SCOTT BURTON IN THE BLUE RIDGE

JIMMY TRIED DESPERATELY TO STAY HIS TEAM.

CHAPTER I OFF TO A NEW JOB

The ticking of the old grandfather clock in the neat little New England house was the only sound to break the stillness. So still it was that any one approaching the house could have heard the clock distinctly and would certainly have overlooked the silent figure in the old rocking-chair. But a man was sitting there, nevertheless, completely absorbed in his own thoughts.

An old gentleman appeared in the doorway and stood there for an instant before he saw him. Then his face lighted up.

“Hello, Scott! I thought you had gone out and I wanted to talk to you about your new assignment. Mother tells me that you have your sailing orders now.”

The son looked at him with a smile, but his face still wore a puzzled frown.

“Yes,” he said, “I have my sailing orders, but—”

“Good or bad?” his father interrupted anxiously. “You don’t look overjoyed with them.” The old man was really worried.

“I don’t know just what to think of them,” Scott frowned once more and opened the letter for the hundredth time. “They have assigned me to a timber sales job in the North Carolina mountains.”

“Well, that sounds good enough. They say that is a beautiful country and it is a place I have always wanted to see.”

“Oh, the country is all right,” Scott said brightening, “and I am crazy to go there, only I had my mind set on going back to my old place in the southwest.” And again he frowned. “It is not the country but the job that I am afraid of. Sometimes I am almost sorry that I caught those range thieves out there in Arizona.”

“Why, Scottie boy! If it had not been for that you would never be where you are in the Service to-day,” his father remonstrated proudly.

“Oh, I know that it made me solid with the Forest Service and gave me a chance at a supervisor’s job years before I would ordinarily have had one, but they have been using me as a sort of detective ever since. I was lucky enough to catch those timber thieves in Florida, but I am no sleuth and I’ll fall down on that job sooner or later.”

“But, Scott, I don’t believe this is detective work. I expect they have heard what a tremendous success you made of your own logging job last winter and want you to look after the logging work down there.”

“Yes,” Scott admitted, “I think you are partly right. But why transfer me down there when there are local men who understand those methods? Logging in New Hampshire and logging in North Carolina are very different propositions.”

“Maybe the local men cannot handle it and they know you can,” his father suggested proudly.

“Of course that’s what you think, dad,” Scott said affectionately, “and it may be what they think, but I am afraid that there is something else wrong.”

This rather gloomy conversation was broken up by Mrs. Burton, who had come to the doorway unnoticed. “Well, well, why worry over something you don’t either of you know anything about? Maybe we do not know what you are going to do in North Carolina, but we do know that you have to leave us in the morning and we don’t want to waste what time we have left worrying. Come on in to supper.”

Scott laughed. “All right, mother, you always say the sensible thing. I’ll bet there is nothing wrong with the supper no matter what may be the matter with the new job.”

So they went in to supper cheerfully enough and all three spent the evening poring very busily over the atlas, and trying to see what they could find out about the new country. Caspar, the little town where the headquarters were located, was not shown on the old map, but they found out a great deal about the country in general, and it was bedtime before they knew it.

“There,” Mrs. Burton exclaimed cheerfully as they said good night, “I am satisfied. I’d be willing to go to that country on any old kind of a job.”

Scott was not ordinarily given to worrying much and by the time his train pulled out of the quiet little Massachusetts village the next morning he was looking forward eagerly to seeing this new country and had forgotten all the imaginary troubles which the new work might bring.

His orders were to report direct to Caspar, but he had half a day between trains in Washington and took the opportunity to visit the Forest Service offices. He met a few friends and became personally acquainted with a number of men who had before that been to him only a name attached to the end of an official letter, but he learned nothing definite in regard to his new work. The chief of the particular branch in which Scott was employed was out of the office and the inspector who was to meet him in Caspar had already gone to North Carolina. That looked as though there must be something unusual there, but Scott resolutely refused to worry about it any more and settled down in the car seat to enjoy the scenery of Virginia, which was altogether new to him.

