“I thought that would about hit the spot with you, Dick,” laughed Mr. Boone.
“Yes,” said Garry, “he is starving to death; he hasn’t had anything to eat for nearly an hour and a half.”
Leading the way, Mr. Boone headed the boys toward the dining room, while they unanimously ordered a fine steak, and soon were busily eating.
As they eat, let us look them over and get acquainted with them. Those of our readers who have read the three volumes preceding this one, “The Ranger Boys to the Rescue,” “The Ranger Boys Find the Hermit,” and “The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers,” already know our heroes. Others must be introduced.
The leader of the trio is Garfield Boone. He is generally known as Garry. The stout boy with the long distance appetite is Dick Wallace, close friend of Garry, and ward of Mr. Boone. The third is Phil Durant, a boy of French Canadian parentage. The three boys live in a small Maine town, only a few miles from Portland, the principal city of the Pine Tree State, as our northernmost commonwealth is known.
They have just completed their junior year in high school, and it has been decided that Garry and Dick shall go to a military school the coming fall, while Phil will have to remain and finish at the high school.
Hence they wanted to spend their last vacation together, and had picked on the idea of taking a camping trip to the woods. Mr. Boone, father of Garry, who owned extensive lumber tracts in the Maine woods and was connected with some of the big paper mills of the state, came to bat with an idea that pleased the boys immensely.
It was to this effect. That instead of going on a mere camping trip which might prove to be tiresome before it was concluded, that the boys become attached to the Forest Ranger Service as an extraordinary Unit of this woodcraft outfit.
Their duties would be the same as those of the older Rangers; that is, to guard the forests from the fire peril that constantly menaced the timber lands of the state. In this service there were two branches, the men who act as lookouts, having an unchanged station, and the patrol men who travel over a certain set course watching that fire does not start and keeping careless campers from starting fires in dangerous spots.
In a few days the boys had outfitted themselves and were on their way to their first station on the Sourdehunq Mountain, a tract of timberland owned by Mr. Boone. They had no thought of any adventure other than that which might be caused by the discovery of a fire, but on their second night on the trail they find the guide they had hired, one Jean LeBlanc, a French Canadian halfbreed, trying to steal their supplies.