconds.
"There's your five," said he, carelessly dropping his gun back into its holster.
The five bullets were found to be scattered within the six-inch black.
The concourse withdrew to give space for the next contestant. Silence fell as the man was taking his aim. Amy touched Bob's arm. He looked down. Her eyes were shining, and her cheeks red with excitement.
"Doesn't it remind you of anything?" she whispered eagerly.
"What?" he asked, not guessing her meaning.
"This: all of it!" she waved her hand abroad at the fair oval meadow with its fringe of tall trees and the blue sky above it; at the close-gathered knot of spectators, and the single contestant advanced before them. He shook his head. "Wait," she breathed, laying her fingers across her lips.
The contest wore along until it again came the turn of the younger man. He stepped to the front, unbuckled a covered holster of the sort never carried in the West, and produced one of those beautifully balanced, beautifully finished revolvers known as the Officer's Model. Taking the firm yet easy position of the practised target shot, he sighted with great deliberation, firing only when he considered his aim assured. Indeed, once he lowered his weapon until a puff of wind had passed. The five shots were found to be not only within the black, but grouped inside a three-inch diameter.
"'A Hubert! A Hubert!'" breathed the girl in Bob's ear. "In the clout!"
"I thought his name was Elliott," said Bob. "Is it Hubert?"
The girl eyed him reproachfully, but said nothing.
"You're agoodshot, youngster!" cried Ware, in the heartiest congratulation; "but if Mr. Thorne don't mind, I'd like to shoot off this tie. Down in our country we don't shoot quite that way, or at that kind of a mark. Will you take a try my way?"
Amy leaned again toward Bob, her face aflame.
"'And now,'" she shot at him, "'I will crave your Grace's permission to plant such a mark as is used in the north country; and welcome every brave yeoman who shall try a shot at it—'Don't dare tell me you don't remember!"
"'A man can but do his best,'" Bob took up the tale. "Of course, I remember; you're right."
"All right," Thorne was agreeing, "but make it short. We've got a lot to do."
Ware selected another target—one intended for the six-shooters—that had not been used. This he tacked up in place of the one already disfigured by many shots. Then he paced off twelve yards.
"That looks easier than the other," Thorne commented.
"Mebbe," agreed Ware, non-committally, "but you may change your mind. As for that sort of monkey-work," he indicated the discarded target, "down our way we'd as soon shoot at a barn."
The girl softly clapped her hands.
"'For his own part,'" she quoted in a breath, and so rapidly that the words fairly tumbled over one another, "'in the land where he was bred, men would as soon take for their mark King Arthur's round table, which held sixty knights around it. A child of seven might hit yonder target with a headless shaft.' Oh, this is perfect."
"Now," said Ware to young Elliott, "if you'll hit that mark in my fashion of shooting, you're all right."
Bob turned to the girl, his eyes dancing with delight.
"'—he that hits yon mark at I-forget-how-many yards,'" he declaimed, "'I will call him an archer fit to bear bow before a king'—or something to that effect; I'm afraid I'm not letter perfect."
He laughed amusedly, and the girl laughed with him. "Just the same, I'm glad you remember," she told him.
Ware had by now taken his place at the new mark he had established.
"Fifteen shots," he announced. At the word his hand dropped to the butt of his gun, his right shoulder hunched forward, and with one lightning smooth motion the weapon glided from the holster. Hardly had it left the leather when it was exploded. The hammer had been cocked during the upward flip of the muzzle. The first discharge was followed immediately by the five others in a succession so rapid that Bob believed the man had substituted a self-cocking arm until he caught the rapid play of the marksman's thumb. The weapon was at no time raised above the level of the man's waist.
"Hold on!" commanded Ware, as the bystanders started forward to examine the result of the shots. "Let's finish the string first."
He had been deliberately pushing out the exploded cartridges one by one. Now he as deliberately reloaded. Taking a position somewhat to the left of the target, he folded his arms so that the revolver lay across his breast with its muzzle resting over his left elbow. Then he strode rapidly but evenly across the face of the target, discharging the five bullets as he walked.
Again he reloaded. This time he stood with the revolver hanging in his right hand gazing intently for some moments at the target, measuring carefully with his eye its direction and height. He turned his back; and, flipping his gun over his left shoulder, fired without looking back.
"The first ten ought to be in the black," announced Ware, "The last five ought to be somewheres on the paper. A fellow can't expect more than to generally wing a man over his shoulder."
But on examination the black proved to hold but eight bullet holes. The other seven, however, all showed on the paper.
"Comes of not wiping out the dirt once in a while when you're shooting black powder," said Ware philosophically.
The crowd gazed upon him with admiration.
"That's a remarkable group of shots to be literallythrownout at that speed," muttered Thorne to Bob. "Why, you could cover them with your hat! Well, young man," he addressed Elliott, "step up!"
But Elliott shook his head.
"Couldn't touch that with a ten-foot pole," said he pleasantly. "Mr. Ware has given me a new idea of what can be done with a revolver. His work is especially good with that heavily charged arm. I wish he would give us a little exhibition of how close he can shoot with my gun. It's supposed to be a more accurate weapon."
"No, thank you," spoke up Ware. "I couldn't hit a flock of feather pillers with your gun. You see, I shoot bythrow, and I'm used to the balance of my gun."
Thorne finished making some notes.
"All right, boys," he said, snapping shut his book. "We'll go down to headquarters next."