THE GIANTS OF THE FOREST AND THE MEN WHO SAFEGUARD THEM.
Photography by U. S. Forest Service.

U. S. SERVICE SERIES.

THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FORESTERS

BY FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER

With Thirty-eight Illustrations from Photographs taken by the U. S. Forest Service

BOSTON

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.

1910

To My Son Roger's Friend

WILBUR UFFORD

PREFACE

Much of the wilderness is yet but little trod. Great stretches of virgin forest still remain within whose dim recesses nothing is changed since the days the Indians dwelt in them. The mystery and the adventure are not sped, the grandeur and the companionship still pulse among the glades, the "call of the wild" is an unceasing cry, and to that call the boy responds.

But if this impulse to return to the shelter of the wilds be still so strong, how greatly more intense does it become when we awaken to the fact that the forest needs our help even more than we need its sense of freedom. When we perceive that the fate of these great belts of untamed wilderness lies in the hands of a small group of men whose mastery is absolute, when first we realize that national benefits—great almost beyond the believing—are intrusted to these men, surely Desire and Duty leap to grip hands and pledge themselves to the service of the forests of our land. To breathe the magnificent spaces of the West, to reveal the wealth and beauty of our great primeval woods, to acclaim the worth of the men who administer them, and to show splendid possibilities to a lad of grit and initiative is the aim and purpose of

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS

  1. [ENTERING THE SERVICE]
  2. [PUTTING A STOP TO GUN-PLAY]
  3. [THE FIGHT IN THE COULEE]
  4. [PICKING A LIVELY BRONCHO]
  5. [A TUSSLE WITH A WILD-CAT]
  6. [IN THE HEART OF THE FOREST]
  7. [WILBUR IN HIS OWN CAMP]
  8. [DOWNING A GIANT LUMBERJACK]
  9. [A HARD FOE TO CONQUER]
  10. [A FOURTH OF JULY PERIL]
  11. [AMIDST A CATTLE STAMPEDE]
  12. [ALMOST TRAMPLED TO DEATH]
  13. [HOW THE FOREST WON A GREAT DOCTOR]
  14. [A ROLLING CLOUD OF SMOKE]
  15. [THE FOREST ABLAZE]
  16. [IN THE MIDST OF A SEA OF FIRE]

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FORESTERS

CHAPTER I

ENTERING THE SERVICE

"Hey, Wilbur, where are you headed for?"

The boy addressed, who had just come through the swing-doors of an office building in Washington, did not slacken his pace on hearing the question, but called back over his shoulder:

"To the forest, of course. Come along, Fred."

"But—" The second speaker stopped short, and, breaking into a run, caught up with his friend in a few steps.

"You certainly seem to be in a mighty big hurry to get there," he said.

"We don't loaf on our service," answered the boy with an air of pride.

His friend broke into a broad grin. He had known Wilbur Loyle for some time, and was well aware of his enthusiastic nature.

"How long has it been 'our' service?" he queried, emphasizing the pronoun.

"Ever since I was appointed," rejoined Wilbur exultantly.

"I'm glad the appointment has had time to soak in; it didn't take long, did it?" Wilbur flushed a little, and his chum, seeing this, went on laughingly: "Don't mind my roasting, old man, only you were 'way up in the clouds."

The boy's expression cleared instantaneously, and he laughed in reply.

"I suppose I was," he said, "but it's great to feel you've got the thing you've been working for. As you know, Fred, I've been thinking of this for years; in fact, I've always wanted it, and I've worked hard to get it. And then the Chief Forester's fine; he's just fine; I liked him ever so much."

"Did you have much chance to talk with him?"

"Yes, quite a lot. I thought I was likely enough to meet him, and p'raps he would formally tell me I was appointed and then bow me out of the office. Not a bit of it. He told me all about the Service, showed me just what there was in it for the country, and I tell you what—he made me feel that I wanted to go right straight out on the street and get all the other boys to join."

"Why?"

"Well, he showed me that the Forest Service gave a fellow a chance to make good even better than in the army or the navy. There you have to follow orders mainly; there's that deadly routine besides, and you don't get much of a chance to think for yourself; but in the Forest Service a chap is holding down a place of trust where he has a show to make good by working it out for himself."

"Sounds all right," said the older boy. "Anyway, I'm glad if you're glad."

"What I like about it," went on Wilbur, "is the bigness of the whole thing and the chance a chap has to show what he's made of. Glad? You bet I'm glad!"

"You weren't so sure whether you were going to like it or not when you went in to see about it," said Fred.

"Oh, yes, I was. I knew I was going to like it all right. But I didn't know anything about where I might be sent or how I would be received."

"I think it's just ripping," said his friend, "that it looks so good to you, starting out. It makes a heap of difference, sometimes, how a thing begins."

"It surely does. Right now, the whole thing seems too good to be true."

"Well," said the other, "as long as it strikes you that way I suppose you're satisfied now for all the grind you did preparing for it. But I don't believe it would suit me. It might be all right to be a Forest Ranger, but you told me one time that you had to start in as a Fire Guard, a sort of Fire Policeman, didn't you?"

"Sure!"

"Well, that doesn't sound particularly exciting."

"Why not? What more excitement do you want than a forest fire! Isn't that big enough for you?"

"The fire would be all right," answered the older boy, "but it's the watching and waiting for it that would get me."

"You can't expect to have adventures every minute anywhere," said Wilbur, "but even so, you're not standing on one spot like a sailor in a crow's nest, waiting for something to happen; you're in the saddle, riding from point to point all day long, sometimes when there is a trail and sometimes when there isn't, out in the real woods, not in poky, stuffy city streets. You know, Fred, I can't stand the city; I always feel as if I couldn't breathe."

"All right, Wilbur," said the other, "it's your own lookout, I suppose. Me for the city, though."

Just then, and before Fred could make any further reply, a hand was laid on Wilbur's shoulder, and the lad, looking around, found the Chief Forester walking beside them.

"Trying to make converts already, Loyle?" he asked with a smile, nodding pleasantly to the lad's companion.

"I was trying to, sir," answered the boy, "but I don't believe Fred would ever make one of us."

The Chief Forester restrained all outward trace of amusement at the lad's unconscious coupling of the head of the service and the newest and youngest assistant, and, turning to the older boy, said questioningly:

"Why not, Fred?"

"I was just saying to Wilbur, sir," he replied in a stolid manner, "that a Forest Guard's life didn't sound particularly exciting. It might be all right when a fire came along, but I should think that it would be pretty dull waiting for it, week after week."

"Not exciting enough?" The boys were nearly taken off their feet by the energy of the speaker. "Not when every corner you turn may show you smoke on the horizon? Not when every morning finds you at a different part of the forest and you can't get there quick enough to convince yourself that everything is all right? Not when you plunge down ravines, thread your way through and over fallen timber, and make up time by a sharp gallop wherever there's a clearing, knowing that every cabin you pass is depending for its safety on your care? And then that is only a small part of the work. If you can't find excitement enough in that, you can't find it in anything."

"Yes—" began Fred dubiously, but the Chief Forester continued:

"And as for the responsibility! I tell you, the forest is the place for that. We need men there, not machines. On the men in the forest millions of dollars' worth of property depends. More than that, on the care of the Forest Guards hangs perhaps the stopping of a forest fire that otherwise would ravage the countryside, kill the young forest, denude the hills of soil, choke with mud the rivers that drain the denuded territory, spoil the navigable harbors, and wreck the prosperity of all the towns and villages throughout that entire river's length."

"I hadn't realized there was so much in it," replied Fred, evidently struck with the Forester's earnestness.

"You haven't any idea of how much there is in it. Not only for the work itself, but for you. Wild horses can't drag a man out of the Service once he's got in. It has a fascination peculiarly its own. The eager expectancy of vast spaces, the thrill of adventure in riding off to parts where man seldom treads, and the magnificent independence of the frontiersman, all these become the threads of which your daily life is made."

"It sounds fine when you put it that way, sir," said Fred, his eyes kindling at the picture. "But it's hardly like that at first, is it?"

"Certainly it is! Does the life of a fireman in a big city fire department strike you as being interesting or exciting?"

"Oh, yes, sir!"

"It isn't to be compared with that of the Forest Guard. A city fireman is only one of a company huddled together in a little house, not greatly busy until the fire telegraph signal rings. But suppose there were only one fireman for the whole city, that he alone were responsible for the safety of every house, that instead of telegraphic signaling he must depend on his trusty horse to carry him to suitable vantage points, and on his eyesight when there; suppose that he knew there was a likelihood of fire every hour out of the twenty-four, and that during the season he could be sure of two or three a week, don't you think that fireman would have a lively enough time of it?"

"He surely would," said Wilbur.

"Aside from the fact that there are not as many people involved, that's not unlike a Forest Guard's position. I tell you, he's not sitting around his shack trying to kill time." Then, turning sharply to the older boy, the Chief Forester continued:

"What do you want to be?"

"I had wanted to be a locomotive engineer, sir," was the boy's reply, "but now I think I'll stay in the city."

"It was the excitement of the life that appealed to you, was it?"

"Yes, sir. I guess so."

"True, there's a good deal of responsibility there, when you stand with your hand on the throttle of a fast express, knowing that the lives of the passengers are in your hand. There's a good deal of pride, too, in steering a vessel through a dangerous channel or in a stormy sea; there's a thrill of power when you sight a big gun and know that if you were in warfare the defense of your country might lie in your skill and aim. But none of these is greater than the sense of power and trust reposing in the men of the Forest Service, to whom Uncle Sam gives the guardianship and safe-keeping of millions of acres of his property and the lives of thousands of his citizens."

The Chief Forester watched the younger of his companions, who was striding along the Washington street, and casting rapid glances from building to building as he went along, as though he expected to see flame and smoke pouring from every window, and that the city's safety lay in his hands. Smiling slightly, very slightly, and addressing himself to the older boy, although it was for the benefit of his new assistant that he was speaking, the Forester continued:

"It's really more like the work of a trusted army scout than anything else. In the old days of Indian warfare,"—both boys gave a quick start of increased attention—"the very finest men and the most to be trusted were the scouts. They were men of great bravery, of undaunted loyalty, of great wariness, and filled with the spirit of dashing adventure. They were men who took their lives in their own hands. Going before the main body of the army, single-handed, if need be, they would stave off the attacks of Indian foes and would do battle with outposts and pickets. If the force were too great, they would map out the lay of the land and devise a strategical plan of attack, then, without rest or food often, would steal back to the main body, and, laying their information in the hands of the general, would act as guides if he ordered a forward movement."

"But how—" interrupted Fred.

"I was just coming to that," replied the Forester in response to his half-uttered query. "A Forest Guard is really a Forest Scout. There have been greater massacres at the hands of the Fire Tribe than from any Indian tribe that ever roamed the prairies. Hundreds, yes, thousands of lives were lost in the days before the Forest Service was in existence by fires which Forest Scouts largely could have prevented. Why, I myself can recall seeing a fire in which nearly a thousand and a half persons perished."

"In one fire?"

"Just in one fire. What would you think if you were told that in a forest in front of you were several thousand savages, all with their war-paint on, waiting a chance to break forth on the villages of the plain, that you had been chosen for the post of honor in guarding that strip of plain, and that the lives of those near by depended on your alertness? If they had picked you out for that difficult and important post, do you think that you would go and stand your rifle up against a tree and look for some soft nice mossy bank on which to lie down and go to sleep?"

"I'd stay on the job till I dropped," answered Wilbur quickly and aggressively.

"There's really very little difference between the two positions," said the Chief Forester. "No band of painted savages can break forth from a forest with more appalling fury than can a fire, none is more difficult to resist, none can carry the possibility of torture to its hapless victims more cruelly, none be so deaf to cries of mercy as a fire. Instead of keeping your ears open for a distant war-whoop, you have to keep your eyes open for the thin up-wreathing curl of smoke by day, or the red glow and flickering flame at night, which tells that the time has come for you to show what stuff you are made of. On the instant must you start for the fire, though it may be miles away, crossing, it may be, a part of the forest through which no trail has been made, plunging through streams which under less urgency would make you hesitate to try them, single-handed and 'all on your own,' to fight Uncle Sam's battles against his most dangerous and most insistent foe."

"But if you can't put it out?" suggested Fred.

"It has got to be put out," came the sharp reply, with an insistence of manner that told even more than the words. "There isn't anything else to it. If you have to get back to headquarters or send word there, if all the Rangers in the forest have to be summoned, if you have to ride to every settlement, ranch, and shack on the range, yes, if you have to rouse up half the State, this one thing is sure—the fire has got to be put out."

"But can you get help?"

"Nearly always. In the first place, the danger is mutual and everybody near the forest or in it will suffer if the fire spreads. In the second place, the Service is ready to pay men a fair wage for the time consumed in putting out a fire, and even the Ranger has the right to employ men to a limited extent. Sometimes the blaze can be stopped without great difficulty, at other times it will require all the resources available under the direction of the Forest Supervisor, but in the first resort it depends largely upon the Guard. A young fellow who is careless in such a post as that is as great a traitor to his country as a soldier would be who sold to the enemy the plans of the fort he was defending, or a sailor who left the wheel while a battle-ship was threading a narrow and rocky channel."

"What starts these forest fires, sir?" asked Fred.

"All sorts of things, but most of them arise from one common cause—carelessness. There are quite a number of instances in which fires have been started by lightning, but they are few in number as compared with those due to human agency. The old tale of fires being caused by two branches of a dead tree rubbing against each other is, of course, a fable."

"But I should think any one would know enough not to start a forest fire," exclaimed the older boy. "I'm not much on the woods, but I think I know enough for that."

"It isn't deliberate, it's careless," repeated the Forester. "Sometimes a camper leaves a little fire smoldering when he thinks the last spark is out; sometimes settlers who have to burn over their clearings allow the blaze to get away from them; when Indians are in the neighborhood they receive a large share of the blame, and the hated tramp is always quoted as a factor of mischief. In earlier days, sparks from locomotives were a constant danger, and although the railroad companies use a great many precautions now to which formerly they paid no heed, these sparks and cinders are still a prolific cause of trouble. And beside this carelessness, there is a good deal of inattention and neglect. The settlers will let a little fire burn for days unheeded, waiting for a rain to come along and put it out, whereas if a drought ensues and a high wind comes up, a fire may arise that will leap through the forest and leave them homeless, and possibly even their own lives may have to pay the penalty of their recklessness."

"But what I don't understand," said Fred, "is how people get caught. It's easy enough to see how a forest could be destroyed, but I should think that every one could get out of the way easily enough. It must take a tree a long while to burn, even after it gets alight, especially if it's a big one."

"A big forest fire, fanned by a high wind, and in the dry season," answered the Chief Forester, "could catch the fastest runner in a few minutes. The flames repeatedly have been known to overtake horses on the gallop, and where there are no other means of escape the peril is extreme."

"But will green trees burn so fast?" the older boy queried in surprise. "I should have thought they were so full of sap that they wouldn't burn at all."

"The wood and foliage of coniferous trees like spruce, fir, and pine are so full of turpentine and resin that they burn like tinder. The heat is almost beyond the power of words to express. The fire does not seem to burn in a steady manner, the flames just breathe upon an immense tree and it becomes a blackened skeleton which will burn for hours.

"The actual temperature in advance of the fire is so terrific that the woods begin to dry and to release inflammable vapors before the flames reach them, when they flash up and add their force to the fiery hurricane. It is almost unbelievable, too, the way a crown-fire will jump. Huge masses of burning gas will be hurled forth on the wind and ignite the trees two and three hundred yards distant. Fortunately, fires of this type are not common, most of the blazes one is likely to encounter being ground fires, which are principally harmful in that they destroy the forest floor."

"But I should have thought," said Wilbur, "that such fires could only get a strong hold in isolated parts where nobody lives."

"Not at all. Sometimes they begin quite close to the settlements, like the destructive fire at Hinckley, Minnesota, in 1894, which burned quietly for a week, and could have been put out by a couple of men without any trouble; but sometimes they start in the far recesses of the forest and reach their full fury very quickly. Of course, every fire, even the famous Peshtigo fire, started as a little bit of a blaze which either of you two boys could have put out."

"How big a fire was that, sir?" asked Fred.

"It covered an area of over two thousand square miles."

"Great Cæsar!" ejaculated Wilbur after a rapid calculation, "that would be a strip twenty miles wide and a hundred miles long."

The Chief Forester nodded.

"It wiped the town of Peshtigo entirely off the map," he said. "The people were hemmed in, ringed by fire on every side, and out of a population of two thousand, scarcely five hundred escaped. Flight was hopeless and rescue impossible."

"And could this have been stopped after it got a hold at all?" asked Wilbur seriously, realizing the gravity of the conditions that some day he might have to face. "Could not something have been done?"

"It could have been prevented," said the Chief Forester fiercely, "and as I said, in the first few hours either one of you boys could have put it out. But there have been many others like it since, and probably there will be many others yet to come. Even now, there are hundreds of towns and villages near forest lands utterly unprovided with adequate fire protection. Some of them are near our national forests, and it is our business to see that no danger comes to them.[1] Think of a fire like that of Peshtigo, think that if it had been stopped at the very beginning a thousand and a half lives would have been saved, and then ask yourself whether the work of a Forest Guard is not just about as fine a thing as any young fellow can do."

[1] While this volume was in the press, forest fires of the utmost violence broke out in Idaho, Washington, and Montana. Over two hundred lives were lost, many of them of members of the Forest Service, and hundreds of thousands of acres of timber were destroyed.

Wilbur turned impulsively to his chum.

"You'll just have to join us, Fred," he said. "I don't see how any one that knows anything about it can keep out. You could go to a forestry school this summer and start right in to get ready for it."

"I'll think about it," said the older boy.

The Chief Forester was greatly pleased with the lad's eagerness to enroll his friend, and, turning to him, continued:

"I don't want you to think it's all fire-fighting in the forest, though, Loyle; so I'll give you an idea of some of the other opportunities which will come your way in forest work. I suppose both of you boys hate a bully? I know I used to when I was at school."

"I think," said Wilbur impetuously, "that a bully's just about the worst ever."

"I do, too," joined in Fred.

"Well, you'll have a chance to put down a lot of bullying. You look surprised, eh? You don't see what bullying has to do with forestry? It has, a great deal, and I'll show you how. I suppose you know that a forest is a good deal like a school?"

"Well, no," admitted Wilbur frankly, "I don't quite see how."

"A forest is made up of a lot of different kind of trees, isn't it, just as a school is made up of a lot of boys? And each of these trees has an individuality, just in the same way that each boy has an individuality. That, of course, is easy to see. But what is more important, and much less known, is that just as the school as a whole gets to have a certain standard, so does the forest as a whole."

"That seems queer," remarked Fred.

"Perhaps it does, but it's true none the less. In many schools there are some boys bigger than others, but who are not good for as much, and they're always picking at the others and crowding them down. In the same way in a forest there are always some worthless trees, trying to crowd out the ones which are of more value. As the trees of better value are always sought for their timber, that gives the worthless stuff a good chance to get ahead. One of the duties of a Forester, looking after his section of the forest, is to see that every possible chance is given to the good over the bad."

"It's really like having people to deal with!" cried Fred in surprise. "It sounds as if a tree were some kind of a human being."

"There are lots of people," said the Chief Forester, "who think of trees and speak of trees just exactly as if they were people like themselves. And it isn't even only the growing of the right kind of trees, but there are lots of ways of handling them under different conditions and at different ages. Thus, a Forester must be able to make his trees grow in height up to a certain stage, then stop their further growth upwards and make them put on diameter."

