The autumn passed, and winter closed down.  Plant continued his administration.  For a month the countryside was on a tip-toe of expectation.  It counted on no immediate results, but the “suspension pending investigation” was to take place within a few weeks.  As far as surface indications were concerned nothing happened.  Expectation was turned back on itself.  Absolute confidence in Plant’s removal and criminal conviction gave place to scepticism and doubt, finally to utter disbelief.  And since Thorne had succeeded in arousing a real faith and enthusiasm, the reaction was by so much the stronger.  Tolerance gave way to antagonism; distrust to bitterness; grievance to open hostility.  The Forest Reserves were cursed as a vicious institution created for the benefit of the rich man, depriving the poor man of his rights and privileges, imposing on him regulations that were at once galling and senseless.

The Forest Rangers suddenly found themselves openly unpopular.  Heretofore a ranger had been tolerated by the mountaineers as either a good-for-nothing saloon loafer enjoying the fats of political perquisite; or as a species of inunderstandable fanatic to be looked down upon with good-humoured contempt.  Now a ranger became a partisan of the opposing forces, and as such an enemy.  Men ceased speaking to him, or greeted him with the curtest of nods.  Plant’s men were ostracized in every way, once they showed themselves obstinate in holding to their positions.  Every man was urged to resign.  Many did so.  Others hung on because the job was too soft to lose.  Some, like Ross Fletcher, California John, Tom Carroll, Charley Morton and a few others, moved on their accustomed way.

One of the inspiring things in the later history of the great West is the faith and insight, the devotion and self-sacrifice of some of the rough mountain men in some few of the badly managed reserves to truths that were but slowly being recognized by even the better educated of the East.  These men, year after year, without leadership, without encouragement, without the support and generally against the covered or open hostility of their neighbours, under most disheartening official conditions kept the torch alight.  They had no wide theory of forestry to sustain their interest; they could certainly have little hope of promotion and advancement to a real career; their experience with a bureaucratic government could not arouse in their breasts any expectation of a broad, a liberal, or even an enlightened policy of conservation or use.  They were set in opposition to their neighbours without receiving the support of the power that so placed them.  Nevertheless, according to their knowledge they worked faithfully.  Five times out of ten they had little either of supervision or instruction.  Turned out in the mountains, like a bunch of stock, each was free to do as much or as little of whatever he pleased.  Each improved his district according to his ideas