Boy With the U. S. Foresters Read online

  CHAPTER II

  PUTTING A STOP TO GUN-PLAY

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

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

  "Every one was just as fine as could be," answered the lad. "But how didyou 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 officewho 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,' asyou call it. But I didn't call only to congratulate you; I thoughtperhaps you would like to come with me to-night and meet some of the menin 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 sametime 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 theway."

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

  "You see," said Masseth as they left the hotel, "it is a good plan foryou to meet as many of the leaders of your profession as you can, notonly because their friendship may be useful to you, nor yet only becausethey are all pleasant fellows, but because forestry is a profession, avery large and complex one, and it is a revelation sometimes to see whatcan be made of it. I know myself, whenever I meet a great geologist Ialways 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'tlet your enthusiasm run away with your good sense. You are no more aForester yet than a railroad bill-clerk is a transportation expert."

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

  "You will meet the real article to-night. As I told you, the DistrictForesters are East for a conference, and this lecture is given beforethe Forestry Association. So you will have a good chance of sizing upthe 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 theSupervisors 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 inUtah, one in California, and one in Oregon. And they have under theircharge, so I learned to-day, nearly two hundred million acres of land,or, in other words, territory larger than the whole state of Texas andfive times as large as England and Wales."

  "I had forgotten the figures," said the geologist. "That gives eachDistrict Forester a little piece of land about the size of England tolook after. And they can tell you, most of them, on almost every squaremile of that region, approximately how much marketable standing timbermay be found there, what kinds of trees are most abundant, and in whatproportion, 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 DistrictForester 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 goingin 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 thesame direction, quite with a feeling of companionship. One of the menwho overtook and passed them, giving a hearty greeting to Masseth as hewent by, was Roger Doughty, a young fellow who had distinguished himselfin the Geological Survey, having taken a trip from south to north ofAlaska, and Wilbur's companion felt a twinge of regret that his nephewhad not entered his own service.

  Wilbur, however, was always a "woods" boy, and even in his earlychildish days had been possessed with a desire to camp out. He had readevery book he could lay hands on that dealt with "the great outdoors,"and would ten thousand times over rather have been Daniel Boone thanGeorge Washington. Seeing his intense pleasure in that life, his fatherhad always allowed him to go off into the wilds for his holidays, and inconsequence he knew many little tricks of woodcraft and how to makehimself comfortable when the weather was bad. His father, who was alawyer, had wanted him to enter that profession, but Wilbur had been sosure of his own mind, and was so persistent that at his request he hadbeen permitted to go to the Colorado Ranger School. From this he hadreturned even more enthusiastic than before, and Masseth, seeing that bytemperament Wilbur was especially fitted for the Forest Service, hadurged the boy's father to allow him to enter for it, and did not attemptto conceal his satisfaction with Wilbur's success.

  "Why, Masseth, how did you get hold of Loyle?" asked the Chief Foresteras 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 neversaid anything to me about it."

  The geologist looked inquiringly at his young relative.

  "I thought," said Wilbur, coloring, "that if I said anything aboutknowing you, before I was appointed, it would look as though I had doneit to get a pull. I didn't think it would do me any good, anyhow; andeven 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, asyou see, you did not need it. I'm glad, too, that you did not mention itat the time." He nodded his appreciation of the boy's position as theypassed into the room beyond.

  The place was thoroughly typical of the gathering and the occasion. Thewalls were hung with some magnificent trophies, elk and moose heads, onestuffed fish of huge size was framed beside the door, and there werenumberless photographs of trees and forests, cross-sections of woods,and comparisons of leaves and seeds. Although in the heart ofWashington, there was a breath and fragrance in the room, which, to theboy, seemed like old times in the woods. The men, too, that weregathered there showed themselves to be what they were--men who knew thegreat wide world and loved it. Every man seemed hearty in manner andthoroughly 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 atthe various trophies hung on the walls. As he drew near to one of thesmaller groups, however, he caught the word "gun-play," so he edged upto the men and listened. One of them, seeing the lad, moved slightly toone side as an unspoken invitation to be one of them, and Wilbur steppedup.

  The man who was speaking was comparing the present peacefuladministration of the forests with the conditions that used to existyears 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 prettyquick on the draw," said one.

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

  "Talking about the cattle war," said the first speaker, "the worsttrouble I ever had, or rather, the one that I hated to go into most, wasback in those days. I was on the old Plum Creek Timber Land Reserve,now a portion of the Pike National Forest. A timber trespass sometimesleads 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 cuttingrailroad ties in a secluded canyon forming one of the branches of WestPlum Creek. They were hated good and plenty, these same tie-cutters,because they had a reputation of being too handy with their guns, andconsequently causing a decrease in the calf crop. The cattlemen used todrop 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 moralcertainty that they weren't buying meat, but nothing could be provedagainst them, and the interchanges of compliments, while lively andpicturesque enough, never took the form of lead, although it wasexpected every time they met."