"But how can you get a tree to grow in a certain way?" asked Fred in utter amazement.

"Get Loyle here to tell you all about it. I suppose you learned that at the Ranger School, didn't you?" he added, turning to the younger boy.

"Yes, sir. We had a very interesting course in silviculture."

"But just to give you a rough idea, Fred," continued the Forester, "you know that some trees need a lot of light. Consequently, if a number of young trees are left fairly close together, they will all grow up straight as fast as they can, without putting out any branches near the bottom, and all their growth will be of height."

"See, Fred," interjected Wilbur, "that's why saplings haven't got any twigs except just at the top."

"Just so," said the Forester. "Presently," he continued, "as these young trees grow up together, one will overtop the rest. If the adjacent small trees be cut down when this tallest tree has reached a good height, it will spread at the top in order to get as much sunlight as possible. In order to carry a large top the diameter of the trunk must increase. So, by starting the trees close together and allowing one of them to develop alone after a certain height has been reached, the Forester has persuaded that tree first to grow straight and high, and then to develop girth, affording the finest and most valuable kind of lumber. That's just one small example of the scores of possibilities that lie in the hands of the expert Forester. By proper handling a forest can be made to respond to training, as I said, just as a school might do."

"I can tell you a lot more things, Fred, just as wonderful as that," commented Wilbur.

The Chief Forester nodded.

"I'd like to hear you myself," he said; "I'd rather listen to something about trees than eat. But I've got to go now. I'll see you again soon, Loyle," and with a parting good wish to both boys, he crossed the street and went on his way.

A FOREST FIRE OUT OF CONTROL.
Conditions which tax man's resources to the uttermost, and where peril is the price of victory.
Courtesy of U. S. Forest Service.

GOOD FORESTRY MANAGEMENT.
All the smaller wood is used for cord-wood, the brush is in piles ready for burning, and the young trees are left to grow up into a new forest.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.

BAD FORESTRY MANAGEMENT.
Forest cut clear and burned over, all the young growth destroyed, and nothing left except costly replanting.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.

CHAPTER II

PUTTING A STOP TO GUN-PLAY

Wilbur was sitting in the writing-room of the hotel where he was staying while in Washington, just finishing a letter home telling of his good-fortune and his appointment, when a bell-boy came to tell him that his uncle, Mr. Masseth, was downstairs waiting to see him. This uncle had been a great inspiration to Wilbur, for he was prominent in the Geological Survey, and had done some wonderful work in the Canyon of the Colorado. Wilbur hurried down at once.

"Congratulations!" the geologist said, as soon as the boy appeared. "So you came through with flying colors, I hear."

"Every one was just as fine as could be," answered the lad. "But how did you know about it, uncle?"

"You wrote me that you were going to call on the Chief Forester to-day, and so I took the trouble to telephone to one of the men in the office who would be likely to know the result of your interview."

"Isn't it bully?"

"Yes," said the older man with a quiet laugh, "I think it is 'bully,' as you call it. But I didn't call only to congratulate you; I thought perhaps you would like to come with me to-night and meet some of the men in the Forest Service who are really doing things out West. If you do, there's no time to waste."

"You bet I do," the boy replied hastily. "But what is it all about?"

"It's a lecture on forestry in China, but it happens to come at the same time as a meeting of the District Foresters, so they're all in town. Trot along upstairs and get your hat, and we can talk about it on the way."

The geologist sauntered over to an acquaintance who was standing in the hotel lobby near by, but he had hardly exchanged half a dozen sentences with him when Wilbur reappeared, ready to go.

"You see," said Masseth as they left the hotel, "it is a good plan for you to meet as many of the leaders of your profession as you can, not only because their friendship may be useful to you, nor yet only because they are all pleasant fellows, but because forestry is a profession, a very large and complex one, and it is a revelation sometimes to see what can be made of it. I know myself, whenever I meet a great geologist I always feel a little better to think I can say, 'I am a geologist, too.' So you, I hope, may be able to say some day, 'I am a Forester, too.'"

"I'm one now," said Wilbur elatedly.

"You're not, you're only a cub yet," corrected his uncle sharply; "don't let your enthusiasm run away with your good sense. You are no more a Forester yet than a railroad bill-clerk is a transportation expert."

"All right, uncle," said Wilbur, "I'll swallow my medicine and take that all back. I'm not even the ghost of a Forester—yet."

"You will meet the real article to-night. As I told you, the District Foresters are East for a conference, and this lecture is given before the Forestry Association. So you will have a good chance of sizing up the sort of men you are likely to be with."

"Will the Forest Supervisors be there, too?"

"I should imagine not. There may be one or two in town. But the Supervisors alone would make quite a gathering if they were all here. There are over a hundred, are there not? You ought to know."

"Just a hundred and forty-one now—about one to each forest."

"And there are only six District Foresters?"

"Yes. One is in Montana, one in Colorado, one in New Mexico, one in Utah, one in California, and one in Oregon. And they have under their charge, so I learned to-day, nearly two hundred million acres of land, or, in other words, territory larger than the whole state of Texas and five times as large as England and Wales."

"I had forgotten the figures," said the geologist. "That gives each District Forester a little piece of land about the size of England to look after. And they can tell you, most of them, on almost every square mile of that region, approximately how much marketable standing timber may be found there, what kinds of trees are most abundant, and in what proportion, and roughly, how many feet of lumber can be cut to the acre. It's always been wonderful to me. That sort of thing takes learning, though, and you've got to dig, Wilbur, if you want to be a District Forester some day."

"I'm going to get there some day, all right."

"If you try hard enough, you may. By the way, there's one of them going in now. That's the house, on the other side of the Circle."

The boy looked across the curve and scanned all the men going in the same direction, quite with a feeling of companionship. One of the men who overtook and passed them, giving a hearty greeting to Masseth as he went by, was Roger Doughty, a young fellow who had distinguished himself in the Geological Survey, having taken a trip from south to north of Alaska, and Wilbur's companion felt a twinge of regret that his nephew had not entered his own service.

Wilbur, however, was always a "woods" boy, and even in his early childish days had been possessed with a desire to camp out. He had read every book he could lay hands on that dealt with "the great outdoors," and would ten thousand times over rather have been Daniel Boone than George Washington. Seeing his intense pleasure in that life, his father had always allowed him to go off into the wilds for his holidays, and in consequence he knew many little tricks of woodcraft and how to make himself comfortable when the weather was bad. His father, who was a lawyer, had wanted him to enter that profession, but Wilbur had been so sure of his own mind, and was so persistent that at his request he had been permitted to go to the Colorado Ranger School. From this he had returned even more enthusiastic than before, and Masseth, seeing that by temperament Wilbur was especially fitted for the Forest Service, had urged the boy's father to allow him to enter for it, and did not attempt to conceal his satisfaction with Wilbur's success.

"Why, Masseth, how did you get hold of Loyle?" asked the Chief Forester as the two came up the walk together.

"Didn't you know he was my nephew?" was the surprised reply.

"No," answered their host as they paused on the threshold, "he never said anything to me about it."

The geologist looked inquiringly at his young relative.

"I thought," said Wilbur, coloring, "that if I said anything about knowing you, before I was appointed, it would look as though I had done it to get a pull. I didn't think it would do me any good, anyhow; and even if it had, I felt that I'd rather not get anything that way."

"It wouldn't have helped you a bit," said the Chief Forester, "and, as you see, you did not need it. I'm glad, too, that you did not mention it at the time." He nodded his appreciation of the boy's position as they passed into the room beyond.

The place was thoroughly typical of the gathering and the occasion. The walls were hung with some magnificent trophies, elk and moose heads, one stuffed fish of huge size was framed beside the door, and there were numberless photographs of trees and forests, cross-sections of woods, and comparisons of leaves and seeds. Although in the heart of Washington, there was a breath and fragrance in the room, which, to the boy, seemed like old times in the woods. The men, too, that were gathered there showed themselves to be what they were—men who knew the great wide world and loved it. Every man seemed hearty in manner and thoroughly interested in whatever was going on.

Masseth was called away, soon after they entered the room, and Wilbur, left to himself, sauntered about among the groups of talkers, looking at the various trophies hung on the walls. As he drew near to one of the smaller groups, however, he caught the word "gun-play," so he edged up to the men and listened. One of them, seeing the lad, moved slightly to one side as an unspoken invitation to be one of them, and Wilbur stepped up.

The man who was speaking was comparing the present peaceful administration of the forests with the conditions that used to exist years ago, before the Service had been established, and when the Western "bad man" was at the summit of his power.

"It was during the cattle and sheep war that a fellow had to be pretty quick on the draw," said one.

"The Service had a good enough man for that, all right," suggested another member of the same group, "there wasn't any of them who could pull a bead quicker than our grazing Chief yonder." Wilbur turned and saw crossing the room a quiet-looking, spare man, light-complexioned, and apparently entirely inoffensive. "I guess they were ready enough to give him a wide berth when it came to gun-play."

"Talking about the cattle war," said the first speaker, "the worst trouble I ever had, or rather, the one that I hated to go into most, was back in those days. I was on the old Plum Creek Timber Land Reserve, now a portion of the Pike National Forest. A timber trespass sometimes leads to a very pretty scrap, and a cattle mix-up usually spells 'War' with a capital 'W,' but this had both."

"You get them that way sometimes," said a middle-aged, red-headed man, who was standing by.

"Had some down your way, too, I reckon?"

"Plenty of 'em. But go ahead with the yarn."

"Well, this bunch that I'm speaking of had skipped out from Montana; they were 'wanted' there, and they had come down and started cutting railroad ties in a secluded canyon forming one of the branches of West Plum Creek. They were hated good and plenty, these same tie-cutters, because they had a reputation of being too handy with their guns, and consequently causing a decrease in the calf crop. The cattlemen used to drop in on them every once in a while, but the tie-cutters were foxy, and they were never caught with the goods. Of course, there was a moral certainty that they weren't buying meat, but nothing could be proved against them, and the interchanges of compliments, while lively and picturesque enough, never took the form of lead, although it was expected every time they met."

"Had this been going on long?"

"Several months, I reckon," answered the former Ranger, "before I heard of it. This was just before that section of the country was taken over by the Forest Service. As soon as notice was given that the district in question was to be placed under government regulations, a deputation to the tie-cutters loped down on their cow-ponies to convey the cheerful news. Expressing, of course, the profoundest sympathy for them, the spokesman of the cattle group volunteered the information that they could wrap up their axes in tissue paper, tie pink ribbons on their rifles and go home, because any one caught cutting timber on the reserve, now that it was a reserve, would go to the Pen for fifteen years."

"What a bluff!"

"Bluff it certainly was. It didn't work, either. One of the tie-cutters in reply suggested that the cowmen should go back and devote their time to buying Navajo saddle-blankets and silver-mounted sombreros, since ornamenting the landscape was all they had to do in life; another replied that if a government inspector ever set eyes on their cattle he'd drive them off the range as a disgrace to the State; and a third capped the replies with the terse answer that no ten United States officers and no hundred and ten cattlemen could take them out alive."

"That wouldn't make the cow-camp feel happy a whole lot," remarked the red-headed man.

"There wasn't any shooting, though, as I said before, though just how it kept off I never rightly could understand. At all events they fixed it so that we heard of it in a hurry. Then both sides awaited developments. The tie-cutters kept their hands off the cattle for a while, and the cowmen had no special business with railroad ties, so that, aside from snorting at each other, no special harm was done.

"But, of course, the timber trespass question had to be investigated, and the Supervisor, who was then located at Colorado Springs, arranged to make the trip with me to the tie-cutters' camp from a small station about fifty miles north of the Springs. I met him at the station as prearranged. We were just about to start when a telegram was handed him calling him to another part of the forest in a hurry."

"Tough luck," said one of the listeners.

"It surely was—for me," commented the narrator. "The camp to which we had intended going was twenty-six miles into the mountains, and going up there alone didn't appeal to me a little bit. However, the Supervisor told me to start right out, to get an idea of how much timber had been cut, and in what kind of shape the ground had been left, and in short, to 'nose around a little,' as he put it himself."

"That was hardly playing the game, sending you up there alone," said one of the men.

"I thought at the time that it wasn't, but what could he do? The matter had to be investigated, and he had been sent for and couldn't come with me. But he was considerate enough, strongly urging me not to get killed, 'as Rangers were scarce.'"

"That was considerate!"

"Yes, wasn't it? But early the next morning I started for the canyon where the outlaws were said to be in hiding. The riding was fair, so I made good time on the trail and got to the entrance of the canyon about the middle of the day. A few hundred feet from the fork of the stream I came to a little log cabin, occupied by a miner and his family. I took lunch with them and told them my errand. Both the man and his wife begged me not to go up to the camp alone, as they had heard the tie-cutters threaten to kill at sight any stranger found on their land."

"Why didn't you propose that the miner should go up to the camp with you?"

"I did. But he remarked that up to date he had succeeded in keeping out of the cattlemen-lumbermen trouble, and that he was going to keep right along keeping out. He suggested that if there was going to be any funeral in the immediate vicinity he wasn't hankering to take any more prominent part than that of a mourner, and that the title-rôle of such a performance wasn't any matter of envy with him. However, I succeeded in persuading him to come part of the way with me, and secured his promise that he would listen for any shooting, and if I should happen to resign involuntarily from the Service by the argument of a bullet, that he would volunteer as a witness in the case."

"I don't altogether blame him, you know," said the red-headed man; "you said he had a wife there, and interfering with other folks' doings isn't healthy."

"I didn't blame him either," said the first speaker, "but I would have liked to have him along. A little farther up the canyon I came to a recently built log cabin, covered with earth. An old man stood at the door and I greeted him cheerily. We had a moment's chat, and then I asked him the way to the cabin where the tie-cutters lived. Judge of my surprise when he told me this was their cabin, and that they lived with him. By the time I had secured this much information the two younger men had come out, and one of them, Tom, wanted to know what I was after. I stated my business, briefly. There was a pause.

"'Ye 'low as ye're agoin' to jedge them ties,' he said slowly. 'Wa'al I 'low we'll sort 'er go along. Thar's a heap o' fow-el in these yar parts, stranger, an' I 'low I'll take a gun.'

"The other brother, who seemed more taciturn, turned and nodded to two youngsters who had come out of the cabin while Tom was speaking. The elder of the two, a boy about thirteen years old, went into the shack and returned in a moment bringing out two rifles. I turned the broncho's head up the trail, but Tom interposed.

"'I 'low,' he said, 'that ye'll hev ter leave yer horse-critter right hyar; thar ain't much of er trail up the mount'n.'

"I wasn't particularly anxious to get separated from my horse, and that cabin was just about the last place I would have chosen to leave him; but there was no help for it, and as I would have to dismount anyway to get into the timber, I slipped out of the saddle and put the hobbles on. But when we came to start, the two men wanted me to go first. I balked at that. I told them that I wasn't in the habit of walking up a mountain trail in front of two men with guns, and that they would have to go first and show the way. They grumbled, but, seeing that I meant it, they turned and silently walked up the mountainside ahead of me.

"They stopped at an old prospect shaft that was filled to the brim with water, and wanted me to come close to the hole and look at it, telling me some cock-and-bull story about it, and calling my attention to some supposed outcrop of rich ore that could be seen under the water. But I refused flatly to go a step nearer than I then was, telling them that I wished to get to those ties immediately.

"At an old cabin they halted again, and Tom wanted to know which was 'the best shot in the bunch.' I was not in favor of trying guns or anything of that sort, especially when there seemed no reason for it, knowing how easy it would be for a shot to go wide, and so I urged them to lead on to the ties. But Tom insisted upon shooting, and though his brother did not seem quite to follow the other's plans, still he chimed in with him, and the only thing I could do was to agree with what grace I could. But I decided to make this a pretext for disposing of some of their superfluous ammunition.

"Pulling my six-shooter, I told Jim to put an old sardine can, that was lying on the ground near by, on the stump of a tree about twenty-five or thirty yards distant. Then I told him to lean his rifle against the cabin while placing the can on the tree. This he did. I stepped over to the cabin and took the gun as though to look after it. Then I walked over to where Tom stood, telling him to blaze away at the can on the tree. While he was doing so I slipped the cartridges out of Jim's gun and put them in my pocket.

"By the time that Tom had fired three shots Jim came up and I told the former to hand over the rifle and let his brother try. Quite readily he did so. Of course, there were only two cartridges left in the gun, for it was a half-magazine, but Jim expected to take the third shot with his own rifle. When he had fired twice, however, and reached out his hand for the other gun, I handed it to him with the remark that it was empty. For a minute or two things looked black, because both men saw that they had been tricked. But I had the drop on them, and since they were both disarmed I felt considerably easier."

"How did it end up?" asked the red-haired listener.

"It was easy enough after that, as long as I didn't turn my back to them or let either get too near. We went together and counted the ties, returning to the cabin where I had left my horse. When the tie-cutters found, however, that the cattlemen had deliberately exaggerated the penalty for timber trespass in the hope that they would resist and thus get themselves into serious trouble with the government, their anger was diverted from me. By joining in with them in a sweeping denunciation of the cow-camp, and by pointing out that no harsh measures were intended against them, they came to look on me as friend instead of foe."

"What was done about the trespass?"

"It was pretty early in the days of the Service, and, as you remember, we let them down easily at first so that no undue amount of friction should be caused. I think some small fine, purely nominal, was exacted, and the tie-cutters got into harmonious relations with the Supervisor later. But those same boys told me, just as I was starting for home, that they intended to drop me in that old prospect shaft, or, failing that, to pump me full of holes."

The speaker had hardly finished when a scattering of groups and an unfolding of chairs took place and the lecturer for the evening was announced. He won Wilbur's heart at once by an appreciative story of a young Chinese boy, a civil service student in his native province, who had accompanied him on a portion of his trip through China in order to learn what might be done toward the improvement of his country.

"He was a bright lad, this Fo-Ho," said the lecturer, "and it was very largely owing to him that I extended my trip a little and went to Fou-Ping. I visited Fo-Ho's family home, where the graves of his ancestors were—you know how powerful ancestor-worship still is in China. Such a scene of desolation I never saw, and, I tell you, I was sorry for the boy. There was the town that had been his father's home deserted and in ruins.

"Two hundred years before, in this same place now so thickly strewn with ruins, there had been no one living, and the mountains were accounted impassable because of the dense forests. But in 1708 a Mongol horde under a powerful chieftain settled in the valley, and the timber began to be cut recklessly. Attracted by the fame of this chieftain, other tribes poured down into these valleys, until by 1720 several hundred thousand persons were living where thirty years before not a soul was to be seen. The cold winters of Mongolia drew heavily upon the fuel resources of the adjacent forests, and a disastrous fire stripped hundreds of square miles. Farther and farther afield the inhabitants had to go for fuel, until every stick which would burn had been swept clear; bleaker and more barren grew the vicinity, until at last the tribes had to decamp, and what was once a dense forest and next a smiling valley has become a hideous desert which even the vultures have forsaken."

Masseth leaned over toward Wilbur and whispered:

"You don't have to go as far away as China. There are some terrible cases of deforestation right here in the United States."

The lecturer then launched into a description of the once great forests of China, and quoted the words of writers less than three centuries ago who depicted the great Buddhist monasteries hid deep in the heart of densely wooded regions. Then, with this realization of heavily forested areas in mind, there was flashed upon the screen picture after picture of desolation. Cities, once prosperous, were shown abandoned because the mountains near by had become deforested. Man could not live there because food could not grow without soil, and all the soil had been washed away from the slopes. The streams, once navigable, were choked up with the silt that had washed down. When rains came they acted as torrents, since there was no vegetation to hold the water and the lower levels became flooded.

