“We’re the public just as much as them cattlemen,” declaimed one grizzled veteran waving his pipe.  “I come to these mountains first in sixty-six, and the sheep was bad enough then, but you always had some horse meadows.  Now they’re just plumb overrunning the country.  There’s thousands and thousands of folks that come in camping, and about a dozen of these yere cattlemen.  They got no right to hog the public land.”

With so much approval did this view meet that a delegation went to Plant’s summer quarters to talk it over.  The delegation returned somewhat red about the ears.  Plant had politely but robustly told it that a supervisor was the best judge of how to run his own forest.  This led to declamatory denunciation, after the American fashion, but without resulting in further activity.  Resentment seemed to be about equally divided between Plant and the cattlemen as a class.

This resentment as to the latter, however, soon changed to sympathy.  In September the Pollock boys stopped overnight at the Lake Meadow on their way out.  Their cattle, in charge of the dogs, they threw for the night into a rude corral of logs, built many years before for just that purpose.  Their horses they fed with barley hay bought from Merker.  Their camp they spread away from the others, near the spring.  It was dark before they lit their fire.  Visitors sauntering over found George and Jim Pollock on either side the haphazard blaze stolidly warming through flapjacks, and occasionally settling into a firmer position the huge coffee pot.  The dust and sweat of driving cattle still lay thick on their faces.  A boy of eighteen, plainly the son of one of the other two, was hanging up the saddles.  The whole group appeared low-spirited and tired.  The men responded to the visitors by a brief nod only.  The latter there-upon sat down just inside the circle of lamplight and smoked in silence.  Presently Jim arose stiffly, frying pan in hand.

“It’s done,” he announced.

They ate in silence, consuming great quantities of half-cooked flapjacks, chunks of overdone beef, and tin-cupfuls of scalding coffee.  When they had finished they thrust aside the battered tin dishes with the air of men too weary to bother further with them.  They rolled brown paper cigarettes and smoked listlessly.  After a time George Pollock remarked: 

“We ain’t washed up.”

The statement resulted in no immediate action.  After a few moments more, however, the boy arose slowly, gathered the dishes clattering into a kettle, filled the latter with water, and set it in the fire.  Jim and his brother, too, bestirred themselves, disappearing in the direction of the spring with a bar of mottled soap, an old towel, and a battered pan.  They returned after a few moments, their faces shining, their hair wetted and sleeked down.

“Plumb too lazy to wash up.”  George addressed the silent visitors by way of welcome.

“Drove far?” asked an old ranchman.