but we can't have rangers, good, bad, or
indifferent, hanging around here. I hope you understand that?"

Merker nodded, his wide eyes growing dreamy.

"It's an economic waste," he sighed, "all this cross-purposes. Here's
you a good man, and Ross a good man, and you cannot work in harmony
because of little things. The Government and the private owner should
conduct business together for the best utilization of all raw
material--"

"Merker," broke in Bob, with a kindly twinkle, "you're a Utopian."

"Mr. Orde," returned Merker with entire respect, "you're a lumberman."

With this interchange of epithets they parted.

XII

The establishment of the store attracted a great many campers.
California is the campers' state. Immediately after the close of the
rainy season they set forth. The wayfarer along any of the country roads
will everywhere meet them, either plodding leisurely through the
charming landscape, or cheerfully gipsying it by the roadside. Some of
the outfits are very elaborate, veritable houses on wheels, with doors
and windows, stove pipes, steps that let down, unfolding devices so
ingenious that when they are all deployed the happy owners are
surrounded by complete convenience and luxury. The man drives his ark
from beneath a canopy; the women and children occupy comfortably the
living room of the house--whose sides, perchance, fold outward like
wings when the breeze is cool and the dust not too thick. Carlo frisks
joyously ahead and astern. Other parties start out quite as cheerfully
with the delivery wagon, or the buckboard, or even--at a pinch--with the
top buggy. For all alike the country-side is golden, the sun warm, the
sky blue, the birds joyous, and the spring young in the land. The
climate is positively guaranteed. It will not rain; it will shine; the
stars will watch. Feed for the horses everywhere borders the roads. One
can idle along the highways and the byways and the noways-at-all,
utterly carefree, surrounded by wild and beautiful scenery. No wonder
half the state turns nomadic in the spring.

And then, as summer lays its heats--blessed by the fruit man, the
irrigator, the farmer alike--over the great interior valleys, the people
divide into two classes. One class, by far the larger, migrates to the
Coast. There the trade winds blowing softly from the Pacific temper the
semi-tropic sun; the Coast Ranges bar back the furnace-like heat of the
interior; and the result is a summer cl