WHAT TREE-PLANTING WILL DO.WHAT TREE-PLANTING WILL DO.Pine plantation fifty years old showing growth of timber. Trunks, however, should not show so many superfluous low branches.Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.
THE FIRST CONSERVATION EXPERTTHE FIRST CONSERVATION EXPERT.Work of a beaver in felling a tree with which to build a dam for his home.Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.
In the middle of the night the telephone bell rang. Instantly Wilbur heard the doctor's voice responding.
"Yes, where is it?" he queried. "Where? Oh, just beyond Basco Aleck's place. All right, I'll start right away."
There was some rummaging in the other rooms, and in less than five minutes' time the clatter of hoofs outside told the boy that the doctor was off, probably on the huge gray horse Wilbur had seen in the corral as he rode in that day. It was broad daylight when he wakened again, and Mrs. Davis was standing beside him with his breakfast tray. It was so long since Wilbur had not had to prepare breakfast for himself that he felt quite strange, but the night's rest had eased him wonderfully, and aside from a little soreness where he had had his scalp laid open, he was quite himself again.
"Did Doctor Davis have to go away in the night?" he asked. "I thought I heard the telephone."
"Yes," answered the doctor's wife. "But that is nothing new. Almost once a week, at least, he is sent for in the night, or does not reach home till late in the night. I've grown used to it," she added; "doctors' wives must."
"But distances are so great, and there are so few trails," said the boy, "and Doctor Davis is so famous, one would think that he would do better in a city."
"Better for himself?" came the softly uttered query.
The boy colored hotly as he realized the idea of selfishness that there had been in his speech.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "No, I see. But it does seem strange, just the same, that he should be out here."
"He wouldn't be happy anywhere else."
"Excuse me, Mrs. Davis," said the boy, who had caught something of the Supervisor's abruptness, "but what brought him here?"
"Do you not," answered the doctor's wife, giving question for question, "know the old hunter, 'Rifle-Eye Bill'? I don't know his right name. Why, of course, you must; he's the Ranger in your part of the forest."
"Do I know him?" said Wilbur, and without stopping for further question talked for ten minutes on end, telling all that the old hunter had done for him and how greatly he admired him. "Know him," he concluded, "I should just guess I did."
"It was he," said the woman, "who persuaded us to come out here."
"Won't you tell me?" pleaded the boy. "I'd love to hear anything about Rifle-Eye. And the doctor, too," he added as an afterthought.
"It was long ago," she began, "seventeen years ago. Yes," she continued with a smile at the lad's surprise, "I have lived here seventeen years."
"Do you—" began the boy excitedly, "do you ride a white mare?"
This time it was the doctor's wife who colored. She flushed to the roots of her hair.
"Yes," she answered hurriedly, and went on to explain the early conditions of the forest. But Wilbur was not listening, he was remembering the stories that he had heard since his arrival into the forest of the "little white lady," of whom the ranchers and miners always spoke so reverently. But presently Rifle-Eye's name attracted his attention and he listened again.
"We were camping," she said, "in one of the redwood groves not far from San Francisco for the summer, the doctor having been appointed an attending surgeon at one of the larger hospitals, although he was very young. We had been married only a little over a year. One evening just after supper, Rifle-Eye, although we did not know him then, walked into camp.
"'You are a doctor, an operating doctor?' he inquired.
"'Yes,' my husband replied, 'I am a surgeon.'
"Then the old hunter came to where I was standing.
"'You are a doctor's wife?' he queried. You know that direct way of his?"
"Indeed I do," Wilbur replied. "It's one you've got to answer."
"So I said, 'Yes, I am a doctor's wife,' just as if I was a little girl answering a catechism.
"'The case is seventy miles away,' he said, 'and there's a horse saddled.' He turned to me. 'A woman I know is coming over in a little while to stay the night with you, so that you will not be lonely. Come, doctor.' There was a hurried farewell, and they were gone. I can laugh now, as I think of it, but it was dreadful then.
"Presently, however, the woman that he had spoken of came over to our camp. She was a mountaineer's wife, and very willing and helpful. But I was a little frightened, as I had never seen any one quite like her before."
"You couldn't have had much in common," said Wilbur, who was observant enough to note the artistic nature of the room wherein he lay, the exquisite cleanliness and freshness of all his surroundings, and the faultless English of the doctor's wife. Besides, she was pretty and sweet-looking, and boys are quick to note it.
"We didn't," she answered, "but when I happened to mention the old hunter, why the woman was transformed. She brightened up, and told me tales far into the night of what the old hunter had done until," she smiled, "I almost thought he must be as nice as Doctor Davis."
"Doctor Davis does look awfully fine," agreed Wilbur.
"I always think so," said his wife demurely. "Two days passed before the men returned, and when I got a chance alone with my husband, he was twice as bad as the mountaineer's wife. He would talk of nothing but Rifle-Eye and the need of surgical work in the mountains.
"'And you, Violet,' he said, 'you're going to ride there with me to-day and help look after this man.' It did rather surprise me, because I knew that he hated to have me troubled with any details of his work, for he used to like to leave his profession behind when he came home. So I knew that he thought it important, and I went. But I rode the greater part of the day with the old hunter, and long before he reached the place where the man was who needed me, all my objections had vanished and I was eager to begin."
"That's just the way that Rifle-Eye does," said the boy, "he makes it seem that what he wants you to do is just what you want to do yourself."
"When I got to the place," she went on, "I found that it was a Basque shepherd, who had been hurt by some of the cattlemen. That made it much more interesting for me, for you know, my people were Basques, that strange old race, who, tradition tells, are all that are left of the shepherds on the mountains of the lost Atlantis. So I nursed him as best I could, and presently, from far and wide over the Rockies I would get messages from the Basque shepherds."
"Didn't you put a stop to the feuds at one time?" asked Wilbur. "The old hunter told me something about 'the little white lady' and the sheep war."
