Meantime, seeing no chance of aiding the ranger, Redfield and the Forester prepared to return, but Lee, reinforced by her mother, refused to accompany them. “I shall stay here,” she said, “till he is safely out of it—till I know that he is beyond all danger.”
Redfield did not urge her to return as vigorously as Dalton expected him to do, but when he understood the girl’s desire to be near her lover, he took off his hat and bowed to her. “You are entirely in the right,” he said. “Here is where you belong.”
Redfield honored Lize for her sympathetic support of her daughter’s resolution, and expressed his belief that Ross would escape the plague. “I feel that his splendid vigor, combined with the mountain air, will carry him through—even if he should prove not to be immune. I shall run up again day after to-morrow. I shall be very anxious. What a nuisance that the telephone-line is not extended to this point. Ross has been insisting on its value for months.”
Lee saw the doctor go with some dismay. Young as he was, he was at least a reed to cling to in case the grisly terror seized upon the ranger. “Mr. Redfield, can’t you send a real doctor? It seems so horrible to be left here without instructions.”
The Forester, before going, again besought Cavanagh not to abandon his work in the Forestry Service, and intimated that at the proper time advancement would be offered him. “The whole policy is but beginning,” said he, “and a practical ranger with your experience and education will prove of greatest value.”
To this Ross made reply. “At the moment I feel that no promise of advancement could keep me in this country of grafters, poachers, and assassins. I’m weary of it, and all it stands for. However, if I could aid in extending the supervision of the public ranges and in stopping forever this murder and burning that goes on outside the forestry domain, I might remain in the West.”
“Would you accept the supervisorship of the Washakie Forest?” demanded Dalton.
Taken by surprise, he stammered: “I might; but am I the man?”
“You are. Your experience fits you for a position where the fight is hot. The Washakie Forest is even more a bone of contention than this. We have laid out the lines of division between the sheep and the cows, and it will take a man to enforce our regulations. You will have the support of the best citizens. They will all rally, with you as leader, and so end the warfare there.”
“It can never end till Uncle Sam puts rangers over every section of public lands and lays out the grazing lines as we have done in this forest,” retorted Cavanagh.