  "Had this been going on long?"

  "Several months, I reckon," answered the former Ranger, "before I heardof it. This was just before that section of the country was taken overby the Forest Service. As soon as notice was given that the district inquestion was to be placed under government regulations, a deputation tothe tie-cutters loped down on their cow-ponies to convey the cheerfulnews. Expressing, of course, the profoundest sympathy for them, thespokesman of the cattle group volunteered the information that theycould wrap up their axes in tissue paper, tie pink ribbons on theirrifles and go home, because any one caught cutting timber on thereserve, now that it was a reserve, would go to the Pen for fifteenyears."

  "What a bluff!"

  "Bluff it certainly was. It didn't work, either. One of the tie-cuttersin reply suggested that the cowmen should go back and devote their timeto buying Navajo saddle-blankets and silver-mounted sombreros, sinceornamenting the landscape was all they had to do in life; anotherreplied that if a government inspector ever set eyes on their cattlehe'd drive them off the range as a disgrace to the State; and a thirdcapped the replies with the terse answer that no ten United Statesofficers and no hundred and ten cattlemen could take them out alive."

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

  "There wasn't any shooting, though, as I said before, though just how itkept off I never rightly could understand. At all events they fixed itso 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 thecowmen had no special business with railroad ties, so that, aside fromsnorting 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, arrangedto make the trip with me to the tie-cutters' camp from a small stationabout fifty miles north of the Springs. I met him at the station asprearranged. We were just about to start when a telegram was handed himcalling 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 wehad intended going was twenty-six miles into the mountains, and going upthere alone didn't appeal to me a little bit. However, the Supervisortold me to start right out, to get an idea of how much timber had beencut, 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 oneof the men.

  "I thought at the time that it wasn't, but what could he do? The matterhad to be investigated, and he had been sent for and couldn't come withme. 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 canyonwhere the outlaws were said to be in hiding. The riding was fair, so Imade good time on the trail and got to the entrance of the canyon aboutthe middle of the day. A few hundred feet from the fork of the stream Icame to a little log cabin, occupied by a miner and his family. I tooklunch with them and told them my errand. Both the man and his wifebegged me not to go up to the camp alone, as they had heard thetie-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 withyou?"

  "I did. But he remarked that up to date he had succeeded in keeping outof the cattlemen-lumbermen trouble, and that he was going to keep rightalong keeping out. He suggested that if there was going to be anyfuneral in the immediate vicinity he wasn't hankering to take any moreprominent part than that of a mourner, and that the title-role of such aperformance wasn't any matter of envy with him. However, I succeeded inpersuading him to come part of the way with me, and secured his promisethat he would listen for any shooting, and if I should happen to resigninvoluntarily from the Service by the argument of a bullet, that hewould volunteer as a witness in the case."

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

  "I didn't blame him either," said the first speaker, "but I would haveliked to have him along. A little farther up the canyon I came to arecently built log cabin, covered with earth. An old man stood at thedoor and I greeted him cheerily. We had a moment's chat, and then Iasked him the way to the cabin where the tie-cutters lived. Judge of mysurprise when he told me this was their cabin, and that they lived withhim. By the time I had secured this much information the two younger menhad come out, and one of them, Tom, wanted to know what I was after. Istated 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 yarparts, stranger, an' I 'low I'll take a gun.'

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

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

  "I wasn't particularly anxious to get separated from my horse, and thatcabin 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 toget 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 balkedat that. I told them that I wasn't in the habit of walking up a mountaintrail in front of two men with guns, and that they would have to gofirst and show the way. They grumbled, but, seeing that I meant it, theyturned and silently walked up the mountainside ahead of me.

  "They stopped at an old prospect shaft that was filled to the brim withwater, and wanted me to come close to the hole and look at it, tellingme some cock-and-bull story about it, and calling my attention to somesupposed outcrop of rich ore that could be seen under the water. But Irefused flatly to go a step nearer than I then was, telling them that Iwished 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 oranything 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 themto lead on to the ties. But Tom insis
ted upon shooting, and though hisbrother did not seem quite to follow the other's plans, still he chimedin with him, and the only thing I could do was to agree with what graceI could. But I decided to make this a pretext for disposing of some oftheir superfluous ammunition.