"Nature made the world a garden," said the speaker, "and man is making it a desert. Our children and our children's children for countless generations are to enjoy the gardens we leave, or bewail the deserts we create."

Startling, too, was the manner in which the lecturer showed the unhappy fate of countries which an unthinking civilization had despoiled. The hills and valleys where grew the famous cedars of Lebanon are almost treeless now, and Palestine, once so luxuriant, is bare and lonely. Great cities flourished upon the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates where were the hanging gardens of Babylon and the great hunting parks of Nineveh, yet now the river runs silently between muddy banks, infertile and deserted, save for a passing nomad tribe. The woods of ancient Greece are not less ruined than her temples; the forests of Dalmatia whence came the timber that built the navies of the ancient world are now barren plateaus, shelterless and waste; and throughout a large part of southern Europe and northern Africa, man has transformed the smile of nature into a mask of inflexible severity.

"But," said Wilbur, turning excitedly to his uncle, as soon as the lecturer had closed, "isn't there anything that can be done to make those places what they were before?"

"Not often, if it is allowed to go too far," said the geologist. "It takes time, of course, for all the soil to be washed away. But wherever the naked rock is exposed the case is hopeless. You can't grow anything, even cactus, on a rock. Lichens, of course, may begin, but hundreds of thousands of years are required to make soil anew."

"But if it's taken in time?"

"Then you can reforest by planting. But that's slow and costly. It requires millions of dollars to replant a stretch of forest which would have renewed itself just by a little careful lumbering, for Nature is only too ready to do the work for nothing if given a fair chance."

By this time the gathering had broken up in large part and a number of those who had come only to hear the lecture had gone. Some of the Forest Service men, however, were passing through the corridors to the dining-room. At the door Wilbur paused hesitatingly. He had not been invited to stay, but at the same time he felt that he could hardly leave without thanking his uncle, who at the time was strolling toward the other portion of the house, deeply engrossed in conversation. In this quandary the Chief Forester, all unknown to the lad, saw his embarrassment, and with the quick intuition so characteristic of the man, divined the cause.

"Come along, Loyle, come along in," he said, "you're one of us now."

Wilbur, with a grateful look, passed on into the reception-room. A moment later he heard his name called, and, turning, came face to face with a tall young fellow, bronzed and decisive looking.

"My name's Nally," he said, "and I hear you're going to one of my forests. Mr. Masseth was telling me that you're his nephew. I guess we'll start right in by having our first feed together. This is hardly camping out," he added, looking around the well-appointed and handsome room, "but the grub shows that it's the Service all right."

The District Forester motioned to the table which was heaped with dozens upon dozens of baked apples, flanked by several tall pitchers of milk.

"There you have it," he continued, "back to nature and the simple life. It's all right to go through a Ranger School and to satisfy the powers that be about your fitness, but that isn't really getting to the inside of the matter. It's when you feel that you've had the chance to come right in and take the regular prescribed ritual of a baked apple and a glass of milk in the house of the Chief Forester that you can feel you're the real thing in the Service."

THE TIE-CUTTERS' BOYS.
Two young members of the outlaw gang which defied the cattle man and threatened the Forest Service.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.

DEFORESTED AND WASHED AWAY.
Example of laborious artificial terracing in China to save the little soil remaining.
Courtesy of U. S. Forest Service.

AS BAD AS ANYTHING IN CHINA.
Final results of deforestation in Tennessee, due to cutting and to fumes from a copper smelter.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.

CHAPTER III

THE FIGHT IN THE COULEE

When, a few days later, Wilbur found himself standing on the platform of the little station at Sumber, with the cactus-clad Mohave desert about him and the slopes of the Sierra Nevada beyond, he first truly realized that his new life was beginning. His journey out from Washington had been full of interest because the District Forester had accompanied him the greater part of the way, and had taken the opportunity to explain how varied were the conditions that he would find in the Sequoia forest to which he had been assigned. In large measure the District Forester's especial interest, Wilbur realized, was due to the fact that Masseth had told him of the boy's intention to go to college and thence through the Yale Forestry School, having had beforehand training as Guard, and possibly later as Ranger.

But, as the train pulled out of the station, and Wilbur looked over the sage-brush and sparse grass, seeming to dance under the shimmering heat-waves of the afternoon sun, he suddenly became conscious that the world seemed very large and that everything he knew was very far away. The strange sense of doubt as to whether he were really himself, a curious feeling that the desert often induces, swept over him, and he was only too ready to enter into conversation when a small, wiry man, with black hair and quick, alert eyes, came up to him with the rolling walk that betokens a life spent in the saddle, and said easily:

"Howdy, pard!"

The boy returned a friendly "Good-afternoon," and waited for the stranger to continue.

"She looks some as if you was the whole pack on this deal," was the next remark.

"Well," replied Wilbur, looking at him quizzically, "I wasn't conscious of being crowded here."

The range-rider followed the boy's glance around the immediate neighborhood, noting the station agent and the two or three figures in front of the general store, who formed the sum of the visible population, and nodded.

"Bein' the star performer, then," he went on, "it might be a safe bet that you was sort of prospectin' for the Double Bar J."

"That was the name of the ranch," said the boy. "I was told to go there and get a couple of ponies."

"An' how was you figurin' on gettin' to the ranch? Walkin'?"

"Not if I could help it. And that," he added, pointing to the desert, "I should think would be mean stuff to walk on."

"Mean she is," commented Wilbur's new acquaintance, "but even s'posin' that you did scare up a pony, how did you dope it out that you would hit up the right trail? This here country is plumb tricky. And the trail sort of takes a nap every once in a while and forgets to show up."

"I didn't expect to find my way alone," said the boy. "If nobody had been here, I'd have found somebody to show me—"

"Hold hard," said the cowboy, interrupting, "till I look over that layout. If you hadn't ha' found anybody, you'd ha' found somebody? Shuffle 'em up a bit, pard, and try a new deal."

"But," continued Wilbur, not paying any attention to the interruption, "I fully expected that some one from the ranch would be here to meet me."

"If all your conjectoors comes as near bein' accurate as that same," said the other, "you c'd set up as a prophet and never call the turn wrong. Which I'm some attached to the ranch myself."

"I thought you were, probably," said Wilbur, "and I'm much obliged to you, if you came to meet me."

"That's all right! But if you're ready, maybe we'd better start interviewin' the scenery on the trail. How about chuck?"

"Thanks," said the boy, "I had dinner on the car."

"An' you're thirsty none?"

"Not especially. But," he added, not wishing to offend his companion, "if you are, go ahead."

"Well, if you don't mind," began the other, then he checked himself. "I guess I c'n keep from dyin' of a cracked throat until we get there," he added. "C'n you ride?"

"Yes!" said Wilbur decisively.

The cowboy turned half round to look at him with a dubious smile.

"You surely answers that a heap sudden," he said. "An' I opine that's some risky as a general play."

"Why?" asked the boy.

"Bein' too sure in three-card Monte has been a most disappointin' experience to many a gent, an' has been most condoocive to transfers of ready cash."

"But that's just guessing," said Wilbur. "I'm talking of what I know."

"Like enough you never heard about Quick-Finger Joe?" queried the cowboy. "Over-confidence hastens his exit quite some."

"No," answered Wilbur quickly, scenting a story, "I never even heard of him. Who was he?"

"This same Joe," began the range-rider, "is a tow-haired specimen whose manly form decorates the streets of this here metropolis of Sumber that you've been admirin'. He has the name of bein' the most agile proposition on a trigger that ever shot the spots off a ten o' clubs. He makes good his reputation a couple of times, and then gets severely left alone. To him, one day, while he is standin' takin' a little refreshment, comes up a peaceful and inoffensive-lookin' stranger, who has drifted into town promiscuous-like in the course of the afternoon. He addresses Joe some like this:

"'Which I hears with profound admiration that you're some frolicsome and speedy on gun-play?'

"Joe, tryin' to hide his blushes, admits that his hand can amble for his hip right smart. Whereupon the amiable-appearin' gent makes some sort of comment, just what no one ever knew, but it seems tolerable superfluous an' sarcastic, an' instantaneous there's two shots. When the smoke clears away a little, Joe is observed to be occupyin' a horizontal position on the floor and showin' a pronounced indisposition to move. The stranger casually remarks:

"'Gents, this round's on me. I shore hates to disturb your peaceful converse on a balmy evenin' like this yere in a manner so abrupt an' sudden-like. But he had to get his, some time, an' somebody's meditations would hev to be disturbed. This hyar varmint, gents, what is now an unopposed candidate for a funeral pow-wow, was a little too previous with his gun agin my younger brother. It's a case of plain justice, gents; my brother was without weapons, and he—' pointing to the figure on the floor, 'he knew it. Line up, gents, and give it a name!'"

"What did they do to the stranger?" asked Wilbur eagerly, divided between admiration of the quickness of the action and consternation at the gravity of the result.

"They compliments him some on the celerity of his shootin', and feels a heap relieved by Joe's perpetual absence. An' the moral o' this little tale is that you're hittin' a fast clip for trouble when you go around prompt and aggressive to announce your own virtoos. I'm not advancin' any criticism as to your shinin' talents in the way of ridin', pard, but you haven't been long enough in this here vale of tears to be what you might call experienced."

"I've ridden a whole lot," said Wilbur, who was touchy on the point and proud of his horsemanship, "and while I don't say that there isn't a horse I can't ride, I can say that I've never seen one yet. I started in to ride pretty nearly as soon as I started to walk."

"I don't want to mar your confidence none," replied the cowboy, "an' I likes a game sport who'll bet his hand to the limit, though I generally drops my stake on the other side. But if some mornin' you sh'd find the ground rearin' up and hittin' you mighty sudden, don't forget that I gave you a plain steer. Here's your cayuse."

Wilbur had been a little disappointed that the cowboy should not have shown up as ornamentally as he had expected, not wearing goatskin "chaps" or rattlesnake hatbands, and not even having a gorgeous saddle-blanket on his pony, but the boy felt partly rewarded when he saw him just put his toe in the stirrup and seem to float into the saddle. The pony commenced dancing about in the most erratic way, but Wilbur noted that his companion seemed entirely unaware that the horse was not standing still, although his antics would have unseated any rider that the boy previously had seen. He was conscious, moreover, that his climb into his own saddle was very different from that which he had witnessed, but he really was a good rider for a boy, and felt quite at home as soon as they broke into the loping canter of the cow-pony.

"I understood," said Wilbur as they rode along, "that I should meet the Ranger at the ranch. His name was given to me as Rifle-Eye Bill, because I was told he had been a famous hunter before he joined the Service. I thought at first you might be the Ranger, but he was described to me as being very tall."

"Which he does look some like a Sahaura cactus on the Arizona deserts," said the range-rider, "an' I surely favor him none. But that mistake of yours naterally brings it to me that I haven't what you might say introdooced myself. Which my baptismal handle is more interestin' than useful, an' I lays it by. So I'll just hand you the title under which I usually trots, bein' 'Bob-Cat Bob,' ridin' for the Double Bar J."

"Not having risen to any later title," said Wilbur good-humoredly, "I've got to be satisfied with the one I started with. I'm generally called Wilbur."

"Which is sure unfamiliar to me. I opine it's a new brand on the range." He flourished his sombrero in salute, so that his pony bucked twice and then tried to bolt. Wilbur watched and envied him the absolute ease with which he brought down the broncho to a quiet lope again.

"I'm going to join the Forest Service," the boy explained, knowing that according to the etiquette of the West no question would be asked about his business, but that he would be expected to volunteer some statement, "and my idea in coming to the ranch was to pick up a couple of horses and go on to the forest with the Ranger. I understand the Supervisor, Mr. Merritt, is very busy with some timber sales, and I didn't know whether the Ranger would be able to get away."

"I kind o' thought you might be headed for the Forest Service, since you was goin' along with Rifle-Eye," said the cowboy. "An' if you're goin' with him, you'll be all right."

"The Service looks pretty good to me," said Wilbur.

"I've no kick comin' agin the National Forests," said Bob-Cat, "we've always been treated white enough. Of course, there's always some soreheads who want to stampede the range and gets peevish when they're balked, but I guess the Service is a good thing all round. It don't appeal none to me, o' course. If I held all the cards, I'd rip down every piece of barbed wire west of the Mississippi, let the sheepmen go to the ranges beside the canals o' Mars or some other ekally distant region, an' git back to the good old days o' the Jones 'n' Plummer trail. But then, I sure enough realize that I'm not the only strikin' feature o' the landscape an' there's others that might have a say."

"I guess the present way is the best in the long run at that, for all I hear," said Wilbur, "because every one now has a fair show. You can't have cattle and sheep overrunning everywhere without absolutely ruining the forests. Especially sheep. They can destroy a forest and make it as though it had never existed."

"I'm huggin' love of sheep none," said the cowboy, "an' my mental picter of the lower regions is a place what smells strong of sheep. But I sure miss my throw on any idee as to how they could do up a forest of big trees."

"They do, just the same."

"How? Open her up, pard, an' explain. I'm listenin' mighty attentive."

"This way," began the boy, remembering some of the talks he had heard at the Ranger School. "When a dry year comes, if the sheep are allowed into the forest, the grass, which is poor because of the dryness, soon gets eaten down. Then the sheep begin to browse on the young shoots and seedlings, and even will eat the leaves off the young saplings that they can reach, thus destroying all the baby trees and checking the growth of those that are a little more advanced. When this goes on for two or three seasons all the young growth is gone. Since there are no saplings, no young shoots, and no seedlings, the forest never recovers, but becomes more like a park with stretches of grass between clumps of trees. Then, when these trees die, there are no others to take their place and the forest is at an end."

"How about cattle?"

"They're not nearly as bad. Cattle won't eat leaves unless they have to. And they don't browse so close, nor pack down the ground as hard with their hoofs. If there's grass enough to go round, cattle won't injure a forest much, but, of course, the grazing has got to be restricted or else the same sort of thing will happen that goes on when sheep are let in."

"Never knew before," said the boy's companion, "why I ought ter hate sheep. Jest naterally they're pizen to me, but I never rightly figured out why I allers threw them in the discard. Now I know. There's a heap of satisfaction in that. It's like findin' that a man you sure disagreed with in an argyment is a thunderin' sight more useful to the community dead than he was alive. It don't alter your feelin's none, but it helps out strong on the ensooin' explanations."

"Are there many sheep out here?"

"There's a tidy few. But it's nothin' like Montana. You ought ter get Rifle-Eye Bill to tell you of the old days o' the sheep an' cattle war. The debates were considerable fervent an' plenty frequent, an' a Winchester or two made it seem emphatic a whole lot."

"Was Rifle-Eye mixed up in it?"

"Which he's allers been a sort of Florence Nightingale of the Rockies, has old Rifle-Eye," was the reply. "I don't mean in looks—but if a feller's shot up or hurt, or anythin' of that kind, it isn't long before the old hunter turns up, takes him to some shack near by and persuades somebody to look after him till he gets around again. An' we've got a little lady that rides a white mare in these here Sierras who's a sure enough angel. I don't want to know her pedigree, but when it comes to angels, she's It. An' when she an' Rifle-Eye hitches up to do the ministerin' act, you'd better believe the job's done right. I never heard but of one man that ever said 'No' to Rifle-Eye, no matter what fool thing he asked."

"How was that?" asked Wilbur.

"It was the wind-up of one o' these here little differences of opinion on the sheep question, same as I've been tellin' you of. It happened somewhar up in Oregon, although I've forgotten the name o' the ranch. Rifle-Eye could tell you the story better'n I can, but he won't. It was somethin' like this:

"There was a big coulee among the hills, an', one summer, when there'd been a prairie fire that wiped out a lot o' feed, a bunch o' cattle was headed into this coulee. Three cowpunchers and a cook with the chuck wagon made up the gang. But this yar cook was one o' them fellers what's not only been roped by bad luck, but hog-tied and branded good and plenty. He had been the boss of a ranch, a small one, but he'd fallen foul o' the business end of a blizzard, an' he'd lost every blamed head o' cattle that he had. He lost his wife, too."

"How did she come in on it?"

"It was this way. She heard, or thought she heard, some one callin' outside, a little ways from the house. She s'posed, o' course, that it was the men who had tackled the storm in the hope o' savin' some o' the cattle, an' she ran out o' the door to give 'em an answerin' hail so as they could git an idee as to the direction o' the house. But she hadn't gone but a few steps when the wind caught her—leastways, that was how they figured it out afterwards—and blew her along a hundred feet or so before she could catch breath, and then she stumbled and fell. She got up, sort o' dazed, most like, and tried to run back to the shack. But in the blindin' snow nothin' o' the house could be seen, an' though she tried to fight up in that direction against the wind, she must have gone past it a little distance to the left. They didn't find her until two days after when the blizzard had blown itself out, an' there she was, stone dead, not more than a half a mile away from the house.

"The boss was near crazy when they found her, an' he never was fit for much afterwards. There was a child, only a little shaver then, who was asleep in the house at the time his mother run out to answer the shout she reckoned she heard. So, since the rancher wasn't anyways overstocked on female relations, an' he had the kid to look after, the one-time boss went out as a camp cook an' took the boy along. He was rustlin' the chuck for this bunch I'm a-tellin' you about, that goes into the coulee.

"By 'n' by, a week or so afterward, a herd o' sheep comes driftin' into this same valley, bein' ekally short for feed, an' the herders knocks up a sort o' corral an' looks to settle down. The cowpunchers pays 'em an afternoon call, an' suggests that the air outside the coulee is a lot healthier for sheep—an' sheepmen—an' that onless they makes up their minds to depart, an' to make that departure a record-breaker for speed, they'll make their relatives sure a heap mournful. The sheepmen replies in a vein noways calculated to bring the dove o' peace hoverin' around, an' volunteers as a friendly suggestion that the cattlemen had best send to town and order four nice new tombstones before ringin' the curtain up on any gladiatorial pow-wow. When the cowpunchers rides back, honors is even, an' each side is one man short.

"Now, this coulee, which is the scene of these here operations, is so located that there's only one way out. Most things in life there's more, but in this here particular coulee, the openin' plays a lone hand. As the cattlemen got there first, and went 'way back to the end o' the ravine, the sheepmen are nearer to what you might call the valley door. If the cowpunchers could have made a get-away, it's a cinch that they'd have headed for the ranch an' brought back enough men with them to make their persuasion plenty urgent. But the herders ain't takin' any chances of allowin' the other side to better their hand, an' when, one night, a cowpuncher tries to rush it, they pots him as pretty as you please. The cook, who's cuddlin' his Winchester at the time, fires at the flash and disposes o' the herder, sort o' evenin' matters up. This leaves only one cowpuncher and the cook. There's still three men at the herders' camp.

"Then the cook, he indooces a bullet to become sufficient intimate with one o' the herder's anatomy, but gits a hole in the leg himself an' is laid up. The other cowpuncher runs the gauntlet an' gits out safe. He hikes back the next day with a bunch o' boys, an' they follows up the herders an' wipes out that camp for fair, an' stampedes the herd over the nearest canyon. Then they circles back to the coulee to pick up the cook.

