"Stacy, you are silly," rebuked Tad.
"Nor do they," answered the guide. "The kind I speak of is a forest ranger."
"What do they range?" asked Walter.
"The forest," answered Rector. "That's all there is to range up here."
"The forest rangers watch the forests," explained Vaughn. "It is their business to see that no timber is cut unlawfully and to watch out for fires and warn campers and hunters to be careful. It is a fine life."
"I should think it would be," agreed the fat boy. "But better for them than for me, with the talking 'coons and other things that you can hear but don't see. I'll get another ghost scare if this keeps on. I wish it were morning."
"Morning will come soon enough," answered the guide.
Morning did. With it came work, and plenty of it. Vaughn let the boys do the work of making permanent camp, he instructing them in the work as they went along, applying some of the theories he had expounded to them on the previous day.
"Woodcraft, boys," explained the guide, "is, as perhaps you may know, the art of getting along in the wilderness with just what Nature has placed within your reach. When you are able to find your way through an uncharted wilderness like this one, when you know the trees and the plants, the animal life, when you know how to live comfortably, then you may call yourselves good woodsmen. I might say that there are few of them in this day and age. And as a matter of fact, there are not very many places in America where woodcraft is called for. This is one of the places where it is needed unless you expect to get lost and starve to death. From what I have seen of you boys I should say you might easily get lost, but you all possess natural resourcefulness. You would manage to live and keep going, though you might have a hard time of it."
By eight o'clock the immediate work was finished. Cale announced that they would start off for a hike, as he had suggested the day before. When Stacy learned that they were going to walk, and that they would tramp ten or fifteen miles before they returned, he balked.