Part 13

"Cousin Mary has been here," the girl burst out, losing all idea of keeping anything back. "She had all sorts of things to say: how badly she'd been treated--how she was shipped off East, and I never wrote to her, nothing about my affairs, or that I was married, or anything. She couldn't talk enough. She said everybody sympathized with her, because her prospects were ruined, because the companies I'd insured in wouldn't pay and my land was mortgaged so I couldn't rebuild. She knew that--and she'd never told me. And then she spoke a piece about my conduct in getting married and never telling her a word about it beforehand. She said she was mortified to death to have to learn about my marriage from strangers--strangers--just accidentally. But there wasn't anything she didn't know: that you were a millionaire, but very eccentric and not given to going around like a rational being--in society; and that you had places around in different States and always made it a point not to know your neighbors, so you wouldn't have them come dropping in interfering with you; and that you were amusing yourself now with putting my affairs on their legs again; and how lucky it was for me; and how strange it was, when I was making a brilliant marriage, not to make it, at least, in a dignified, even if not in a brilliant manner, with a church wedding and all. There wasn't anything she didn't know. I believe she used detectives to find out. And she ended up by saying that she had a lovely disposition and would forgive me--I could have killed her--I was her only first cousin's only child--and she was coming here to live."

"The deuce she did!"

"But what did you do it for?" She turned on him furiously. "What did you do it for?"

"Yes--but where's this Cousin Mary?"

"We had a scene--at least, part of one: we didn't either of us say half we wanted to--and she's left. She'll probably decide in the end, though, that her disposition's lovely enough to overlook it, and insist on making her home with her eccentric millionaire cousin-in-law--What did you do this for?"

He stood there, frowning in perplexity. Then with a sigh of relief, "Supposing we sit down," he said, as one who has a happy inspiration. "I don't know as I can explain this to your satisfaction--exactly. But I'll try. It seemed to me--Don't you know, I thought--Hang it all, that King Cophetua business--was that the chap's name?--never did appeal to me a little bit. I'm dead sure that Beggar Maid had it in for him from the start for his beastly condescending ways to her. And I was afraid you might think--you see, it seemed to me that when your affairs were back in the position they ought to be, perhaps you'd feel better towards me."

He looked at her with boyish entreaty in his eyes. It was as though she were suddenly in the room with a new person. The expression of his face left her breathless.

"Then you came to that boarding-house deliberately to----"

"I did. Deliberately to let you get a bit used to me. It might have upset you to have a perfect stranger come up and marry you offhand."

"But--but"--she gasped.

She was flushed to the eyes. Suddenly he turned and switched on the electric lights. Then he turned back and looked at her--hard. The rose deepened.

"Surely, you're not pretending to tell me," he said slowly, as one thoroughly bedazed, "that you don't know I'm so looney about you my hand shakes whenever you come into the room?"

The girl looked away.

"You said that day--that day--that day, you know----"

"Well?"

"You said most distinctly that--you didn't love me."

He turned an exasperated face toward her.

"Said that? Of _course_ I said it. What did you expect me to say? How apt would you have been to have taken me----"

"_Taken_ you!"

"----if I'd come up with the confession that your eyes set me crazy and the impudent tilt of your little nose was very much on my nerves? Supposing I'd told you that you bowled me over the moment I saw you--It's God's truth. I saw you at the theater in New York just before you left for Fort Leavenworth. I followed you there, but nothing that wasn't brass buttons seemed to be having an inning; and I didn't care to meet you at all, unless I could win out. So I left and went down to Arizona, where there was some land business I had to look after. Then McFay came down there and talked a good deal with his mouth; and I was sure it was all off and was doubly glad I hadn't met you. Then came the news of the earthquake and the fire; and I kept waiting for the beggar to get leave and go to you--and he didn't go. And then one night he--well, he was drunk, or he wouldn't have done it--but he talked some more with his mouth; and so I knew what to expect from him and--er, removed your photograph from his rooms--he hadn't any business having it around for men to stare at, anyway--and then I came here to find you; and--and that's about all, I guess."

He laughed an embarrassed laugh.

"I was pretty well done for before--it seems to me everybody I met kept talking about you--but the boarding-house business finished me completely. There were you--you'd lost more than all that trash put together, and had been badly treated, and all--but you held your head high and never peeped and made that dining-table a thing to look forward to beyond everything. No wonder the landlady hated you. I could have kneeled down and kissed your little boots--not that you'd have cared about it especially."

He laughed his boyish, embarrassed laugh again.