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

  "By the time that Tom had fired three shots Jim came up and I told theformer to hand over the rifle and let his brother try. Quite readily hedid so. Of course, there were only two cartridges left in the gun, forit was a half-magazine, but Jim expected to take the third shot with hisown rifle. When he had fired twice, however, and reached out his handfor 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 theyhad been tricked. But I had the drop on them, and since they were bothdisarmed 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 themor 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-cuttersfound, however, that the cattlemen had deliberately exaggerated thepenalty for timber trespass in the hope that they would resist and thusget themselves into serious trouble with the government, their anger wasdiverted from me. By joining in with them in a sweeping denunciation ofthe cow-camp, and by pointing out that no harsh measures were intendedagainst 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 frictionshould be caused. I think some small fine, purely nominal, was exacted,and the tie-cutters got into harmonious relations with the Supervisorlater. 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, failingthat, to pump me full of holes."

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

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

  "Two hundred years before, in this same place now so thickly strewn withruins, there had been no one living, and the mountains were accountedimpassable because of the dense forests. But in 1708 a Mongol hordeunder a powerful chieftain settled in the valley, and the timber beganto be cut recklessly. Attracted by the fame of this chieftain, othertribes poured down into these valleys, until by 1720 several hundredthousand persons were living where thirty years before not a soul was tobe seen. The cold winters of Mongolia drew heavily upon the fuelresources of the adjacent forests, and a disastrous fire strippedhundreds of square miles. Farther and farther afield the inhabitants hadto 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 hadto decamp, and what was once a dense forest and next a smiling valleyhas 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 terriblecases of deforestation right here in the United States."

  The lecturer then launched into a description of the once great forestsof China, and quoted the words of writers less than three centuries agowho depicted the great Buddhist monasteries hid deep in the heart ofdensely wooded regions. Then, with this realization of heavily forestedareas in mind, there was flashed upon the screen picture after pictureof desolation. Cities, once prosperous, were shown abandoned because themountains near by had become deforested. Man could not live therebecause food could not grow without soil, and all the soil had beenwashed away from the slopes. The streams, once navigable, were choked upwith the silt that had washed down. When rains came they acted astorrents, since there was no vegetation to hold the water and the lowerlevels became flooded.

  "Nature made the world a garden," said the speaker, "and man is makingit a desert. Our children and our children's children for countlessgenerations are to enjoy the gardens we leave, or bewail the desertswe create."

  Startling, too, was the manner in which the lecturer showed the unhappyfate of countries which an unthinking civilization had despoiled. Thehills and valleys where grew the famous cedars of Lebanon are almosttreeless now, and Palestine, once so luxuriant, is bare and lonely.Great cities flourished upon the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates wherewere the hanging gardens of Babylon and the great hunting parks ofNineveh, yet now the river runs silently between muddy banks, infertileand deserted, save for a passing nomad tribe. The woods of ancientGreece are not less ruined than her temples; the forests of Dalmatiawhence came the timber that built the navies of the ancient world arenow barren plateaus, shelterless and waste; and throughout a large partof southern Europe and northern Africa, man has transformed the smile ofnature into a mask of inflexible severity.

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

  "Not often, if it is allowed to go too far," said the geologist. "Ittakes time, of course, for all the soil to be washed away. But whereverthe 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 ofthousands 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. Itrequires millions of dollars to replant a stretch of forest which wouldhave renewed itself just by a little careful lumbering, for Nature isonly 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 ofthose who had come only to hear the lecture had gone. Some of the ForestService men, however, were passing through the corridors to thedining-room. At the door Wilbur paused hesitatingly. He had not beeninvited to stay, but at the same time he felt that he could hardly leavewithout thanking his uncle, who at the time was strolling toward theother portion of the house, deeply engrossed in conversation. In thisquandary the Chief Forester, all unknown to the lad, saw hisembarrassment, and with the quick intuition so characteristic of theman, 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. Amoment later he heard his name called, and, turning, came face to facewith a tall young fellow, bronzed and decisive looking.

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

  The District Forester motioned to the table which was heaped with dozensupon dozens of baked apples, flanked by several tall pitche
rs 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 powersthat be about your fitness, but that isn't really getting to the insideof the matter. It's when you feel that you've had the chance to comeright in and take the regular prescribed ritual of a baked apple and aglass of milk in the house of the Chief Forester that you can feelyou're the real thing in the Service."

  THE TIE-CUTTERS' BOYS.

  Two young members of the outlaw gang which defied the cattle man andthreatened the Forest Service.

  _Photograph by U. S. Forest Service._]

  DEFORESTED AND WASHED AWAY.

  Example of laborious artificial terracing in China to save the littlesoil remaining.

  _Courtesy of U. S. Forest Service._]

  AS BAD AS ANYTHING IN CHINA.

  Final results of deforestation in Tennessee, due to cutting and to fumesfrom a copper smelter.

  _Photograph by U. S. Forest Service._]