The general facts interested him, and appealed to his logical common sense.  He saw for the first time, because for the first time it had been presented to his attention, the real use and reason for the forest reserves.  Hitherto he had considered the whole institution as semi-hostile, at least as something in potential antagonism.  Now he was willing fairly to recognize the wisdom of preserving some portion of the mountain cover.  He had not really denied it; simply he hadn’t considered it.

Early in this conviction he made up to Ross Fletcher for his brusqueness in ordering the ranger off the mill property.

“I just classed you with your gang, which was natural,” said Bob.

“I am one of my gang, of course,” said Fletcher.

“Do you consider yourself one of the same sort of dicky bird as Plant and that crew?” demanded Bob.

“There ain’t no humans all alike,” replied the mountaineer.

Although Bob was thus rebuffed in immediately getting inside of the man’s loyalty to his service and his superiors, he was from that moment made to feel at his ease.  Later, in a fuller intimacy, he was treated more frankly.

Welton laughed openly at Bob’s growing interest in these matters.

“You’re the first man I ever saw read any of those things,” said he in regard to the government reports.  “I once read one,” he went on in delightful contradiction to his first statement.  “It told how to cut timber.  When you cut down a tree, you pile up the remains in a neat pile and put a little white picket fence around them.  It would take a thousand men and cost enough to buy a whole new tract to do all the monkey business they want you to do.  I’ve only been in the lumber business forty years!  When a college boy can teach me, I’m willing to listen; but he can’t teach me the A B C of the business.”

Bob laughed.  “Well, I can’t just see us taking time in a short season to back-track and pile up ornamental brush piles,” he admitted.

“Experimental farms, and experimental chickens, and experimental lumbering are all right for the gentleman farmer and the gentleman poultry fancier and the gentleman lumberman—­if there are any.  But when it comes to business——­”

Bob laughed.  “Just the same,” said he, “I’m beginning to see that it’s a good thing to keep some of this timber standing; and the only way it can be done is through the Forest Reserves.”

“That’s all right,” agreed Welton.  “Let’em reserve.  I don’t care.  But they are a nuisance.  They keep stepping on my toes.  It’s too good a chance to annoy and graft.  It gives a hard lot of loafers too good a chance to make trouble.”

“They are a hard lot in general,” agreed Bob, “but there’s some good men among them, men I can’t help but admire.”

Welton rolled his eyes drolly at the younger man.

“Who?” he inquired.

“Well, there’s old California John.”