XIII

The season passed without further incidents of general interest.  It was a busy season, as mountain seasons always are.  Bob had opportunity to go nowhere; but in good truth he had no desire to do so.  The surroundings immediate to the work were rich enough in interest.  After the flurry caused by the delay in opening communication, affairs fell into their grooves.  The days passed on wings.  Almost before he knew it, the dogwood leaves had turned rose, the aspens yellow, and the pines, thinning in anticipation of the heavy snows, were dropping their russet needles everywhere.  A light snow in September reminded the workers of the altitude.  By the first of November the works were closed down.  The donkey engines had been roughly housed in; the machinery protected; all things prepared against the heavy Sierra snows.  Only the three caretakers were left to inhabit a warm corner.  Throughout the winter these men would shovel away threatening weights of snow and see to the damage done by storms.  In order to keep busy they might make shakes, or perhaps 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 Auntie Belle’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 know more 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 were the ranch houses and spacious corrals of the mountain people.  Far and wide through the wooded and brushy foothills roamed the cattle, seeking the forage of the winter range that a summer’s absence in the high mountains had saved for them.  Bob used often to “tie his horse to the ground” and enter for a chat with these people.  Harbouring some vague notions 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 were usually attractive and blooming.  They insisted on hospitality; and Bob had the greatest difficulty in persuading them that he stood in no immediate need of nourishment.  The men repaid cultivation.  Their ideas were often faulty because of insufficient basis of knowledge:  but, when untinged by prejudice, apt to be logical.  Opinions were always positive, and always existent.  No phenomenon, social or physical, could come into their ken without being mulled over and decided upon.  In the field of their observations were no dead facts.  Not much given to reception of contrary argument or idea they were always eager for new facts.  Bob found himself often held in good-humoured tolerance as a youngster when he advanced his opinion; but listened to thirstily when he could detail actual experience or knowledge.  The head of the house held patriarchal sway until the grown-up children were actually ready to leave the paternal 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.