"Of course," smiled the stranger. "I'm a forest-ranger," and he threw back his coat, exhibiting a keystone shaped badge on his breast.
"And it's your duty to protect the forest from fire?" asked Charley.
"Yes; and do a lot more besides. A forest-ranger has to look after the forest just as a gardener has to tend a garden. And that means we must care for everything in the forest--birds and animals and fish as well as trees, though, of course, the game wardens have particular charge of the animals."
"And how do you take care of the animals and the trees?" demanded Charley eagerly.
"Young man," he said, "it would take me all day to answer your question. We do whatever is necessary to the welfare of the forest and its inhabitants. We take out wolf trees, make improvement cuttings, plant little trees, keep our telephone-line in shape, and do a million other things, as we find them necessary. If I had time just now, I'd go down this run and pile some stones in the pools for the trout to hide under. I was through here the other day and I noticed that the coons are playing hob with the fish."
"And does the state pay you for doing this work?"
"Certainly. Pays me well, too."
"Tell me how I could-----" began Charley.
But the ranger interrupted him. "I can't tell you another thing now," he said. "I must be moving. You never can tell when some careless fisherman will set the forest on fire. The fact is I ought to be at headquarters with the other rangers. The chief keeps us pretty close to the office during the fire season, so as to have a fire crew at hand to respond instantly to an alarm. But we have had such difficulty in securing fire patrols this spring that some of us rangers have to do patrol duty. This piece of timber you are in is the most valuable part of this entire forest. It is virgin pine. It would cut close to 100,000 feet to the acre. There is very little timber left in all Pennsylvania as fine as this. A good part of it has already been burned. We are keeping close watch on what is left. You never can tell when or where fires will start and we want to grab them at the first possible minute. So I must shake a leg."
"How do you grab a fire?" demanded Charley. "Please tell us. Maybe we could help put one out some day if we knew how."