"When they gits there, they surely finds themselves up against evidences of a tragedy. The cook, he's lyin' on the floor of the shack, dead as a nail, an' near him is the kid, who's still holdin' a table-knife in his hand, but who's lyin' unconscious from a wound in the head. The way they dopes it out, there's been a free-for-all fight in the place between the two remainin' herders an' the wounded cook, an' it looks some as if the kid had tried to help his dad by jabbin' at the legs o' the herders with a knife and been booted in the side o' the head to keep him quiet."

"How old was the youngster, then, Bob-Cat?" asked Wilbur.

"Seven or eight, I guess, maybe not so much," replied the other, "a nice, bright little kid, so I've heard. But there was somethin' broke, I reckon, by the blow he had, an' he never got over it. The boys took him back to the ranch an' doctored him the best they knew how, but they was buckin' fate an' had to quit, lettin' the kid git better or worse as it might turn out."

"But where does Rifle-Eye come in?"

"This way. Just before round-up, Rifle-Eye comes along, showin' he has the whole story salted down, though where he larned it gits me, and proposes that sence it was the sheepmen that injured the lad, it's up to them to look after him. At first the boys objects, sayin' that the kid was a cowpuncher's kid, but Rifle-Eye convinces 'em that the youngster's locoed for fair, that he's likely to stay that way for good an' all, and sence they agrees they can't ever make anythin' out of him, they lets him go.

"Then Rifle-Eye, he takes this unfortunate kid to the man that owned the sheep. He's a big owner, this man, and runs thirty or forty herds. The old hunter—this was all before he was a Ranger, you know—he puts it right up to the sheep-owner, who's a half-Indian, by the way, an' tells him that he's got to look after the boy. The old skinflint says 'No,' and this here, as I was sayin', is the only time that any one ever turned down old Rifle-Eye."

"And what happened to the boy?" queried Wilbur.

"The old hunter tries to shame this here sheep-owner into doin' the right thing, but he didn't have any more shame in him than a turkey buzzard; an' then he tries to bluff him an' says he'll make him keep the kid, but the old sinner jest whined around an' wouldn't give any sort o' satisfaction at all. So Rifle-Eye, he shakes the dust o' that house off'n his feet so good an' hard that he mighty nearly shakes the nails out of his boot-heels, an' hunts up a legal shark. Then an' there he adopts this half-witted youngster, an' has kep' him ever sence."

"How long ago was this?"

"Fifteen years an' more, I reckon. The kid's big now, an' strong as a bull moose, but he's a long way from bein' right in his head. He lives up in the woods, a piece back here, an' I reckon you'll find Rifle-Eye there as often as you will at his own cabin further along the range, although he never sleeps indoors at either place."

"Never sleeps indoors?"

"That's a straight string. He's got a decent enough shack where the boy is, but as soon as it gits dark, old Rifle-Eye he jest makes a pile o' cedar boughs, builds up a fire, an' goes to sleep. For fifty years he ain't slept under a roof summer or winter, an' when once he was in a town over-night, which was about the boy, as I was tellin' ye, he had to get up an' go on the roof to sleep. Lucky," added Bob-Cat with a grin, "it was a flat roof."

"Fifty years is a long time," commented the boy.

"Old Rifle-Eye ain't any spring chicken. He shouldered a musket in the Civil War, an' durin' the Indian mix-ups was generally found floatin' around wherever the fun was thickest. He was mighty close friends with the Pacific scout, old 'Death-on-th'-Trail,' who handed in his time at Portland not long ago."

"Handed in his time?" questioned Wilbur, then, as the meaning of the phrase flashed upon him, "oh, yes, I see, you mean he died."

"Sure, pard, died. You ought ter git Rifle-Eye Bill to spin you some yarns about 'Death-on-th'-Trail.' He'll deny that he's any shakes himself, but he'll talk about his old campmate forever."

The cowboy pointed with his hand to a long, low group of buildings that had just come within sight.

"See, Wilbur," he said, "there's the Double Bar J."

HOW YOUNG FORESTS ARE DESTROYED.

HOW YOUNG FORESTS ARE DESTROYED.
Showing the way in which sheep and goats, having cropped the grass close, will attack undergrowth.
Photographs by U. S. Forest Service.

WHERE SHEEP ARE ALLOWED.
Example of meadow stretches in midst of heavily forested mountain slopes.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.

CHAPTER IV

PICKING A LIVELY BRONCHO

On seeing the ranch, Bob-Cat and Wilbur had put their ponies to a burst of speed and in a few minutes they reached the corral. The buildings, while comfortable enough, were far from pretentious, and even their strangeness scarcely made up to the boy for the lack of the picturesque. Then, of course, the fact that the cattle at that time of year were scattered all over the range and consequently that none of them were in sight, rendered it still less like his ideal of a cattle ranch, where he had half expected to see thousands of long-horned cattle tossing their heads the while that cowboys galloped around them shouting and firing off pistols.

In contrast with this, the dwelling, the bunk-house, the cooking shack, and the other frame sheds, all of the neutral gray that unpainted wood becomes when exposed to the weather, seemed very unexciting indeed. But when the lad turned to the corral, he felt that there was compensation there. Several hundred horses were in the enclosure, of many colors and breeds, but the greater part of them Indian ponies, or containing a strain of the mustang, and smaller and shaggier than the horses he had been accustomed to ride in his Illinois home.

The boy turned to his companion, his eyes shining with excitement.

"Do you suppose that I can buy any of those horses that I want to?" he said.

"If you're totin' along a pile of dinero, you might," was the reply, "but there's a few cayuses in there that would surely redooce a big roll o' bills to pretty skinny pickin's. For example, this little bay I'm ridin' now ain't any special wonder, an' maybe he's only worth about fifty dollars, but you can't buy him for five hundred. I reckon, though, you c'n trot away with most of 'em in there for ninety or a hundred dollars apiece."

"I hadn't expected to pay more than seventy or seventy-five," said Wilbur, his native shrewdness coming to the front, "and I think I ought to be able to pick up a good horse or two for that, don't you think?"

"There's allers somethin' that ain't worth much to be got cheap," said the cowboy, "but I don't look friendly none on payin' a cheap price for a horse. Speakin' generally, there's somethin' that every feller likes a whole lot, an' out here, where domestic life ain't our chief play, it's mostly a horse. Leastways, when I hit the long trail, I'll be just as sorry to leave some ponies behind as I will humans."

"A horse can be a great chum," assented Wilbur. "So can a dog."

"No dogs in mine," said Bob-Cat emphatically, "they reminds me too much o' sheep. But when it comes to a horse, I tell ye, there's a lot more in the deal than buyin' an animal to carry you; there's buyin' somethin' that all the money in the world can't bring you sometimes—an' that's a friend."

Wilbur waited a moment without reply, and then the cowboy, deliberately changing the topic to cloak any strain of sentiment which he thought he might have been betrayed into showing, continued:

"How about saddles?"

"I'd been thinking about that," replied the boy, "and I thought I'd wait until I got out here before deciding. You can't use an English saddle-tree, of course, and I hate it anyway, and one like yours is too big. Those lumbering Mexican saddles always look to me as if they were as big a load for a little pony to carry as a man."

"Sure, they're heavy. But you can't do any ropin' without them. If you try 'n' rope on a small saddle the girth'll pretty near cut a pony in two. But you ain't got any ropin' to do, so I sh'd think an army saddle-tree would be about right. There's Rifle-Eye Bill comin' out of the bunk-house now. Ask him. He'll know."

Wilbur looked up, and saw emerging from the door of the bunk-house a tall, gaunt mountaineer. He strolled over to the corral with a long, loose-jointed stride.

"Got him, all right, Bob-Cat, did you?" he said in a measured drawl, then, turning to the boy, added: "Glad to see you, son."

"I've been hearing all about you, sir," answered Wilbur, "and I'm awfully glad to meet you here." He was about to dismount, but noting that Bob-Cat had merely thrown a leg over the horn of his saddle, he stayed where he was.

The old Ranger looked him over critically and closely, so that Wilbur felt himself flushing under the direct gaze, though he met the clear gray eye of his new acquaintance without flinching. Presently the latter turned to the range-rider.

"What do you think of him?" he asked in a slow, curiously commanding way.

Bob-Cat squirmed uneasily.

"You is sure annoyin'," he said in an aggrieved manner, "askin' me to go on record so plumb sudden. I'm no mind-reader."

There was a pause, but the Ranger quietly waited.

"It's embarrassin'," said Bob-Cat, "to try an' trot out a verdic' on snap-jedgment. I don't know."

Rifle-Eye, quite unperturbed, looked at him steadily and inquiringly.

"You know what you think," he said.

"He's sure green," replied the cowboy, shrugging his shoulders in protest, "an' he ain't much more humble-minded than a hen that's jest laid an egg of unusooal size, but I reckon he's got the makin's."

"It's a good thing to be green," said the old Ranger thoughtfully, "nothin' grows much after it's dry, Bob-Cat. The heart's got to be green anyway. Ye git hard to bend an' easy to break when ye're gettin' old."

"Then it's a cinch you'll never get old," promptly responded the other.

But the mountaineer continued talking, half to himself:

"An' he's too sure of himself! Wa'al, he's young yet. I've seen a pile o' sickness in my day, Bob-Cat, but that's about the easiest one to cure there is."

"What is?"

"Bein' young. Well, son, ye'd better turn the pony in."

The boy dismounted, and, half in pique at the dubious character given him by Bob-Cat and half in thanks for the meeting at the station and the ride, he turned to the cowboy, and said:

"I'm glad I've 'got the makings' anyway, and I'm much obliged, Bob-Cat, for all the yarns you told me on the trail. But, next time I come to the ranch I'll try not to be as green, and I know I'll not be as young."

The cowboy laughed.

"It's no use tryin' to dodge Rifle-Eye," he said. "You stand about as good a chance as if you was tryin' to sidestep a blizzard or parryin' the charge from a Gatlin' gun. If he asks a question you can gamble every chip in your pile that you're elected, and you've got to ante up with the answer whether it suits your hand or no."

Wilbur, following the suggestion of the Ranger, unsaddled his pony, turned him into the corral, and hung his saddle on the fence. Then together they went up to the house, where Wilbur met the boss, and after a few moments' chat they returned to the corral.

As the lad had come to the ranch especially for the purpose of buying a couple of ponies, he was anxious to transact the business as quickly as possible, and together with Bob-Cat and Rifle-Eye he scanned the horses in the enclosure, endeavoring to display, as he did so, what little knowledge of horseflesh he possessed. After the boy had commented on several, Rifle-Eye pointed out first one and then a second which he had previously decided on as being the best animals for the boy. But Wilbur's eye was attracted to a fine sorrel, and, turning to Rifle-Eye, he said decidedly:

"I want that one!"

The old Ranger, remarking quietly that it was a fine horse, but not suitable to the purpose for which Wilbur wanted the animal, passed on to the discussion of several other ponies near by, teaching the boy to discern the fine points of a horse, not for beauty, but for service.

But as soon as he had finished speaking, after a purely perfunctory assent, Wilbur burst out again:

"But, Rifle-Eye, I really want that sorrel most."

"You really think you want him?"

"Yes!"

"You wouldn't if you knew a little more about horses, son," said the Ranger. "It's all right to be sure what you want, but what you want is to be sure that what you want is right."

"Oh, I'm sure I'm right," answered the boy confidently.

"You can't be too careful choosin' a horse," commented Rifle-Eye. "Choosin' a horse is a good deal like pickin' out a sugar pine for shakes. You know what shakes are?"

"No, Rifle-Eye," answered the boy.

"They're long, smooth, split sheets of wood that the old-timers used for shingles. There's lots of sugar pine that'll make the finest kind o' lumber, an' all of it's good for fuel, but there ain't one tree in a hundred that'll split naturally an' easily into shakes. An' there ain't more'n one man in a hundred as can tell when a tree will do. But when you do get one just right, it's worth any ten other trees. An' the pine that's good ain't because it's a pretty tree to look at, or an easy one to cut down, or because of any other reason than that the grain's right. Same way with a horse. It ain't for his looks, nor for his speed, nor because he's easy to ride, nor for his strength you want him, but because his grain's right."

"Well, I'm sure that sorrel looks just right."

"Do looks always tell?"

"Oh, I can always tell a horse by his looks," replied Wilbur boastfully. "Anyhow, I want him."

"Persistent?" chuckled Bob-Cat, who was standing by enjoying every word, "why, cockle-burs ain't nothin' to him."

"But, supposin'," the old scout began gently, "I told you that the sorrel was the worst you could have, not the best?"

"But he ain't," broke in Bob-Cat, who could not bear to hear a friend's pony harshly criticised, "that's one of Bluey's string, an' he allers had good horses."

"There—you hear," said Wilbur triumphantly.

"I said—for the boy, Bob-Cat," answered the old Ranger firmly.

"I—I suppose you would have good reasons," said Wilbur, answering the old scout's question, "but I want him just the same, and I don't see why I can't buy him, if he's for sale. It's my money!"

"Sure, it's your money. An' the sorrel's a good horse," said the cowboy, to whom the persistence of Wilbur was giving great delight.

The Ranger slowly turned his head in silent rebuke, but although Bob-Cat was conscious of it, he was enjoying the fun too much to stop.

"You know he couldn't ride the sorrel, Bob-Cat," said Rifle-Eye reproachfully.

"But I can ride him, I know," said Wilbur. "I'm a good rider, really I am. And he looks gentle, besides. He is gentle, isn't he, Bob-Cat?"

"He's playful enough," was the reply, "some like a kitten, an' he surely is plenty restless in his habits. But where he shines is nerves. Why, pard, he c'd make a parcel of females besieged by a mouse look as if they was posin' for a picter, they'd be so still by comparison. But he's gentle, all right."

"I wouldn't want to try it if he was vicious, Rifle-Eye," said the boy appealingly, "but I really can ride, and he looks like a good horse."

"Are you buyin' this horse for your own pleasure or the work o' the Service? You're goin' to do your ridin' on my range, an' I reckon you'll admit I have some say."

"But I can break him to the work of the Service. Do let me try him!" Wilbur's persistence appeared in every look and word. "I don't see why I can't try, anyway, and then if I can't do it, there's no harm done."

"Can you throw a rope?" queried the Ranger.

"No," returned the boy promptly. "I never learned. But I can try."

"If you can't rope, how do you expect to saddle him? These ain't farm horses that you c'n harness or saddle while they eat oats out of your hand." He turned to the cowboy. "Can the sorrel be saddled without ropin'?"

"Bluey does," was the reply, "but I don't know that he'll let me."

"Won't you saddle him for me, Bob-Cat? I know I can ride him if I have a fair show."

The range-rider turned to the old Ranger.

"How about it?" he said. "The kid'll hunt leather for a while and then eat grass. But there's nothin' mean in the sorrel, an' he won't get hurt."

"I'll ride him," said Wilbur stoutly.

"You might, at that," rejoined Bob-Cat. "He's a game little sport, Rifle-Eye," he added, turning to the tall figure beside him, "why not let him play his hand out? You can't be dead sure how the spots will fall. Sure, I've twice seen an Eastern maverick driftin' into a faro game, an' by fools' luck cleanin' up the bank."

"If a man's a fool who depends on luck, what kind of a fool is the man who depends on fools' luck? You ain't playin' a square deal, Bob-Cat, in supportin' the lad to go on askin' to do what ain't good for him. But seein' you force my hand, why, you'd better go ahead now."

"I didn't force your hand none," replied the other, "I was merely throwin' out a suggestion."

"If I refuse the boy somethin' another man says is all right, doesn't that make it look as ef it was meanness in me? An' he goin' to work with me, too! What's the use o' sayin' that you ain't forcin' my hand? Givin' advice, Bob-Cat, ain't any go-as-you-please proposition; it's got to be thought out. Feelin's don't allers point the right trail to jedgment, an', as often as not, the blazes lead the wrong way. You're all right in your own way, Bob-Cat, but you're shy on roots, and your idees gets a windfall every time an extra puff comes along. You're like the trees settlers forgets about when they cuts on the outside of a forest an' ruins the inside."

"How is that?" asked Wilbur, anxious to divert the stream of Rifle-Eye's criticism from the cowboy, who had got himself into trouble defending him. "I didn't know there was any difference between a tree on the outside of a forest and one on the inside."

"Wa'al, then, I guess you're due to learn right now. If there's a tree of any size, standin' out by itself on a mountain side, with plenty of leaves, an' a big wind comes along, you c'n see easy enough that she presents a heap of surface to the wind. An' when a mountain gale gets up and blows fer fair, there's a pressure of air on that tree amountin' to several tons."

"Tons?" queried Bob-Cat incredulously.

"Tons," answered the old Banger. "A tree needs to have some strength in order to hold up its end. There's three ways o' doin' it. One is by havin' a lot more give in the fibers, more elastic like, so that the tree'll bend in the wind an' not get snapped off; another is by puttin' out a lot o' roots an' shovin' 'em in deep an' at the same time havin' a trunk that's plenty stout; an' the third is the thickenin' o' the trunk, right near the ground, where the greatest part o' the strain comes. An' all the various kinds o' trees works this out in different ways. But nothin's ever wasted, an'—"

"Oh, I see now," broke in Wilbur. "You're going to say that the trees which don't grow on the outside of a forest don't have to waste vitality into these forms of resistance."

"That's right. A tree that grows in a ravine, where there is little chance of a high wind, an' where light is scarce an' hard to get, such a tree will have a shallow root system an' a spindlin' trunk, all the growth havin' gone to height, an' a tree in the center of a forest is often the same way. The wind can't git through the forest, an' so the trees don't need ter prop themselves against it."

"Talk about yer eddicated trees!" ejaculated the cowboy, "which colleges is a fool to them."

"It's true enough, Bob-Cat, just the same. But supposin' a belt on the outside o' the forest is cut down, then the inner trees, thus exposed, haven't any proper weapons to fight the wind, an' they go down."

"Doesn't it take a very high wind to blow down some of these big trees?" asked Wilbur.

"Some kinds it does," said the Ranger, "but there's others that go down pretty easy, lodge-pole pine, fer instance. But a tree doesn't have to be blown down to be ruined. Even if a branch is blown off—an' you know how often that happens—insects and fungi get into the wound of the tree and decay follows."

"But you can't persuade the wind none," objected Bob-Cat. "If she's goin' to blow, she's goin' to blow, an' that's all there is to it."

"No, it ain't any use arguin' with a fifty-mile breeze, that's sure. But you can keep the inside trees from bein' blown down by leavin' uncut the deep-rooted trees on the outside. If you wanted a good big bit of timber, an' could cut it from a tree on the outside o' the forest, you'd take it first because it was handiest, wouldn't you?"

"I sure would."

"Yet, you see, it would ha' been the worst thing you could do. An' as I started out to say, that's where you get in wrong doin' things without thinkin'. Just like this ridin' idee to-day. By urgin' on the lad's nateral desire you make it hard fer him an' fer me."

"All right, Rifle-Eye," said Bob-Cat good-humoredly, "you've got me. I reckon I passes up this hand entire." He nodded and began to stroll away.

But Wilbur called him back.

"Oh, Bob-Cat," he cried, "aren't you going to saddle him for me now?"

The cowboy turned and grinned.

"Which you'd make tar an' feathers look sick for stickin' to a thing." Then, reading a grudging assent from Rifle-Eye, he continued: "Yep, I'll go an' saddle," and sauntered into the corral.

In a few minutes he came back, leading the sorrel. He was saddled and Bob-Cat had shortened up the stirrups. Wilbur jumped forward eagerly, put his foot in the stirrup, and was up like a flash. The sorrel never moved. The boy shook the reins a little and clucked his tongue against his teeth without any apparent result. Then Wilbur dug his heels into the pony's ribs.