"I helped in many of them," she said simply, "and when they came to me for advice I tried to give it. Doctor Davis was always there to suggest the more advisable course, and I put it to these Bascos, as they called them, so that they would understand."
"How about Burleigh?" asked Wilbur.
But the doctor's wife disclaimed all knowledge of a sheep-owner called Burleigh.
"All right," said Wilbur, "then I'll give my share of the story, as the old hunter told it to me. That is, if you don't mind."
"Tell it," she smiled, "if you like."
"Well," said Wilbur, "one Sunday afternoon a Ranger, whose cabin was near a lookout point, said to his wife, 'I'll ride up to the peak, and be back in time for supper.' He went off in his shirt-sleeves, bare-headed, for an hour's ride, and was gone a week. Up in the brush he found the trail of a band of sheep, and although he was cold and hungry and his horse was playing out, he stuck right on the job until it got too dark to see. The second day he smashed in the door of a miner's cabin, got some grub, and nailed a note on the door saying who'd taken it, and kept on. He tired his horse out, and left him in another fellow's corral, but kept on going on foot. The sheepman was known as dangerous, but this little Ranger—did I tell you he was Irish—stuck to it, trusting to find some way out even if the grazer did get ugly.
"At last he came on the sheep in a mountain meadow, and Burleigh on his horse by them, a rifle across his saddle bow. The Ranger said little at the time, and the two men went home to supper. After eating, as they sat there, the Ranger said his say. He told the grazer what were the orders he had, and that he would have to live up to them. But the grazer had a copy of 'orders,' too, and he had hired a lawyer to find out how he could get out of them. So he lit into the Ranger.
"'You see, Mac,' he said, 'those orders don't mean anything. They may be all right in Washington, but they don't go here. You can't stop me, nor arrest me, nor hurt my sheep. Your bosses won't stand by you if you get into any mix-up. The best thing you can do is to stay here to-night, and then go home. Make a report on it, if you like, I don't care."
"And then the Ranger began," the boy went on. "The old hunter told me that this little bit of an Irishman told the grazer about his work as a Ranger. He told him how he had seen the good that was going to be done, and that having put his hand to the plow, he couldn't let it go again. He didn't know much about it, and he'd never tried to talk about it before, but the natural knack of talking which his race always has came to help him out. Then he began to talk of the sheep and cattle war, and the shame that it was to have them killing each other's flocks and shooting each other because they could not agree about the right to grass.
"'An' there's one more thing,' he said, ''tis only the other day that I was talkin' to the "little white lady," and she said she knew that you wouldn't be the one to start up trouble again.' And he wound up with an appeal to his better judgment, which, so the old hunter told me the grazer said afterward, would have got a paralyzed mule on the move.
"When he got through, Burleigh merely answered:
"'Mac, take that blanket and go to bed. I'll talk to you in the morning.'
"When the Ranger woke, a little after daylight, the grazer sat beside his blanket, smoking. He began without wasting any time.
"'Mac,' he said, 'I'm going to take my sheep out to-day. Not because of any of your little bits of printed orders—I could drive a whole herd through them; and not because of any of your bosses back in Washington, who wouldn't know a man's country if they ever got into it, and couldn't find their way out; and not entirely because, as you say, "the little white lady" trusts me, though perhaps that's got a good deal to do with it. But when I find a man who is so many different kinds of a fool as you seem to be, it looks some like my moral duty to keep him out of an asylum.' And that's the story I heard about Burleigh.
"But I interrupted you," the boy continued, "you were going to tell me about Doctor Davis. Didn't you ever go back to the city?"
"Oh, yes," she replied. "The doctor had to take his hospital service, and for three years he spent six months in the hospital in the city, and six months out here in the mountains. But there were several good surgeons in the city, and only one on the great wide Sierras, and, as you know, he is strong enough for the hardest work. So,—I remember well the night,—he came to me, and hesitatingly suggested that we should live out here for always, but that he didn't wish to take me away from my city friends. And I—oh, I had been wanting to come all the time. I was just one out of so many in the city, paying little social calls, but here I found so many people to be fond of. I think I know every one on the mountains here, and they are all so kind to me. And," she added proudly, "so appreciative of the doctor."
Wilbur laughed as she gathered up the things on the tray.
"Well," he said, "I don't believe the old hunter ever did a better thing when he got Doctor Davis to come to the forest—unless, it was the day 'the little white lady' came with him. Haven't I had a broken head, and am I not her patient? You bet!"
But Mrs. Davis only smiled as she passed from the room.
Wilbur spent the rest of the morning in the doctor's library, and was more than delighted to learn that these books were there for borrowing, on the sole condition that they should be returned. He learned, later, that under the guise of a library to lend books, all sorts of little plans were done for the cheering of the lives of those who lived in isolated portions of the mountain range. The boy had not been twenty-four hours under the doctor's roof, yet he was quite at home, and sorry to go when the Supervisor rode up. He had been careful to groom Kit very thoroughly, and she was standing saddled at the door, half an hour before the time appointed. He was ready to swing into the saddle as soon as Merritt appeared.
"Not so fast, Loyle," he said, "this is once that promptness is a bad thing. I must have a word or two with Mrs. Davis; he'd be a pretty poor stick who ever missed that chance."
So, while he went inside, Wilbur looked over the pack to see that it was riding easily, and led Baldy to where he could have a few mouthfuls of grass. And when he came out the Forester was even more silent than usual, and rode for two hours without uttering a syllable.
"Did you find everything going on all right for the pulp-mill?" asked Wilbur, finally desiring to give a chance for conversation. But Merritt simply replied, "Fairly so," and relapsed into silence. He wakened into sudden energy, however, when, a half an hour later, in making a shortcut to headquarters he came upon an old abandoned trail. It was somewhat overgrown, but the Supervisor turned into it and followed it for some length, finally arriving at a large spring, one of the best in the forest, which evidently had been known at some time prior to the Forest Service taking control, but now had passed into disuse. But Merritt was even more surprised to find beside the spring a prospector of the old type, with his burro and pack, evidently making camp for the night.
