Colorado's story was finished, and as it was about ten-thirty the second guard-men began putting on overcoats and heavy gloves preparatory to two hours and a half of watching the herd.
The stars were shining clear and bright, the bells of the horse-herd came softly over the prairie, making a tuneful chime on the frosty night air, and as I untied the rope that bound my roll of bedding and kicked it out on the ground, I could not keep from thinking of poor Jackson's death and wondering if the morrow held a like fate in store for any of us.
[THE TENDERFOOT FROM YALE]
By permission American Forestry Magazine.
"The trouble with this here forest service business nowadays is, that they're sendin' out, from the effete and luxurious East, a lot of half-baked kids, what never seen a mountain in all their lives, don't know whether beans is picked from trees or made in a factory at Battle Creek, an' generally ain't got savvy enough to find their way home after dark.
"Now here's this kid we've drawed in the last deal; nice enough boy, I reckon, but who's goin' to play nursey to him up in these here hills?" The speaker glared at his companion as if defying him to meet his charges against the newcomer and his kind.
"But he's got eddication, Jack," replied his listener, "an' that's what counts in these days. We got into the service in them good old days when it was a case of ability to ride a pitchin' bronc, rope a maverick, chase sheep herders off the earth, shoot the eyes out of a wildcat at forty yards an' all them things. Nowadays they picks 'em out by their brand of learnin' an' not by their high-heeled boots."
"Howsomever," he continued, "there's some of them that makes good in spite of their eddicational handicap. Over on the Sierra last fall we was all a-settin' in camp one Sunday afternoon when the phone rings like they was trying to wake the dead with it. The old man gits up to answer it. When he says, sort of startled-like, 'Fire, where?' we all pricks up our ears. 'Twas a mighty dry time an' every one was a-prayin' for rain, for we'd been fightin' fire for the last month and was all in.