Things began to happen. The sorrel went straight up in the air with all four feet, coming down with the legs stiff, giving Wilbur a jar which set every nerve twitching as though he had got an electric shock. But he kept his seat. Then the sorrel began pacing forward softly with an occasional sudden buck, each of which nearly threw him off and at most of which he had to "hunt leather," or in other words, catch hold of the saddle with his hands. Still he kept his seat.

Finding that these simpler methods did not avail, the sorrel began a little more aggressive bucking, fore and aft, "sun-fishing" and "weaving," and once or twice rearing up so straight that Wilbur was afraid the sorrel would fall over backwards on him, and he had heard of riders being killed that way. But he stole a glance at Rifle-Eye, and, seeing that the old Ranger was looking on quite unperturbed, he realized that there was no great danger. And still he kept his seat.

But as the sorrel warmed up to his work the boy began to realize that he had not the faintest chance of being able to wear the pony down. It was now only a question of how long he could stick on. He knew he would be done if the sorrel started to roll, but as yet the beast had shown no inclination that way. But as the bucks grew quicker and more jerky, Wilbur began to wonder within himself whether he would prefer to pitch over the pony's head or slide off over his tail. Suddenly, with a bound, the pony went up in the air and gave a double wriggle as he came down and Wilbur found himself on the ground before he knew what had happened. The sorrel, who, as Bob-Cat had said, was a gentle beast, stood quietly by, and the boy always afterwards declared that he could hear the horse chuckle.

The boy got up abashed and red in the face, because several other ranchmen had come up and were enjoying his confusion, but he tried to put a good face on it, and said:

"That's a bucker for fair."

"No," responded Bob-Cat, "that isn't bucking," and he swung himself into the saddle.

The sorrel commenced plunging and rearing again, this time with greater vigor. But Bob-Cat, taking a little bag of tobacco and some cigarette papers out of his pocket, quietly poured out some of the tobacco on the paper, rolled it carefully, and then lighted it, keeping his seat on the bucking broncho quite easily the while. This done, he dismounted, turning to the boy as he did so.

"She's easy enough. There's lots o' the boys, like Bluey, fer example, who really can ride," he continued, "that 'd just split with laughin' at the idee o' me showin' off in the saddle. I c'n rope with the best o' them, but I'm no buster. And some o' these here critters you've got to ride. See that big roan in there?"

Wilbur followed the direction of his finger and nodded.

"They call her 'Squealin' Bess,' an' you couldn't pay me to get on her back. Bluey c'n ride her; he's done it twice; but you c'n bet your last blue chip that he doesn't do it fer fun."

Wilbur turned to the old Ranger who had been standing silently by through the performance.

"I'm much obliged, Rifle-Eye," he said, "but I'd like to buy that sorrel just the same and learn to ride him."

For the first time the old Ranger smiled.

"You're somethin' like a crab, Wilbur," he said, "that grabs a stick viciously with his claw an' won't let go even when he's hauled up out o' the water. You c'n buy the sorrel if you want to, but he won't be any use to you up in the forest. Broncho-bustin' is an amusement you c'n keep for your leisure hours. But I'm thinkin', son, from what I know of the work you'll have to do, that you'll mostly be tired enough after a day's work to want to rest a while. But if you're sot, I s'pose you're sot. An' I'm old enough to know that it's no use hammerin' a mule when he's got his forelegs spread. Get whatever horses you like, I've got a saddle for you up at the bunk-house, an' you c'n meet me beyond the corral sunup to-morrow mornin'."

He nodded to the boys and turned on his heel, walking off in the direction of the river. Seeing that the fun was over the boys scattered, and Wilbur, finding that his friend Bob-Cat was going to stay at the ranch over-night, attached himself to him. But as soon as supper was over, the lad, finding himself stiffer than he had expected from his battle with the sorrel, partly because he had not been riding constantly for a couple of years, was glad to go to his bunk, listening to the breezy Western talk of the men and the yarns of cattle and of horses that they had to tell. He hardly knew that he had fallen asleep when Bob-Cat shook him, saying:

"Better tumble up, bub. Rifle-Eye is sure an early bird. He's some chanticleer, believe me. He's plumb convinced that if he ain't awake and up to greet the sun, it won't rise."

Wilbur laughed and "tumbled up" accordingly.

At breakfast, over the plentiful food served on tin plates and in tin mugs, Rifle-Eye was entirely silent, uttering never a word and paying no attention to any allusion about horses. Right after the meal Wilbur went down to the corral, saddled one of his two new horses, put a leading bridle on the other, and, after bidding Bob-Cat and the boys "Good-by," started for the point where he was to meet the Ranger.

As he rode up, the old frontiersman scanned carefully the two horses the boy had with him and his face cleared.

"What horses are those?" he asked.

"Oh, just a couple I got for the forest work," answered Wilbur with overdone carelessness.

They rode on in silence a few rods, then the old Ranger spoke again.

"Don't ever be afraid o' lettin' on you've made a mistake, son," he said; "the more mistakes you make the more you'll know. There's only one thing to remember, don't make the same mistake twice."

"I'll try not," said the boy.

The Ranger reined up beside the lad, and, reaching out his long, gaunt hand, patted the neck of the pony on which Wilbur was riding.

"They're half-sisters, those two," he said. "I raised 'em from colts myself. I rode the mother over these very trails, many and many's the time. This one is called Kit, after her."

Wilbur flushed at the remembrance of the manner in which before he had slighted the old scout's choice.

"Oh, Rifle-Eye," he said penitently, "if I'd only known!"

"You'll prize them more now," the Ranger said.

COWBOYS AT THE ROUND-UP.
The riders of the Double Bar J Ranch bunching up their cattle in the National Forest.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.

CHAPTER V

A TUSSLE WITH A WILD-CAT

"Bob-Cat was telling me," said Wilbur, as with the Ranger he rode through the arid and silvered grayness of the Mohave desert and reached the foothill country, "that before you entered the Service you were pretty well known as a hunter."

"Wa'al, son," the mountaineer replied, "I reckon I've done some kind o' huntin' for fifty years on end. But there's not much huntin' in this part o' the country."

"No," said Wilbur, looking around him, "I guess there isn't."

The road ran along a little gully with a small stream shaded by scrub oak, but arising from this and similar gullies, in great rounded bosses, heaved the barren slopes, the grass already turning yellow and too sparse to cloak the red earth below.

"Yet," said Rifle-Eye, pointing with his finger as he spoke, "there's a desert fox."

Wilbur strained his eyes to see, but the unfamiliar growth of cacti, sage-brush, palo verde, and the dusty-miller plants made quick vision difficult. In a moment, however, he caught sight of the little reddish-gray animal running swiftly and almost indistinguishable from its surroundings.

"But up there?" queried the boy, pointing in front of them. The road wound onward toward the middle Sierras, thickly wooded with oak and digger pine, and, of course, the chapparal, and towering to the clouds rose the mighty serrated peaks of the range, where magnificent forests of pine, fir, and cedar swept upwards to the limits of eternal snow. "Up there the hunting must be wonderful."

"Among the mount'ns!" said the old hunter slowly. "Wa'al, up there, you see, is home."

"You certainly can't complain about the looks of your home, then," said the boy, "for that's just about the finest I've ever seen."

"'There's no place like home,'" quoted Rifle-Eye quietly, "but I ain't ever feelin' that my home's so humble. It ain't a question of its bein' good enough fer me, it's a question o' whether I'm good enough fer it."

"It makes quite a house," said Wilbur, following the old mountaineer's line of thought.

"I've never lived in any smaller house than that," responded Rifle-Eye, "an' I reckon now I never will. There's some I know that boasts of ownin' a few feet o' space shut in by a brick wall. Not for me. My house is as far as my eyes c'n see, an' from the ground to the sky."

Wilbur was silent for a moment, feeling the thrill of Nature in the old man's speech.

"It's to be my home, too," he said gently.

Rifle-Eye smiled at the lad.

"I don't know that I'm quite the oldest inhabitant," he said, "but I sure am the oldest Ranger in the Service, an' all I c'n say is, 'Make yerself to home.'"

"All right," said Wilbur promptly, "I'll take that as an official welcome from the Sierras, and I will. But," he added, "you were going to tell me about your hunting. I should think it would be great sport."

"Son," said Rifle-Eye somewhat sharply, "I never killed a harmless critter 'for sport,' as you call it, in my life."

"But I thought," gasped Wilbur in astonishment, "that you were hunting nearly all the time, before you started in as Ranger."

"So I was," was the quiet reply.

"But—but I don't quite see—" Wilbur stopped lamely.

"I said before," resumed the old hunter, "that I never killed a harmless critter onless I had to. Neither have I. Varmints, o' course, is a different matter. I've shot plenty o' them, an' once in a while I've had ter kill fer food. But just shootin' for the sake o' shootin' is the trick of a coward or a fool or a tenderfoot or a mixture of all three. It's plumb unnecessary, an' it's dead wrong."

"You mean shooting deer and so forth?"

"I mean just that, son, if the shootin's only fer antlers an' what these here greenhorns calls 'trophies.' If venison is needed, why, I ain't got nothin' to say. A man's life is worth more than a deer's when he needs food, but a man's conceit ain't worth more than a deer's life."

"How about bear, then, and trapping for skins?" asked the boy.

"I said 'harmless critters.' Now, a bear ain't harmless, leastways, not as you'd notice it. Bear will take young stock, an' they're particularly partial to young pig, an' down among these here foothills we've been passin' through there's a lot o' shiftless hog-rustlers as depends on pork fer a livin'. As for bearskins, why, o' course you use the pelts. What's the idee o' leavin' them around? It ain't any kind o' good tryin' to spare an animal's feelin's when he's plenty good an' dead. But I've made this here section of the Sierras pretty hot for wolves."

"I heard down at the ranch," the boy remarked, "that you had bagged forty-seven wolves last season."

"I did have a good year," assented the Ranger, "an', of course, I can't give much time to it. But I reckon I've disposed of more'n a thousand wolves in my day, one way and another. An' as I look at it, that's makin' pretty good use of time."

"Are wolves worse than bear?" queried Wilbur surprisedly.

"They do a lot more harm in the long run. Cattlemen reckon that a wolf will get away with about four head a year. Myself, I think that's pressin' the average some; I'd put it at somewhere between two an' three. But it's generally figured at four."

"I didn't know that wolves, lone wolves, would attack cattle."

"It's calves an' yearlin's mostly that they go for. It ain't often that you see a wolf tacklin' anythin' bigger'n a two-year-old. But if you figure that a wolf gets rid o' four head a year, an' inflicts himself on a sufferin' community for a space of about ten years, that's somewhere in the neighborhood o' forty head. A thousand wolves means about forty thousand head of cattle, or pretty nigh a million dollars' worth of stock."

"The beef you've saved by killing wolves," commented Wilbur, "would feed quite a town."

"Forty thousand is a tolerable sized bunch. An' that's without figurin' on the wolf cubs there would have been durin' all those years from the older ones whose matrimonial expectations I disappointed plenty abrupt. An' it makes a pile o' difference to cattlemen to know they c'n send a herd grazin' on the national forest, an' be fairly sure they won't lose much by varmints."

"It surely must," said the boy. "But I hadn't realized that wolves were such a danger."

"I wouldn't go to say that they was dangerous. An old gray wolf, if you corner him, is surly an' savage, an' will fight anythin' at any odds. Out on the Barren Grounds they're bad, but around the Sierras I ain't heard o' them attackin' humans but twice, an' they was children, lost in the woods. I figure the kids had wandered around till they petered out, an' then, when they were exhausted, the wolves got 'em. But I've never heard of a wolf attackin' a man anywhere in the Rockies."

"But I thought wolves ran in packs often."

"Not in the United States, son, so far as I've heard of. I knew a Russian trapper, though, who meandered down this way from Alaska in the early days. He used to spin a lot o' yarns about the Siberian wolves runnin' in packs an' breakfastin' freely off travelers. But he seemed to think that it was the horses the wolves were after chiefly, although they weren't passin' up any toothsome peasant that happened along."

"And do wolves attack horses here, too?"

"Not on the trail, that fashion. But they're some partial to colts."

"How about coyotes?"

"They're mean critters an' they give a pesky lot o' trouble, although they bother sheep more'n cattle. But a few husky dogs will keep coyotes at a distance, though they'll watch a chance an' sneak off with a young lamb or any sheep what is hurt an' has fallen behind the herd. But they don't worry us here such a great deal, they keep mostly to the plains an' the prairie country."

Saying this, the Ranger pulled up at the door of a shack lying a short distance from the road and gave a hail. Immediately there stepped from the door one of the largest women Wilbur had ever seen. Though her hair was gray, and she was angular and harsh of feature, yet, standing well over six feet and quite erect, she seemed to fit in well under the shadow of the Sierras.

"I reckon you've some bacon, Susan?" was the Ranger's greeting as he swung himself off his horse. Wilbur followed suit.

"There's somethin' awful would have to happen to a pile o' hogs," was the reply, "when you came by here an' couldn't get a bite."

By this time a swarm of children had come out, and Wilbur, seeing that the Ranger had simply resigned his horse into the hands of one of the larger boys, did likewise and followed his guide into the house.

"I wasn't sure if I'd find you here, Susan," said the old scout when they were seated at a simple meal. "I thought you were goin' to move into town."

"I did," she replied. "I stayed thar jest two weeks. An' they was two weeks o' misery. These yar towns is too crowded for me. Now, hogs, I've been used to 'em all my life, an' I don't mind how many's around. But it only takes a few folks to make me feel as if I was real crowded."

"Do you prefer hogs to people?" questioned Wilbur, smiling.

"Not one by one, bub, o' course," came the slow reply, "but when it comes to a crowd o' both, I'm kind o' lost with folks. Everybody's busy an' they don't care nothin' about you, an' it makes you-all feel no 'count. An' the noise is bewilderin'. Have you ever been in a city?"

Wilbur admitted that he had.

"Well, then," she said, "ye'll know what I mean. But out here, there's more room, like, an' I know I'm bigger'n my hogs." Following which, Susan launched into a long description of her favorite porkers, which continued almost without cessation until it was time for the two to be on the trail again.

"That's a queer woman," said Wilbur when they were in the saddle again and out of hearing of the shack.

"She's a good one," answered the Ranger. "Her son, by the way, is a member o' the legislature, an' a good lawyer, an' she's made him what he is. But she ain't the city kind."

"Not with all those children," said Wilbur. "She'd have to hire a block to keep them all."

"Those ain't her own children," replied the Ranger, "not a bit of it. If a youngster gits orphaned or laid up she just says 'Pork's plenty, send 'em to me.' An' I generally do. Other folks do, too, an' quite a few o' them hev been brought her by the 'little white lady' you've been hearing about. She's fonder o' children than any woman I ever saw, is Susan. But she won't talk kids, she'll only talk hogs."

"That's pretty fine work, I think," said the boy. "But I should imagine the youngsters wouldn't have much of a chance. It isn't any better than a backwoods life, away out there."

The old Ranger, usually so slow and deliberate in his movements, turned on him like a flash.

"The meanest thing in this world," he said, "is not bein' able to see or willin' to see what some one else has done for you. There ain't a home in all these here United States that don't owe its happiness to the backwoodsman. You can't make a country civilized by sittin' in an office an' writin' the word 'civilized' on the map. Some one has got to get out an' do it, an' keep on doin' it till it's done. It was the man who had nothin' in the world but a wife, a rifle, an' an ax who made America."

"I had forgotten for the moment," said the boy, a little taken off his feet by the sudden energy and the flashing speech of the usually impassive mountaineer.

"So does mighty near every one else 'forget for the moment.' But if the backwoodsman forgot for the moment he was likely to be missin' his scalp-lock, or if he tried to take a holiday it meant his family would go hungry. He never forgot his children or his children's children, but they're none too fond o' rememberin' him.

"Everythin' you have now, he first showed you how. If he wanted a house, he had to build it; if he wanted bread, he had to raise the grain, grind, an' bake it; if he wanted clothin', he had to get skins, cure, an' sew 'em. But he never had to hunt for honor an' for courage; he brought those with him; an' he didn't have to get any book-larnin' to teach him how to make his cabin a home, an' his wife an' his children were allers joys to him, not cares. They were men! An' what do you reckon made 'em men?"

"The hardships of the life, I suppose," hazarded Wilbur.

"Not a bit of it; it was the forest. The forest was their nurse in infancy, their playmate when they were barefooted kids runnin' around under the trees, their work by day, an' their home when it was dark. They lived right down with Nature, an' they larned that if she was rugged, she was kind. They became rugged an' kind, too. An' that's what the right sort of American is to this day."

"A lot of our best statesmen in early days were from the newly cleared settlements; that's a fact," said Wilbur thoughtfully, "right up to the Civil War."

"An' through it!" added the Ranger. "How about Abe Lincoln?"

Wilbur thought to himself that perhaps "backwoodsman" was not quite a fair idea of the great President's Illinois upbringing, but he thought it wiser not to argue the point to no profit.

"But it's all different now," continued Rifle-Eye a trifle sadly, "things have changed an' the city's beginnin' to have a bigger hold than the forest. An' the forest still needs, an' I reckon it allers will need, the old kind o' men. Once we had to fight tooth an' nail agin the forest jest to get enough land to live on, an' now we've got to fight jest as hard for the forest so as there'll be enough of it for what we need. In this here country you can't ever get away from the woods-dweller, whether he's backwoodsman or Forester, or whatever you call him—the man who can depend on himself an' live his life wherever there's sky overhead an' ground underfoot an' trees between.

"They're the discoverers of America, too. Oh, yes, they are," he continued, noting Wilbur's look of contradiction. "It wasn't Columbus or Amerigo or any o' the floatin' adventurers who first saw a blue splotch o' land on the horizon that discovered America. It was the men who conquered the forest, who found all, did all, an' became all that the life demanded, that really brought into bein' America an' the Americans."

The Ranger stopped as suddenly as he had begun, and, touching his horse lightly with the spur, went on ahead up the trail. Evidently he was thinking of the old times and the boy had wisdom enough not to disturb him. As the afternoon drew on the foothills were left behind and the open road became more and more enclosed, until at last it was simply a trail through the forest. The shadows were lengthening and it was drawing on toward evening, when the Ranger halted beside a little ravine, densely wooded with yellow pine, incense cedar, and white fir. Wilbur was tired and his horses, fresh to the trail, were showing signs of fatigue, so he was glad to stop.

"I don't know how you feel about it," said the Ranger, "but I reckon I'll camp here. There's a good spring a couple of hundred feet down stream. But you ain't used to this sort o' thing, an' maybe you'd better keep on the trail for another half-mile till you come to a little settlement. Somebody can put you up, I reckon."

"No need to," said the boy, "I'll camp here with you."

"Maybe you ain't used to sleepin' on the ground."

"I guess I can stand it, if you can," replied Wilbur promptly.

"Wa'al, I reckon I can," said the Ranger, "seein' that I always have an' always do."

Wilbur had never camped in the open before without a tent or shelter of some kind, but he would not for the world have had his Ranger think that he was in the least disconcerted. Neither, to do him justice, was he, but rather anticipating the night under the open sky with a good deal of pleasure.

