Three thousand feet below, descending in bold faces of naked rugged rock, broken here and there by ledges whereon mighty pines found lodgment, lay the valley of King's River, a thin, winding gleam of green with the water a silver thread so fine as only to be seen at intervals. Here and there in the depths the bottom widened to a quarter of a mile, and there the sunlight, falling on the young grass, gave a brilliancy of green that was almost startling in contrast with the dark foliage of the pines.
"What do you call that rock?" asked the boy, pointing to a tall, pyramidal mass of granite, buttressed with rock masses but little less noble than the central peak, between each buttress a rift of snow, flecked here and there by the outline of a daring spruce clinging to the rock, apparently in defiance of all laws of gravity.
"That is called 'Grand Sentinel,'" said the hunter, "and if you will take out your glasses you will see that from here you can overlook miles and miles of country to the west. This is about as high as any place on the south fork of the King's River until it turns north where Bubbs Creek runs into it."
Wilbur took out from their case his field-glasses and scanned the horizon carefully as far as he could see, then snapping them back into the case, he turned to the hunter, saying:
"No fire in sight here!"
"All right," replied Rifle-Eye, "then we'll go on to the next point."
That whole day was a revelation to Wilbur of the beauty and of the size of that portion of the forest which it was his especial business to oversee. Here and there the Ranger made a short break from the direct line of the journey to take the boy down to some miner's cabin or Indian shack, so that, as he expressed it, "you c'n live in a world of friends. There ain't no man livin', son," he continued, "but what'll be the better of havin' a kind word some day, an' the more of them you give, the more you're likely to have."
Owing to these deviations from the direct trail, it was late when they returned to Wilbur's little camp. But not even the lateness of the hour, nor the boy's fatigue, could keep down his delight in his tent home. He was down at the corral quite a long time, and when he came back Rifle-Eye asked him where he had been. The boy flushed a little.
"I hadn't seen Kit all day," he said, "so I went down and had a little talk to her."
The Ranger smiled and said nothing but looked well pleased. In the meantime he had quickly prepared supper, and Wilbur started in and ate as though he would never stop. At last he leaned back and sighed aloud.