On one side he saw the
pioneer, pressing forward into an unknown wilderness, breaking a way for
those that could follow, holding aloft a torch to illumine dark places,
taking long and desperate chances, or seeing with almost clairvoyant
power beyond the immediate vision of men; waiting in faith for the
fulfillment of their prophecies. On the other he saw the plunderer,
grasping for a wealth that did not belong to him, through values he had
not made. This fundamental difference could never again, in Bob's mind,
be gainsaid.
Nevertheless though a difference in deeper ethics, it did not extend to
the surface of things by which men live. It explained; but did it
excuse, especially in the eye of abstract ethics? Had not these men
broken the law, and is not the upholding of the law important in its
moral effect on those that follow?
"Just the same," he voiced this thought to California John, "the laws
read then as they do to-day."
"On the books, yes," replied the old man, slowly; "but not in men's
ideas. You got to remember that those fellows held pretty straight by
what the law _says_.
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