The Freebooters of the Wilderness | Page 3

you
don't know, a siren of the unknown beckons and lures and retreats.
She had all of what he used to regard as culture in the old Eastern life,
the jargon of the colleges, the smattering of things talked about, the
tricks and turns of trained motions and emotions; but there was a
difference. There was no pretence. There was none of the fire-proof
self-complacency--Self-sufficiency, she had, but not self-righteousness.
Then, most striking contra-distinction of all to the old-land culture,
there was unconsciousness of self--face to sunlight, radiant of the joy of
life, not anaemic and putrid of its own egoism. She didn't talk in
phrases thread-bare from use. She had all the naked unashamed
directness of the West that thinks in terms of life and speaks without
gloze. She never side-stepped the facts of life that she might not wish to
know. Yet her intrusion on such facts gave the impression of the touch
that heals.
The Forest Ranger had heard the Valley talk of MacDonald, the
Canadian sheep rancher, belonging to some famous fur-trade clans that
had intermarried with the Indians generations before; and Wayland
used to wonder if it could be that strain of life from the outdoors that
never pretends nor lies that had given her Eastern culture the
red-blooded directness of the West. To be sure, such a character study
was not less interesting because he read it through eyes glossy as an
Indian's, under lashes with the curve of the Celt, with black hair that
blew changing curls to every wind. Indian and Celt--was that it, he
wondered?--reserve and passion, self-control and yet the abandonment
of force that bursts its own barriers?
She had not wormed under the surface for some indirect answer that
would betray what he intended to do. She had asked exactly what she
wanted to know, with a slight accent on the--you.
"Are you going to straddle or fight?"

Wayland flicked pine needles from his mountaineering boots. He
answered his own thoughts more than her question.
"All very well to say--fight; fight for all the fellows in the Land and
Forest Service when they see a steal being sneaked and jobbed! But
suppose you do fight, and get licked, and get yourself chucked out of
the job? Suppose the follow who takes your place sells out to the
enemy--well, then; where are you? Lost everything; gained nothing!"
She laid her panama sunshade on the timbered seat that spanned
between two stumps.
"Men must decide that sort of thing every day I suppose."
"You bet they must," agreed the Ranger with a burst of boyishness
through his old-man air, "and the Lord pity the chap who has wife and
kiddies in the balance--"
"Do you think women tip the scale wrong?"
"Of course not! They'd advise right--right--right; fight--fight--fight, just
as you do; but the point is--can a fellow do right by them if he chucks
his job in a losing fight?"
The old-mannish air had returned. She followed the Ranger's glance
over the edge of the Ridge into the Valley where the smoke-stacks of
the distant Smelter City belched inky clouds against an evening sky.
"Smelters need timber," Wayland waved his hand towards the pall of
smoke over the River. "Smelters need coal. These men plan to take
theirs free. Yet the law arrests a man for stealing a scuttle of coal or a
cord of wood. One law for the rich, another for the poor; and who
makes the law?"
They could see the Valley below encircled by the Rim-Rocks round as
a half-hoop, terra-cotta red in the sunset. Where the river leaped down a
white fume, stood the ranch houses--the Missionary's and her Father's
on the near side, the Senator's across the stream. Sounds of mouth
organs and concertinas and a wheezing gramaphone came from the

Valley where the Senator's cow-boys camped with drovers come up
from Arizona.
"Dick," she asked, "exactly what is the Senator's brand?"
"Circle X."
"A circle with an X in it?"
The Ranger stubbornly permitted the suspicion of a smile.
"So if the cattle from Arizona have only a circle, all a new owner has to
do is put an X inside?"
"And pay for the cattle," amplified Wayland.
"Or a circle with a line, put another line across?"
"And hand over the cash," added the Ranger.
"Or a circle dot, just put an X on top of the dot?"
"And fix the sheriff," explained the irrelevant [Transcriber's note:
irreverent?] Ranger.
"And the Senator has all the appointments to the Service out here?"
"No--disappointments," corrected Wayland.
They were both watching the grotesque antics of a squirrel negotiating
the fresh tips of a young spruce. The squirrel sat up on his hind legs and
chittered, whether at the Senator's brands or their heresy it would be
hard