"But to go back a bit--how apt would you have been to have taken me--after your experiences and that cur down at your office, besides--if I'd have trotted up and told you how I felt and asked you please to have me? How apt would you have been? I got the license and kept it dark and bided my time. There was nothing else to do--then."

They were standing again, facing one another, wide-eyed, and both rather breathless.

The girl turned away.

"I won't be humble," she whispered to herself tremulously. "I won't. It's a wretched policy for women, and the effects are dreadful on men."

She trailed away towards the other end of the room.

"I'm not Ikey any more. I'm not the Wandering Jew. The thirteenth move is a glorious move, and I've come home--to a man in a million."

Aloud she observed disdainfully, "The whole performance from beginning to end has been unspeakable--simply unspeakable; and I insist----"

She had reached the bay-window and pressed her little nose tight against the window-pane.

"I insist you're no gentleman," came her muffled, shaky voice from behind the curtains, "or I wouldn't have to be standing here quite by myself, waiting for you to come over here and--and kiss me."

[Illustration]

GIFFORD PINCHOT, FORESTER

BY WILL C. BARNES

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

For almost a century the unoccupied government lands of the West have been used as a public commons. The stockmen have used the grass and water; the mining, sawmill, and railroad men the timber; until--simply because no one made it his business to object to the spoliation that was going on--what had been done wholly on the suffrance of the national government had come to be regarded and most lustily defended as an inherent privilege and right.

[Illustration: GIFFORD PINCHOT]

And so when, a decade ago, the tall, pleasant-voiced young man from the far East, now known throughout the United States as Gifford Pinchot, the national forester, appeared in the West, and suggested to the stockmen that they were ruining the country by over-grazing, they laughed him to scorn.

He told the mining and sawmill men that through reckless and extravagant methods of lumbering they were bringing on a timber famine by great strides; he characterized their whole policy as one of utter disregard for the future of the country; and he demanded forcible and immediate

## action on the part of the Federal authorities. These pioneers had seen

uncounted millions of buffalo melt away because no one took enough interest in the matter to stop the wanton waste. They had seen great billowy prairies, once knee-deep in the most splendid covering of grass and vegetation, grazed down until they were hardly more than dust heaps; and mountains that were clothed with magnificent forests swept bare--first by the woodsman's ax and later by forest fires that burned each year millions and millions of feet of the finest timber a country ever possessed, while no one raised a hand even to quench the fire because "it was only government land."

_The Fight against the "Pinchot Policies"_

These hard-headed, adventurous Western pioneers, indignant at the thought of any curtailment of their freedom; resentful of interference in what they were pleased to call their "inalienable right" to do as they pleased with the country they had conquered; utterly regardless of its future, and thinking but of the present and their own selfish interests, arose in their wrath and protested vigorously against what they called the "Pinchot policies" of the government.

That the writer, then a range cattle-raiser in Arizona, was one of the first to feel the effects of the new forest policy gives him all the more right to speak as he does of these things; that he joined with loud tongue and bitter pen in the general denunciation of the "Pinchot policies" makes it all the more a pleasure to him now to defend and explain them in so far as he can.

Although there had been a small start toward forest preservation, it was not until Mr. Pinchot was placed at the head of the movement in 1898 (six years after the first reserve was made), and organized and reconstructed the force of officials, that we really had any national forest policies worth mentioning.

His enemies first attacked his motives. He was a "notoriety seeker," a "political adventurer" looking for personal advancement. To their surprise they found that he showed not the slightest disposition to exploit himself; that, having millions at his command, he could expect to gain nothing financially by his course; and that he was absolutely devoid of any political ambitions.

They then took another point of attack. "He is an Eastern swell who knows nothing of forests, or the West and its needs. By what right does he tell us how to use the public lands?"

And again they found him invulnerable, for, after graduating from Yale in 1889, he had made a systematic and thorough study of forestry. He traveled in Europe, through Russia, on the great steppes of Siberia, in the Philippines, and in every part of the United States where there were forests he investigated conditions and studied the water problem, the grazing of cattle and sheep, and the effect of lumbering and forest fires. There is hardly a corner of our whole Western country from the Missouri to the Pacific where forests are found that he has not visited and inspected. Days, weeks, and months spent on horseback and on foot in the roughest, most inaccessible portions of the Rocky Mountain region from the Canadian to the Mexican line have made him familiar with every problem of forest preservation. He has studied the attendant and equally important question of watershed protection and utilization of the mountains for conserving the sources of all our great Western streams, by which millions of acres are to be irrigated and millions of homes built up in the West. He was from the first no "tenderfoot" adventurer, no visionary enthusiast, but a practical, hard-headed man far more earnestly and disinterestedly concerned in the Westerners' future than they themselves had ever been.