"Evenin'," said Merritt, "where did you get hold of this trail?"
"Allers knew about it," said the prospector. "I s'pose," he added, noting the bronze "U. S." on the khaki shirt, "that you're the Ranger."
"Supervisor," replied Merritt. "Locating a mineral claim, are you?"
"Not yet," the other replied; "I ain't located any mineral to claim yet. I'll come to you for a permit as soon as I do. But I'm lookin' for Burns's lost mine."
"You don't believe in that old yarn, surely?" questioned the other surprisedly.
"Would I be lookin' for it if I hadn't doped it out that it was there?"
"Where?"
"Oh, somewheres around here. I reckon it's further north. But if you don't take any stock in it, there's no use talkin'."
"I'm not denying its existence," said Merritt, "but you know dozens of men have looked for that and no one's found it yet."
"There can't be but one find it," said the prospector. "I aims to be that one. I used to think it was further south. Twenty years ago I spent a lot o' time down at the end of the range. Two seasons ago I got a hunch it was further north. I couldn't get away last year, so here I am. I've been busy on Indian Creek for some years."
"Got a claim there?"
"Got the only jade in the country."
"Was it you located that mine in the Klamath Forest?" queried the Supervisor interestedly. "But that's quite a good deposit. I shouldn't think you'd be prospecting now."
"I didn't for two years. But, pard, it was dead slow, an' so I hired a man to run the works while I hit the old trail again. I don't have to get anybody to grubstake me now. I've been able to boost some of the others who used to help me."
"But what started you looking for Burns's mine? I thought that story had been considered a fake years ago."
"What is a lost mine?" asked Wilbur.
Merritt looked at him a moment thoughtfully, then turned to the prospector.
"You tell the yarn," he said. "You probably know it better than I do."
"I'm not much on talkin'," began the prospector. "Away back in the sixties, after the first gold-rush, Jock Burns, one of the old Forty-niners, started prospectin' in the Sierras. There's not much here, but one or two spots pay. By an' by Burns comes into the settlements with a few little bags of gold dust, an' nuggets of husky size. He blows it all in. He spends free, but he's nowise wasteful, so he stays in town maybe a month.
"Then he disappears from view, an' turns up in less than another month in town with another little bundle of gold dust. It don't take much figurin' to see that where there's a pay streak so easy worked as that, there's a lot more of it close handy. An' so they watches Burns close. Burns, he can't divorce himself from his friends any more than an Indian can from his color. This frequent an' endurin' friendliness preys some on Burns's nature, an' bein' of a bashful disposition, he makes several breaks to get away. But while the boys are dead willin' to see him start for the mountains, they reckon an escort would be an amiable form of appreciation. Also, they ain't got no objection to bein' shown the way to the mine.
"Burns gets a little thin an' petered out under the strain, but time an' agin he succeeds in givin' 'em the slip. Sure enough he lines up a month or two later with some more of the real thing. Finally, one of these here friends gets a little peevish over his frequent failures to stack the deck on Burns. He avers that he'll insure that Burns don't spend any more coin until he divvys up, an' accordin'ly he hands him a couple of bullets where he thinks they'll do most good."
"What did he want to kill him for?" asked Wilbur.
"He didn't aim to kill him prompt," was the reply. "His idee was to trot him down the hill by easy stages, an' gradooally indooce the old skinflint to talk. But his shootin' was a trifle too straight, and Burns jest turns in his toes then an' there. This displeases the sentiment of the community. Then some literary shark gits up and spins a yarn about killin' some goose what laid eggs that assayed a hundred per cent., an' they decides that it would be a humane thing to arrange that Burns shan't go out into the dark without some comfortin' friend beside him. So they dispatches the homicide, neat an' pretty, with the aid of a rope, an' remarks after the doin's is over that Burns is probably a heap less lonesome."
"Well, I should think that would have stopped all chance of further search," said Wilbur.
"It did. But a year or two after that, Burns acquires the habit of intrudin' his memory on the minds of some of these here friends. When it gits noised about that a certain kind of nose-paint is some advantageous toward this particular brand of dream, why, there ain't no way of keeping a sufficient supply in camp. I goes up against her myself, an' wild licker she is. But one by one, the boys all gets to dreamin' that Burns has sorter floated afore them, accordin' to ghostly etiquette, an' pointed a ghostly finger at the ground. Which ain't so plumb exact, for no one supposes a mine to be up in the air. But different ones affirms that they can recognize the features of the landscape which the ghost of Burns frequents. As, however, they all strikes out in different directions, I ain't takin' no stock therein.
"But, two years ago, when I was meanderin' around lookin' for signs, I comes across the bones of an old mule with the remains of a saddle on his back, an' I didn't have any trouble in guessin' it to be Burns's. There was no way of tellin', though, whether he was goin' or returnin' when the mule broke down, or if he was far or near the mine, but, anyhow, it gave some idee of direction, an' I reckon I'm goin' to find it."
"All right," said the Supervisor as they shook up their horses ready to go, "I hope you have good luck and find it."
"I'll let you or Rifle-Eye know as soon as I do," called back the prospector, "an' you folks can pan out some samples. If I find it, we'll make the Yukon look sick."
Merritt laughed as they cantered down the trail to headquarters.
SAND BURYING A PEAR ORCHARD.SAND BURYING A PEAR ORCHARD.Almost too late to save a fine plantation which a suitable wind-break of trees would have guarded.Photo by U. S. Forest Service.