The little shanties scattered all through the country and the grinning black faces which crowded one end of the platform at every station reminded him of Florida, but the country itself was very different. Instead of the flat sand-plains covered with dense stands of yellow pine the train wound through rolling clay hills and hardwood forests until it lost itself in the foothills of the mountains just as the sun went down. Scott peered eagerly out of the car window until he could no longer see even the telegraph poles beside the track.

Morning found him at a junction point in the heart of the mountains. These mountains were not like the Rocky Mountains as he had known them in the southwest. There was none of that stark grandeur of the bare rocky slopes and flat-top mesas, but there was a peaceful beauty about them which reminded him more of the overgrown Massachusetts hills; soft green slopes towering above the valley to a surprising height, considering the low absolute altitude of the range. There was as much difference between the valley and the mountain peak as there usually was in the Rockies, but Scott remembered that the valleys in the Rockies were as high as many of these peaks.

A little branch line carried him down a narrow valley between what appeared to be flat-topped, unbroken ridges clothed in every kind of hardwood tree that Scott had ever heard of, and capped with a rim of dark green spruce which fitted over it like a black cape. Here and there a peak rose conspicuously above the level ridge.

“It must be great in those forests,” Scott thought, “and the views from those peaks ought to be worth seeing. I tell you there has got to be a lot of trouble in this job if I can’t enjoy myself in this country.”

He was trying to catch a glimpse of a particularly high peak which showed itself every now and then above the dark spruce ridge when the conductor called, “Caspar,” and Scott had to hurry to get his pack sack and suit case off the train at his headquarters.

CHAPTER II THE MYSTERY OF THE TWO STORES

When the dinky little train pulled out and left Scott standing on the platform, he realized why he had not seen the town of Caspar from the car window. It consisted of a railroad station, two stores, four dwelling houses and another large, decrepit-looking building which could not easily be classified, and they were all on the other side of the railroad track from Scott’s position in the car. From that side of the train no one would have suspected the presence of a town anywhere in that vicinity. The mountain slope came down almost to the railroad track and the forest on that side was almost unbroken.

The station agent seemed quite interested at the sight of a stranger. He watched Scott for a minute and seemed to be studying him in his own slow way. Finally he seemed to decide that it would be safe to speak.

“Howdy! Stranger in these parts, be ye?” he drawled.

“Yes,” Scott said, “is there a hotel here or any place where a man can stay?”

“Reckon you can stay at the hotel. Ain’t no place else you could stay in this town and live.”

Scott thought at the time that that was a rather peculiar remark for any one to make, but when he found that the station agent also ran the hotel he charged it up to professional pride. When he saw the hotel he wondered how any one could have any professional pride in it.

The hotel turned out to be the nondescript building which stood, or rather sat, apart from the others at the end of the street. It was a large, rambling, barn-like structure a story and a half high. Half a dozen gables stuck up from the side of the roof. It looked very old and its first coat of paint had never been renewed. The ground around it was as bare as the weathered clapboarding. There was no sign of any attempt at beautifying either grounds or building. A rough picket fence separated it from the rest of the village, but just why no one could tell, for the ground inside the fence was, if anything, more barren than that outside. Altogether it was a forlorn-looking place.

The proprietor led Scott upstairs into a room large enough for a banquet hall. It looked even more desolate, if possible, than the outside of the house. It contained a bed covered with an old patch-work quilt and two boxes—one to serve as a chair and the other as a washstand (you could tell which was the washstand by the old tin basin half full of dirty water).

Scott looked around the room in dismay, but he had made up his mind that he would have to put up with it when he caught a sickening odor, as of a dead mouse, that apparently came from the closet. That he could not stand. He had heard of the touchiness of these people, and he did not want to offend them, especially as he would probably have to make the place his headquarters for some time. But he had to get out of there by some means.