After the horses were unsaddled and hobbled, Rifle-Eye told Wilbur to get the beds ready. The boy, greatly pleased with himself that he knew how to do this without being told, picked up his ax and started for the nearest balsam. But he found himself in somewhat of a difficulty. The white fir grew to a much larger tree than the Balm-of-Gilead he had known in the East, and the lower branches were tough. So he chopped down a young tree near, scarcely more than a sapling.

A moment later he heard the Ranger call to him.

"How many trees of that size do you reckon you'll want?" he asked.

"Oh, they're only just saplings," the boy replied, "five or six ought to do."

"They'll make five or six fine trees some day, won't they?" queried the old woodsman.

"Yes, Rifle-Eye, they will," answered the boy, flushing at his lack of thoughtfulness. "I'd better take only one, and that a little bigger, hadn't I?"

"An' one that's crooked. Always take a tree that isn't goin' to make good timber when you're not cuttin' for timber."

Wilbur accordingly felled a small white fir near by, having had his first practical lesson of forest economy on his own forest, stripped the tree of its fans or flattest branches and laid them on the ground. A thickness of about six inches, he found, was enough to make the beds wonderfully springy and comfortable.

In the meantime he found that Rifle-Eye was getting a fireplace ready, using for the purpose some flat stones which lay conveniently near by. Wilbur, stepping over a tiny rivulet which ran into the creek, noted a couple of stones apparently just suited for the making of a rough fireplace and brought them along. The Ranger looked at them.

"What kind o' stone do you call that?" he asked.

"Granite," said Wilbur immediately.

"An' you took them out o' the water?"

"Yes," answered the boy.

"An' what happens when you build a fire between granite stones?"

"I don't know, Rifle-Eye. What does?"

"They explode sometimes, leastways, when they're wet inside. Don't forget that," he added as he put the stones aside. "Now," he continued, "go down to the spring an' fill this pot with water, an' I'll have a fire goin' an' some grub sizzlin' by the time you get back. The spring is about two hundred feet downstream and about twenty feet above the water. You can't miss it."

Wilbur took the aluminum pot and started for the spring. He had not gone half the distance when he noted a stout crotched stick such as he had been used to getting when he camped out in the middle West for the purpose of hanging the cooking utensils on over the fire. So he picked it up and carried it along with him. Presently the gurgling of water told him that he was nearing the spring, and a moment later he saw the clearing through the trees. But, suddenly, a low snarling met his ears, and he halted dead at the edge of the clearing.

There, before him, on the ground immediately beside the spring, crouched a large wild-cat, the hairy tips of her ears twitching nervously. Under her claws was a rabbit, evidently just caught, into which the wild-cat had just sunk her teeth when the approach of the boy was heard. At first Wilbur could not understand why she had not sprung into the woods with her prey at the first distant twig-snapping which would betoken his approach. But as he looked more closely he saw that this was precisely what the cat had tried to do, but that in the jerk the rabbit had been caught and partly impaled on a tree root that projected above the ground, and for the moment the cat could not budge it.

Wilbur was utterly at a loss to know what to do. He had been told that wild-cats would never attack any one unless they had been provoked to fight, and he found himself very unwilling to provoke this particular specimen. The cat stood still, her eyes narrowed to mere slits, the ears slightly moving, and the tip of the tail flicking from side to side in quick, angry jerks. There was menace in every line of the wild-cat's pose.

The boy had his revolver with him, but while he had occasionally fired a six-shooter, he was by no means a crack shot, and he realized that if he fired at and only wounded the creature he would unquestionably be attacked. And there was a lithe suppleness in the manner that the movement of the muscles rippled over the skin that was alarmingly suggestive of ferocity. Wilbur did not like the looks of it at all. On the other hand, he had not the slightest intention of going back to the camp without water. He had come for water, and he would carry water back, he thought to himself, if a regiment of bob-cats was in the way.

The old fable that a wild beast cannot stand the gaze of the human eye recurred to Wilbur's remembrance, and he stood at the edge of the clearing regarding the cat fixedly. But the snarls only grew the louder. Wilbur was frightened, and he knew it, and what was more, he felt the cat knew it with that intuition the wild animals have for recognizing danger or the absence of danger. She made another effort to drag away the rabbit, but failing in that, with an angry yowl, with quick jerks and rending of her powerful jaws began to try to force the rabbit free from the entangling root, which done, she could carry it into the forest to devour at leisure. The ease with which those claws and teeth rent asunder the yielding flesh was an instructive sight for Wilbur, but the fact that the wild-cat should dare to go on striving to free her prey instead of slinking away in fright made the boy angry. Besides, he had come for that water.

Wilbur decided to advance into the clearing anyway, and then, if the creature did not stir, he would be so near that he couldn't miss her with the revolver. As he grew angrier his fear began to leave him. He took the pot in his left hand, putting the long stick under his arm, and, drawing his six-shooter, advanced on the cat. He came forward slowly, but without hesitation. At his second step forward the wild-cat raised her head, but instead of springing at him, as Wilbur half feared, she retreated into the woods, leaving her prey, snarling as she went. Wilbur went boldly forward to the spring, and, thinking that he would see no more of the cat, put away his revolver.

Having secured the water, and as he turned to go, however, the boy felt a sudden impulse to look up. He had not heard a sound, and yet, on a low branch a few feet above his head, crouched the wild-cat, her eyes glaring yellow in the waning light. Once again he felt the temptation to shoot her, but resisted it, through his fear of only wounding the creature and thus bringing her full fury upon him.

But it occurred to Wilbur that it was not unlikely that he might have to come back to the spring a second time for more water, and he did not wish to risk another encounter. He thought to himself that if he did return and interrupted the wild-cat a second time he would not escape as easily as he had on this occasion, and consequently he tried to devise a means to prevent such meeting. He figured that if he picked up the rabbit and threw it far into the woods the cat would follow and the path to the spring would be open. Forgetting for the moment that he could not expect the angry creature in the tree to divine the honesty of his intentions, he stooped down and grasped the rabbit by the leg to throw it into the forest. As he did so, the wild-cat, thinking herself about to be deprived of her prey, sprang at him.

With one hand holding the pot of water, which, boy-like, he did not want to spill, and the other grasping the rabbit, Wilbur was terribly handicapped. But, by the greatest good fortune, as he stooped, the crotch of the stick that he was carrying caught the wild-cat under the body as she launched herself at him from the tree. The stick was knocked out of the boy's grasp, but it also turned the cat aside, and she half fell, landing on Wilbur's outstretched leg, instead of on his neck, which was the objective point in her spring. As her claws ripped into the soft flesh of his thigh, Wilbur released his hold of the rabbit, drew his revolver, and fired full at the creature hanging on his leg.

Almost instantaneously with the shot, however, one of her foreclaws shot out and caught the back of his right hand, making a long but superficial gash from the wrist to the knuckles. At the same time, too, one of her hind claws struck down, opening the calf of the leg and making the boy sick for a moment. His right hand was bleeding vigorously and paining a good deal, but his finger was still on the trigger and Wilbur fired again. A moment later, the Ranger came running into the clearing. But before he reached the boy's side the cat had fallen limply to the ground. The second shot had gone clear through her skull, and, being fired at point-blank distance, had almost blown her head off.

The old Ranger, without wasting time in words, quickly examined the boy's injuries and found them slight, although they were bleeding profusely. Wilbur reached out the pot full of water from the spring.

"Here's the water, Rifle-Eye," he said a little quaveringly; "I hardly spilled a drop."

The old woodsman took the vessel without a word. Then he looked down at the cat.

"Just as well for you," he said, "that it wasn't a true lynx. But how did she get at your leg? Did you walk on her, or kick her, just for fun?"

Wilbur, laughing a little nervously from the reaction of the excitement, described how it was that the wild-cat had landed on his leg instead of on his neck, and the old hunter nodded.

"It's a mighty lucky thing for you," he said, "that stick was there, because there's a heap o' places around the neck where a clawin' ain't healthy. But these scratches of yours won't take long to heal. Where you were a fool," he continued, "was in touchin' the rabbit at all. It's just as I told you. When you went quietly forward, you say, the bob-cat got out of your road all right. Of course, that's what she ought to do. And if you had filled the pot with water an' come away that's all there'd have been to it. But jest as soon as you begin ter get mixed up in the prey any varmint's killed, you've got ter begin considerin' the chances o' joinin' the select company o' victims."

"But I wanted her out of the way for next time," said Wilbur.

"She'd have got out of your way so quick you couldn't see her go," said the hunter, "if you'd given her a chance. Next time, leave a varmint's dinner alone."

"Next time, I will," the boy declared.

"I guess now," continued the old hunter, "you'd better come back to camp an' we'll see what we c'n do to improve them delicate attentions you've received. An' don't be quite the same kind of an idiot again."

"Well," said Wilbur, "I got the water from the spring, anyhow."

PATROLLING A COYOTE FENCE.
The old Ranger and his hound safeguarding the grazing interests of the forest.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.

REDUCING THE WOLF SUPPLY.

REDUCING THE WOLF SUPPLY.
Sport that is worth while, freeing the National Forests from beasts of prey.
Photographs by U. S. Forest Service.

CHAPTER VI

IN THE HEART OF THE FOREST

Towards noon the next day, Wilbur and the Ranger rode up to the shack in the woods which Rifle-Eye considered as one of his headquarters. As soon as they reached the clearing they were met by a big, shambling youth, whose general appearance and hesitating air proclaimed him to be the half-witted lad of whom Wilbur had heard. He came forward and took the horses.

"You've heard about Ben?" queried the hunter as the horses were being led away.

"Yes," answered Wilbur, "Bob-Cat Bob told me all about the death of his father during the sheep and cattle war. He told me when we were riding up to the ranch, from the station at Sumber."

"I have thought," said Rifle-Eye, "that perhaps it ain't quite the right thing to keep Ben here, up in the woods. But I tried sendin' him to school. It wasn't no manner of use. It only troubled the teacher an' bothered him, an' I reckon his life will stack up at the end jest as well, even if he can't read."

"What does he do while you are away?" asked Wilbur.

"Oh, a lot of things. He ain't idle a minute, really, an' there's times that he's as good as them that thinks themselves so wise."

"What sort of things?"

"Well, he's done a lot o' work stampin' out the prairie dogs. Of course, there's very few o' them in these parts, so few that the government has made no appropriation for this forest. It's in Eastern Montana an' the Dakotas that you get them, an' there's been a lot o' trouble in the Custer an' Sioux forests. He's gone there several times, an' there's been villages o' them here among the foothills that Ben's cleared up entirely."

"They poison the prairie dogs, don't they?"

"Yes, with strychnine, mainly. Grain is soaked in the poison an' a few grains put outside each hole in a dog town. If this is done early in the year, before the green grass is up for food, it will pretty nearly clean up the town."

"It seems rather a shame," said Wilbur, "they are such fat, jolly little fellows, and the way they sit up on their hind legs and look at you is a wonder."

"It's all right for them to look 'fat and jolly,'" replied Rifle-Eye, "but when the stock raiser finds hundreds of acres of grass nibbled down to the roots, an' when the farmer's young wheat is ruined, they don't see so much jollity in it."

"But I didn't know that the Forest Service took a hand in that sort of thing."

"Only indirectly. But they provide the poison an' the settlers usually git some one to put it round. As I say, Ben's been doin' a lot of it this spring."

"But that sort of work doesn't last long."

"No, only in the spring. But Ben's busy other ways. Sometimes he goes down to the valleys an' helps the ranchers with their hayin'. He don't know anythin' about money, though, an' so they never pay him cash."

"That's tough on Ben, then," remarked Wilbur. "Does he work all the time for nothing?"

"Not at all. They always see that he gits a fair return. Every once in a while the man he's workin' for will drive up to the shack with some bacon an' a barrel o' flour an' trimmin's. Often as not, he'll bring the wife along, an' she'll go over the lad's things to find what he needs."

"That's mighty nice," commented Wilbur.

"Some of 'em are as good to Ben as if he was their own," said the Ranger. "They'll go over everything he's got, fix up whatever needs mendin', an' make a list o' things to be bought next time any one goes into town. You see, he gits his wages that way. He works well, an' so it ain't like charity, an' at the same time it gives the man he works for a chance to do the right thing."

"I suppose if he didn't, you'd get after him," suggested the boy.

"Never had to yet, an' never expect to," was the prompt reply. "Mostly folks is all right, an' a lot o' the supposed selfishness is jest because they ain't been reminded. And then Ben never makes trouble."

"He seems quiet enough," said Wilbur, with a gesture towards the doorway where the lad was approaching. He came in and stood looking vacantly at the two sitting together.

"What were you doin' yesterday, Ben?" asked the Ranger sharply to rouse him.

The lad flung out both arms with a wild gesture.

"I was away, away, far away," he answered; "away, away over the hills."

"Where?"

The half-witted lad passed his hand across his eyes.

"With Mickey," he said.

"An' what were you an' Mickey doin'?"

"Lots of things, lots, lots, lots. Little fires creep, creep, creepin' on the ground," he moved his hands waveringly backward and forward as though to show the progress of the flames, "then put them out quick, so!" he stamped his foot on the ground.

"Does he mean a forest fire, Rifle-Eye?" queried Wilbur, alert at the very mention of fire.

"No, no, no," interrupted Ben; "little bit fires. Pile burn, burn hot, grass catch fire, put out grass."

"You mean," said the mountaineer, "that you an' Mickey were burnin' up brush?"

"Yes, brush all in piles, burn."

"It's a pretty risky business," said Rifle-Eye, "this burnin' brush in the late spring, but Mickey's right enough to have had Ben along. He's one o' the best fire-fighters that ever happened. He never knows enough to quit."

"Did you have any trouble, Ben?" asked Wilbur.

"One little fire, walk, walk, walk away into the woods. But I stopped him."

"Alone?"

The half-witted lad nodded. Then, coming over to Wilbur, he pointed to the rude bandages and said questioningly:

"Tumble?"

"No, Ben," replied the other boy, "I got into a mix-up with a bob-cat."

"I fight, too. Wait, I show you something."

He disappeared for a moment and then came back with two wolf pups, carrying one in each hand as he might a kitten.

"I got five more," he said.

"Where did you get 'em, Ben?" asked the Ranger.

"Way, way over. Deadman Canyon."

"Get the old wolf?"

The half-witted lad nodded his head vigorously several times.

"Yes," he said, "dead, dead, dead."

"Was the den just by the Sentinel Pine?"

"Yes."

"I reckon that's the wolf that's been givin' such a lot of trouble on the Arroyo," commented Rifle-Eye. "I went out after that wolf one day this spring, Ben, but I didn't get her. I waited at the den a long time, too."

"Two holes out of den, two. I wait, too. Long, long time. No come out. Plug up one hole. Long more time waited. Then wolf go in. I go in, too."

"You went into the wolf's den?" queried Wilbur in amazement.

"Yes, in. Far, far in."

"How far?"

"Don't know. Far."

"Well, I went in about forty feet myself," said the old hunter, "an' I didn't see any sign o' the pups, so I backed out again. If you went all the way in, Ben, I reckon it was a pretty long crawl."

"But why did you go in the den when the mother wolf was there?" asked Wilbur.

"Boy fool," said the half-witted lad, pointing at him. "Why go in if wolf not there?"

"Well," said Wilbur, on the defensive, "I should think it a whole lot safer to go in—that is, if I was going in at all—sometime when I'd be sure the mother wolf wouldn't be there."

But the other, still holding the cubs in his hands, negatived this reasoning with a vigorous shake of the head.

"Safer, wolf in," he said.

"I don't see that at all," objected Wilbur. "It can't be safer."

"You go in, in far, when wolf out. By and by wolf come, eat up legs, no can turn round for shoot."

"I hadn't thought of that," the boy said, a little humbled.

"Ben's nearly right," said the Ranger, "an' it ain't really as dangerous as it sounds. There ain't room in the passage for the wolf to spring, an' if you shoot you're bound to hit her somewhere, no matter how you aim. O' course, a wolf ain't goin' to come along an' 'eat up your legs' the way he puts it, but you might get a nasty bite or two. It's a lot better to go after a wolf than have the wolf come after you. It takes more nerve, but it ain't so hard at that."

"But how did you kill the old wolf, Ben?" asked Wilbur.

"I go in, far in. See eyes glitter. Shoot once. Shoot twice. Old wolf dead. Take out pups, easy. Skin wolf."

"Where's the skin?"

"Dryin'."

But Wilbur was by no means satisfied and he plied the half-witted lad with questions until he had secured all the details of the story. In the meantime the Ranger had been getting dinner, and as soon as it was over Wilbur was glad to lie down on Ben's bed, for he had lost not a little blood in his tussle with the wild-cat the night before, and riding all morning with those deep scratches only rudely bandaged had been rather a strain. By the time that Rifle-Eye was ready to start again Wilbur was fairly stiffened up, and at the Ranger's suggestion he agreed to stay on a couple of days in the shack, having Ben cook for him and look after him, as the Ranger felt that he himself ought to get back to headquarters.

It was not until the third day that Wilbur once more got into the saddle and with Ben to guide him through the forest, started for the Supervisor's headquarters, or rather the Ranger's cabin where the Supervisor was staying. The two boys rode on and up, leaving behind the scrub oak, chapparal, and manzanita, and into the great yellow pine and sugar pine forests. Shortly before noontime they heard voices in the woods, and Ben, after listening a moment, turned from the trail. In a few minutes he reined up beside a tall, sunburned man, walking through the woods pencil and notebook in hand. At the same time the Ranger, who was working with him, stepped up.

"Thanks, Ben," he said. Then, turning to the Supervisor, he said: "Merritt, here's the boy!"

Wilbur's new chief stepped forward quickly and held out his hand with a word of greeting. Wilbur shook it heartily and decided on the spot that he was going to like him. Wearing khaki with the Forest Service bronze badge, a Stetson army hat, and the high lace boots customarily seen, he looked thoroughly equipped for business.

"You're Wilbur Loyle," he said, "of course. I heard you were coming. Have you had any experience?"

"Just the Colorado Ranger School, sir," said the boy.

"You were to be here three days ago."

"Yes, Mr. Merritt, but I was delayed, and I put up a couple of days with Ben, here."

"He reckoned he had more right to a rabbit what a bob-cat was feastin' on than the cat had," volunteered Rifle-Eye in explanation. "In the ensooin' disagreement he got a bit scratched, an' so I looked after him. I told him to stay at Ben's, an' I guess he's all right now."

"Being three days late isn't the best start in the world," said the Supervisor sharply, "but if Rifle-Eye knows all about it and is willing to stand for it, I won't say any more. Can you cruise?"

"I've learned, sir, but I haven't done much of it. I think, though, I can do it, all right."

"Very well. We'll break off for dinner now, and you can try this afternoon. Or do you still feel tired, and would you rather wait until to-morrow?"

"Thanks, Mr. Merritt," answered Wilbur, "but I want to start right now."

"Very well," said the Supervisor laconically. Then, turning to the Ranger, he commenced talking with him about the work in hand, and for the moment Wilbur was left aside. The lumberman who had been working on the other side of the Supervisor, however, sauntered up and introduced himself as "McGinnis, me boy, Red McGinnis, they call me, because of the natural beauty of me hair."

"I'm very glad, Mr. McGinnis—" began the boy when the lumberman interrupted him.

"'Tis very sorry ye'll be if ye call me out of me right name. Sure I said McGinnis, jest plain McGinnis, not Misther McGinnis. Ye can call me 'Judge,' or 'Doctor,' or 'Colonel,' or annything else, but I won't be called Misther by annyone."

"Very well, McGinnis," said the boy, looking at his height and broad shoulders, "I guess there's no one that will make you."

