covered a huge entertainment in this. One day, however, he found Merker in earnest discussion with a mountain man, whom the store-keeper introduced as Ross Fletcher. Welton did not pay very much attention to this man and was about to pass on when his eye caught the gleam of a Forest Ranger's badge. Then he stopped short.

"Merker!" he called sharply.

The store-keeper looked up.

"See here a minute. Now," said Welton, as he drew the other aside, "I want one thing distinctly understood. This Government gang don't go here. This is my property, and I won't have them loafing around. That's all there is to it. Now understand me; I mean business. If those fellows come in here, they must buy what they want and get out. They're a lazy, loafing, grafting crew, and I won't have them.”

Welton spoke earnestly and in a low tone, and his face was red. Bob, passing, drew rein in astonishment. Never, in his long experience with Welton, had he seen the older man plainly out of temper. Welton's usual habit in aggravating and contrary circumstances was to show a surface, at least, of the most leisurely good nature. So unprecedented was the present condition that Bob, after hesitating a moment, dismounted and approached.

Merker was staring at his chief with wide and astonished eyes, and plucking nervously at his brown beard.

"Why, that is Ross Fletcher," he gasped. "We were just talking about the economic waste in the forests. He is a good man. He isn't lazy. He—”

"Economic waste hell!" exploded Welton. "I won't have that crew around here, and I won't have my employees confabbing with them. I don't care what you tell them, or how you fix it, but you keep them out of here. Understand? I hate the sight of one of those fellows worse than a poisonsnake!"

Merker glanced from Welton to the ranger and back again perplexed.

"Well, you'd better say something, unless you want me to throw him off the place. This is no corner saloon for loafers."

"I'll fix it," offered Bob, and without waiting for a reply, he walked over to where the mountaineer was leaning against the counter.

"You're a Forest Ranger, I see," said Bob.

"Yes," replied the man, straightening from his lounging position.

"Well, from our bitter experiences as to the activities of a Forest Ranger we conclude that you must be very busy people -too busy to waste time on us."

The man's face changed, but he evidently had not quite arrived at the drift of this.

"I think you know what I mean," said Bob.

A slow flush overspread the ranger's facc. He looked the young man up and down deliberately. Bob moved the fraction of an inch nearer.

"Meaning I'm not welcome here ?" he demanded.

"This place is for the transaction of business only. Can I have Merker get you anything?"

Fletcher shot a glance half of bewilderment, half of anger, in the direction of the store-keeper. Then he nodded, not without a certain dignity, at Bob.

"Thanks, no," he said, and walked out, his spurs jingling. "I guess he won't bother us again," said Bob, returning to Welton.

The latter laughed, a trifle ashamed of his anger.

"Those fellows give me the creeps," he said, "like cats do some people. Mossbacks don't know no better, but a Government grafter is a little more useless than a nigger on a sawlog."

He went out. Bob turned to Merker.

"Sorry for the row," he said briefly, for he liked the gentle, slow man. "But they're a bad lot. We've got to keep that crew at arm's length for our own protection."

"Ross Fletcher is not that kind," protested Merker. "I've known him for years."

"Well, he's got a nerve to come in here. I've seen him and his kind holding down too good a job next old Austin's bar."

"Not Ross," protested Merker again. "He's a worker. He's just back now from the high mountains. Mr. Orde, if you've got a minute, sit down. I want to tell you about Ross."

Willing to do what he could to soften Merker's natural feeling, Bob swung himself to the counter, and lit his pipe. "Ross Fletcher is a ranger because he loves it and believes in it," said Merker earnestly. "He knows things are going rotten now, but he hopes that by and by they'll go better. His district is in good shape. Why, let me tell you: last spring Ross was fighting fire all alone, and he went out for help and they docked him a day for being off the reserve!" "You don't say," commented Bob.

"You don't believe it. Well, it's so. And they sent him in after sheep in the high mountains early, when the feed was froze, and wouldn't allow him pay for three sacks of barley for his animals. And Ross gets sixty dollars a month, and he spends about half of that for trail tools and fire tools that they won't give him. What do you think of that?"

'Merker," said Bob kindly, “I think your man is either a damn liar or a damn fool. Why does he say he does all this?" "He likes the mountains. He well, he just believes in it."

"I see. Are there any more of these altruists? or is he the only bird of the species?"

Merker caught the irony of Bob's tone.

"They don't amount to much, in general," he admitted.

"But there's a few they keep the torch lit."

"I supposed their job was more in the line of putting it out," observed Bob; then, catching Merker's look of slow bewilderment, he added: "So there are several."

"Yes. There's good men among 'em. There's Ross, and Charley Morton, and Tom Carroll, and, of course, old California John."

Bob's amused smile died slowly. Before his mental vision rose the picture of the old mountaineer, with his faded, ragged clothes, his beautiful outfit, his lean, kindly face, his steady blue eyes, guarding an empty trail for the sake of an empty duty. That man was no fool; and Bob knew it. The young fellow slid from the counter to the floor.

"I'm glad you believe in your friend, Merker," said he "and I don't doubt he's a fine fellow; but we can't have rangers, good, bad, or indifferent, hanging around here. I hope you understand that?"

Merker nodded, his wide eyes growing dreamy.

"It's an economic waste," he sighed, "all this cross-purposes. Here's you a good man, and Ross a good man, and you cannot work in harmony because of little things. The Government and the private owner should conduct business together for the best utilization of all raw material "Merker," broke in Bob, with a kindly twinkle, "you're a Utopian."

"

"Mr. Orde," returned Merker with entire respect, "you're a lumberman."

With this interchange of epithets they parted.

T

XII

HE establishment of the store attracted a great many campers. California is the campers' state. Immediately after the close of the rainy season they set forth. The wayfarer along any of the country roads will everywhere meet them, either plodding leisurely through the charming landscape, or cheerfully gipsying it by the roadside. Some of the outfits are very elaborate, veritable houses on wheels, with doors and windows, stove pipes, steps that let down, unfolding devices so ingenious that when they are all deployed the happy owners are surrounded by complete convenience and luxury. The man drives his ark from beneath a canopy; the women and children occupy comfortably the living room of the house whose sides, perchance, fold outward like wings when the breeze is cool and the dust not too thick. Carlo frisks joyously ahead and astern. Other parties start out quite as cheerfully with the delivery wagon, or the buckboard, or even at a pinchwith the top buggy. For all alike the country-side is golden, the sun warm, the sky blue, the birds joyous, and the spring young in the land. The climate is positively guaranteed. It will not rain; it will shine; the stars will watch. Feed for the horses everywhere borders the roads. One can idle along the highways and the byways and the noways-at-all, utterly carefree, surrounded by wild and beautiful scenery. No wonder half the state turns nomadic in the spring. And then, as summer lays its heats man, the irrigator, the farmer alike valleys, the people divide into two far the larger, migrates to the Coast.

--

blessed by the fruit

over the great interior classes. One class, by There the trade winds