“Use?” repeated California John vaguely.

“Yes.  Of what you and all the rest of us are doing.”

“To save the public’s property.”

“That’s part of it; and that’s the part you’ve been doing superlatively well.  It’s the old idea, that:  the idea expressed by the old name—­the Forest Reserves—­to save, to set aside.  It seemed the most important thing.  The forests had so many eager enemies—­unprincipled land-grabbers and lumbermen, sheep, fire.  To beat these back required all our best efforts.  It was all we could think of.  We hadn’t time to think of anything else.  It was a full job.”

“You bet it was,” commented the old man grimly.

“Well, it’s done.  There will be attempts to go back to the old state of affairs, but they will grow feebler from year to year.  Things will never slide back again.  The people are awake.”

“Think so?” doubted California John.

“I know it.  Now comes the new idea.  We no longer speak of Forest Reserves, but of National Forests.  We’ve saved them; now what are we going to do with them?  What would you think of a man who cleared a ‘forty’, and pulled all the stumps, and then quit work?”

“I never thought of that,” said California John, “but what’s that got to do with these confounded whelps——­”

“We are going to use these forests for the benefit of the people.  We’re going to cut the ripe trees and sell them to the lumber manufacturer; we’re going to develop the water power; we’re going to improve the grazing; we’re going to study what we have here, so that by and by from our forests we will be getting the income the lumberman now gets, and will not be injuring the estate.  Each Forest is going to be a big and complicated business, like railroading or wholesaling.  Anybody can run Martin’s store down at the Flats.  It takes a trained man to oversee even a proposition like the Star at White Oaks.”

“Oh, I see what you’re drivin’ at,” said California John, “but I’ve made good up to now; and until they try me out, they’ve no right to fire me.  I’ll defy ’em to find anythin’ crooked!!!”

“John, you’re as straight as a string.  But they have tried you out.  Your office work has been away off.”

“Oh, that!  What’s those dinkey little reports and monkeydoodle business amount to, anyhow?  You know perfectly well it’s foolish to ask a ranger to fill out an eight-page blank every time he takes a ride.  What does that amount to?”

“Not very much,” confessed Thorne.  “But when things begin to hum around here there’ll be a thousand times as much of the same sort of stuff, and it’ll all be important.”

“They’d better get me a clerk.”

“They would get you a clerk, several of them.  But no man has a right to even boss a job he doesn’t himself understand.  What do you know about timber grading? estimating? mapping?  What is your scientific training—?”