The Boy With the U. S. Foresters | Page 4

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