"There is not!" the big lumberman replied. "And are ye goin' to join us in a little promenade through the timber?"

"So Mr. Merritt said."

"I don't see what for," the Irishman replied. "Sure, there's the three of us now."

"Is there much of it to do?"

"There is that. There's three million feet wanted, half sugar pine and half yellow pine, in this sale alone. An' there's another sale waiting, so I hear, as soon as this one's through."

"Maybe it's just to find out whether I can do it?" suggested Wilbur.

The lumberman nodded affirmatively.

"That's just about it," he said. "Because ye'll have a big stretch to cover as Guard, an' there'll be no time for ye cruisin'. You keep the trees from burnin' up so as we can mark them for cuttin' down."

"It always seems a shame," said Wilbur, "to have to cut down these trees. Of course, I know it's done so as to help the forest, not to hurt it, and that if the big trees weren't cut down the young ones couldn't get sunlight and wouldn't have a chance to grow. But still one hates to see a big tree go."

"It isn't that way at all, at all," said the lumberman. "There's some that does their best work livin', and there's some that does it dead. A man does it livin' and a tree does it dead. But what a tree does after it's dead depends on what kind of a chance it's had when it's been livin'. Sure ye've been to the schools when all the girls and some of the boys gets into white dresses, the girls I mean, and sings songs, and gives speeches and class poems and other contraptions, and graduates."

"I have," said Wilbur, "and not so long ago at that."

"And so have I," answered the lumberman. "Sure, me own little Kathleen was graduated just a month ago from high school. Well, cuttin' down a tree is like its graduation. It's been livin' and growin' and gettin' big and strong and makin' up into good timber. Now its schoolin' in the forest is over, it's goin' out into the world, to be made useful in some kind of way, and in goin' it makes room for more."

"You don't take kindly to the 'Oh, Woodman, spare that tree' ideal?" smiled Wilbur.

"I do not. But I'd spare it, all right, until there were other young trees growin' near it to take its place in time. 'Tis the biggest part of the work is cuttin' down the trees that make the best timber."

When they were settled drinking hot tea and eating some trout that the party had with them, the Supervisor turned to Wilbur.

"McGinnis is a good man," he began, smiling as the Irishman with pantomime returned the compliment by drinking his health in a pannikin of tea, "but he's so built that he can't see straight. If you introduce McGinnis to a girl he'll want to estimate how many feet she'd make board measure."

He dodged a pine cone which the Irishman threw at him.

"How about Aileen?" he said.

"I'll take that back," said Merritt; "Mrs. McGinnis hasn't gone to diameter growth. But," he continued, "she's good on clear length and has a fine crown."

By which Wilbur readily understood that the lumberman's wife was slight, well-built, and neat, and with heavy hair. The lumberman, mollified by the tribute, returned to his dinner, and the Supervisor continued:

"McGinnis told you that cutting down the best trees available for timber is the most important part of forest work. It's not. The most important thing is keeping the forest at its best. Cutting trees when they have reached their maximum is a most necessary part, and it's a policy that helps to make the forest pay for itself. But the value to the forest lies in its conservation. You know about that?"

"Yes, sir," said the boy; "it's keeping the watersheds from becoming deforested, either by cutting or by fire, and so preventing erosion from taking place."

"I reckon," put in the old Ranger, "thar's another that pleases me still better than either of those."

"And what's that, Rifle-Eye?" asked Merritt.

"It's the plantin'. When I walk along some of the forest nurseries, an' see hundreds and hundreds of little seedlin's all growin' protected like, and bein' cared for just the same as if they was little children, an' when I know that in fifty years time they'll be big fine trees like the one we're sittin' under, I tell you it looks pretty good to me. They're such helpless little things, seedlin's, and they do have such a time to get a start. Nursery's a good name all right. I've been along some of 'em at night, when the moonlight was a shinin' down on them, and they wasn't really no different from children in their little beds."

"I should think," said Wilbur, "that the changing of a forest from one kind of tree to another would be the most interesting. I mean getting rid of the worthless trees and giving the advantage to those that are finer."

"And a few sections west," commented the Supervisor, "you would find that Bellwall, who's the Ranger there, thinks that the most interesting thing in the whole of the forest work is putting an end to the diseases of trees and to the insects that are a danger to them. Another Ranger may be a tree surgeon."

"A tree surgeon doesn't help so much," put in McGinnis, "the timber is niver worth a whoop!"

"There you go again," said the head of the forest, "there's other things to be thought of besides timber." He turned to the boy. "You don't know the trees of the Sierras, I suppose?"

"I think I know them pretty well now," answered Wilbur. "I had to learn a lot about them at school, and then Rifle-Eye has been giving me pointers the last few days."

"What's the difference between a yellow pine and a sugar pine?" queried the Supervisor.

"Sugar pine wood is white and soft," said the boy, "yellow pine is hard, harder than any other pine except the long-leaf variety."

"That's right enough. But how are you going to tell them when standing?"

Wilbur thought for a moment.

"I should think," he said, "that the yellow pine is a so much bigger tree as a rule that you could tell it by that alone. But I suppose a younger yellow pine might look like a sugar. The leaves would help, though, because I should think the sugar, like most of the soft pines, has its leaves in clusters of five in a sheath, and the yellow being a hard pine, has them in bundles of three."

"How about the bark?"

"Sugar pine bark is smoother," said the boy.

The Supervisor nodded.

"All right," he said, "we'll try you at it. You go along with McGinnis for an hour or so, to see just how he does it, and then you can take one side, and he the other. Just for a day or two, while Rifle-Eye looks after some other matters."

Wilbur accordingly took a pair of calipers and walked with McGinnis back to where he had originally met the party. Resuming work the lumberman started through the forest, calling as he went the kind of trees and their approximate size. As, however, this particular portion of the forest had never been "cruised," McGinnis not only called and marked the trees which were to be cut in the sale, but also the other timber.

Thus he would call, as he reached a tree, "Sugar, thirty-four, six," by which Wilbur understood him to mean that the tree was a sugar pine, that it was thirty-four inches in diameter breast high, and that it would cut into six logs of the regular sixteen-foot length. It probably would be thirty or fifty feet higher, but the top could only be used for posts, cordwood, and similar uses. Such a tree, having been estimated and adjudged fit for sale, the lumberman would make a blaze with a small ax, by slicing off a portion of bark about eight inches long, then turning the head of the ax, whereon was "U. S." in raised letters, he would whack the blaze, making a mark which was unchangeable. No other trees than those so marked might be cut.

But as other trees were passed which were not good enough for merchantable timber, he would call these rapidly, "Cedar, small," "Engelmann (spruce), eighteen," "Douglas (spruce), fourteen," all of which were entered by the Supervisor, walking behind, in his cruising book. At the same time he made full notes as to the condition of the young forest, the presence of parasitic plants such as mistletoe, of diseased trees, if any were found, of the nature of the soil, of the drainage of the forest, and of the best way in which the timber sale was to be logged in order to do the least possible damage to the forest.

In a half an hour or so Wilbur dropped back to the Supervisor.

"I think, sir," he said, "that I can do that without any trouble. But I can't do it as fast as McGinnis, sir, for he can tell the size of a tree just by looking at it. I shall have to use the calipers for a day or two."

Merritt looked at him.

"For a day or two?" he said. "McGinnis has been doing it for thirty years. In these Western forests, too. You take him to an Eastern forest and even now he wouldn't be sure of estimating correctly. You use the calipers for a year or two!"

Wilbur, accordingly, quickened his pace, and, going along a little to the left and in advance of the Supervisor, took up his share of the work. He found that he had to depend entirely upon McGinnis for his compass direction, and that he was only doing about one tree to McGinnis' six, but still every hour that passed by gave him greater confidence. The afternoon was wearing away when suddenly they came to a part of the forest in which some timber seemed to have been cut during the winter preceding. McGinnis dropped back.

"Sure, ye didn't tell me that any of this had been cut over," he said aggrievedly.

"It hasn't, so far as I know," said Merritt. He put his book in his pocket and walked on briskly for a few hundred yards. Although the logging had been done the preceding winter the signs were clear for those who could read them determining the direction in which the logs had been taken.

"That's Peavey Jo's work," said the Supervisor at last. "I reckon this is where he begins to find trouble on his hands. We'll find out, McGinnis, how much of this timber he has stolen, measure up the stumps and make him pay for every stick he's taken."

"Ye'd better leave Peavey Jo alone. They used to call him 'The Canuck Brute,'" remarked McGinnis.

"He will pay," repeated Merritt quietly, "for every foot that he's got. And I'll see that he does."

"You'll have the fight of your life."

"What of it! You don't want to back out?"

"Back out? Me? I will not! But it'll be a jim-dandy of a scrap."

The Supervisor turned to Wilbur.

"Measure," he said, "the diameter of all those stumps and mark with a bit of chalk those you have measured. We'll talk to Peavey Jo in a day or two."

WHERE BEN AND MICKEY BURNED THE BRUSH.
Getting rid of slashings which otherwise might feed a forest fire.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.

THE CABIN OF THE OLD RANGER.
Where Wilbur stayed a couple of days recovering from the wild-cat's scratches.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.

STAMPING IT GOVERNMENT PROPERTY.
McGinnis marking "U. S." on timber that has been scaled and measured up.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.

CHAPTER VII

WILBUR IN HIS OWN CAMP

"I should think," said Wilbur at headquarters that night, when the timber theft of Peavey Jo was being discussed, "that it would be mighty hard to prove that the timber had been taken."

"Why?" asked the Supervisor.

"Well, we can see how the logs were drawn, and so forth, but you can't bring those driveways into court very well, and put them before the judge as Exhibit A, or anything?"

"You could bring affidavits, couldn't you? But there are few who want to go to law about it. A man knows he can't buck the government on a fake case. We have very little trouble now, but there used to be a lot of it."

"Did you ever have to use weapons, Mr. Merritt?" asked the boy, remembering the story he had heard in Washington about the tie-cutters.

"No," was the instant reply. "You don't handle people with a gun any more in California than you do in New York. These aren't the days of Forty-nine."

"But I thought the 'old-timers' still carried guns," persisted the boy.

"Very few do now. But I got into trouble once, or thought I was going to, when I was a Ranger in the Gunnison Forest. It involved some Douglas fir telephone poles. This trespass was done while I was in town for a while in the Supervisor's office. When I came back I happened to pass by this man's camp, and seeing a lot of telephone poles, I asked if they had been cut in the forest. The man was a good deal of a bully, and he ordered me off the place. He said he didn't have to answer any questions, and wasn't going to."

"Did you go?" asked Wilbur.

"Certainly I went. What would be the use of staying around there? But before I left I got a kind of an answer. He said he had shipped in these telephone poles from another part of the State."

"Sure, that was a fairy tale," said McGinnis.

"Of course it was. I went into the forest and searched around, although there had been a recent fall of snow, until I found the place where most of the poles had been cut. Then I went back to the trespasser and told him, saying I would prove to him that it was on government ground.

"He agreed, and we rode to the place. He took his Winchester along and carried it over his shoulder. He wasn't carrying it in the usual way, but had his hand almost level with his shoulder so that the barrel pointed in my direction. I noticed, too, that he was playing with the trigger. It seemed likely that it might suit his purposes rather well if I was accidentally killed. But each time I cantered up close to him, the barrel returned to its natural position.

"Presently, as we rode along, we came to a waterfall, not a big one, but falling with quite a splashing, and under the cover of the noise I suddenly came to a quick gallop, overtook the trespasser, and, grasping his Winchester firmly with both hands, jerked it out of his grasp."

"Sure, he must have been the maddest thing that iver happened!" said McGinnis.

"He was sore, all right. But what could he do? I had the rifle, and we neither of us had any six-shooters. I showed him that there was no object in my shooting him, while he would gain by shooting me, so I proposed to hold the gun. And hold it I did. On my return I put a notice of seizure on the poles.

"The report went through the usual way to the Commissioner of the General Land Office. He wrote me a letter direct about the case and put it up to me to ask the trespasser what proposition of settlement he intended to make. I thought the town was the best place for this and waited at the post-office for a day or two until he came in. There I tackled him, and told him he would have to notify the Department immediately. At this, he and his son invited me outside to fight it out. I told them I did not intend to fight, but that if within thirty minutes they did not make a proposition of settlement I would telegraph to the Department and his case would become one for harsher measures.

"The postmaster set out to convince him that Uncle Sam was too big a job for him to handle, and in twenty minutes or so back he came with an offer which was forwarded to the Department. A year or so later the case was settled by a Special Agent."

McGinnis added several similar stories of timber difficulties, and, supper being over, they got ready to turn in. The headquarters was a most comfortable house, fairly large, having been built by the previous Ranger, who was married. It was now used by another Ranger, as well as Rifle-Eye, being near the borders of their two districts, and having plenty of good water and good feed near. But although it was barely dark, Wilbur was tired enough to be glad to stretch himself on the cot in the little room and sink to sleep amid the soughing of the wind through the pine needles of neighboring forest giants one and two hundred feet high.

Early the next morning, Wilbur tumbled up, went out and looked after his horses, and came in hungry to breakfast.

"I had intended," said the Supervisor, "to go with you this morning and show you the part of the range you are to look after. But I want to get at Peavey Jo, lest he should decide to leave suddenly, and Rifle-Eye will show you the way instead. I had the tent pitched three or four days ago, when you ought to have been here. You'll find that to cover your range takes about six hours' good riding a day. Use a different horse, of course, each day, and remember that your horse in some ways is fully as important as you are. You can stand a heap of things that he can't. A man will tire out any animal that breathes."

"And what have I to do?"

"You have three trails to ride, on three successive days, so that you will have a chance of seeing all your range, or points that will command all your range at least twice a week. And, of course, quite a good deal of it you will cover daily. You are to watch out for fires, and if you see one, put it out. If you can't put it out alone, ride back to your camp and telephone here, as soon as it is evening. Sometimes it is better to keep working alone until you know there's some one to answer the 'phone, sometimes it's better to get help right away. You can tell about that when you have got to the fire and have seen what it is."

Wilbur nodded.

"That's easy enough to follow," he said.

"If a heavy rain comes, you had better ride back here, because for a few days after a big rain a fire isn't likely to start, and there's always lots of other stuff to be done in the forest, trail-building, and things of that sort."

"Very well, Mr. Merritt," answered the boy.

"There are no timber sales going on in that section of the forest, so that if you see any cutting going on, just ride up quietly and get into conversation with the people cutting and casually find out their names. Ask no other questions, but in the evening telephone to me."

"The telephone must be a big convenience. But," added Wilbur, "it seems to take away the primitiveness of it, somehow."

"Wilbur," said the Supervisor seriously, "you don't want to run into the mistake of thinking that life on a national forest is principally a picturesque performance. It's a business that the government is running for the benefit of the country at large. Anything that can be done to make it efficient is tremendously important. The telephone already has saved many a fearful night ride through bad places of the forest, has been the means of stopping many a fire, and has saved many a life in consequence. I think that's a little more important than 'primitiveness,' as you call it."

The boy accepted the rebuke silently. Indeed, there was nothing more to say.

"As for grazing, there's not much to be said, except that the sheep limits are pretty well defined. The cattle can wander up the range without doing much harm here, for the young forest is of pretty good growth, but the sheep must stay down where they belong. Rifle-Eye will show you where, and sheep notices have been posted all along the limits. And if there's anything you don't know, ask. And I guess that's about all."

The Supervisor rose to go, but Wilbur stopped him.

"How am I to arrange about supplies?" he said.

"The tent's near a spring," was the brief but all-embracing reply. "There's a lake near by with plenty of trout, there's flour and groceries and canned stuff in a cache, and the Guard that was there last year had some kind of a little garden. You can see what there is, and if you want seeds of any kind, let me know. And there's nothing to prevent you shooting rabbits, though they're not much good this time of year."

"I'll get along all right, Mr. Merritt," said Wilbur confidently.

"I'll ride over on Sunday and see you anyway," added the Supervisor as he strode through the doorway, meeting McGinnis, who was waiting for him outside. Wilbur followed him to the door.

"'Tis all the luck in the world I'm wishin' ye," shouted the big Irishman, "an' while ye're keepin' the fires away we'll be gettin' another nicely started for that old logjammer. Sure, we'll make it hot enough for him."

"Good hunting," responded Wilbur with a laugh, as the two men disappeared under the trees.

Although only a day had passed since Wilbur had met the Supervisor and McGinnis, it seemed to him that several days must have elapsed, so much had happened, and he found it hard to believe, when he found himself in the saddle again beside the old Ranger, that they had started from Ben's shack only the morning before.

"I like Mr. Merritt," he said as soon as they had got started. "I like McGinnis, too."

"I reckon he wasn't over-pleased with your bein' late?" queried Rifle-Eye.

"He wasn't," admitted the boy candidly, "but I don't blame him for that. I liked him just the same. But I don't think it's safe to monkey with him. Now, McGinnis is easygoing and good-natured."

"So is a mountain river runnin' down a smooth bed. The river is just the same old river when rocks get in the road, but it acts a lot different. Now, Merritt, when he's satisfied and when he ain't, don't vary, but I tell you, McGinnis can show white water sometimes."

"I don't think I'm aching to be that rock," said Wilbur with a grin.

"Wa'al," said the Ranger, "I ain't filed no petition for the nomination, not yet."

"But tell me, Rifle-Eye," said the boy, "what is McGinnis? He isn't a Guard, is he? and he doesn't talk like a Ranger from another part of the forest."

"No, he's an expert lumberman," replied the hunter. "He isn't attached to this forest at all. He ain't even under the service of the government all the while. He generally is, because he knows his business an' the Forest Service knows a good man when it sees one. They engage him for a month, or three, or four months, an' he goes wherever there's a timber sale, or a big cut. Often as not, he teaches the Rangers a heap of things they don't know about lumberin', and the Forest Assistants themselves ain't above takin' practical pointers from him."

"But I thought Mr. Merritt said that McGinnis only knew this kind of forest?"

"He said McGinnis wouldn't know anything of an Eastern hardwood forest. That's right. But the government hasn't got any hardwood forests yet, though I guess they soon will in the Appalachians. But you can't lose him in any kind of pine. I've met up with him from Arizona to Alaska."

The old woodsman turned sharply from the trail, apparently into the unbroken forest.

"Do you see the trail?" he asked.

Wilbur looked on the ground to see if he could discern any traces. Not doing so, he looked up at the Ranger, who had half turned in the saddle to watch him. As he shook his head in denial he noticed the old mountaineer looking at him with grieved surprise.

"What do you reckon you were lookin' on the ground for?" he asked.

"For the trail," said Wilbur.

"Did ye think this was a city park?" said Rifle-Eye disgustedly.

"Well, I never saw a trail before that you couldn't see," responded Wilbur defiantly.

The old hunter stopped his horse.

"Turn half round," he said. Wilbur did so. "Now," he continued, "can you see any trail through there?"

The boy looked through the long cool aisles of trees, realizing that he could ride in any direction without being stopped by undergrowth, but he could see nothing that looked like a trail.

"Now turn round and look ahead," said the hunter.

The moment Wilbur turned he became conscious of what the old mountaineer wanted to show him. Not a definite sign could he see, the ground was untrampled, the trees showed no blaze marks, yet somehow there was a consciousness that in a certain direction there was a way.

"Yes," he said vaguely. "I can't see it, but I feel somehow that there's a trail through there." He pointed between two large spruces that stood near.

The hunter slapped his pony on the neck.