“You haven’t any bedroom on the first floor, have you?” he asked, trying to conceal the disgust he actually felt. “I may be here a long time, and there may be a great many people coming to see me, and a ground-floor room would be much more convenient.”

“Shore, I reckon we can accommodate you,” the man said, and he led the way apathetically downstairs again.

He opened a door off the long back porch and stepped back to let Scott enter. It was a palace compared with the upstairs room. The furniture was old, but everything was there down to a rag carpet on the floor, and, moreover, everything looked clean.

“This will be fine,” Scott said as he glanced quickly about. “What time do you have dinner?”

“Twelve o’clock, most times, but there ain’t anything certain about it.” He paused at the door on his way out. “It ain’t none of my business, but you ain’t a U. S. marshal, be you?”

“No,” Scott laughed, “nothing like that. Why, are there many moonshiners around here?”

“I ain’t saying anything about moonshiners,” the man replied in the same dull tone. “I was just going to tell you that this was a mighty unhealthy country around here for the U. S. marshal.”

Scott did not know whether this was meant as a friendly warning or as a threat, and before he could ask anything more about it the man was gone. As he was not in any way connected with the United States marshal, he thought no more about it.

Left to himself, he began to examine the room more closely. It was clean all right, but the general effect of it was most grotesque. The high, carved head-board of the old walnut bed might have had a place in a medieval museum, but here in this room it looked out of place like everything else in it. When Scott’s eyes fell on the wall paper, he stood aghast. He counted thirty-seven different patterns, each a small square evidently taken from a country storekeeper’s sample book, and only a third of the wall was covered. The east window was heavily curtained with portières, lace curtains and a shade. Scott peeped out. It opened almost into the mountainside and no human habitation was in sight. The glass door opening on to the back porch—which was by far the most frequented part of the house—was not curtained at all. It was a queer place, but Scott had been in worse, and he decided that it would have to do.

He had been so interested in finding a place to stay that he had forgotten all about the man from the Washington office who was to meet him here. He went out to inquire for him. The dining room opened on to the porch next to his room and the kitchen was next to that.

The man was nowhere to be seen, but there were three women in the kitchen and they were feverishly discussing Scott’s probable business. Complete silence fell on them all when he appeared in the doorway.

“Pardon me,” he said. “Do you know whether Mr. Reynolds of the Forest Service has been here?”

The women looked at each other as though an important problem had been solved before any one answered.

Then one of the women answered with a question: “Are you Mr. Burton?”

“Yes,” Scott said.

“Mr. Reynolds left here this morning. He said that if Mr. Burton, the new supervisor, came to tell him he would be back to-night or to-morrow morning. I was looking for a much older man,” she added looking at him curiously.

“Well,” Scott laughed, “time will correct that.”

Scott noticed that these women were all sizing him up just as the station agent had done a little while before. He went back to his room, and looked in the glass to see what could be wrong. He could see nothing to attract attention. He tried to forget the occurrence and went out to see the town and surrounding country.

He wandered down the street, if the road between the two stores could be called a street, and wondered why there should be two stores in such a place. Judging from the unbroken forests on the mountain slopes he did not see where enough people could possibly come from to support any store at all.

On the porch of each store there was a small group of idlers holding down the dry-goods boxes, and Scott saw that they were sizing him up just as the women had done. Moreover, the stare of these men seemed to be distinctly unfriendly. It made him feel uneasy. He was glad when he had run the gauntlet of unfriendly stares, and was out in the open road with only the railroad station and the mountains before him. But he had one more examination to stand. The station agent was watching him from the corner of the platform. In fact, Scott caught him squatting down to get a better view of him even before he came out in the open. He resented this officious spying on his movements and turned aside into a mountain road which wound its way up a timber-covered slope.

“Heh!” Scott turned to see the man coming towards him at what was an unusual gait for him. “Didn’t buy anything at the store, did you?”

