“Listen,” said Baker kindly.  “That isn’t the scrap.  Thorne vs. Plant—­looks like easy money on Thorne, eh?  Well, now, Plant has a drag with Chairman Gay; don’t know what it is, but it’s a good one, a peacherino.  We know because we’ve trained some heavy guns on it ourselves, and it’s stood the shock.  All right.  Now it’s up to Chairman Gay to support his cousin.  Then there’s old Simeon Wright.  Where would he get off at without Plant?  He’s going to do a little missionary work.  Simeon owns Senator Barrow, and Senator Barrow is on the Ways and Means Committee, so lots of people love the Senator.  And so on in all directions—­I’m from Missouri.  You got to show me.  If it came to a mere choice of turning down Plant or Thorne, they’d turn down Plant, every time.  But when it comes to a choice between Thorne and Gay, Thorne and Barrow, Thorne and Simeon Wright, Thorne and a dozen others that have their own Angel Children to protect, and won’t protect your Angel Child unless you’ll chuck a front for theirs—­why Thorne is just lost in the crowd!”

“I don’t believe it,” protested Bob.  “It would be a scandal.”

“No, just politics,” said Baker.

XVI

The sawmill lay on the direct trail to the back country.  Every man headed for the big mountains by way of Sycamore Flats passed fairly through the settlement itself.  So every cattleman out after provisions or stock salt, followed by his docile string of pack mules, paused to swap news and gossip with whoever happened for the moment to have leisure for such an exchange.

The variety poured through this funnel of the mountains comprised all classes.  Professional prospectors with their burros, ready alike for the desert or the most inaccessible crags, were followed by a troupe of college boys afoot leading one or two old mares as baggage transportation.  The business-like, semi-military outfits of geological survey parties, the worn but substantial hunters’ equipments, the marvellous and oftentimes ridiculous luxury affected by the wealthy camper, the makeshifts of the poorer ranchmen of the valley, out with their entire families and the farm stock for a “real good fish,” all these were of never-failing interest to Bob.  In fact, he soon discovered that the one absorbing topic—­outside of bears, of course—­was the discussion, the comparison and the appraising of the various items of camping equipment.  He also found each man amusingly partisan for his own.  There were schools advocating—­heatedly—­the merits respectively of the single or double cinch, of the Dutch oven or the reflector, of rawhide or canvas kyacks, of sleeping bags or blankets.  Each man had invented some little kink of his own without which he could not possibly exist.  Some of these kinks were very handy and deserved universal adoption, such as a small rubber tube with a flattened brass nozzle with which to encourage reluctant fires.