yes, there were warriors scarred from the
fight, fellows with corky arms and mottled streaks where the lightning
had struck and splintered. Only the cheesy-hearted, the warriors with
maggots and grubs manufacturing punk out of heart-wood, for all the
world like humans infected by evil thoughts, only the hollow hearted
came down to earth with a crash in the fray.

Another turn, you were among the lodge-pole pines and englemann
spruce--pure park, Wayland always thought, the delight of a Forester's
heart; warm human open park places where you kept looking for deer
though you knew there weren't any. In riding down the backbone of the
Ridge, Wayland always planned to camp under the lodge pole pines; it
was so cool, so rain-proof and sun-proof, with an almost certainty of a
mountain stream somewhere near, and if you had eyes to see, a game
trail down to the stream. To-night, he went on down to the _Brule_, a
cross section of the mountain swept by fire years before the Forest
Service had taken hold in the days when millmen had been permitted to
take out windfall and burn free, and all a millman had to do to become
a millionaire in free lumber was set the incendiary fire going to
create windfall. In his own district, Wayland knew two men who had
become rich in that way; but of course, _that_ was long ago. The
Forest men had cleared out the windfall and burn; and now, the deity of
the woods, Nature, was at work! By the moonlight, the Ranger could see
the pale chalky peach-bloom boles of the ghost birches, and the satiny
poplars and cottonwoods, turning gold to the approaching autumn but
going down gay, twinkling, laughing fellows to the year's death,
actually clapping their hands, shaking with glee, sending leaves down
in a rain of gold, which, it is to be hoped, the pixies picked up, the
pixies sailing the air in feather parachutes of flower and cone seed!
Wayland could see these airy ships between him and the silver
moonlight, dropping seeds--seeds--seeds; seeds of fire flower and
golden rod and hoary evergreen; shooting them out in tiny catapults;
sending them up in dandelion fluff and sky rockets; catching and
skimming the wind in airy canoes; tilting the winged sails to a whiff
and sailing, sailing, dropping the seeds of life for a thousand years!
And beneath the birches with the hundred eyes looking out from the
chalky faced bark, and the poplars laughing and shaking with glee, and
the cottonwoods showering down a ra