tuation his curiosity
grew. The lumberman's instinctive hostility to government control and
interference had not in the slightest degree modified; but he had begun
to differentiate this small, devoted band from the machinery of the
Forest Reserves as they were then conducted. He was a little inclined to
the fanatic theory; he knew by now that the laziness hypothesis would
not apply to these.

"What is there in it?" he asked. "You surely can't hope for a boost in
salary; and certainly your bosses treat you badly."

At first he received vague and evasive answers. They liked the work;
they got along all right; it was a lot better than the cattle business
just now, and so on. Then as it became evident that the young man was
genuinely interested, California John gradually opened up. One strange
and beautiful feature of American partisanship for an ideal is its
shyness. It will work and endure, will wait and suffer, but it will not
go forth to proselyte.

"The way I kind of look at it is this," said the old man one evening.
"I always did like these here mountains--and the big trees--and the
rocks and water and the snow. Everywhere else the country belongs to
some one: it's staked out. Up here it belongs to me, because I'm an
American. This country belongs to all of us--the people--all of us. We
most of us don't know we've got it, that's all. I kind of look at it
this way: suppose I had a big pile of twenty-dollar gold pieces lying
up, say in Siskiyou, that I didn't know nothing whatever about; and some
fellow come along and took care of it for me and hung onto it even when
I sent out word that anybody was welcome to anything I owned in
Siskiyou--I not thinking I really owned anything there, you
understand--why--well, you see, I sort of like to feel I'm one of those
fellows!"

"What good is there in hanging onto a lot of land that would be better
developed?" asked Bob.

But California John refused to be drawn into a discussion. He had his
faith, but he would not argue about it. Sometime or other the people
would come to that same faith. In the meantime there was no sense in
tangling up with discussions.

"They send us out some reading that tells about it," said California
John. "I'll give you some."

He was as good as his word. Bob carried away with him a dozen government
publications of the sort that, he had always concluded, everybody
received and nobody read. Interested, not in the subject matter of the
pamphlets,