The Essential Writings of James Willard Schultz. James Willard Schultz
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So, at about four o’clock, I was again alone on the summit of Mount Thomas. And lonely enough I was. More lonely still when I went down to the cabin in the dusk, cooked and hurriedly ate my supper, and tumbled into bed. And thought about Henry King. Why had he cut the telephone wire? Was it that he intended to make one last grand raid upon our supplies, and wanted to make sure that we should have no chance to report him before he could get well away from Mount Thomas? Yes, that was probably the explanation.
And there was all that wall chinking to be mudded — what time would I ever have to do that?
At three-thirty, the next morning, I had my breakfast, and then, by the light of a small fire that I built outside, I mixed mud and slammed it into the spaces, smoothed it with a strip of box cover and soon after dawn completed the task. I washed the mud off my hands, washed the breakfast dishes, prepared a lunch, took up my rifle, and, locking the door behind me, hurried up the trail to the lookout. The sun was just rising. A heavy bank of clouds was low in the southern sky. I looked out upon the great forest: nowhere was there even a wisp of smoke. Five mule deer were slowly feeding down the bare ridge between the White River forks. I watched them with the glasses until they entered the heavy timber that clothes all but the upper end of the ridge. The bucks had funny stubs of growing antlers; not until September would they get their full growth of branching prongs.
The belt of black clouds kept creeping up from the south, and at eight o’clock the first electric storm of the season struck Mount Thomas. With the first boom of it I was out of the lookout and running down the trail to the cabin. Terrible thunder crashed and echoed down into the deep canyons, and the whole summit of the mountain was one glare of lightning; blinding, zigzag lightning that struck the rocks time and again and tore them apart. Capped with a four-prong lightning rod though it was, I felt sure that the lookout would be destroyed. Only little rain came with the storm, but I was shivering with cold when I got into the cabin and built a fire in the stove.
At nine o’clock I ’phoned the office, reported the storm, and was told to return to the lookout as soon as it ceased, for the lightning had probably started some fires. Now and then the rain beat upon the iron roof of the cabin with a deafening noise, but upon opening the door and looking out, I saw that the showers were but slight, wind-driven drizzles, not heavy enough to wet the ground. I returned to the summit in the last of them, the thunder and lightning having ceased, and upon emerging from the spruces, saw that the lookout had survived the storm. For seven years it had stood there, beaten by the fierce winter winds, shaken by the thunderstorms of summer, and though lightning had several times come into it along the wire and smashed the telephone, it had never been directly struck. I hurried up into it, looked north, south, east, and west, and discovered the smoke of three fires: one away down in the Blue Range, and two on the Indian reservation, in the direction of Fort Apache. I reported them.
For eight days I kept those sunrise to sunset hours upon the summit, and during that time no one came near me, nor had I to report any new fires. I spent some time each day collecting beads and arrow-points close around the lookout, but did not once visit my cave hole. My mother and sister called me up from Riverside Station — still without a ranger — to learn how I was standing my lonely watch and long hours. I frequently listened in at the telephone and heard bits of news about the war, I.W.W. troubles at Globe and other mining camps, and the doings of the men in the Forest Service. Many of these men had girls in the different mountain settlements, and after hours would talk with them over the ’phone. And such silliness they talked. It was sickening.
“Hello; that you, Laura? That you?” Bill would say.
“Yes, it’s me. How you getting along. Bill?”
“All right. How you getting along?”
“All right.”
A long pause. Bill trying to think of something to say. And then:
“Say, Laura, what you going to do Sunday?”
“Nothing. What you going to do?’’
Nothing.” Both titter, and I wonder what there is in that to laugh about? Another long pause, and Bill says:
‘‘You ain’t going to do anything Sunday, Laura?”
‘‘No. Wish’t I was.”
“Wish’t I was, too.” And both laugh again.
“Well, I guess I got to go take care of my horse. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Bill.”
And then says some one listening in: “Oh, good-bye. Bill, dear, sweet Bill!”
On the eighth day, Saturday, of my sixteen-hour watches, the Supervisor telephoned me that the I.W.W. firebugs had evidently left the forest, so I could resume my usual hours in the lookout. That meant that I could leave the lookout at four o’clock, sun time, and so have four hours of daylight for exploring my cave find. I called Riverside Station, hoping that some one would be there to take word to my sister that I wanted her to come up, but got no answer. The next morning, however, my mother went to the station and called me, to learn if I was safe and well, and after a lot of persuading, I got her to consent to Hannah spending a few days with me. A little later in the day, Hannah came to the ’phone and asked if I had been down into the cave hole?
“Have n’t been near it since you were here,” I answered.
‘‘Good! Promise that you will keep away from it until I come. You promise. Then I’ll be with you to-morrow afternoon.”
What with the big food chest, the stove, table, stools, and all, there was no space in the little cabin for a second bunk, nor a bed upon the floor, so, after quitting time that evening, I made a sleeping-place for myself out on the south side of the cabin: a pole bunk with a foot of springy spruce boughs in it, and a canvas pack cover for a roof. Hannah could have the cabin all to herself during the nights. With old Double Killer prowling around upon the mountain, and maybe worse than he, I just did n’t want to sleep out there. When bedtime came, and I stepped out for a last look around, the very thought of sleeping outside of my four well-chinked walls made me shiver. That made me plumb mad at myself. Did n’t Uncle John and all our other mountain men often sleep out, with never a thought that harm could come to them? Sure they did, and I would, too. I brought my bedding out and spread it upon my bough mattress, and got under the covers with my rifle at my side. I found then that I had made my canvas roof too low: it prevented me seeing anything more than ten feet off. I got up and raised it, and lay down again. That was better. I could see all of the little clearing in three directions; the cabin, of course, shut off the north side of it. There was now a good moon; it enabled me to see even into some of the shadows cast by the spruces. I sat up, aimed my rifle at a stump sticking up in the east end of the clearing, and could see it quite well through the sights; was sure that I could put a bullet into it. Sleeping out was n’t so bad, after all. I lay back upon my pillow, intending to watch the clearing for a time and learn if any night prowlers were about — and the first thing I knew it was morning! I had slept well; better than in the cabin. I sprang up and began my daily round of tasks, glad that Hannah would soon be with me to explore my cave find.
I had a hurried breakfast, put everything in the cabin in good order, and started up the trail to the lookout. When halfway there, I came upon the tracks of a bear that had passed down the trail during the night. Not old Double Killer, but a bear of good size — a grizzly, as I could tell by the imprint of his long claws in the soft earth. And staring down at them, maybe I shivered a a bit. If he had come nosing around under my bunk what would have happened ? Try as I would to forget it, that unpleasant thought was with me, on and off, all day.
From the lookout I could see no fire anywhere, but shortly after I had made my nine o’clock report, I heard Green’s Teak lookout ’phone the officer about two fires to the west of him, and a half-hour later he reported a third fire, still farther west. Then, still listening in, I heard him and the Supervisor agree that the I.W.W. firebugs were probably the cause of them. My call rang. I was asked to try to find the fires, give a chart reading of them. I replied that I could see no smoke in that direction; that Green’s Peak and the high ridge south of it