The days became hotter and hotter, and each morning when Wilbur rose he searched eagerly for some sign of cloud that should presage rain, but the sky remained cloudless. Several times he had heard of fires in the vicinity, but they had kept away from that portion of the forest over which he had control, and he had not been summoned from his post. The boy had given up his former schedule of covering his whole forest twice a week, and now was riding on Sundays, thus reaching every lookout point every other day. It was telling upon the horses, and he himself was conscious of the strain, but he was more content in feeling that he had gone the limit in doing the thing that was given him to do.
One day, while in a distant part of the forest, he came upon the signs of a party of campers. Since his experience with the tourists the boy had become panic-stricken by the very idea of careless visitors to the forest, and the chance of their setting a fire, and so, recklessly, he put his horse at a sharp gallop and started down the trail that they had left. The signs were new, so that he overtook them in a couple of hours. But in the meantime he had passed the place where the party had made their noonday halt, and he could see that full precautions had been taken to insure the quenching of the fire.
When he overtook them, moreover, he was wonderfully relieved and freed from his fears. There were six in all, the father, who was quite an old man, the mother, two grown-up sons, and two younger girls. They had heard his horse come galloping down the trail, and the two younger men had hung back to be the first to meet him.
"Which way?" one of them asked, as Wilbur pulled his horse down to a walk.
"Your way," said Wilbur, "I guess. I just rode down to see who it was on the trail. There was a bunch of tourists hanging around here a few weeks ago, and the forest floor is too dry to take any chances with their campfires."
"Oh, that's it," said the former speaker. Then, with a laugh, he continued: "I guess we aren't in that class."
"I can see you're not," the boy replied, "but I'm one of the Forest Service men, and it's a whole lot better to be safe than sorry."
"Right," the other replied. "I think you might ride on with us a bit," he continued, "and talk to the rest of them. It may ease their minds. You were headed our way down that trail as though you were riding for our scalps."
Wilbur laughed at the idea of his inspiring fear in the two stalwart men riding beside him.
"I guess I'd have had some job," he said, "if I had tried it on."
"Well," the first speaker answered, "we wouldn't be the first of the family to decorate a wigwam that way. My grandfather an' his two brothers got ambushed by some Apaches in the early seventies."
"Your grandfather?" the boy repeated.
"Sure, son. Most of the fellows that got the worst of it with the Indians was some one's granddad, I reckon. One of my uncles, father's brother, was with them at the time, and he got scalped, too. It isn't so long ago since the days of the Indians, son, an' it's wonderful to think of the families livin' peacefully where the war-parties used to ride. That's goin' to be a great country down there. But," he broke off suddenly, "here's dad."
The bent figure in the saddle, riding an immense iron gray mare, straightened up as the three rode close, and the old man turned a keen glance on the boy. Instantly, Wilbur was reminded of the old hunter, although the two men were as unlike as they could be, and in that same instant the boy realized that the likeness lay in the eyes. The springiness might have gone out of his step, and to a certain extent the seat in the saddle was unfirm, and the strength and poise of the body showed signs of abatement, but the fire in the eyes was undimmed and every line of the features was instinct to a wonderful degree with life and vitality. After a question or two to his sons he turned to the boy, and in response to a query as to his destination, replied, in a sing-song voice that was reminiscent of frontier camp-meetings:
"I'm goin' to the Promised Land. It's been a long an' a weary road, but the time of rejoicin' has come. It is writ that the desert shall blossom as a rose, an' I'm goin' to grow rose-trees where the cactus used to be; the solitary place shall be alone no more, an' I and mine are flockin' into it; the lion an' wolf shall be no more therein, an' the varmints all are gone away; an' a little child shall lead them, an' before I die I reckon to see my children an' my children's children under the shadow of my vine an' fig tree."
Wilbur looked a little bewilderedly at the two younger men and one of them said hastily:
"We're goin' down to the Salt River Valley, down in Arizona, where the government has irrigated land."
"Oh, I know," said Wilbur, "that's one of the big projects of the Reclamation Service."
"Have you been down there at all?"
"No," the boy answered, "but I understand that to a very great extent much of the Forest Service work is being done with irrigation in view."
"They used to call it," broke out the old prophet again, "the 'land that God forgot,' but now they're callin' it the 'land that God remembered.'"
Wilbur waited a moment to see if the old man would speak again, but as he was silent, he turned to the man beside him:
"How did you get interested in this land?" he asked.
"I was born," the other answered, "in one of the villages of the cliff-dwellers, who lived so many years ago. Dad, he always used to think that the sudden droppin' out of those old races an' the endurin' silence about them was some kind of a visitation. An' he always believed that the curse, whatever it was, would be taken off."
"That's a queer idea," said the boy; "I never heard it before."
"Well," said the other, "it does seem queer. An' when the government first started this reclamation work, dad he thought it was a sign, and he went into every project, I reckon, the government ever had. An' they used to say that unless 'the Apache Prophet,' as they called him, had been once on a project, it was no use goin' on till he came."
"But what did he do?"
"They always gave him charge of a gang of men for as long as he wanted it, and Jim an' I, we used to boss a gang, too. We've been on the Huntley and Sun River in Montana, we've laid the foundation of the highest masonry dam in the world—the Shoshone dam in Wyoming,—helped build a canal ninety-five miles long in Nebraska, I've driven team on the Belle Fourche in South Dakota; in Kansas, where there's no surface water, I've dug wells that with pumps will irrigate eight thousand acres, and away down in New Mexico on the Pecos and in Colorado on the Rio Grande I've helped begin a new life for those States."
"An' a river shall flow out of it," the old man burst forth again, "an' I reckon thar ain't a river flowin' nowhere that's forgot. I don't know where Jordan rolls, but any stream that brings smilin' plenty where the desert was before looks enough like Jordan to suit me. I've seen it, I tell you," he added fiercely, turning to the boy, "I've seen the desert an' I've seen Eden, an' I'm goin' there to live. An' where the flamin' sword of thirst once whirled, there's little brooks a-ripplin' an' the flowers is springin' fair."
"You must have seen great changes?" suggested the boy, interested in the old man's speech.
