Each Forest is going to be a big and
complicated business, like railroading or wholesaling. Anybody can run
Martin's store down at the Flats. It takes a trained man to oversee even
a proposition like the Star at White Oaks."
"Oh, I see what you're drivin' at," said California John, "but I've made
good up to now; and until they try me out, they've no right to fire me.
I'll defy 'em to find anythin' crooked!!!"
"John, you're as straight as a string. But they have tried you out. Your
office work has been away off."
"Oh, that! What's those dinkey little reports and monkeydoodle business
amount to, anyhow? You know perfectly well it's foolish to ask a ranger
to fill out an eight-page blank every time he takes a ride. What does
that amount to?"
"Not very much," confessed Thorne. "But when things begin to hum around
here there'll be a thousand times as much of the same sort of stuff, and
it'll _all_ be important."
"They'd better get me a clerk."
"They would get you a clerk, several of them. But no man has a right to
even boss a job he doesn't himself understand. What do you know about
timber grading? estimating? mapping? What is your scientific
training--?"
"I've give my soul and boot-straps to this Service for nine years--at
sixty and ninety a month," interrupted California John.
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