Part 17

"Why not?" inquired Wayland.

Belden glared. "Because I tell you so. Your sympathy-hunting game has just about run into the ground. You've worked this baby dodge about long enough. You're not so almighty sick as you put up to be, and you'd better hunt some other cure for lonesomeness, or I'll just about cave your chest in."

All this was shockingly plain talk for a slender young scholar to listen to, but Norcross remained calm. "I think you're unnecessarily excited," he remarked. "I have no desire to make trouble. I'm considering Miss Berea, who is too fine to be worried by us."

His tone was conciliating, and the cowman, in spite of himself, responded to it. "That's why I advise you to go. She was all right till you came. Colorado's a big place, and there are plenty other fine ranges for men of your complaint--why not try Routt County? This is certain, you can't stay in the same valley with my girl. I serve notice of that."

"You're making a prodigious ass of yourself," observed Wayland, with calm contempt.

"You think so--do you? Well, I'll make a jack-rabbit out of you if I find you on this ranch again. You've worked on my girl in some way till she's jest about quit me. I don't see how you did it, you measly little pup, but you surely have turned her against me!" His rage burst into flame as he thought of her last words. "If you were so much as half a man I'd break you in two pieces right now; but you're not, you're nothing but a dead-on-the-hoof lunger, and there's nothing to do but run you out. So take this as your final notice. You straddle a horse and head east and keep a-ridin', and if I catch you with my girl again, I'll deal you a whole hatful of misery--now that's right!"

Thereupon, with a final glance of hate in his face, he whirled his horse and galloped away, leaving Norcross dumb with resentment, intermingled with wonder.

"Truly the West is a dramatic country! Here I am, involved in a lover's wrath, and under sentence of banishment, all within a month! Well, I suppose there's nothing to do but carry out Belden's orders. He's the boss," he said as he rode on. "I wonder just what happened after I left? Something stormy, evidently. She must have given him a sharp rebuff, or he wouldn't have been so furious with me. Perhaps she even broke her engagement with him. I sincerely hope she did. She's too good for him. That's the truth."

And so, from point to point, he progressed till with fine indignation he reached a resolution to stay and meet whatever came. "I certainly would be a timorous animal if I let myself be scared into flight by that big bonehead," he said at last. "I have as much right here as he has, and the law must protect me. It can't be that this country is entirely barbaric."

Nevertheless, he felt very weak and very much depressed as he rode up the street of the little town and dismounted at the hotel. The sidewalks were littered with loafing cowboys and lumber-jacks, and some of them quite openly ridiculed his riding-breeches and his thin legs. Others merely grinned, but in their grins lay something more insulting than words. "To them I am a poor thing," he admitted; but as he lifted his eyes to the mighty semicircular wall of the Bear Tooth Range, over which the daily storm was playing, he forgot his small worries. What gorgeous pageantry! What life-giving air! "If only civilized men and women possessed this glorious valley, what a place it would be!" he exclaimed, and in the heat of his indignant contempt he would have swept the valley clean.

As his eyes caught the flutter of the flag on its staff above the Forest Service building, his heart went out to the men who unselfishly wrought beneath that symbol of federal unity for the good of the future. "That is civilized," he said; "that is prophetic," and alighted at the door in a glow of confidence.

Nash, who was alone in the office, looked up from his work. "Come in," he called, heartily. "Come in and report."

"Thank you. I'd like to do so; and may I use your desk? I have a letter to write."

"Make yourself at home. Take any desk you like. The men are all out on duty."

"You're very kind," replied Wayland, gratefully. There was something reassuring in this greeting, and in the many signs of skill and scientific reading which the place displayed. It was like a bit of Washington in the midst of a careless, slovenly, lawless mountain town, and Norcross took his seat and wrote his letter with a sense of proprietorship.

"I'm getting up an enthusiasm for the Service just from hearing Alec Belden rave against it," he said a few minutes later, as he looked up from his letter.

Nash grinned. "How did you like Meeker?"

"He's a good man, but he has his peculiarities. Belden is your real enemy. He is blue with malignity--so are most of the cowmen I met up there. I wish I could do something for the Service. I'm a thoroughly up-to-date analytical chemist and a passable mining engineer, and my doctor says that for a year at least I must work in the open air. Is there anything in this Forest Service for a weakling like me?"

Nash considered. "The Supervisor might put you on as a temporary guard. I'll speak to him if you like?"

"I wish you would. Tell him to forget the pay. I'm not in need of money, but I do require some incentive--something to do--something to give me direction. It bores me stiff to fish, and I'm sick of loafing. If McFarlane can employ me I shall be happy. The country is glorious, but I can't live on scenery."

"I think we can employ you, but you'll have to go on as fire-guard or something like that for the first year. You see, the work is getting to be more and more technical each year. As a matter of fact"--here he lowered his voice a little--"McFarlane is one of the old guard, and will have to give way. He don't know a thing about forestry, and is too old to learn. His girl knows more about it than he does. She helps him out on office work, too."

Wayland wondered a little at the freedom of expression on the part of Nash; but said: "If he runs his office as he runs his ranch he surely is condemned to go."

"There's where the girl comes in. She keeps the boys in the office lined up and maintains things in pretty fair shape. She knows the old man is in danger of losing his job, and she's doing her best to hold him to it. She's like a son to him and he relies on her judgment when a close decision comes up. But it's only a matter of time when he and all he represents must drift by. This is a big movement we're mixed with."

"I begin to feel that that's why I'd like to take it up. It's the only thing out here that interests me--and I've got to do something. I can't loaf."

"Well, you get Berrie to take up your case and you're all right. She has the say about who goes on the force in this forest."

It was late in the afternoon before Wayland started back to Meeker's with intent to repack his belongings and leave the ranch for good. He had decided not to call at McFarlane's, a decision which came not so much from fear of Clifford Belden as from a desire to shield Berea from further trouble, but as he was passing the gate, the girl rose from behind a clump of willows and called to him: "Oh, Mr. Norcross! Wait a moment."

He drew rein, and, slipping from his horse, approached her. "What is it, Miss Berrie?" he asked, with wondering politeness.

She confronted him with gravity. "It's too late for you to cross the ridge. It'll be dark long before you reach the cut-off. You'd better not try to make it."