"Five years ago," he answered, "we were campin' on the Snake River, in southern Idaho. There was sage-brush, an' sand, an' stars, an' nothin' else. An engineerin' fellow, who he was I dunno, rides up to the fire. Where he comes from I dunno; I reckon his body came along the road of the sage-brush and the sand, but his mind came by the stars. An' he takes the handle of an ax, and draws out on the sand an irrigatin' plan. There wasn't a house for thirty miles. An' he just asks if he shall go ahead. An' I knows he's right, an' I says I knows he's right, an' he goes straight off to Washington, an' now there's three thousand people where the sage-brush was, and right on the very spot where my campfire smoked just five years ago, a school has been opened with over a hundred children there."
He stopped as suddenly as he began.
"There was some great work in the Gunnison canyon, was there not?" queried Wilbur.
The old man made no reply, and the son answered the question.
"When they had to lower a man from the top into the canyon, seven hundred feet below," he said, "Dad was the first to volunteer. I reckon, son, there's no greater story worth the tellin' than the Uncompahgre tunnel. And then, I ain't told nothin' about the big Washington and Oregon valleys, where tens of thousands now have homes an' are rearin' the finest kind of men an' women. But, as dad says, we're comin' home. There's four centuries of our history and there's seven centuries of Moki traditions, an' still there's nothing to tell me who the people are who built the cliff-town where I was born. Dad, he thinks that when the water comes, perhaps the stones will speak. I don't know, but if they ever do, I want to be there to hear. It's the strangest, wildest place in all the world, I think, and while it is harsh and unkindly, still it's home. Dad's right there. These forests are all right," he added, remembering that the boy was attached to the Forest Service, "but for me, I want a world whose end you can't see an' where every glance leads up."
"Do you suppose," said Wilbur, "that in the days of the cliff-dwellers, and earlier, the 'inland empire' was densely populated?"
"Some time," the other replied slowly, "it must have been. Not far from my cliff home is the famous Cheltro Palace, which contains over thirty million blocks of stone."
"How big is it?" asked Wilbur.
"Well, it is four stories high, nearly five hundred feet long, an' just half that width."
Wilbur whistled.
"My stars," he ejaculated, "that is big! And is there nothing left to tell about them?" he asked.
The other shook his head.
"Nothing," he answered.
"They were, an' they were not," interjected the old patriarch. "I looked for the place where I should find him, an' lo, he was gone. They were eatin' an' drinkin' when the end came, an' they knew it not. Like enough they had some warnin' which they heeded not, an' their house is left unto them desolate. An' we go in and possess their land. Young man, come with us."
Wilbur started.
"Oh, I can't," he said. "I should like to see some of those projects, but my work is here. But I'm one of you," he added eagerly; "the rivers that flow down to enrich your desert rise from springs in our mountains, and all those springs would dry up if the forests were destroyed. And all the headwaters of the streams are in our care."
"You kind of look after them when they're young," Wilbur's companion suggested, "that we can use them when the time is ripe."
"That is just it," said Wilbur. Then, turning to the old man, he added:
"I must go back to my patrol," he said, "but when you're down in that Garden of Eden, where the river is making the world all over again, you'll remember us once in a while, and the little bit of a stream that flows out of my corral will always have good wishes for you down there."
The old man turned in his saddle with great dignity.
"There be vessels to honor," he said gravely, "an' to every one his gifts. Go back to your forest home an' work, an' take an old man's wishes that while water runs you may never want for work worth doin', for friends worth havin', an' at the last a tally you ain't ashamed to show."
Wilbur raised his hat in salute for reply and reined Kit in until the party was lost to view. The afternoon was drawing on and the lad had lost nearly two hours in following the party, and in his chat with the old patriarch, but he could not but feel that even the momentary glimpse he had been given of the practical workings of the reclamation work of the government had gone far to emphasize and render of keener personal interest all that he had learned at school or heard from the Forest Service men about the making of a newer world within the New World itself. And when he remembered that over a quarter of a million families, within a space of about six years, have made their homes on what was an absolute desert ten years ago, and that these men and women were stirred with the same spirit as the old patriarch, he felt, as he had said, that the conserving of the mountain streams was work worth while.
As it chanced, he passed over the little stream whose channel he had cleared on one of his patrol rides, and he stopped a moment to look at it.
"Well," he said aloud, "I suppose some youngster some day will be picking oranges off a tree that would have died if I hadn't done that day's work," and he rode on to his camp greatly pleased with himself.
For a day or two the boy found himself quite unable to shake the spell of the old patriarch's presence off his mind, and the more he thought over it, the more he realized that scarcely any one thing in the whole of the United States loomed larger on its future than the main idea of Conservation. It had been merely a word before, but now it was a reality, and he determined to take the first opportunity he would have, during his vacation, of going down to the Salt River Valley to see the old patriarch once again.
And still the weather grew hotter and the sky remained cloudless. And now, every evening, Rifle-Eye would telephone over to make sure that Wilbur was back at camp and that there was as yet no danger. They had had one quite sharp tussle at a distant point of the forest, and one day Wilbur had received orders to make a long ride to a lookout point in another part of the forest, the work of a Guard who had been called away to fight fire, but so far, Wilbur had been free. Two or three times he found himself waking suddenly in the night, possessed with an intense desire to saddle Kit and ride off to a part of the forest where he had either dreamed or thought a fire was burning, but Rifle-Eye had been careful to warn him against this very thing, and although the morning found him simply wild to ride to this point of supposed danger, he had followed orders and ridden his regular round.
Although Wilbur's camp was high, the heat grew hard to bear, and when the boy passed from the shade of the pine along the naked rock to some lookout point the ground seemed to blaze under him. The grass was rapidly turning brown in the exposed places, and the pine needles were as slippery as the smoothest ice.