Born in Simsbury, Connecticut, in 1865, of old New England ancestry, Mr. Pinchot is just in the prime of life. A man of tremendous energy and resourcefulness, tactful, quick to see a point, frank to admit his errors, open and friendly in his intercourse with all men, and in the game of politics the equal of any one in Washington, he is giving the best years of his life to a cause that will bring him no personal advantage save a place in our national history greater than that of great generals and war captains. For while their armies destroy, his little army is saving and preserving; while their forces are ever non-productive, he and his small force are making "two blades of grass grow where one grew before"; are building up and developing to the uttermost the great region lying around and about the national forest areas.

_Training an Army of Foresters_

Mr. Pinchot rapidly gathered about him a force of expert assistants. The forest schools in the East were just turning out their first crop of young men, trained and educated as scientific foresters, and he brought them into the work. A year or two in the forests, mapping, scaling, estimating, and studying the western timber conditions, made them practical as well as scientific. The old sawmill men, themselves educated in the college of "Hard Knocks," first laughed at these college-bred foresters, but soon learned to respect and trust them. They began to adopt their plans and follow their suggestions, and to-day one of the most serious embarrassments the forester has to meet is the continual hiring away from him of his best men by the Western lumber and sawmill men, who offer salaries far beyond what the government pays.

To handle the stockmen's interests--by far the most difficult and perplexing of all the problems connected with the administration of the national forests--Pinchot went to the Southwest and persuaded one of the most intelligent and level-headed young stockmen in the country to become head of the grazing department. A. F. Potter had been for years a cow-boy and range cattleman, then for several years a sheep owner, and not only knew every branch of the stock business through practical experience, but had the administrative ability to handle successfully the intricate and perplexing questions of ranges, priority of rights, effects of grazing, and methods of handling stock that must be passed upon. With this corps of assistants, and with Mr. Overton W. Price, a man second only to himself in ability, as his chief lieutenant, Mr. Pinchot began in earnest in the year 1898 the work of saving the remaining forested areas of the United States.

A few years ago the mining men, lumbermen, and the stockmen were almost united in their opposition to the policies of the Government Forest Service. Then the mining men found to their surprise that instead of being ruined and forced out of business they were being helped. If a miner had a valuable claim on some national forest lying idle, the forest ranger of that district saw that not one stick of timber upon it was cut by unauthorized persons. In the past, when a miner returned to his claim after a year's absence, he generally found it stripped of the timber which some day he would need for its development. Under the new service, he discovered also that, when there was no timber on his own claim, he could buy at a reasonable figure all the timber he desired for the development of his mine. In many cases, in southern Arizona, for instance, where the wood haulers were in the habit of taking from the miners' claims fuel which they would be likely to need for their engines sooner or later, the rangers stopped the practice and gave the wood haulers other areas from which to cut, where no such injury to the miners would result.

_Land Piracy Checked_

Of course, where mining companies, organized solely to obtain vast areas of timber land, under cover of the mining laws, especially the Timber and Stone Act, and the Placer Mining laws, found their work exposed by the activity and watchfulness of the forest officers, they naturally raised a cry against the Service that woke the echoes.

The Placer laws allow a company to obtain title to twenty acres of land simply by showing five hundred dollars' worth of mining work done upon it. No signs of mineral need be shown, no further attempt to develop it is required. Prove that five hundred dollars' worth of work has been done, and the patent is issued. The takers are not limited to a single tract, but can have just as many tracts as they have sums of five hundred dollars to invest. Under this Placer law whole townships, covered with the finest timber on the Pacific coast, were taken up solely to obtain title to the land for the timber upon it.

Wherever the final patents had not been issued on these lands, the Forest Service stepped in and put a stop to it, thus saving thousands of acres of timber land for the people. Small wonder that these licensed pirates look upon a forest ranger as the embodiment of all that is bad, and the forest policy as an encroachment upon sacred vested rights!

_The Case of the Wood Haulers_

And the poor wood haulers! How they complained because they thought their divine right to cut and slash as they chose was to be invaded! What happened to them? To-day they are better off than ever. True, they pay a little for the wood--from as low as ten cents a cord in some forests up to fifty cents in others. But what do they get in return for it?

If a wood hauler wants to buy ten cords of wood or any amount up to fifty dollars' worth, he simply goes to the nearest ranger, and in ten minutes the deal is over; the ranger accompanies him to the area where he wishes to cut and shows him by marks and bounds just where he may cut; the trees are marked, and the man sets to work knowing full well that no one else will invade this little tract or steal his wood when it is cut and piled up waiting for him to haul it away, as was the case over and over again in the old days of free and unlimited competition.