Scott looked at him indignantly for an instant, but he remembered again that he had to live with these people, probably for a long time, and did not want to offend them. “No,” he replied as pleasantly as he could. “Why?”

“I just wanted to know,” the man replied frankly. “But if you haven’t done it, don’t.” The man had evidently noticed that Scott had resented his interference and he walked away with considerable dignity without making any further explanation.

Scott started to call him back but changed his mind and continued his walk up the road. He wanted to get away from these inquisitive people for a while, and try to think things over. Fate, however, seemed to have decided otherwise. He had gone a little more than a quarter of a mile up the winding road through the heavy hardwood timber when he came to a little cabin set back only a few feet from the road behind the inevitable picket fence. An old man was sitting on the porch, and he sized Scott up with the same all-consuming curiosity, but his gaze seemed to be wholly friendly. There was none of that furtive animosity he had felt rather than seen in the groups down at the store.

“Howdy, stranger?” the old man greeted him pleasantly. “Be you the new supervisor?”

The old man’s manner was so evidently friendly, and his curiosity so frank that Scott warmed up to him at once.

“Yes,” he admitted cheerfully, “I’m the new supervisor.”

“Haven’t bought anything at the store yet, have you?” the old man continued in his friendly way.

There was that same question about the store and Scott stiffened for an instant, but he thought better of it. Maybe he could learn something from this old man.

“No,” Scott said, “I have not bought anything from the store. Tell me, why does everybody ask me that? I have not been in this town much more than half an hour and two people have already asked me if I have bought anything at the store. What is the meaning of it?”

The old man looked at him thoughtfully for a minute as though hesitating to answer the question. Then he answered slowly as though pronouncing final judgment:

“Because when you do buy anything from one of those stores, you might as well leave the town for all the good you’ll ever be able to do in this country,” and he turned as though to enter the house.

CHAPTER III THE OLD MAN’S STORY

The old man’s statement seemed so ridiculous that Scott hesitated to believe it. He thought that the man must be making fun of him, but he recalled the station agent’s warning. There must be something in it. The whole community could not be conspiring just to play a joke on him. Before the old man reached the door he called him back.

“Just a minute, please. You are the second man to warn me not to buy anything at that store. Why shouldn’t I? What has buying at the store got to do with running a national forest? I can’t see the connection.”

The old man looked at him and smiled sarcastically. “Neither could the other two men who came here before you, and they both had to leave.”

Scott’s curiosity was now thoroughly aroused, and he determined to pump an explanation out of this man. He smiled winningly. “Then tell me the secret so that I shall not have to follow them.”

At his change of tone the old man’s sarcasm disappeared immediately. “Well, if that’s the way you look at it,” he said with all his old friendliness, “why, maybe I’ll try to tell you. You couldn’t tell those other fellows anything.”

“I would certainly appreciate it,” Scott said, as he settled himself down on the fence to listen. “I have come here to run this forest, and if that store down there has anything to do with it, I want to know about it.”

“Come in, come in,” the old man repeated hospitably. “It’s a long story, and you might as well sit down to listen to it.”

Scott gladly stepped inside the fence, and took a seat opposite his host on the porch. “By the way,” he said, “I thought I saw two stores down there in the village. Which one do you mean?”

“That’s just the point. If there was only one store there you could buy all you pleased, but if you buy anything from one of those stores now, the fellow who owns the other one would sure get you.”

“But can’t a man buy where he pleases in this country?” Scott asked indignantly. His spirit rebelled at any one dictating to him the way he should run what he considered to be his own business.

“Not and live in peace,” the old man answered sadly. “I’ll tell you the story, and then you can do as you please.

“You see the people here in the mountains don’t move around much. When a man gets used to these mountains he never wants to live anywhere else. The children don’t marry, and go off somewhere else to live; they just put up another shanty, and live close to home. The families stick close together, and form a kind of settlement. Most everybody in the settlement is kin to somebody else.