Just at noon, one morning, Wilbur turned his horse—he was not riding Kit that day—into one of these open trails, and taking out his glasses, commenced to sweep the horizon. A heat haze was abroad, and his over-excited eyes seemed to see smoke everywhere. But, as he swept round the horizon, suddenly his whole figure stiffened. He looked long, then, with a sigh of relief, turned away, and completed his circuit of the horizon. This done, he directed the glasses anew where he had looked before. He looked long, unsatisfied, then lay down on the rock where he could rest the glasses and scanned the scene for several minutes.
"Be sure," Merritt had once warned him, "better spend a half an hour at the start than lose two hours later."
But Wilbur felt sure and rushed for his horse. Half-way he paused. Then, going deliberately into the shade of a heavy spruce, he half-closed his eyes for a minute or two to let the muscles relax. Then quietly he came to the edge of the cliff, and directing his glasses point-blank at the place he had been examining so closely, scanned it in every detail. He slipped the glasses back into their case, snapped the clasp firmly, walked deliberately back to his horse, who had been taking a few mouthfuls of grass, tightened the cinches, looked to it that the saddle was resting true and that the blanket had not rucked up, vaulted into the saddle, and rode to the edge of the cliff. There was no doubt of it. Hanging low in the heavy air over and through the dark foliage of pine and spruce was a dull dark silver gleam, which changed enough as the sunlight fell upon it to show that it was eddying vapor rather than the heavier waves of fog.
"Smoke!" he said. "We've got to ride for it."
NO WATER, NO FORESTS. NO FORESTS, NO WATER.NO WATER, NO FORESTS. NO FORESTS, NO WATER.Example of country which irrigation will cause to become wonderfully fertile.Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.
WITH WATER!WITH WATER!In the foreground, a field and orchard; in the background, the sand-dunes of the arid desert. Transformation effected by a tiny stream and a poplar wind-break.Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.
As Wilbur broke into a steady, if fast pace, it seemed to him that all his previous experiences in the forest had been directed to this one end. True, once before, he had seen smoke in the distance and had ridden to it, but then he had felt that it was a small fire which he would be able to put out, as indeed it had proved. But now, while there was no greater cloud of smoke visible than there had been before, the boy felt that this was in some measure different.
As his horse's hoofs clattered on the trail, it seemed to his excited fancy that every inch of ground was crying to the valley below, "He's coming," the wind that blew past him seemed filled with purpose, every eddying gust awoke in him a greater desire to reach the place of danger before the wind should rise to higher gusts, and as the needles of the pines whispered overhead it seemed to Wilbur that they murmured, "Hurry, hurry, if you want to be there on time." Over and over again, he found himself on the point of using the whip or spurs to induce a greater burst of speed, but as often as he did so, the old short, curtly-worded counsels of Merritt came back to him, never to press his horse if the ride was to be of any length, and he grew to believe that the animal knew as well as the rider the errand on which he was bound.
He had thought, before starting, of riding back to his camp and telephoning to Rifle-Eye, but the knowledge that after all it might be a little fire kept him back. All the tales that he had ever heard about forest fires rushed through his mind, but he resolutely set them aside to watch his horse's path, to hold him in where he would be apt to stumble, to give him his head on rising ground, and to bring him to speed where the trail was easy to follow. Two hours he rode, his horse well in hand, until he came to the place where he had decided from his lookout point that he would have to leave the trail and plunge through the forest itself.
This was a very different matter, and Wilbur found himself wondering how his horse kept his footing. He was not riding Kit, for which he was glad, as in leaving the trail and plunging downhill he had struck some parts of the forest where undergrowth was present, and his favorite mare's slender legs would have been badly scratched. Also the footing grew dangerous and uncertain. There had been many windfalls in the forest, and now was no time to take them quietly; a flying leap, not knowing what might be on the other side, a stumble, perhaps, which sent the boy's heart into his mouth, a quick recovery, and they were off again, only to find, perhaps, a few yards further on, a bowlder-strewn gully which it would have been madness to take at other than a walk. But the boy chafed terribly at each and every stay to his ride, and he had to hold himself in hand as much as he had his horse.
Little by little the exhilaration of the ride stole into his veins. He was alone in the forest, he and his horse, the world was all before, and he must ride and ride. He shouted as he rode under the towering pines, raced across a clearing with a whoop that roused the echoes, and yelled for sheer delight in the mad ride through the untraveled forest, where, as the knights of old, he rode forth to conquer and to do.
But a sudden, sharp, acrid whiff of vapor in his nostrils checked his riotous impulses. It was one thing to ride out to meet the foe, it was another matter when the foe was known to be near. A half mile nearer and the acrid taste in the air turned to a defined veil of smoke, intangible and unreal, at first, which merely seemed to hang about the trunks of the mighty trees and make them seem dim and far away. Nearer yet, and the air grew hard to breathe, the smoke was billowing through the foliage of the pines, which sighed wearily and moaned in a vague fear of the enemy they dreaded most.
A curving gully, too wide to leap, too deep to cross readily, had deflected the boy in his ride until he found himself to the lee of the fire, and the heat of it, oppressive and menacing, assailed him.
Remembering the lay of the land, as he had seen it from his lookout point, Wilbur recalled the fact that no peak or rise was in the vicinity up which he could ride to gain a nearer view of the fire, and he did not dare to ride on and find himself on the windward side of the fire, for then his efforts to hold it back would be unavailing. He rode slowly till he came to the highest tree near. Then, dismounting, Wilbur tied his horse to the foot of the tree, tied him as securely as he knew how, for the animal was snorting in fear at being thus fastened up when the smoke was over his head and the smell of the fire was in his nostrils. Then, buckling on his climbing irons, which he had carried with him that morning because he had thought, if he had time, he might do a little repairing to his telephone line, he started up the side of the great tree. Up and up he went, fifty, sixty, one hundred feet, and still he was not at the top; another twenty feet, and there far above the ground, he rested at last upon a branch whence he could command an outlook upon the forest below.