_How the Government Sells Timber_

What of the next class, the sawmill men? Every stick of matured, merchantable timber in the forests, not needed for protection of water-sheds, is for sale. By matured timber is meant a tree that has reached its maximum growth and development, and is beginning slowly to deteriorate, and should, like any ripe crop, be harvested. There is no limit either high or low. In New Mexico one contract for 1907 called for 50,000 feet and another for 10,000,000, and each was made and carried out under the same conditions; little man and big both got the same square deal.

"But," cry some of the politicians with both eyes upon the political barometer, "the Forest Service, in selling lumber by such methods, is playing into the hands of the Lumber Trust and boosting prices."

What are these methods? If a citizen wants to buy some saw-logs for his mill, he goes to the nearest forest officer and states his case, indicating where the timber lies that he wishes to cut. A careful survey and cruise of the timber is then made by experienced and competent men trained especially for that work. If they report favorably upon the cutting, a minimum price is set at which the timber will be sold, and the sale is duly advertised for thirty days, if it amounts to more than one hundred dollars in value. If it comes to less, the forest officer on the ground makes the sale without delay. When the bids are opened, the highest bidder gets the timber.

[Illustration: A SECTION OF THE BIG HORN NATIONAL FOREST, WYOMING, SHOWING THE FOREST SERVICE METHODS OF LUMBERING. A CERTAIN PROPORTION OF THE TREES HAVE BEEN LEFT STANDING FOR SEED PURPOSES. THE REST HAVE BEEN CUT CLOSE TO THE GROUND, TO AVOID WASTE, AND THE BRANCHES PILED AT A SAFE DISTANCE FOR BURNING]

There is seldom much competition on the small lots, but the large tracts are frequently bid up to very much more than the minimum price set by the forest expert. In New Mexico, for instance, several large sales were made in 1907, where the keen competition ran the price up from three dollars, set by the Service, to five and six dollars a thousand. Surely this was not playing into the hands of the Lumber Trust.

"_Two Blades of Grass Where One Grew Before_"

Moreover, when the buyers come to cut, the ranger marks each tree, leaving out all those below a certain size for future growth, and also a certain number for seed purposes, that reproduction may follow. Again, the buyers are required to cut the stumps low, generally at a height equal to the diameter. Under old methods they cut them off high up, where it was easier for the ax and saw men to work, thus leaving in the stump a waste equal to more than ten per cent. of the measured value of the tree. "Two blades of grass" here surely!

Under the old methods, if the logs had to be "snaked" out, the loggers took the shortest cut, and if that cut led through a dense thicket of young trees, the logs were dragged through them, so that millions of young trees were destroyed each year by this recklessness alone. To-day the ranger sees to it that they go around such little groves, or, if it is absolutely unavoidable, a straight and narrow way is cut through them to which the loggers must keep, thus reducing the damage to the minimum. "Two blades of grass" here also.

In the old days of reckless lumbering only the best of the tree was used. A single log was taken, and the rest left to waste. Now the watchful "scaler" sees to it that the logs are cut with judgment, so as to utilize every foot of saw timber.

When the logging is finished on a tract, according to the government contract, the brush must be carefully piled by the lumberman far enough away from other trees or young stuff to cause no damage when it is burned by the rangers. Under the early methods the "slashings," as cut-over areas were called, were an almost impassable mass of dead tree-tops and logs, a most fruitful and dangerous source and auxiliary of forest fires.

[Illustration: SECTION OF A REDWOOD FOREST IN CALIFORNIA, SHOWING WASTEFUL AND DESTRUCTIVE METHODS OF LUMBERING. THE TREES HAVE BEEN CUT HIGH UP, LEAVING A LARGE PROPORTION OF WASTE IN THE STUMP. THE LAND HAS BEEN STRIPPED BARE OF ITS TIMBER, AND IS IN CONDITION TO ENCOURAGE FIRE, EROSION, AND DESTRUCTIVE FLOODS]

_The Forest Service and the Stock-Raisers_

The only remaining class opposed to the policy of the Forest Service is that composed of the stock-raisers; and for their interests and welfare the Forest Service has worked harder than for all the other users of the forests combined.

That mistakes were made in handling the livestock interests; that in some cases individuals were unduly hampered with rules enforced by over-zealous forest officers, is not to be denied. It was a huge task. Almost in a day the Forest Service sprang full-fledged into the world, charged with the care and responsibilities of more than a hundred million acres; to-day it controls a third of the area of grazing country in the United States, whereon graze about eight million sheep and a million and a half cattle and horses.