WORK ON A NATIONAL FOREST 



625 



He wrote up his diary every night be- 

 fore he went to bed. And the diary 

 showed that he couldn't have been 

 drunk anywhere nor received money 

 anywhere in the forest, because he was 

 about twenty miles away, taking his 

 wife and little sick baby to a doctor's. 

 His leave-of-absence lalank, on file, 

 showed that, too. Then, after about 

 twenty people had been hunted up in 

 all sorts of places, including Jack's wit- 

 nesses, and their evidence written down 

 and compared, and after the land had 

 been surveyed and gone over, the Gov- 

 ernment found there hadn't been any 

 timber trespass nor any hush-money 

 offered to anybody. 



"I heard afterward that the letter 

 Jack finally received from the higher- 

 ups read about this way : 'Your charges 

 against your former associate, Ranger 

 Blank, have been found to be entirely 

 baseless.' Of course, Jack resigned. 

 That was before the days of civil- 

 service examinations, and he tried the 

 examination two years later and got in 

 again without saying anything about 

 any early experiences in the 'reserve' 

 way up North. 



"When he got that letter, though, he 

 showed it 'round himself one night 

 when he wasn't quite responsible, down 

 at Lumbago's Indian and sheep-herder 

 saloon, just to prove how mean the de- 

 partment was to a poor, hard-working 

 man. But even old Pete Lumbago, who 

 is just a drunken horse-thief, said : 

 'They seem to have sized you up, all 

 right. Jack, as a kind of a liar.' It went 

 all over the woods in that shape." 



"Well, there !" said one big ranger. 

 "I never knew the rights of that affair. 

 Jack sure did throw himself down by 

 the roadside and break his bones. He's 

 off the roll-call when the boys line up. 

 Gosh! I'd hate to be that kind of a 

 dead duck!" 



"Jack, he talked loose ends, and that 

 growed on him," said another. "But 

 'tain't always talk that puts men out. 

 It's gambling or it's laziness, or it's a 

 bad temper or it's silly, little, cry-baby 

 wives. But mostly, I think, it's stoppin' 

 all study an' thinkin', just to feel his 

 own head, an' then sayin' in an admirin' 



tone of voice, 'Ain't I jest the limit for 

 real smart? Ain't I jest a charmin' 

 Government ossifer in a new uni- 

 form ?' " 



Some one turned to me for a contri- 

 bution to this symposium, and I added : 

 "Boys, a lot of men that fail in this 

 work do so because they were badly 

 brought up at home ; they never learned 

 how to work hard, and they were al- 

 lowed to consider themselves 'sensi- 

 tive' — too averse to honest criticism, 

 too undisciplined, in a word, either to 

 take or to give orders or to work in a 

 systematic way. I do not know of any 

 more appalling waste in all America's 

 natural resources than the waste of 

 young manhood through such lack of 

 discipline. It seems to many a fine 

 young man who is beautiful to look at, 

 splendid to fight fire beside, as if he 

 could not unbend, or give and take, or 

 come into the system without losing 

 what he calls his 'self-respect' and 

 making what he terms a 'slave of him- 

 self.' The work really needs all his 

 superb energies, but they must be di- 

 rected and controlled. He must come 

 into harness and push against the collar, 

 not like a mule, but like a royal- 

 hearted man. He must do what col- 

 lege men call team-work. Then he be- 

 comes a part of the fellowship of the 

 service. 



"Jack Yoacum really didn't mean to 

 tell lies ; he only loved to gossip, and 

 the real Jack inside of him liked to 

 sneer a little at hard work and courage 

 and get other folks into trouble. His 

 boys are growing up just like him, but 

 his girls have had more of the mother- 

 training. In ten years they will make 

 rangers' wives, and poor old Jack will 

 sit in the sun, quite harmless, an amus- 

 ing talker whom no one takes seriously. 

 The moment he left the service his 

 power for injuring it came to an end." 



A district ranger from over the crest 

 of the Sierra spoke up : "Well, now, I 

 can see my way plain in a case like 

 Jack's ; but what I can't seem to handle 

 is those fellows that one keeps on hop- 

 ing against hope will do better — and 

 they don't pan out. 