The fire was near, much nearer than he had imagined, and had he ridden on another ten or fifteen minutes, he might have taken his horse in danger. The blaze was larger than he thought. For half a mile's length, at least, the smoke was rising, and what was beyond he could not rightly see, because the branches of a large tree obscured his sight.
Immediately below him, the little gully, whose curving course had turned him from the straight path, seemed to be the edge of the flames, which had not been able to back up over the water. On this side, clear down to the water's edge the forest floor was burning, but how wide a stretch had been burned over he could not see. Once on the other side of the gully he would be able to judge better what to do.
Below his horse neighed shrilly.
Looking straight down, Wilbur noted a long rolling curl of smoke steal swiftly along the ground a few hundred yards away, and he saw there was no time to lose. Springing from the branch to the trunk of the tree, he started to climb down. But he was over-hurried, and his feet slipped. It was only a foot at most, and Wilbur was not easily frightened, but he turned cold and sick for an instant as he looked below and saw the height from which he so nearly had fallen. Minutes, nay seconds, were precious, but he crawled back upon the branch and sat still a moment to steady his nerves. So startling a shock for so small a slip! He felt thoroughly ashamed of himself, but it had been quite a jolt.
Again the horse neighed, and the fear in the cry was quite unmistakable. Gingerly this time, Wilbur left the kindly support of the branch and made his way down the trunk of the tree, heaving a sigh of profound thankfulness when he reached the ground. His horse looked at him with eyes wild with terror and every muscle atwitch. It was the work of a moment to unfasten the ropes and vault in the saddle, but Wilbur needed all his horsemanship to keep the horse from bolting. Indeed, he did start to run away with the boy, but Wilbur sawed him into a more normal pace and headed him down the gully.
Although the weather had been dry, it seemed that not a few springs must flow above, for there was quite a stream of water, not deep, but rushing very swiftly, and consequently hiding the bottom of the stream. It was no time for looking for a ford, and so, after leading the horse down the bank by the bridle, Wilbur got into the saddle to put the horse across. He would not budge. Every muscle and nerve was tense, and the fire, owing to the curvature of the stream, seeming to come from the other side, the horse refused to move. Wilbur dug in heavily with the spurs. The horse would not move. Again Wilbur used the spurs. Then, snatching the quirt that was fastened on his saddle, the quirt the cattleman had given him after his ride in the cattle stampede, he laid it with all his will across the horse's flanks. Never before, since Wilbur had owned the horse, had he struck him. Frantic, the horse leaped into the stream. It was deeper than the boy had thought, but there was no time to go back, and indeed, unless it was taken at a rush, the horse would not climb the other bank. As they struck the water, therefore, Wilbur rose in his stirrups and lashed the horse a second time. He felt the horse plunge under him, picked him up with the reins as he stumbled on the loose stones in the creek bed and almost fell, and though he was becoming a rider, "hunted leather" by holding on to the pommel of his saddle, as the horse with two or three convulsive lunges climbed like a cat up the opposing bank, and reached the top, trembling in every limb. The gully was crossed.
But there was no time to pause for satisfaction over the crossing of the little stream; that was only the beginning. It would have to be crossed again, higher up, as soon, as they came opposite to the fire. The quirt was still in his hand, and a light touch with it brought the horse to a full gallop. Up along the gully, with the blackened forest floor on the other side, rode Wilbur, until he came to the further end of the fire. It was almost a mile long. Right where the edge of the fire was, with little flames leaping among the needles and the smoke rolling, Wilbur headed the horse for the creek. He expected to have trouble, but the beast had learned his lesson, and went steadily down the creek and over to the other side. The return was in nowise difficult, as it was on the side opposite the fire that the bank was steep. Hastily Wilbur tied up his horse on the burned-out area, seized his shovel, and started along the line of the fire, beating it out with the flat of his shovel where the flames were small, then going to lee of it he made a firebreak by turning up a narrow line of earth.
His hands began to blister and his lips grew so parched that he could endure it no longer, and snatched a moment to go back to the stream and lave his face and hands. He took off his coat, dipped it in the water, and came with it all dripping to beat out the fire with that. Foot by foot and yard by yard he worked his way along the line, every once in a while running back over the part he had already beaten to make sure that all was out. The afternoon was drawing on and for about a quarter of a mile the fire was entirely out, and for another quarter it was almost under control.
Madly the boy worked, his breath coming in gasps, his lungs aching from the smoke, so that it became agony even to breathe, the ground hot beneath his feet, and his feet beginning to blister, as his hands had done an hour before, but there was no let-up. He had come to fight fire, and he would fight fire. Another mad hour's battle, not so successfully, and, contrary to the usual custom, the wind began to rise at sunset; it might die down in a couple of hours, but in the meantime damage might be done.
Little by little the shadows grew deeper, and before it got entirely dark Wilbur tried, but vainly, to reach the end of the line, for he knew well that if a night wind rose and got a hold upon the remnant of the fire that remained all his work would go for nothing. With all his might he ran to the far end of the line, determining to work from that end up to meet the area where he had conquered. Foot by foot he gained, but no longer was he able to work along a straight line, the gusts of wind, here and there, sweeping through the trees had fanned stretches, perhaps only a few yards wide, but had driven them forward a hundred feet. But as it grew darker the wind began to fall again, though with the darkness the red glow of the burning needles and the flames of the burning twigs showed more luridly and made it seem more terrifying. Still he gained headway, foot after foot jealously contesting the battle with the fire and the wind.
So short a space remaining, and though he seemed too tired and sore to move, still his shovel worked with never a pause, still he scraped away all that would burn from the path of a little line of flame. The line of flame grew shorter, but even as he looked a gust came along, which swept a tongue of fire fifty yards at a breath. Wilbur rushed after it, knowing the danger of these side-way fires, but before that gust had lulled the tongue of fire reached a little clearing which the boy had not known was there, only a rod or two of grass, but that browned by the sun and the drought until it seemed scarcely more than tinder. If it should touch that!
