but in their influence on these mountain men, he did read
them. In this manner he became for the first time acquainted with the
elementary principles of watersheds and water conservation. This was
actually so. Nor did he differ in this respect from any other of the
millions of well-educated youth of the country. In a vague way he knew
that trees influence climate. He had always been too busy with trees to
bother about climate.

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