"Get up there, Milly," he said, "we'll teach him yet! You see," he continued, "there ain't no manner of use in tryin' to see a trail. If the trail's visible, the worst tenderfoot that ever lived could follow it. It's the trail that you can't see that you've got to learn to follow."

"And how do you do it, Rifle-Eye?" asked the boy.

"Same as you did just now. There's just a mite of difference where folks have ridden, there's perhaps just a few seedlin's been trodden down, an' there's a line between the trees that's just a little straighter than any animal's runway. But it's so faint that the more you think about it, the less sure you are. But, by an' by, you get so that you couldn't help followin' it in any kind of weather." And the old hunter, seeing the need of teaching Wilbur the intricacies of the pine country forests, gave him hint after hint all the way to his little camp.

When he got there Wilbur gave an exclamation of delight. The camp, as the Supervisor had said, was near a little spring, which indeed bubbled from the hillside not more than ten feet away from the tent, and gleaming on the slope a couple of hundred feet below, he could see the little lake which was "so full of trout" glistening itself like a silver fish in the sunlight. A tall flagstaff, with a cord all reeved for the flag, stood by the tent, and for the realities of life a strong, serviceable telephone was fastened to a tree.

Wilbur turned to the hunter, his eyes shining.

"What a daisy place!" he cried.

The old hunter smiled at his enthusiasm.

"Let's see the tent," he said, and was about to leap from his horse when the hunter called him.

"I reckon, son," he said, "there's somethin' you're forgettin'."

"What's that?" said Wilbur.

"Horses come first," said Rifle-Eye. "It's nigh dinner-time now. Where's the corral?"

But Wilbur's spirits were not to be dampened by any check.

"Is there a corral?" he said. "How bully! Oh, yes, I remember now Mr. Merritt said there was. Where is it, Rifle-Eye? Say, this is a jim-dandy of a camp!"

A few steps further they came to the corral, a pretty little meadow in a clearing, and in the far corner of it the stream which trickled from the spring near the house. Wilbur unsaddled with a whoop and turned the horses in the corral, then hurried back to the camp. The old hunter, thinking perhaps that the boy would rather have the feeling of doing it all himself for the first time, had not gone near the tent. There was a small outer tent, which was little more than a strip of canvas thrown over a horizontal pole and shielding a rough fireplace for rainy weather, and within was the little dwelling-tent, with a cot, and even a tiny table. On the ground was Wilbur's pack, containing all the things he had sent up when he had broken his journey to go to the Double Bar J ranch, and there, upon the bed, all spread out in the fullness of its glory, was a brand-new Stars and Stripes. For a moment the boy's breath was taken away, then, with a dash, he rushed for it, and fairly danced out to the flagpole, where he fastened it and ran it to the truck, shouting as he did so. His friend, entering into the boy's feelings, solemnly raised his hat, as the flag settled at the peak and waved in the wind. Wilbur, turning, saw the old scout saluting, and with stirring patriotism, saluted, too.

"And now," said the old hunter. "I'll get dinner."

"That you'll not," said Wilbur indignantly. "I guess this is my house, and you're to be my first guest."

WILBUR'S OWN CAMP.
His first photograph; taken the day the Supervisor dropped in to see him.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.

CHAPTER VIII

DOWNING A GIANT LUMBERJACK

"I don't believe," said Wilbur the next morning as they rode along the trail that led to the nearest of his "lookout points," "that any king or emperor ever had as fine a palace as this one."

The comparison was a just one. Throughout the part of the forest in which they were riding the whole sensation was of being roofed in and enclosed, the roof itself being of shifting and glowing green, through which at infrequent intervals broad streams of living light poured in, gilding with a golden bronze the carpet of pine needles, while the purple brown shafts of the trunks of the mighty trees formed a colonnade illimitable.

"I reckon every kind of palace," replied the Ranger, "had some sort of a forest for a pattern. I took an artist through the Rockies one time, an' he showed me that every kind of buildin' that had ever been built, and every kind of trimmin's that had been devised had started as mere copies of trees an' leaves."

"Well," said Wilbur, his mind going back to a former exclamation of the old woodsman, "you said this was your house."

"My house it is," said Rifle-Eye, "an' if you wait a few minutes I'll show you the view from one of my windows."

For two hours the hunter and the boy had been riding up a sharp slope, in places getting off their horses so as to give them the benefit of as little unnecessary carrying as possible, constantly ascending on a great granite spur twenty miles wide, between the Kaweah and King's River canyons. Now, suddenly they emerged from the shadowy roof of the forest to the bare surface of a ridge of granite.

"There's the real world," said Rifle-Eye; "it ain't goin' to hurt your eyes to look at it, same as a city does, and your own little worryin's soon drop off in a place like this."

He turned his horse slightly to the left, where a small group of mountain balsam, growing in a cleft of the granite, made a spot of shadow upon the very precipice's brink. The boy looked around for a minute or two without speaking, then said softly: "How fine!"

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.

"That's the best dinner I ever ate," he said; "I never thought fish could taste so good."

But he jumped up again immediately and took the dishes down to the spring to wash them. He had just dipped the plates into the pool under the spring when the old woodsman stopped him.

"You don't ever want to do that," he said. "There ain't any manner of use in foulin' a stream that you'll want to use all the time. Little bits of food, washin' off the plates, will soon make that water bad if you let them run in there. An' not only is that bad for you, but ef you'll notice, it's the overflow from that little pool that runs down through the meadow."

"And it would spoil the drinking water for the horses," exclaimed Wilbur; "I hadn't thought of that. I'm awfully glad you're along, Rifle-Eye, for I should be making all sorts of mistakes."

Under the advice of his friend Wilbur washed up and put away the dishes and then settled down for the evening. He made up his day's report, and then thought he would write a long letter. But he had penned very, few sentences when he began to get quite sleepy and to nod over the paper. The Ranger noted it, and told him promptly to go to bed.

"I'll finish this letter first," said Wilbur.

A moment or two later he was again advised to turn in, and again Wilbur persisted that he would finish the letter first. There was a short pause.

"Son," said Rifle-Eye, "what do you suppose you are ridin' from point to point of the forest for?"

"To see if there's any sign of fire," said the boy.

"And you've got to look pretty closely through those glasses o' yours, don't you?"

The boy admitted that they were a little dazzling and that he had to look all he knew how.

"Then, if you make your eyes heavy and tired for the next mornin', you're robbin' the Service of what they got you for—your eyesight, ain't you? I ain't forcin' you, noways. I'm only showin' you what's the square thing."

Wilbur put forward his chin obstinately, then, thinking of the kindness he had received from the Ranger all the way through, and realizing that he was in the right, said:

"All right, Rifle-Eye, I'll turn in."

About half an hour later, just as the old woodsman stretched himself on his pile of boughs outside the tent, he heard the boy mutter:

"I hope I'll never have to live anywhere but here."

The following day and the next were similar in many ways to the first. Wilbur and the Ranger rode the various trails, the boy learning the landmarks by which he might make sure that he was going right, and making acquaintance with the few settlers who lived in his portion of the forest. On Sunday morning, however, the Ranger told the boy he must leave him to his own devices.

"I've put in several days with you gettin' you started," he said, "an' I reckon I'd better be goin' about some other business. There's a heap o' things doin' all the time, an' as it is I'm pressed to keep up. But I'll drop in every now an' again, an' you're allers welcome at headquarters."

"I hate to have you go, Rifle-Eye," the boy replied, "and you certainly have been mighty good to me. I'll try not to forget all the things you've told me, and I'll look forward to seeing you again before long."

"I'll come first chance I can," replied the hunter. "Take care of yourself."

"Good-by, Rifle-Eye," called the boy, "and I'll look for your coming back." He watched the old man until he was lost to sight and then waited until the sound of the horse's hoofs on the hillside had ceased. He found a lump in his throat as he turned away, but he went into the tent, and went over his reports to see if they read all right before the Supervisor arrived. Then, thinking that it was likely his chief would come about noon, he exerted himself trying to make up an extra good dinner. He caught some trout, and finding some lettuce growing in the little garden, got it ready for salad, and then mixed up the batter for some "flapjacks," as the old hunter had shown him how. He had everything ready to begin the cooking, and was writing letters when he heard his guest coming up the trail, and went out to meet him.

After Wilbur had made his reports and got dinner, for both of which he received a short commendation, the Supervisor broached the question of the timber trespass.

"Loyle," he said, "McGinnis and I have measured up the lumber stolen. There's about four and a half million feet. You were with us when we first located the trespass, and I want you to come with us to the mill."

"Very well, Mr. Merritt," answered the boy.

"I don't want you to do any talking at all, unless I ask you a question. Then answer carefully and in the fewest words you can. Don't tell me what you think. Say what you know. I'll do all the talking that will be necessary."

Wilbur thought to himself that the conversation probably would not be very long, but he said nothing.

"That is," continued the other as an afterthought, "McGinnis and I. I don't suppose he can be kept quiet."

Wilbur grinned.

"But he usually knows what he is talking about, I should think," he hazarded.

"He does—on lumber." Then, with one of the abrupt changes of topic, characteristic of the man, the Supervisor turned to the question of intended improvements in that part of the forest where Wilbur was to be. He showed himself to be aware that the lad's appointment as Guard was not merely a temporary affair, but a part of his training to fit himself for higher posts, and accordingly explained matters more fully than he would otherwise have done. Reaching the close of that subject he rose to go suddenly. He looked around the tent.

"Got everything you want?" he demanded.

"Yes, indeed, sir," the boy replied. "It's very comfortable here."

"Got a watch?"

"No, Mr. Merritt, not now."

"Why not?"

"Mine got lost in that little trouble I had with the bob-cat, and I didn't notice it until next day."

"Saw you hadn't one the other day. Take this."

He pulled a watch out of his pocket and handed it to the boy.

"But, Mr. Merritt," began the boy, "your watch? Oh, I couldn't—"

"Got another. You'll need it." He turned and walked out of the tent.

Wilbur overtook him on the way to the corral.

"Oh, Mr. Merritt—" he began, but his chief turned sharply round on him. The boy, for all his impulsiveness, could read a face, and he checked himself. "Thank you very much, indeed," he ended quietly. He got out the Supervisor's horse, and as the latter swung himself into the saddle, he said:

"What time to-morrow, Mr. Merritt?"

"Eleven, sharp," was the reply. "So long."

Wilbur looked after him as he rode away.

"That means starting by daybreak," he said aloud. "Well, I don't think I'm going to suffer from sleeping sickness on this job, anyway." And he went back into the tent to finish the letter which he had started two evenings before and never had a chance to complete.

By dawn the next morning Wilbur was on the trail. He was giving himself more time than he needed, but he had not the slightest intention of arriving late, neither did he wish the flanks of his horse to show that he had been riding hard. For the boy was perfectly sure that not a detail would escape the Supervisor's eye. Accordingly, he was able to take the trip quietly and trotted easily into camp a quarter of an hour ahead of time. He was heartily welcomed by McGinnis, while Merritt told him to go in and get a snack, as they would start in a few minutes. There was enough to make a good meal, and Wilbur was hungry after riding since dawn, so that he had just got through when the other two men rode up. He hastily finished his last mouthful, jumped up, and clambered into the saddle after the Supervisor, who had not waited a moment to see if he were ready.

Merritt set a fairly fast pace, and the trail was only intended for single file, so that there was no conversation for an hour or more. Then the head of the forest pulled up a little and conversed with McGinnis briefly for a while, resuming his rapid pace as soon as they were through. Once, and once only, did he speak to Wilbur, and that was just as they got on the road leading to the sawmill. There he said:

"Think all you like, but don't say it."

When they reached the mill they passed the time of day with several of the men, who seemed glad to see them, and a good deal of good-natured banter passed between McGinnis and the men to whom he was well known. The Supervisor sent word that he wanted to see the boss, and presently Peavey Jo came out to meet them.

"Salut, Merritt!" he said; "I t'ink it's long time since you were here, hey?"

The words as well as the look of the man told Wilbur his race and nation. Evidently of French origin, possibly with a trace of Indian in him, this burly son of generations of voyageurs looked his strength. Wilbur had gone up one winter to northern Wisconsin and Michigan where some of the big lumber camps were, and he knew the breed. He decided that Merritt's advice was extremely good; he would talk just as little as he had to.

The Supervisor wasted no time on preliminary greetings. That was not his way.

"How much lumber did you cut last winter off ground that didn't belong to you?" he queried shortly.

"Off land not mine?"

"You heard my question!"

"I cut him off my own land," said the millman with an injured expression.

"Some of it."

"You scale all the logs I cut. You mark him. I sell him. All right."

"You tell it well," commented the Supervisor tersely. "But it don't go, Jo. How much was there?"

"I tell you I cut him off my land."

Merritt pointedly took his notebook from his breastpocket.

"Liars make me tired," he announced impartially.

"You call me a liar—" began the big lumberman savagely, edging up to the horse.

"Not yet. But I probably will before I'm through," was the unperturbed reply.

"You say all the same that I am a liar, is it not?"

"Not yet, anyway. What does it matter? You cut four and a half million feet, a little over."

A smile passed over the faces of the men attached to the sawmill. It was evident that a number of them must know about the trespass, and probably thought that Peavey Jo had been clever in getting away with it. The mill-owner laughed.

"You t'ink I keep him in my pocket, hey?" he queried. "Four and a half million feet is big enough to see. You have a man here, he see logs, he mark logs, I cut them."

The Supervisor swung himself from his horse and handed the reins to Wilbur. McGinnis did the same.

"You don't need to get down, Loyle," he said; "it will not take long to find where the logs are."

The big lumberman stepped forward with an angry gleam in his eye.

"This my mill," he said. "You have not the right to walk it over."

"This is a National Forest," was the sharp reply, "and I'm in charge of it. I'll go just wherever I see fit. Who'll stop me?"

"Me, Josef La Blanc—I stop you."

Just then Wilbur, glancing over the circle of men, saw standing among them Ben, the half-witted boy who lived in the old hunter's cabin. Seeing that he was observed, the lad sidled over to Wilbur and said, in a low voice, questioningly:

"Plenty, plenty logs? No marked?"

"Yes," said Wilbur, wondering that he should have followed the discussion so closely.

"I know where!"

"You do?" queried Wilbur.

Ben nodded his head a great many times, until Wilbur thought it would fall off. In the meantime Merritt and Peavey Jo, standing a few feet apart, had been eying each other. Presently the Supervisor stepped forward:

"Show me those logs," he ordered.

"You better keep back, I t'ink," growled the millman.

Merritt stepped forward unconcernedly, but was met with an open-hand push that sent him reeling backward.

"I not want to fight you," he cried; "I get a plenty fight when I want him. You no good; can't fight."

"I'm not going to fight," said the Supervisor, "but I'm going to see where those logs are, or were. Stand aside!"

But the big Frenchman planted himself squarely in the way.

"If you hunt for the trouble," he said, "you get him sure," he said menacingly.

"I'm not hunting for trouble, Jo, and you know it But I'm hunting logs, and I'll find them."

He was just about to step forward, trusting to quickness to dodge the blow that he could see would be launched at him, when Ben, who had been whispering to Wilbur, lurched over to the Supervisor and pulled his arm.

"Plenty, plenty logs, no mark," he said loudly; "I know where. I show you. They are up—"

But he never finished the sentence, for the lumberman, taking one step forward, drove his left fist square at the side of the boy's jaw, dropping him insensible before he could give the information which Merritt was seeking.

But unexpected as the blow had been, it was met scarcely a second later by an equally unexpected pile-driver jolt from McGinnis.

"Ye big murdhering spalpeen," burst out the angry Irishman, "ye think it's a fine thing to try and shtop a man that's trying to do his duty, and think yerself a fightin' man, bekass ye can lick a man that doesn't want to fight. This isn't any Forest Service scrap, mind ye, and I'm saying nothing about logs. I'm talking about your hittin' a weak, half-crazed boy. Ye're a liar and a coward, Peavey Jo, and a dirty one at that."

"Keep quiet, McGinnis," said Merritt, who was stooping down over the insensible lad, "we'll put him in jail for this."

"Ye will, maybe," snorted the Irishman, "afther he laves the hospital."

"You make dis your bizness, hey?" queried the mill-owner.

"I'll make it your funeral, ye sneaking half-breed Canuck! How about it, boys," he added turning to the crowd, "do I get fair play?"

A chorus of "Sure," "'Twas a dirty trick," "The kid didn't know no better," and similar cries showed how the sentiment of the crowd lay. In a moment McGinnis and the Frenchman had stripped their coats and faced each other. The mill-owner was by far the bigger man, and the play of his shoulders showed that his fearful strength was not muscle bound, but he stood ponderously; on the other hand, the Irishman, who, while tall, was not nearly as heavy, only seemed to touch the ground, his step was so light and springy.

The Frenchman rushed, swinging as he did so. A less sure fighter would have given ground, thereby weakening the force of his return blow should he have a chance to give it. McGinnis sidestepped and cross-jolted with his left. It was a wicked punch, but Peavey Jo partly stopped it. As it was, it jarred him to his heels.

"Lam a kid, will ye, ye bloated pea-jammer," grinned McGinnis, who was beaming with delight now that the fight was really started.

"You fight, no talk," growled the other, recovering warily, for the one interchange had showed him that the Irishman was not to be despised.

"I can sing a tune," said McGinnis, "and then lick you with one hand—" He stopped as Peavey Jo bored in, fighting hard and straight and showing his mettle. There was no doubt of it, the Frenchman was the stronger and the better man. Twice McGinnis tried to dodge and duck, but Peavey Jo, for all his size, was lithe when roused and knew every trick of the trade, and a sigh went up when with a sweeping blow delivered on the point of the shoulder, the Frenchman sent McGinnis reeling to the ground. He would have kicked him with his spiked boots as he lay, in the fashion of the lumber camps, but the Supervisor, showing not the slightest fear of the infuriated giant, quietly stepped between.

"This fight's none of my making or my choosing," he said, "but I'll see that it's fought fair."

But before the bullying millman could turn his anger upon the self-appointed referee, McGinnis was up on his feet.

"Let me at him," he cried, "I'll show him a trick or two for that."

Again the fight changed color. McGinnis was not smiling, but neither had he lost his temper. His vigilance had doubled and his whole frame seemed to be of steel springs. Blow after blow came crashing straight for him, but the alert Irishman evaded them by the merest fraction of an inch. Two fearful swings from Peavey Jo followed each other in rapid succession, both of which McGinnis avoided by stepping inside them, his right arm apparently swinging idly by his side. Then suddenly, at a third swing, he ran in to meet it, stooped and brought up his right with all the force of arm and shoulder and with the full spring of the whole body upwards. It is a difficult blow to land, but deadly. It caught Peavey Jo on the point of the chin and he went down.

One of the mill hands hastened to the boss.

"You've killed him, I think," he said.

"Don't you belave it," said McGinnis; "he was born to be hanged, an' hanged he'll be."

But the big lumberman gave no sign of life.

"I have seen a man killed by that uppercut, though," said the Irishman a little more dubiously, as the minutes passed by and no sign of consciousness was apparent, "but I don't believe I've got the strength to do it."

Several moments passed and then Peavey Jo gave a deep respiration.

"There!" said McGinnis triumphantly. "I told ye he'd live to be hanged." He looked around for the appreciation of the spectators. "But it was a bird of a punch I handed him," he grinned.

TRAIN-LOAD FROM ONE TREE.
Temporary railroad built through the forest to the sawmill.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.

CHAPTER IX