The men made short work of the job.  In a twinkling the horses were unhitched from the vehicles.  Six out of ten of these men were more or less practised at throwing packing hitches, for your Californian brought up in sight of mountains is often among them.  Bob admired the dexterity with which some of the mountaineers improvised slings and drew tight the bulky and cumbersome packs.  Within half an hour the long procession was under way, a hundred men and fifty horses.  They filed past California John, who had drawn one side.

“Camping, boys?” he asked the leader.

The man nodded and passed on.  California John sat at ease, his elbow on the pommel, his hand on his chin, his blue eyes staring vacantly at the silent procession filing before him.  Star stood motionless, his head high, his small ears pricked forward.  The light dust peculiar to the mountain soils of California, stirred by many feet, billowed and rolled upward through the pines.  Long rays of sunlight cut through it like swords.

“Now did you ever see such utter damn foolishness?” growled Welton.  “Make that bunch walk all the way up that mountain!  What on earth is the difference whether they walk or ride?”

But Bob, examining closely the faded, old figure on the magnificent horse, felt his mind vaguely troubled by another notion.  He could not seize the thought, but its influence was there.  Somehow the irritation and exasperation had gone from the episode.

“I know that sort of crazy old mossback,” muttered Welton as he turned down the mountain.  “Pin a tin star on them and they think they’re as important as hell!”

Bob looked back.

“I don’t know,” he said vaguely.  “I’m kind of for that old coon.”

The bend shut him out.  After the buckboard had dipped into the horseshoe and out to the next point, they again looked back.  The smoke of marching rose above the trees to eddy lazily up the mountain.  California John, a tiny figure now, still sat patiently guarding the portals of an empty duty.

VII

Bob and Welton left the buckboard at Sycamore Flats and rode up to the mill by a detour.  There they plunged into active work.  The labour of getting the new enterprise under way proved to be tremendous.  A very competent woods foreman, named Post, was in charge of the actual logging, so Welton gave his undivided attention to the mill work.  All day the huge peeled timbers slid and creaked along the greased slides, dragged mightily by a straining wire cable that snapped and swung dangerously.  When they had reached the solid “bank” that slanted down toward the mill, the obstreperous “bull” donkey lowered its crest of white steam, coughed, and was still.  A man threw over the first of these timbers a heavy rope, armed with a hook, that another man drove home with a blow of his sledge.  The rope tightened.  Over rolled the log, out from the greased slide, to come, finally, to rest among its fellows at the entrance to the mill.