Despite the fact that his shoes were dropping from his feet, the leather being burned through, Wilbur sped after the escaping fire. He reached it. But as he reached, he heard the needles rustle overhead and saw the branches sway. As yet the breeze had not touched the ground, but before two strokes with the wet coat had been made, the last of the gusts of the evening wind struck him. It caught the little tongue of flame Wilbur had so manfully striven to overtake, swept it out upon the clearing, and almost before the boy could realize that his chance was gone, the grass was a sheet of flame and the fire had entered the forest beyond in a dozen places.
Wilbur was but a boy after all, and sick and heart-broken, he had to swallow several times very hard to keep from breaking down. And the reaction and fatigue together stunned him into inertness. For a moment only, then his persistent stubbornness came to the front.
"That fire's got to be put out," he said aloud, "as the Chief Forester said, back in Washington, if it takes the whole State to do it."
He walked back to his horse and started for his little cabin home. How he reached there, Wilbur never rightly knew. He felt like a traitor, leaving the fire still burning which he had tried so hard to conquer, but he knew he had done all he could. As he rode home, however, he saw through the trees another gleam, and taking out his glasses, saw in the distance a second fire, in no way connected with that which he had fought. This cheered him up greatly, for he felt that he could rightly call for help for two fires without any reflection on his courage or his grit, where he hated to tell that he had tried and failed to put out a blaze which perhaps an older or a stronger man might have succeeded in quelling. He called up the Ranger.
"Rifle-Eye," he said over the 'phone as soon as he got a response, "there's a fire here that looks big. In fact, there's two. I've been after one all afternoon, and I nearly got it under, but when the wind rose it got away from me. And there seems to be a bigger one pretty close to it."
"Well, son, I s'pose you're needin' help," came the reply.
"All hands, I think," said the boy. "By the time I can get back there the two fires probably will have joined, and the blaze will be several miles long."
"Surest thing you know," said the Ranger. "Where do you locate these fires?"
Wilbur described with some detail the precise point where the fires were raging.
"You'd better get back on the job," said Rifle-Eye promptly, "and try an' hold it down the best you can. I'll have some one there on the jump. We want to get it under to-night, as it's a lot easier 'n in the daytime."
Never did the little tent look so inviting or so cozy to Wilbur as that moment. But he had his orders. "Get back on the job," the Ranger had said. He took the time to change his shoes and to snatch up some cold grub which was easy to get. But he ate it standing, not daring to sit down lest he should go to sleep—and go to sleep when he had been ordered out! He ate standing. Then, going down to the corral, he saddled Kit.
He rode quietly up past the tent.
"I guess," he said, "I really never did want to go to bed so much before, but—" he turned Kit's head to the trail.
It was well for Wilbur that he had ridden the other horse that day, for Kit was fresh and ready. The moon had risen and was nearly full, but Wilbur shivered as much from nervousness and responsibility as from fatigue. It was useless for him to try riding at any high rate of speed in the uncertain light, and in any case, the boy felt that his labors for a half an hour more or less would not mean as much as when it had been a question of absolutely extinguishing a small blaze. Kit danced a little in the fresh night air, but Wilbur sat so heavily and listlessly upon her back that the mare sensed something wrong and constantly turned her wise face round to see.
"I'm just tired, Kit," said the boy to her, "that's all. Don't get gay to-night; I'm not up to it."
And the little mare, as though she had understood every word, settled down to a quiet lope down the trail. How far he had ridden or in what direction he was traveling Wilbur at last became entirely unconscious, for, utterly worn out, he had fallen asleep in the saddle, keeping his seat merely by instinct and owing to the gentle, easy pace of his mare.
He was wakened by a heavy hand being put upon his shoulder, and rousing himself with a start, he found the grave, kindly eyes of the old Ranger gleaming on him in the moonlight.
"Sleeping, son?" queried the old mountaineer.
"Yes, Rifle-Eye, I guess I must have been," said the lad, "just dozed off. I'm dog-tired. I've been on that fire all afternoon."
The Ranger looked at him keenly.
"Best thing you could have done," he said. "You'll feel worse for a few minutes, an' then you'll find that cat-nap is just as good as a whole night's sleep. That is," he added, "it is for a while. What's the fire like? I tried to get somethin' out of Ben, but he was actin' queerly, an' I left him alone. But he seemed to know pretty well where it was."
Wilbur tried to explain the story of the fire, but his tale soon became incoherent, and before they had ridden another half a mile, his story had died down to a few mutterings and he was asleep again. The old hunter rode beside him, his hand ready to catch him should he waver in the saddle, but Kit loped along at her easiest gait and the boy scarcely moved. Rifle-Eye woke him again when they left the trail and broke into the forest.
"I reckon you better wake up, son," he said, "landin' suddenly on your head on a rock is some abrupt as an alarm clock."
Wilbur dropped the reins to stretch himself.
"I feel a lot better now," he announced, "just as good as ever. Except for my hands," he added ruefully, as returning wakefulness brought back with it the consciousness of smart and hurt, "and my feet are mighty sore, too. We're right near the fire, too, aren't we," he continued. "Gee, that was nifty sleeping nearly all the way. I guess I must have felt you were around, Rifle-Eye, and so I slept easily, knowing it would come out all right with you here."
"I ain't never been famous for hypnotizin' any forest fire that I've heard of," said the old hunter, smiling, "but I've got a lurkin' idea somewhere that we'll get this headed off all right. An' in any case, there ain't much folks livin' in the path of the fire, if the wind keeps the way she is now."
Wilbur thought for a moment over the lay of the land and the direction in which the flames were moving.
"There's the mill," he said suddenly and excitedly.
"Yes, son," said the old hunter. "I'd been thinkin' of that. There's the mill."